Dario Argento Loves Red Velvet!

For some inexplicable reason (is there any other kind on the web?), the post I did a month ago about Dario Argento's praise for Red Velvet (2009), a smart, gory, stylish slasher movie produced by my friend Sean Fernald, has vanished.

So I'm reposting it, because hey — you can't just pick up an Argento endorsement at the corner drugstore. To this day I remember how thrilled I was when Argento praised the very first version of Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds, the one I submitted as my Columbia University masters' thesis.

That encounter wss rivaled only by veteran English filmmaker Michael Powell's response to my first published film article, a very formal, academic analysis of his recently rereleased Peeping Tom. I was still an undergraduate, paying for my education by working in the New York City Ballet's press office, and a dance-world friend was involved with one of the earliest attempts to bring The Red Shoes to the New York stage (the end result was the disastrous 1993 production that opened and closed in four days); he slipped Powell a copy and then introduced us at a backers' audition.

I held my breath as Powell, then in his 80s, looked at me for a moment and then said, "You know, I never intended any of those things you wrote about when I made Peeping Tom." My heart sank. "But you saw them," he continued, "so they must be there."

If that's not graciousness incarnate, I don't know what is.

The Crazies and Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds

My review of the remake of George Romero's 1973 The Crazies is live on MissFlickChick.com, and here's the surprise: It's good.

And Fangoria just did an online item about the upcoming new edition of my book Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento, which is due out in April. Read it here.

Attack of the monster beach party movie pastiches — kind of cool and way camp

Hallelujah! My technical problems have been solved (it only took my web host's IT department a week or so, but hey — I'm trying to count my blessings) and I can post again.

So to celebrate, I added reviews of Charles Busch's Psycho Beach Party and the recent Monster Beach Party A-Go Go.

The're both flawed, but Psycho Beach Party features an early turn by the then-unknown Amy Adams, and Monster Beach Party A-Go Go has a slammin' sound track. Take a look and let me know what you think!

Clap for The Wolfman... or Not

It's opening under a black cloud of gossip and dire speculation — why has its opening been delayed so many times; how come there was only a single screening; could it possibly be as bad as Van Helsing — and I certainly can't say it's great. But I didn't hate The Wolfman: Del Toro is good, the look is pure '60s Hammer, and at least there are no sparkly vampires. M review is live here.

The Who on the Superbowl

So, I'm rewatching White of the Eye ("I believe in miracles, oh baby... you sexy thing") -- which to my dismay remains unavailable on region 1 DVD; I own a Dutch copy -- but I took a break to see The Who do the Superbowl half-time show.


Am I the only person who wanted to cry? Not that they put on a bad show -- they didn't.
But there's something painful about seeing game-changing musicians rehashing songs that put them on the cultural map 40 years ago.

And now a digression. I just went to the gas station across the street -- staffed entirely, I think, by emigrees from Lagos -- to buy a litre of coca-cola for my better half and the fellow at the window, whom I've seen many times mopping the floors and tidying the shelves, looked at me and said, "You're not American, are you? You're European -- where are you from?"

Odd moment. Because I was born in the United States, but my mother is English and my upbringing was so much more English than American; my nightmares were about Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, not Charlie Manson and his girls. In fact, the first time I heard about Manson's family I was in London... odd. And You Sexy Thing will haunt me forever.