Author: DOuG pRATt

I’m watching Morgan Spurlock’s series, 50 Documentaries to See Before You Die, on Keith Olbermann’s new home, the Current TV cable network. I hope one of those documentaries is Spurlock’s own Supersize Me. Spurlock is a great admirer of a documentary I love, The King of Kong, and for the series Morgan interviewed Billy Mitchell, the bad guy in Kong.

My buddy D.F. Rogers’ favorite directors are Frank Capra and John Ford. I too love their classic movies, but my top two director picks are Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell.

Recently it was announced that a few reels of a long-lost early work by Hitchcock were found, from a silent movie called The White Shadow. Here’s a nice mini-documentary surveying Hitch’s career.

And now there’s another find from the silent film era. A cache of sheet music has been uncovered, with cues for a pianist to play for every sort of scene.

As mentioned in the video, the British Film Institute has a project to restore nine Hitchcock silent films. The BFI is preparing the films for a showing with the London Olympics next year.

This post is, in part, my roundabout way to say how dismayed I am by the violence that erupted in England this week. I’m glad the situation seems to have calmed down, especially because by now Prudence Bury has arrived in London for an upcoming reunion at the Royal Ballet School.

A terrible highway accident happened today, not far from here on a stretch of road that I travel often. It’s always disturbing to contemplate how something like this could happen to any of us, without a moment’s notice.

A woman is dead, another is seriously injured, and so are two children. I assume National Grid’s attorneys are already preparing for the lawsuit that is sure to come.