Jan. 20
6:27 PM
These Eyes Of Mine
Been down a variety of metaphors due to having entered the dread concentrated research stage of The Enterprise of Death--fun, for obvious reasons but taxing in the way that fruitless research always is. Of course, acquiring interesting information is its own reward but when one is chasing a very specific information and it just isn't coming it can get obnoxious. Nevertheless, the things-to-do list is being worn down, and as always I'm picking up nice details I wasn't expressly looking for in the process.
We've been on a bit of a classics kick in terms of watching stuff: Raech and I with classic horror films, Molly and I with BBC adaptations of classic literature. Some highpoints:
The Oblong Box--Last night we wanted to watch something Poe-ish for the big man's big day and settled on this, due to the inclusion of both Vincent Price and Christopher Lee. Plenty of unintentionally offensive portrayals of African witch doctors to counteract all of Price's agonizing over Europeans' exploitation of Africa.
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling--The BBC miniseries from 1997. High points include Brian Blessed screaming, Brian Blessed drinking, and Brian Blessed screaming some more. Great stuff.
Corridors of Blood and The Haunted Strangler--A pair of Boris Karloff films put out in a handsome 2-disc set from Criterion--really lovely cover art for both COB and THS by Darwyn Cooke. In both Karloff plays would-be reformers who meet with grisly fates--in the former we get a very young Christopher Lee as "Resurrection Joe" and in the latter we have Karloff pulling an amazing face for half the film. Great stuff; sorry I missed the Karloff blogathon earlier in the month.
Fanny Hill--The touching story of a very dirty young woman, from the novel widely acknowledged as the first true work of pornography written in the English language. Molly became very upset when I interjected with a Samwise Gamgee impression at one point. Gorgeous...costumes. Really!
and The Abominable Dr. Phibes, because neither Raech nor Molly had seen it. Here's the spoiler-heavy trailer:
In terms of reading I'm nearly done with Nick Mamatas' Move Under Ground and am about a hundred footnotes into Stephen Graham Jones' Demon Theory, both if which are rather excellent so far. Full reviews when I'm done, and while we're at everyone should hustle over to Tor.com and download the Year's Best Fantasy 9 sampler they've got for free--so far I've read Marc Laidlaw's very fun "Childrun," which will be wildly enjoyable to fans of Vance' Dying Earth and the short fiction of Clark Ashton Smith.
So that's what I've been up to--busy days and nights. And you?