Since we’re already going into February June, here’s an update. I’m working, and shall be for a while, on the Phil Tucker script book (which is on for this fall). I’ll surface and have more to say about that in a couple months. Stay tuned …
Blogging for Film Masters in 2023
During this now closing year of 2023, I’ve had the honor of writing blog pieces for Film Masters. This is a recently formed company that is getting some great classic monster releases out there on Blu Ray. I can’t think of a better way to close out the year here and look forward to 2024 than by mentioning them, and here’s a piece I wrote for their blog about Christmas ghost movies.
Brief Writing Update
Everything intended for 2023 is shifting into this impending year of 2024. Expect some updates on the Phil Tucker script book along the way to a publication later in the year. And new fiction projects are on the way. Will be back in February … best wishes to all for a wonderful New Year!
Holding Pattern
Writing work continues in the material world. Meanwhile, here’s this fun TV performance by Robyn Hitchcock. There was nothing quite like ‘80s alternative rock when it was alternative, and the host of this show was clearly having fun introducing the band:
“Man or Ro-Man” Short Film
Matthew Muhl is a filmmaker and writer who has been keeping the Robot Monster flame alive with his script Man or Ro-Man, for which he was kind enough to ask me for input. Matthew has assembled a creative little short film that previews some of Man or Ro-Man, which I believe he’s working on presenting as a theatrical play. It’s now up on YouTube, so please check it out, give it a like, and spread the word!
Hobbit Rock, Part V
From postpunk, the hobbit rock thread can be traced onward to later in the same decade. A mellow strain of alternative rock began to emerge in the mid-1980s, or so it seemed to some of us in America. I suspect that in Britain, funnily enough, much British music seemed mainstream. And this example, courtesy of Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, fits the jangly guitar sound that was more and more common then.
I like this song, and the banter at the end is amusing, but I’ve got another reason to like this video. I can’t quite remember, yet I’m convinced that I owned Lloyd’s shirt in junior high school.
Bonus video: Back in 1968, Leonard Nimoy graced the world with this lighthearted ode to a hobbit. This is not postpunk or alt rock, but it is quite literally hobbit rock.
This Year’s Posts, Script Book Set for 2023
And I’ve been absent from here for a while. Probably my longest absence, in fact. Been having a year of what expert writer Dean Wesley Smith calls “life rolls,” and the old schedule has been thrown seriously out of alignment. Some bloggers have streaks, and lately my blogging streak has been absences.
Anyway, onward …
These three posts will be it for this year. A lot of stuff going on behind the scenes, and I’ll be back in January. And, specifically:
- The script book for Phil Tucker’s Space Jockey is planned for 2023.
- A number of other writing projects are set for 2023.
Stay tuned …
Hobbit Rock, Part IV
Another year, and blogging has been too infrequent around here. There will clearly be much more Hobbit Rock work to be done in 2022. In the meantime, here is an easy one.
As my previous Hobbit Rock post showed, all the Joy Division influence in northern England could not extinguish the Hobbit Rock flame. Like a stubborn Viking invader, it merely moved north to Scotland and never left the island. And here’s a further ‘80s Scottish example of Hobbit Rock to follow up “All About You” by Scars. This is one that everyone knows, but here in a fantastic live performance:
Jean-Paul Belmondo, 1933-2021
In the mid-90s I saw Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, one of those foreign classics that it’s assumed everyone will like. Well … I gave it a try, and it just didn’t do anything for me, though I later liked Godard’s Alphaville and Pierrot le Fou. And I found that Godard in general had a fantastic sense of absurdity, atmosphere, and was of course very good at editing. I just got off to a patchy start with Breathless. But I did think that the lead actor in that movie had some quirky star power and wondered if he was in anything else.
As I found out before long, Jean-Paul Belmondo was a major movie star in France. I’m not sure what I saw him in next, but I soon understood the extent of his stardom, and that his career was long and varied between commercial and experimental movies. While he often played conventional leading man parts, Belmondo had range and I can’t recall him ever seeming fake in anything. Among his lesser known roles, one of Belmondo’s most interesting was for Jean-Pierre Melville, frequent director of crime films who also made one of the greatest religious dramas of all time with Leon Morin, Priest.
France used to produce a bushel of serious movies about Catholicism and the tensions between hope in the next world and life in the present one. Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest, from a novel by Georges Bernanos, is probably the most famous, but Leon Morin, Priest deserves much more attention. (It used to be a Criterion title. Many thanks to Kino Lorber for bringing it back to Blu-Ray in the U.S. a couple years ago.) Cast as far from a ladies’ man as possible, Belmondo is utterly convincing and engrossing as a sincere young priest, engaged in a part spiritual battle, part platonic relationship with a young windowed mother (Emmanuelle Riva, soon after Hiroshima, Mon Amour).
Leon Morin, Priest is a great movie and maybe, all these years later, I should give Breathless another try too.
Rest in peace, Jean-Paul Belmondo.
Update on Phil Tucker’s Space Jockey
In July of last year I announced the upcoming print debut of the script from Phil Tucker’s lost film Space Jockey. Intended for this fall, the project hasn’t moved along as quickly as intended, so this is the inevitable production delay. But this time next year is now the projected release date and there will be more to share along the way.
See you in 2022, and stay tuned …
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