By Steve Vertlieb: It was in 1997 that I first received a rather flattering telephone call from an editor in New York, asking if I’d be willing to participate in a new published anthology that he was compiling for Midnight Marquee Press. The book would assemble many genre writers of the period in a collaborative effort celebrating the “life,” and death of Bram Stoker’s literary creation Dracula in film.
The “editor,” whose name shall go unspoken here, said that he had grown up with my work in such publications as The Monster Times, and that he would be honored to include a chapter by me in the pages of his forthcoming book, which was to be called Dracula, The First Hundred Years. I was asked to write a somewhat light-hearted examination of the Dracula, and related vampire films, and television productions of the 1970’s. Prompted, perhaps, by his professed “love” for my work, I agreed, and began fabricating a new article for his publication.
I set about writing a lengthy new piece and, once finished, sent it off by mail to New York. I received a congratulatory telephone call from the “gentleman” in question shortly following its receipt, advising me that he was delighted with my work. He said that it was everything that he could have hoped for, and more, and that while many of his writers would need to be heavily edited, my work would be published essentially as I had written it.
Now, it’s normal for an editor to send each of his stable of writers the “proofs” of their edited work once completed, prior to publication, so that they might be gone over and approved for content. Months went by, however, without any further communication from the book’s editor. I’d begun hearing ominous rumblings from a number of writers, grumbling that their efforts had been heavily tampered with and changed, and that there was brewing trouble in “paradise.” I continued to rest easily, however, in the spoken assurance that my work would be published essentially as written.
When the book was at last published, however, I discovered to my horror that my work had been badly distorted, compromised, and truncated. Wherever I had spoken of actor Christopher Lee with affection and reverence, my text had been re-written to ridicule and attack him. Wherever I had spoken of actor Frank Langella with respect and admiration, my text had been re-written as would reflect the secret yearnings of a smitten school girl in drooling affection for her hero. Large chunks of my writing had been unceremoniously removed and altered, without either my knowledge or permission by an unscrupulous “editor” who had unkindly inserted his own cryptic observations and prejudice under my name and byline, shabbily using my personal reputation either to malign or revere the films and performances that he had either loved or loathed.
When I asked why he had done this to me, he replied that he thought that “it was funny.” Reviewers of the volume, who had taken offence to many of the cruel observations expressed supposedly by me, were harsh in their very personal criticism of my work. I set about composing a letter writing campaign to address these issues, stating rather forcefully that the offensive opinions determined objectionable were either edited, or added, after my work had been submitted, and neither with my knowledge or consent. Consequently, sales of the volume plummeted, and the editor complained that I had “murdered” his book.
In the twenty years since its publication, the title has come to be reviled by readers, and wholly disavowed by its unwitting publisher. In the decades that followed, I’d longed to have my work published in its entirety, and as originally conceived as written. Here, then, for the first time ever, and with the enthusiastic permission of Midnight Marquee Press, is the published premiere of my original work … “Dracula In The Seventies: Prints Of Darkness.”
…At five, the always cool Monica Valentinelli came to my hotel room and helped me begin the transformation into Mer queen. I had tweeted about the dress months before, at which point my friend Kris Dikeman said it needed a seashell tiara, Nick Hyle then volunteered a trident, and by the time of the Nebulas I was a little worried it would turn out to be a costume instead of an outfit and instead it was GLORIOUS and I felt like the belle of the underwater ball….
…Sunday morning was time for my favorite part and another one I will take full credit for implementing, unlike most of the other stuff: the volunteer breakfast. We had close to fifty people show up this time, which was the third so far, and people seemed to happy to get their fancy certificates (suitable for framing!) and get a chance to talk with each other. I told the joke I stole from Joe Haldeman about SFWA, like soylent green, being made of people once again and a good time was had by all….
The Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles will host a conversation between renowned architect Jimenez Lai and children’s fantasy author Henry Lien entitled Imagined Cities: Innovative Uses of Architecture in Film and Literature at its gallery in Westwood on Saturday, June 2, 2018 from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
The conversation is in connection with the Taiwan Academy’s current exhibition Rooftops & Backyards: Expanding Taipei & L.A., which explores the construction of “architecture on top of architecture”, and multi-purpose use of properties as ways that cities deal with the issue of limited space in densely populated urban areas. The Imagined Cities event explores such themes in fictional depictions of cities.
“From Blade Runner to Howl’s Moving Castle, film and literature have historically embraced innovative uses of architecture,” says Henry Lien, the author of Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword. “Science fiction and fantasy are particularly effective in expanding notions of beauty in buildings and cities, which becomes relevant as cities experiment with new ways to solve population density issues.”
Jimenez Lai, the founding partner of Los Angeles-based studio Bureau Spectacular and the curator of Rooftops & Backyards: Expanding Taipei & L.A., hopes to explore the universal issue of limited space in densely populated urban areas through the dialogue and the exhibition.
According to Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles, the exhibition demonstrates an interesting comparison between Taipei and Los Angeles, discussing topics surrounding art, architecture, urbanism, and the way of life between the cultures of Taiwan and the United States
(3) DOZOIS HOSPITALIZED. Christopher Casper posted on Facebook that Gardner Dozois is in hospital:
Friends of Gardner – He is currently in Pennsylvania hospital under medical sedation and intubated. While in the hospital for a chronic condition he had a serious and rapid deterioration causing some major systems to fail. He has an amazing team of doctors and the doctors are cautiously optimistic that his condition can be reversed!
I will do my best to keep everyone informed.
I am comforted and Gardner would be humbled by the hundreds of IM I received in the last 24 hrs expressing concern and love for my father. Due to the mere quantity, please forgive me if I am unable to respond personally to them all. Gardner is blessed to be so loved by so many.
Please continue to send good vibes, well wishes, and prayers his way. It is appreciated and thank you.
(4) THEY’LL BE MISSED. Sharon Lee and Steve Miller have moved from the country town of Winslow, Maine to the city of Waterville, Maine, and that’s affected their summer travel plans. They tell how in the latest “Liaden Universe® Infodump No. 120”.
LEE AND MILLER WILL NOT ATTEND WORLDCON 76
We had intended to attend WorldCon; we had budgeted time and money; arranged schedules, and then — in late February, we looked at a house in town (we have long been looking to move into town, closer to services and conveniences), fell in love with the place, made an offer, and — the long and short of it is that, all the money and time we had budgeted for attending WorldCon instead went to moving into the new house. We’re very sorry that we won’t be at the con with our friends and readers, old and new. But we’re very happy with our new situation.
On the topic of conventions — this is the first time since 1997, that we haven’t had a convention, or three, on the schedule. That feels. . .strange, indeed.
The icy surface of Jupiter’s moon, Europa, is thought to lie on top of a global ocean1–4. Signatures in some Hubble Space Telescope images have been associated with putative water plumes rising above Europa’s surface5,6, providing support for the ocean theory. However, all telescopic detections reported were made at the limit of sensitivity of the data5–7, thereby calling for a search for plume signatures in in-situ measurements. Here, we report in-situ evidence of a plume on Europa from the magnetic field and plasma wave observations acquired on Galileo’s closest encounter with the moon….
Scientists have discovered three vast canyons in one of the last places to be explored on Earth – under the ice at the South Pole.
The deep troughs run for hundreds of kilometres, cutting through tall mountains – none of which are visible at the snowy surface of the continent.
Dr Kate Winter from Northumbria University, UK, and colleagues found the hidden features with radar.
Her team says the canyons play a key role in controlling the flow of ice.
And if Antarctica thins in a warming climate, as scientists suspect it will, then these channels could accelerate mass towards the ocean, further raising sea-levels.
The ancestors of modern birds may have survived the asteroid strike that wiped out the rest of their kin by living on the forest floor.
The new theory, based on studying fossilised plants and ornithological data, helps explain how birds came to dominate the planet.
The asteroid impact 66 million years ago laid waste to the world’s forests.
Ground-dwelling bird ancestors managed to survive, eventually taking to the trees when the flora recovered.
“It seems clear that being a relatively small-bodied bird capable of surviving in a tree-less world would have conferred a major survival advantage in the aftermath of the asteroid strike,” said Dr Daniel Field of the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath.
Apollo and Skylab astronaut Alan Bean, the fourth human to walk on the moon and an accomplished artist, has died.
Bean, 86, died on Saturday, May 26, at Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. His death followed his suddenly falling ill while on travel in Fort Wayne, Indiana two weeks before.
“Alan was the strongest and kindest man I ever knew. He was the love of my life and I miss him dearly,” said Leslie Bean, Alan Bean’s wife of 40 years. “A native Texan, Alan died peacefully in Houston surrounded by those who loved him.”
A test pilot in the U.S. Navy, Bean was one of 14 trainees selected by NASA for its third group of astronauts in October 1963. He flew twice into space, first as the lunar module pilot on Apollo 12, the second moon landing mission, in November 1969, and then as commander of the second crewed flight to the United States’ first space station, Skylab, in July 1973….
On Nov. 19, 1969, Bean, together with Apollo 12 commander Charles “Pete” Conrad, landed on the Ocean of Storms and became the fourth human to walk on the moon. During two moonwalks Bean helped deploy several surface experiments and installed the first nuclear-powered generator station on the moon to provide the power source. He and Conrad inspected a robotic Surveyor spacecraft and collected 75 pounds (34 kilograms) of rocks and lunar soil for study back on Earth.
Of all of the monsters known to man, which one could possibly be considered more iconic than Count Dracula? The quintessential vampire, Count Dracula has inspired tens of films and stories the world over, not to mention the virtual immortality of the character during as a beloved Halloween character. For all of these reasons, it’s undeniable that this icon of horror more than deserves his own little holiday so the world can show its appreciation for his contributions to the worlds of cinema and literature over the centuries. So put on your fangs, and let’s sink out teeth right into this, shall we?
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY
May 26, 1961 — The Twilight Zone aired “Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?” Jack Elam utters the words, “It’s a real Ray Bradbury.”
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Born May 26, 1912 — Jay Silverheels (“Tonto” on The Lone Ranger TV series)
Born May 26, 1913 – Actor Peter Cushing
Born May 26, 1951 — Sally Ride, astronaut. First American woman in space
(12) COMICS SECTION.
Chip Hitchcock discovered the game of Monopoly roused surprisingly strong feelings in these Something Positive characters.
(13) SARTORIAL SPLENDOR. Indeed, it is a most absolute and excellent hat.
(14) HOLLYWOOD LAWYERS FIND WORK. Sesame Street production company Sesame Workshop (formerly known as Children’s Television Workshop) has sued distributor STX over Melissa McCarthy’s new movie The Happytime Murders.
The makers of Sesame Street are suing the promoter of a new Melissa McCarthy movie, saying it’s abusing the famed puppets’ sterling reputation to advertise the film.
A judge Friday scheduled a hearing next week to consider a request for immediate relief by Sesame Workshop, which sued Thursday in federal court for unspecified damages.
The film, The Happytime Murders, is scheduled for release Aug. 17. McCarthy plays a human detective who teams with a puppet partner to investigate grisly puppet murders.
The lawsuit said the Sesame Street brand will be harmed by a just-released movie trailer featuring “explicit, profane, drug-using, misogynistic, violent, copulating and even ejaculating puppets” along with the tagline “NO SESAME. ALL STREET.”
STX Productions LLC says in a statement it is confident in its legal position.
Apparently, the puppet-based entertainment industry is more divided than we knew. The people behind Sesame Street may not like it, but The Happytime Murders has the imprimatur of Muppet royalty: the director is none other than Jim Henson’s son, Brian Henson, who is also the chairman of the Jim Henson Company, and will feature a number of puppeteers from various Muppet movies.
But “Sesame Street” creators are incensed at the reference, arguing in the lawsuit that it will confuse audiences and harms the “Sesame Street” brand. The marketing campaign “seeks to capitalize on the reputation and goodwill of ‘Sesame Street,’” the suit says. “While the trailer at issue is almost indescribably crude, ‘Sesame’ is not trying to enjoin defendants’ promotion or distribution of their movie. It is only defendants’ deliberate choice to invoke and commercially misappropriate ‘Sesame’s’ name and goodwill in marketing the movie — and thereby cause consumers to conclude that ‘Sesame’ is somehow associated with the movie — that has infringed on and tarnished the ‘Sesame Street’ mark and goodwill.”
(15) IS REY BELIEVABLE? YouTuber MisAnthro Pony is skeptical about Star Wars’ Rey:
She knows how to swim even though she spent her entire life on a desert planet, she’s as powerful as Kilo Ren despite receiving no training from Luke, she’s as skilled of a swordsman as Obi Wan, and now she can gun the Millennium Falcon like a pro in a matter of minutes. She apparently seems to know everything about stuff she should know nothing about. OK, Rey doing things she shouldn’t have been able to do in The Force Awakens was stupid too. But this is reaching it. This is really reaching it.
Carl Slaughter defends the presentation of the character:
Oh I don’t know. Luke blocks multiple gadget beams blindfolded with a light saber the first time he wields it. After only a few hours of training in the Force, he pinholes the shot that takes out the Death Star. After only a couple of months of training with Yoda, even Darth Vader is impressed. Never mind that even the best Jedi are trained all their life from toddlership by a team of instructors in an academy.
(16) ON HIS GAME. And Chuck Tingle is skeptical about some gameplaying skeptics….
have heard that there are lonesome basement boys moaning on and on about a ladybuck on the cover of BATTLEFIELD video game. wonder if they know ladybucks are better warriors than them. cant be a warrior when your sitting lonesome in the basement all day
top funniest devils are lonesome basement boys moaning on ETHICS IN BASEMENT DWELLING and HISTORICAL ACCURACY what in the heck do you think your playing this is a dang video game its just a plumber fixin pipes and eating turtles who the heck cares
In what might prove beneficial, given the scope of Dune as a story, Villeneuve recently confirmed that he plans to split the adaptation into two films, still likely to be substantial in length each. While speaking to the Quebec publication La Presse, he mentioned the news while touching on the process of turning Herbert’s 896-page epic into a cohesive feature (or set of them): “Eric Roth wrote the first draft and I worked on my side afterwards… I have not had such fun on the creative side since Incendies! My wish would have been to make both films at the same time, but it will be too expensive. We will do them one at a time.”
(19) DESPITE POPULAR DEMAND. Borys Kit in The Hollywood Reporter story “‘Star Wars’: Boba Fett Movie in the Works With James Mangold”, says that James Mangold and Simon Kinberg, who last worked together on Logan (which Mangold directed and co-wrote and Kinberg produced) have been signed by Disney to develop a Boba Fett movie.
A message from our Legal and Compliance Department:
Dear User/Subscriber/Stranger/Prisoner
Due to the recent legislative changes in the European Union (a body not recognised by our founder and CEO, Timothy the Talking Cat), we have made several changes to our security policy.
… Our change in policy means that we will no longer:
Post lists of your names and misdeeds as a notice in the town square.
Maintain in a dark basement a wall with your photographs joined together with lines of red twine, with some faces circled in red marker and others defaced with a huge question mark….
Much more humor follows…
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, Lis Carey, Andrew Porter, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Soon Lee, Jonathan Cowie, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contirebiting editor of the day microtherion.]
We journey forwards and back as we come to know what has occurred to Joshua and the man who wants to get him, Kanu, genius criminal who has found a way to recreate his memories. Kanu has been ostracised to London from Alkebulahn with his mind wiped, but has the help of ‘arachnobots’ and now he controls a huge armaments corporation which is a front for a sinister organisation The Black Axis. He comes across with some considerable strength and charisma, indeed in one moment where he speaks of making people uncomfortable because of ‘My ethnicity, my bearing and my outspokenness’ and although is an absolute villain, his story is nicely interwoven, as it is important to the back story that is Joshua’s heritage.
Its a cracking good read, this one.
It rockets on, the chapters are nice and short, and all the time there are adventures. Joshua is set tasks by his learned school teacher, at a very impressive school, and these end up involving explorations and inventing, taking part in extreme sports, or combative and challenging excitements, and soon we see that our team gets into some tights spots culminating in a wonderfully tense set of scenes.
This book has it all: a sinister, cloaked Black Airship, mechanised Mayhem, ancient elements with science fictional connections, alien technologies and black history, white pulsed energy blasts, portals, a robotic and somewhat intelligent drone called Ballz, super soakers turned into weapons that make water solid like a ball bearing until they strike an adversary, a visit to the British Museum, Notting Hill Carnival and to imaginative places that are portrayed with an element of brilliance. Music, food and language give strong cultural indicators, offering elements that I was not aware of before….
Have you always planned on writing for an English-speaking market?
When I was nineteen, I worked in a science-fiction bookshop in Stockholm. There was, and still is, this magazine called “Locus,” which is the SFF industry’s main magazine, and I would read that during lunch break. And I had this revelation that “I wanted to be in here. I want to have my book reviewed in here. I want to have an interview here. And I want to be on the shelves in the book shop… in English.” The thing is, Sweden has a very small readership. It’s very difficult to get books published, it’s very difficult to sell books, it’s extremely difficult to sell speculative fiction. So, I realized that the market was so small that I had to switch languages, but I didn’t switch until I was in my early thirties.
Tell us a little about your book, “Amatka.”
Amatka is about humans colonizing a world where matter, physical matter, responds to language. It’s about what happens to society that tries to survive in such a world. What happens to the people who quite can’t find a place in it. So, it’s about reality, it’s about language, it’s about revolution, and it’s about love.
There is going to be a meteor shower on 12th of August, 2017. According to astronomers this will be the brightest shower in the recorded human history. It will light up the night sky and some of these might even be visible during the day. This meteor shower is being considered as once in a lifetime opportunity as the next meteor shower of such kind will be after 96 years.
The Perseid meteor shower, one of the brighter meteor showers of the year, occurs every year between July 17 and August 24. The shower tends to peak around August 9-13.
Niantic Labs threw a big event in Chicago last weekend to celebrate the first year of Pokémon Go, only to run into cellular data congestion and server issues that made the game unplayable for many attendees. Now, the company has announced that it’s delaying several planned European events to ensure that trainers will be able to play the game.
In a blog post, Niantic said that its delaying two sets of events planned for Copenhagen and Prague (August 5) and Stockholm and Amsterdam (August 12), until later this fall. Several other planned events for Japan (August 14th), and France, Spain, and Germany (September 16th) are moving forward as scheduled.
The delay comes after Chicago’s Pokémon Go Fest got off to a disastrous start last week. Cellular service was spotty, and server issues prevented players from logging into the game. When Niantic CEO John Hanke took to the stage for his opening remarks, players booed him, and the company ultimately ended up offering refunds and $100 worth of Pokécoins to players. Last week, nearly two dozen attendees launched a class-action lawsuit against Niantic, aiming to recoup travel expenses.
(5) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. The Hugo Award Book Club declares there are “Too Many Sequels” up for the award. They make a colorable argument anyway.
It’s worth noting that the majority of this year’s Best Novel Hugo Award shortlist is comprised of books that are either the first part in a series, or the sequel to another work.
In fact, only one of the six novels on this year’s shortlist (All The Birds In The Sky) is a standalone work.
This is not the first time in recent memory that the shortlist has been dominated by sequels, prequels, or works in a shared universe. But it is part of a larger trend, and it’s one that worries us.
In the 1960s, 88 per cent of the Hugo shortlist was comprised of standalone novels. From 2001 to 2010, 56 per cent of Hugo shortlisted novels were standalone works. In the first seven years of this decade, the statistic has fallen to 27 per cent (ten of the 36 novels shortlisted).
Join us for a celebration of Ray Harryhausen’s 1957 classic, ’20 Million Miles to Earth’. Our 15th episode sees Foundation trustee John Walsh and Collections Manager Connor Heaney discuss the adventures of the Ymir- one of Ray’s most beloved and sympathetic creations.
We then discuss the first exhibition of Ray Harryhausen material in the USA for several years, opening at the Science Museum Oklahoma from July through to December. We describe this incredible display with museum director Scott Henderson, alongside his own lifelong enthusiasm for Harryhausen films.
An exclusive interview follows, recorded on location at the Barbican Centre’s ‘Into the Unknown’ exhibition with Terry Marison. Terry was one of the suited Selenites in the 1964 classic ‘First Men in the Moon’, and discusses his experiences of being one of Ray Harryhausen’s living creatures!
(7) TODAY’S DAY
Paperback Book Day
How To Celebrate Paperback Book Day
The best way to celebrate Paperback Book Day is to curl up with your favorite paperback book. If it’s been a while since you’ve bought a proper book, this is your opportunity to do so. Get out there and find a copy of your favorite text, or even pass one on to another friend. Then, when you’ve hit all the used book stores and perused the shelves of the nearest book stores, it’s time to come on home and look over your collection. Paperback Book Day recalls all those rainy quiet days spent reading a book while the drips ran down the windowpane.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY
July 30, 1971 — Apollo 15 landed on the Moon.
July 30, 1986 — Walt Disney’s Flight of the Navigator premiered on this day.
July 30, 1999 — The Blair Witch Project, is released in U.S. theaters.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY TERMINATOR
Born July 30, 1947 — Arnold Schwarzenegger
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY LURCH
Born July 30, 1948 – Actor Carel Struyckenis born in The Hague, Netherlands. He is best known for playing the Giant in Twin Peaks, Mr. Homn in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Lurch in three Addams Family films.
A first bookform edition sold for £11,000 at Cheffins of Cambridge earlier this month was slightly foxed and stained, but on the front free endpaper Wells had signed and inscribed the book for Edmond Joseph Sullivan and added a tiny drawing of a moustachioed angel.
The last stop in any shipwreck walk ought to be the evocative St Mary’s church in Whitby, where there is a memorial to the lifeboat tragedy of 1861… After visiting the church, head down the steps – known by all as the Dracula Steps – across the swing bridge and over to the pier itself, a fabulous piece of marine engineering.
From there, continue up the hill towards East Terrace. On a grassy bank you will find a park bench dedicated to Bram Stoker, who sat here and used a real shipwreck – that of a Russian vessel on the shore opposite – to create an imaginary one, that of the Demeter, and, of course, the most memorable shipwreck survivor of all time: Count Dracula himself.
AMC announced that Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tomis in development for television as part of their “scripts-to-series development model that puts the emphasis on the most important part of our strategy – outstanding writing, a commitment to worlds you’ve never seen on TV before, and rich character development.”
Good fantasy, Hobb believes, is about “lowering the threshold of disbelief so the reader can step right into the book and not feel blocked out by something that’s impossible or at first glance silly. And I think silly is more dangerous than impossible.”
It is also, as Martin knows so well, about not being afraid to draw the final curtain for your characters when the time comes. “Nobody gets to go on for ever. If you put a little magical umbrella over your characters and say ‘yes, we’re going to scare you a little bit but ultimately you know that at the end of the book everything is going to be much the same way it was when we started the story’, well then, why write the story, what’s the point?”
(16) ALIEN ADVENTURE. The Recall official trailer.
[Thanks to Carl Slaughter, Cat Eldridge, Andrew Porter, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
(1) LITIGATION. File 770 reported in September about the Kickstarter appeal raising funds for Oh, The Places You’ll Boldly Go!, featuring the writing of David Gerrold, the art of Ty Templeton, and the editorial skills of ComicMix’s Glenn Hauman.
The holders of the Dr. Seuss rights have objected and sued for damages reports TMZ.com in “Oh, The Lawsuits You’ll See”.
Dr. Seuss‘ stories should NOT be rehashed with Vulcans or Klingons in the mix — at least not without permission … according to a new lawsuit.
The Doc’s camp just filed suit against ComicMix, which thought it’d be neat to make a ‘Star Trek‘ version of “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” In the docs, obtained by TMZ, the Seuss’ co. says ComicMix fused elements of the classic book with their own story, and even jacked actual prose from the original … all without asking.
They say ComicMix knew damn well it was doing the Doc dirty because its Kickstarter page for the project mentioned they might have to go to court to prove their work was parody and not a violation of copyright. They acknowledged, “we may even lose.”
Team Seuss is suing for damages. A lawyer for ComicMix tells us they love Dr. Seuss and hope to resolve the suit amicably.
(2) NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MARS SERIES. Don’t wait until the November 14 premiere. Stream the Mars premiere now.
The year is 2033, and humanity’s first crewed mission to Mars is about to become a reality. As a clock counts down the final 90 seconds to landing, an expert crew of astronauts endures the final harrowing moments before touching down on the red planet. Even with the best training and resources available, the maiden crew of the Daedalus spacecraft must push itself to the brink of human capability in order to successfully establish the first sustainable colony on Mars. Set both in the future and in the present day, the global miniseries event MARS blends feature film-caliber scripted elements set in the future with documentary vérité interviews with today’s best and brightest minds in modern science and innovation, illuminating how research and development is creating the space technology that will enable our first attempt at a mission to Mars.
(3) TAOS TOOLBOX. Walter Jon Williams announced today the “Most Famous Author in the World” George R.R. Martin will be joining the Taos Toolbox faculty as a special guest. The Taos Toolbox Writers Workshop takes place June 18-July 1, 2017.
George was our guest for the very first Taos Toolbox, and now he’s consented to return for our tenth anniversary. We’re pleased and flattered to have him, even if it’s only once per decade.
The other faculty are Walter Jon Williams, Nancy Kress, with special lecturers Steven Gold and E.M. Tippets.
Earlier today, I had the great pleasure of sitting down one-on-one with J.A. Bayona in promotion of his upcoming movie A Monster Calls, and it was towards the end of our chat that we talked a bit about his next project. I posed the aforementioned question to the filmmaker, and he not only enjoyed the challenge of the query, but explained why his installment in the dinosaur franchise will be both Jurassic World 2 and Jurassic Park 5.
(5) TOVAR OBIT. Lupita Tovar, the Mexican actress who starred in the 1931 Spanish-language version of Dracula that was shot at the same time on the same sets as the Bela Lugosi picture has died at the age of 108 according to The Hollywood Reporter.
… Lupita returned to Mexico to great acclaim to star in Santa (1932), her country’s first talking film, and later appeared in The Invader (1936) opposite Buster Keaton, Blockade (1938) with Henry Fonda, South of the Border (1939) with Gene Autry and The Westerner (1940) with Gary Cooper….
Lupita Tovar’s daughter is Susan Kohner, who earned an Oscar nomination for portraying the young woman who rejects her black mother (Juanita Moore) and tries to pass herself off as white in the 1959 Douglas Sirk melodrama Imitation of Life.
Other survivors include her grandchildren Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz, Kohner’s sons, who shared an Oscar screenplay nomination for About a Boy (2002).
Tovar was married to Czech-born producer and Hollywood agent Paul Kohner, who represented the likes of Greta Garbo, John Huston, Lana Turner, Ingmar Bergman, Yul Brynner, David Niven, Billy Wilder and Charles Bronson, from 1932 until his death in 1988.
They worked like children of the night, shooting from sundown to sunrise. Directed by a man who didn’t know a word of their language, the Spanish-speaking actors filmed an obscure alternative version of what would become one of the most famous movies of all time.
“Above all,” explains Lupita Tovar, the film’s heroine, “we wanted our version to be the best.” And, in many ways, it is.
For those of us who’ve watched and rewatched the Lugosi version, the simultaneously shot Drácula opens up a mind-boggling parallel universe—one with much improved camerawork and often more convincing acting.
This is a lavish, artful film in its own right, so much more than the “bonus feature” it’s listed as on home releases. If I haven’t hooked you already, here’s why any movie buff or horror fan needs to see Drácula.
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
November 13, 1933 – The Invisible Man premieres. Did you know: in order to achieve the effect that Claude Rains wasn’t there when his character took off the bandages, James Whale had him dress completely in black velvet and filmed him in front of a black velvet background.
November 13, 1940 — Walt Disney’s Fantasia premiered at the Broadway Theater in New York; first film to attempt to use stereophonic sound.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL
Born November 13, 1955 — Whoopi Goldberg
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
Born November 13, 1947 – Joe Mantegna, who appeared in both the stage production and the Disney movie of Ray Bradbury’s Wonderful Ice Cream Suit.
Northbound is a post-apocalyptic webseries set in a North American wilderness soon after a mysterious, cataclysmic event killed millions in a single day. Season 1 of the series is available to view for free exclusively through the entertainment website, GeekNation. The filmmakers are comprised of a Michigan and Los Angeles-based team that is dedicated to shooting in Michigan, and contributing to the long-term growth of the Upper Peninsula region.
Season 1, and the upcoming Season 2 of Northbound are designed as a prelude series to a feature film titled Northstar. Taken as a whole, The Northstar Saga will tell the story of a father as he works to discover why his daughter was one of the rare survivors to be rendered comatose after The Cataclysm. His journey will put him into contact (and inevitable conflict) with others that are struggling to rebuild lives, communities and an overall sense of purpose in a hazardous new world.
(11) PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH. Ethan Mills reviews the movie Arrival (beware copious spoilers) at Examined Worlds.
Director Denis Villeneuve has created a beautiful adaptation, from the striking cinematography to Jóhann Jóhannsson’s unnervingly sublime score. Amy Adams portrays the quiet strength and struggle of the main character, Dr. Louise Banks. I think I speak for most of my fellow college professors when I say it’s great to see a college professor depicted in a movie as a full human being rather than a pompous jerk, an emotionless egghead, or the absent-minded comic relief.
(12) STYLING ALIENS. In the Washington Post, Stephanie Merry takes the aliens in Arrival as a cue to look at how Hollywood has looked at aliens in sf films of the past 40 years, including Close Encounters, Mars Attacks! and Edge of Tomorrow. Beware mild spoilers in “The aliens in ‘Arrival’ are stunning. How do they compare to other film creatures?”
The aliens in “Arrival” are spectacular, and that’s no small feat. In most “first contact” movies, the otherworldly creatures almost always let us down. Either they’re predictable — you know, little green men speaking an echoey, indecipherable language or stereotypical “Greys” with the big eyes and the egghead — or they look fake.
Carlos Huante tested many iterations with director Denis Villeneuve before they settled on the final design for “Arrival,” which came out this week and follows a linguist (Amy Adams) who’s trying to understand what these visitors want. The creature artist first considered a very conventional look but also tried out beings that were more like stone creatures; ones composed of stacks of paper; and egg-shaped critters ambling around on spider legs.
Back to the movies. Point, by John T. Phillifent (perhaps better known under his pen name John Rackham), deals with a group of filmmakers who travel to Venus to make their latest blockbuster. The proposed feature involves beautiful female Venusians, and seems intended to provide a bit of satire of silly science fiction movies such as Queen of Outer Space. Although the author’s description of Venus is a bit more realistic than that, it’s still not terribly plausible. The Planet of Love is a very dangerous place, inhabited by all kinds of deadly creatures, but its atmosphere is breathable, and humans can walk around on its hot, steamy surface without spacesuits. The plot deals with a pilot who agrees to take the film crew into the Venusian wilderness. As you might expect, things quickly go very wrong, and the story turns into a violent account of survival in a hostile environment. All in all it’s a fairly typical adventure yarn, competent but hardly noteworthy. Two stars.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day John Winkelman.]
To celebrate the spookiest of holidays, we’re publishing a selection of excerpts from David J. Skal’sSomething in the Blood, a biography of Bram Stoker, published this month by Liveright. First up: the origins of Dracula.
There are many stories about how Bram Stoker came to write Dracula, but only some of them are true. According to his son, Stoker always claimed the inspiration for the book came from a nightmare induced by “a too-generous helping of dressed crab at supper”—a dab of blarney the writer enjoyed dishing out when asked, but no one took seriously (it may sound too much like Ebenezer Scrooge, famously dismissing Marley’s ghost as “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese”). But that hasn’t stopped the midnight snack of dressed crab from being served up as a matter of fact by countless people on countless occasions. While the nightmare aspect may well have some validity—Stoker’s notes at least suggest that the story might have had its genesis in a disturbing vision or reverie—it exemplifies the way truth, falsehood, and speculation have always conspired to distort Dracula scholarship. An unusually evocative piece of storytelling, Dracula has always excited more storytelling—both in endlessly embellished dramatizations and in the similarly ornamented accounts of its own birth process.
For readers looking for a casual haunt to sit down with a good book and a drink (or writers looking for a few strong ounces of liquid creativity)‚ Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood [is] home to a literary-themed bar‚ slated to open Oct. 14. Famous Last Words – echoing CanLit legend Timothy Findley’s 1981 novel of the same name – will feature craft cocktails “with a literary twist‚” with book-inspired names like The English Patient‚ Cryptonomicon‚ The Perks of Being a Wallflower‚ and Fahrenheit 451.
The bar’s bookish decor includes a Scrabble-tile-topped bar‚ bookshelf wallpaper‚ washrooms for Jane Austens or Oscar Wildes‚ typewriters‚ and‚ of course‚ plenty of paperbacks to browse on a bar-spanning book wall.
This chapter does not mention the array of sneaky means by which we sci fi authors try to weasel our way around causality and temporal protection. One is the universe branching point. When Spock accidentally lures a vengeful Romulan to go back in time and destroy Planet Vulcan (in J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek flick) many fans consoled themselves that this is just a branching-off of a newborn parallel reality… that the older timeline still stands, where Shatner-Kirk and all the rest remain, along the original timeline, like a trellis for the new one to grow alongside.
Well, well, that’s an artistic representation of one of many ways that physicists (at least a few) think that paradoxes might be resolved. Speaking as both a physicist and a science fiction author, I must say that this very loose partnership is one of the most fun that our unique and marvelous civilization offers, during a unique and marvelous… time.
(4) FELINE FEST. For National Cat Day, Jeff Somers of the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog has compiled “The 25 Best Cats in Sci-Fi & Fantasy”. (Not all of them are cats strictly speaking – for example, Aslan is on this list.)
Lying Cat in Saga, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples If you Google “lying cat” you’ll be rewarded with a slew of images of a fierce-looking cat saying the word “lying” in various tones—from vicious to interrogative. Lying cat can always tell if someone is deliberately lying, and thus is an invaluable companion to bounty hunter The Will in this remarkable comic series. More than just a very large cat that acts as a lie detector, Lying Cat is also a fierce warrior, and fiercely loyal. The fact that a cat that comes up to The Will’s shoulder was the runt of its litter should disturb you.
However, there is one email* that has come out that may truly signal the end of her hopes for the Presidency. Instead of being political in nature, or housing secret government information, this email discusses Doctor Who — or, rather, how she just does not appreciate the show, calling it “boring garbage” and feeling as though she is being left out on a joke that everyone else understands
…But to say that Doctor Who is boring garbage? Well, that crosses a line that few would dare to verbalize. In saying that, she has, in effect, removed the Whovian demographic from her voting population. Yes, she has a somewhat higher opinion of Sherlock, which has a great deal of overlap in terms of fandom, but to attack the Doctor?
(6) SAVE OUR STOTTIES. Fanhumorist and distinguished geezer Graham Charnock is in jeopardy of being denied access to an essential food group. He has launched a petition at Change.org
Greggs have ceased to sell ham and pease pudding stotties, a staple food of the Tyneside community. Let’s persuade them they are wrong that there is no demand.
Our goal is to reach 100 signatures and we need more support.
And to reassure yourself this is not (entirely) a hoax, you can study up on Tyneside cuisine in this Chronicle article.
(7) ZACHERLE OBIT. Horror movie TV host John Zacherle died October 27 at the age of 98 reports the New York Times.
[He] played a crypt-dwelling undertaker with a booming graveyard laugh on stations in Philadelphia and New York in the late 1950s and early ’60s…
In 1953 he began appearing as characters on “Action in the Afternoon,” a live western series shot in a vacant lot behind the studios of WCAU. “The idea was to get somebody in trouble on Monday, and either get him out of trouble, shoot him or hang him by Friday,” he told The Daily News in 1959.
One of his recurring characters was an undertaker named Grimy James, whose frock coat came in handy when the station bought a collection of 52 old horror films from Universal. The station manager, reviewing his new acquisition, decided that most of the films were so bad, he would have to build a show around them to add entertainment value.
Mr. Zacherle put on the frock coat and, in October 1957, went to work as the host of “The Shock Theater” (later simply “Shock Theater”), bringing with him an endless supply of sight gags and ad-lib patter.
A rabid fan base developed. When the station held an open house, expecting about 1,500 viewers to turn up, 13,000 stormed the studio to meet the Cool Ghoul, as Mr. Zacherle was known.
(8) CONVENTION IN A SYNAGOGUE. The first Jewish Comic Con takes place in Brooklyn on November 13.
All it took was a Shabbat dinner between the President of Congregation Kol Israel, Fred Polaniecki, and comic book creator Fabrice Sapolsky. Together, they outlined the Jewish Comic Con – a place to explore how Jewish identity has influenced comics both on the page and behind the scenes. Featuring panel discussions, artist tables, and lots of shmoozing,…
Now, Congregation Kol Israel is proud to organize the first ever Comic Con in a synagogue, our synagogue!
(9) PLAID AND PROUD. A kilt reference in yesterday’s Scroll prompted John King Tarpinian to remind me about the local Pasadena specialty store Off Kilter Kilts.
Southern California’s only multi-brand modern kilt store is celebrating its first anniversary on August 27, 2016.
Kilters from across the region will be converging on the store to mark the occasion with owner J.T. Centonze and the rest of the OKK crew. With more than 800 kilts sold in the first year, Off Kilter Kilts has a lot to celebrate.
Off Kilter Kilts has become a regular sight at local Renaissance Faires, Highland Games, and Celtic Festivals. They can also be seen around Pasadena hosting Kilts and Drinks nights at local restaurants.
(10) THE WINNER. Jonathan Maberry explains that the Canyon Crest Academy Writers Conference is the nation’s only absolutely free writers conference for teens. This year the conference inaugurated an award and named it after an author – him — the Jonathan Maberry Inspiring Teens Award. Then they turned around and made Maberry the first winner. Says Maberry, “I’m insanely honored to be the recipient of an award that is named after me. Yeah…I know. That’s surreal.”
(11) HAM ON VINYL. Someone sent along a link to William Shatner Live, a 1977 spoken word album. With the assurance, “No, I’ve not listened to it.” I must confess I have honored that choice myself, beyond about the first 15 seconds of the YouTube recording listed below.
The Wikipedia article on the album includes the text of William Shatner’s explanation for doing this one-man show on stage.
If I were good, it would be the actor’s dream– but if it failed I would be alone. Alone up there with thousands of eyes peering at me — opera glasses raised for a closer look, and the unasked but heavily felt question “what’s he going to do?”
All this was going through my head as I learned the lines — all this was in front of my eyes as I lay down at night — and when the day came that I was to open at Texas A&M University I was filled with fear.
A very primitive fear — the fear of the actor. The nightmare that all actors have from time to time is appearing naked in front of an audience — not knowing the lines, not knowing the play — I was living the dream.
Thirty-five hundred people awaited me expectantly; the buzz of their voices reached me backstage, the lights dimmed, the M.C. announced my name and I walked out. The spotlight hit me like a physical force and I was on — oh muse, be with me know — I took a breath & started to speak…
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, Cat Eldridge, Steven H Silver, David K.M. Klaus, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jonathan Edelstein.]
James Gunn is killing it on social media. The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2director has made himself unusually accessible to fans, especially considering he’s at the helm of a massive franchise for a studio known for its secrecy. But Gunn can pull it off because he’s managed to find the fine line between satisfying fan curiosity without actually giving anything away.
Imagine plopping Adam West’s Batman down in the dark and corrupt Gotham of, among other creators, Frank Miller, where half the cops are on the take and all the villains are not just colorful lunatics but mass murderers; imagine him fighting, for instance, the Joker of Scott Snyder’s DEATH OF THE FAMILY, or the one played by Heath Ledger.
Conversely, imagine the grim and militaristic Batman of ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN in the Gotham of Lorenzo Semple Jr., where all the crimes are whimsical and campy and Commissioner Gordon has all the competence of a turtle lying on his back.
This would lead to some fun scenes.
FRANK MILLER BATMAN: “There’s nothing about you I can’t fix, Joker…with my hands…”
CESAR ROMERO JOKER (Disconcerted): “Umm, what?”
or
ADAM WEST BATMAN: “I’m just an ally of this fine city’s fine, upstanding police force!”
BURT WARD ROBIN: “Gosh, Batman! You’re right!”
JIM GORDON: (Disconcerted) “Ummm, what?”
And Castro continues…
(4) LE GUIN DOCUMENTARY SEEKS FUNDING. Worlds of UKL is doing fundraising for a prospective documentary about Ursula K. Le Guin.
Jayn, who sent the link, mischieviously swears, “I have no connection with the production beyond also thinking that Le Guin deserves a documentary about her (and possibly also a Nobel Prize for Literature and the throne of an Empress.)” Well, who doesn’t agree with that?
Director Arwen Curry wrote on Facebook about a Kickstarter appeal that begins soon.
As I announced a while back, the NEH recently awarded Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin a major production grant. We’re so excited to finish filming and get into the edit room. But the NEH won’t release the funding until we raise the rest of the budget. On January 31, we will do a “soft launch” of a Kickstarter campaign, inviting friends and family to help support this important film. We hope to have a respectable sum when the press announces the campaign to the public on February 1. Can you help now by reaching out to your reading groups, your Facebook pages, and your best geek pals and asking them to ‘like” Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin? Thank you!
As we previously reported, noted sculptor Bryan Moore has launched a Kickstarter Campaign to help fund his latest project, a gorgeous bronze bust of DRACULA author Bram Stoker, a project formed in collusion with the Dublin Writer’s Museum and geared to tie into World Dracula Day on May 26th, 2016.
And now, author and dark visionary Neil Gaiman, the man behind such works as SANDMAN, CORALINE and AMERICAN GODS is among the project’s most famous backers.
“We’re incredibly grateful for Mr. Gaiman’s kindness and generosity” says Moore, the sculptor who has successfully crowdfunded efforts to place busts of H.P. Lovecraft at the Providence Athenaeum Library in Rhode Island and Edgar Allan Poe in Massachusetts at the Boston Public Library
Keeping with this morning’s theme of British horror, there’s an interesting article here on the state of British horror by Nina Allen, in which she raises, yet again, the subject of gender parity. With regard to THE 2ND SPECTRAL BOOK OF HORROR STORIES, I’d like to say this:
First of all, it’s not a ‘Best Of…’ anthology, as she claims, but an anthology of original horror fiction.
Secondly, she criticises the book – and by implication my editorship of it – by pointing out that of its nineteen stories only three are by women.
I’ll answer this observation by stating what I’ve stated several times before – for me, the most important thing when editing an anthology is to get the *best stories possible* for it. I don’t care whether those stories are by men or by women. I’m not driven by having to fulfil particular quotas as regards sex, race, level of fame or anything else. All I’m interested in is selecting the very best stories out of all the ones that are sent to me. And if the twenty best stories (in my opinion) were all written by men one year, or were all written by women, then those are the ones I would select. (And would no doubt be damned for it).
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
January 30, 1933 — The Lone Ranger debuts on Detroit radio.
January 30, 1991 — Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs premieres.
Could the prehistoric Stonehenge megaliths once have been the support for a wooden, two-storey roundhouse, a venue for feasting, speakers and musicians? That’s the theory of an English landscape architect who designed a small model of what she has in mind and is looking for money to build a 1:10 scale model of the structure.
Sarah Ewbank says the fact she is not an archaeologist has freed her from preconceived notions and allowed her to approach the matter in a fresh way.
For the second time in four months, researchers have reported autopsy results that suggest Alzheimer’s disease might occasionally be transmitted to people during certain medical treatments—although scientists say that neither set of findings is conclusive.
The latest autopsies, described in the Swiss Medical Weekly on January 26, were conducted on the brains of seven people who died of the rare, brain-wasting Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD). Decades before their deaths, the individuals had all received surgical grafts of dura mater—the membrane that covers the brain and spinal cord. These grafts had been prepared from human cadavers and were contaminated with the prion protein that causes CJD.
…Neither study implies that Alzheimer’s disease could ever be transmitted through normal contact with caretakers or family members, the scientists emphasize. And no one uses cadaver-derived preparations in the clinic anymore. Synthetic growth hormone is used for growth disorders, and synthetic membranes are used for patching up in brain surgery.
LEGO-based artist, author, and curator Mike Doyle (previously here and here) has collected another impressive set of LEGO masterpieces in his lastest book Beautiful LEGO: Wild! by No Starch Press, a book that explores natural wonders from undersea landscapes to a family of sea otters produced from over 3,500 LEGO pieces. Unlike Doyle’s last book which featured sculptures depicting sci-fi horrors and ghoulish nightmares, this book collects the works of several dozen artists who capture natural scenes from our planet’s Animal Kingdom and beyond.
One of Doyle’s own pieces that appears in the book is a new piece titled Appalachian Mountaintop Removal (2015), a work composed of more than 10,000 pieces that directly references the act outlined in its title. Mountaintop removal is a form of coal mining affecting the Appalachian Mountains that levels mountains, poisons aquifers, and damages surrounding wildlife indefinitely. You can learn how to help the destruction of these natural resources as well as view more of Doyle’s massive lego sculptures on his blog here.
What you nominate is, of course, entirely up to you.
But please, NOMINATE. I have been beating that same drum for a decade, and this year it behooves me to beat it even louder. Nominate the stuff that you enjoyed best last year. Let your own individual voice be heard.
Yes, I have recommended some stuff I liked, in older posts below. And I will be doing more of same in the near future. But remember, that’s just me saying, “hey, I liked this, you might like it too, take a look.” No one should ever nominate anything just because someone else tells them to.
(11) VOX DAY ON HUGO NOMINATIONS. On the other hand, Vox Day told Vox Popoli readers when they can expect his Rabid Puppy list.
The Rabid Puppy List of Recommendations That Is Most Certainly Not a Slate, Much Less a Direct Order From the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil will be posted in February.
It’s award nomination time! AND THANK GAWD, I don’t need to ask you fine folks to nominate or vote for me or anything, because I already know all the awards I’m going to win this year. The people behind the people behind the scenes have told me I’m a shoe-in. So here’s the list. Don’t be jealous.
2016 Hugo for Best Novel Idea about Use of a Hugo: “Condom demonstration prop in sexual education class for cyborgs“, submitted by Randy Henderson, author of Finn Fancy Necromancy…
And after that, he plans on winning every other award in the field….
[Thanks to Will R., Jayn, James H. Burns, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]
Last words of John Carradine, who died on this day in 1988.
Did you know? Carradine played Count Dracula in four films: House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945), Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966) and Nocturna (1979).
Having seen mixed reviews, I waited until Tomorrowland came out on cheaper streaming services. Directed and mostly written by Brad Bird, auteur of brilliant work like Iron Giant and The Incredibles, the previews looked promising — a story about the shiny visions of the technological future we had as kids in the 1960s, and a world where they actually happened.
Twenty-five years ago, youngsters at my door could see through the screen to a life-sized Superman and Batman that were just past me, in the living room.
On another night, every window of my home was adorned with special Halloween themed balloons, the merry Mylar reaching high into the October sky.
For another year, a wide assortment of latex masks of classic Hollywood monsters (a wolfman, a mummy, Planet of the Apes’ Dr. Zaius and creatures from The Outer Limits)–an amazing collection I had somehow acquired–peered out from those portals, gazing upon a lawn filled with a virtual galaxy of giant pumpkin lawn bags!
Diego Ramirez captured video of the 25-foot-tall jack o’lantern blowing around in traffic after it broke free of its straps at the Peoria Sports Complex.
“I was so shocked to see that it was like bouncing like a basketball all the way down the road,” Patrick Sparkes of Big AZ Promotions, the company that owns the decoration, told KPNX-TV.
The company said the 350-pound pumpkin broke free from its straps with the help of strong winds.
“We showed up and it wasn’t there and we spent the last 40 minutes driving around looking for it,” Sparkes said.
There were no injuries from the pumpkin’s dash for freedom, but there was some damage done to streetlamps.
THE ADDAMS FAMILY features an original story, and it’s every father’s nightmare. Wednesday Addams, the ultimate princess of darkness, has grown up and fallen in love with a sweet, smart young man from a respectable family. A man her parents have never met. And if that weren’t upsetting enough, she confides in her father and begs him not to tell her mother. Now, Gomez Addams must do something he’s never done before — keep a secret from his beloved wife, Morticia. Everything will change for the whole family on the fateful night they host a dinner for Wednesday’s “normal” boyfriend and his parents.
JACOBS: Misunderstood – that’s what I’m here to do is trying to salvage the reputation of some of these Halloween monsters. So yes, Frankenstein I think gets a really raw deal in the reputation department. We all think of Frankenstein’s monster as this monosyllabic idiot from the movies. But actually, in Mary Shelley’s original novel from 1818, Frankenstein’s monster was more of a sensitive intellectual type. He read Plutarch and Goethe. He was more Brooklyn hipster and less unfrozen caveman.
October 31, 1926 – Harry Houdini dies. Harry Houdini, the most celebrated magician and escape artist of the 20th century, dies of peritonitis in a Detroit hospital. Twelve days before, Houdini had been talking to a group of students after a lecture in Montreal when he commented on the strength of his stomach muscles and their ability to withstand hard blows. Suddenly, one of the students punched Houdini twice in the stomach. The magician hadn’t had time to prepare, and the blows ruptured his appendix. He fell ill on the train to Detroit, and, after performing one last time, was hospitalized. Doctors operated on him, but to no avail. The burst appendix poisoned his system, and on October 31 he died.
October 31, 2001 — Lovecraft adaptation Dagon makes its theatrical premiere in Spain.
(10) Today’s Birthday Boy
October 31, 1961 — Peter Jackson is born on Halloween in Wellington, New Zealand.
Beatrice’s creations bring boring old gears and machinery to life. She has the ability to turn ratchets and other tiny technical parts into a lively mouse, seahorse or fairy. The more you look at her varied artwork the more you wonder what this woman can’t do… as it appears she can make everything out of anything.
(12) How badly do you want to be one of the first people to see the new Star Wars movie? Air France can help you out.
Lines will form at the crack of dawn on December 18 as die-hard fans set out to snag the best seats to see Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens in theaters.
But some very lucky trans-Atlantic plane passengers will get the jump on them.
In what seems like a ploy to rope super-fans into buying very expensive plane tickets, Air France will be letting passengers watch the much-anticipated flick two days before its official release, on December 16.
The French airline is teaming up with EuropaCorp CINEMAS to offer the advance screenings for passengers on four Paris-bound flights, AF083 from San Francisco to Paris, AF065 from Los Angeles, AF011 from New York and AF009 from New York.
[Thanks to James H. Burns, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day, Soon Lee.]
John King Tarpinian was on hand not just to see the movie, but to flash his replica of the Dracula ring Lugosi wore in the film. You all know how hard it is to find social occasions to wear your finery.
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello join forces with Universal’s menagerie of famous monsters… a perfect blending of classic comedy and terror. The boys were never funnier, combining verbal routines with their best slapstick gags. A top-notch supporting cast plays it absolutely straight, with Bela Lugosi as Dracula for only the second time, Lon Chaney Jr. making his full moon change into The Wolf Man, and Glenn Strange stalking the boys as Frankenstein’s Monster. Even Vincent Price gets a cameo as The Invisible man. This top grosser for Universal still holds all its charm.
Carla Laemmle, who spoke the opening line of the 1931 movie Dracula, died June 12 at the age of 104.
Dracula begins with her bespectacled character reading aloud a Transylvanian tourist brochure to the other passengers bouncing along in a horse-drawn coach taking Renfield to Dracula’s castle. “Among the rugged peaks that crown down upon the Borgo Pass are found crumbling castles of a bygone age….”
She was a niece of Carl Laemmle, who co-founded Universal, and a cousin of Carl Jr. who ran Universal during its monster movie-making heyday until financial trouble forced the Laemmle family to sell its interest in 1936.
Laemmle’s first film appearance, uncredited, was in the 1925 production of The Phantom of the Opera. She also performed small parts in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1927), The Broadway Melody (1929), Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935), His Last Fling (1935), The Adventures of Frank Merriwell (1936) and as a ballet dancer in On Your Toes (1939).
Program Cover
She was briefly married during WWII — a marriage annulled after three weeks because her spouse already had another wife. She also had a relationship for many years with Ray Cannon, a writer and director at Universal, who wrote the play “Her Majesty the Prince” which she starred in at the Hollywood Music Box in 1936.
In attendance were many industry people, only a few of which I had the time to meet or identify. Among them were Ray Bradbury, George Clayton Johnson, Bela Lugosi, Jr., Sara Karloff and Ron Chaney. At age 100 Carla was as spry as any of us. She was surrounded by friends and family, including great great grandchildren.
(Incidentally, my attempt to add information from Tarpinian’s 100th birthday post to Wikipedia’s article about Laemmle set off a row that eventually resulted File 770 being classified as a source of information that may be cited in articles.)
Ray Bradbury, Bela Lugosi, Jr., Carla Laemmle, Sara Karloff and Ron Chaney at Laemmle’s 100th birthday party in 2009. Photo by John King Tarpinian.
