Author: DOuG pRATt

Petula Clark: Driven By Emotion, Driven Off The Web

A regular comment writer on Petula Clark: Driven By Emotion was Davie, who has written to me with an explanation of the blog’s sudden disappearance.

The blogger was getting a lot of hate mail and abuse from some nutty people. However, the final straw came when a copy of the blog was put up with a slightly different title, and it contained an upload of Petula’s new album.

Making some obscure pieces of Pet’s enormous catalogue available was a fantastic service to her fans. The blogger would NEVER, however, have put out an entire album, and most definitely, not her latest one. That would be seen to interfere with Petula’s career.

Clearly the person with a grudge against this blog, albeit that he is a complete ass hole, can find his way round a computer.

Presumably our blogger was standing on someone’s toes, costing them money perhaps, and the saboteur, went to work to end it all.

The blogger knows who the culprit is.

It’s sad because we have lost a really good, interesting blog, created with love and attention to detail. I think all of us who enjoyed the blog would want to thank the blogger, for putting up with all the shit that they did… and hope that they will come back at some stage in the future.

Incidentally, this information was posted on the blog on Saturday. Then it closed down.

I’ve had the honour to meet Petula on quite a few occasions over the years. My impression of her is that she would HATE people who did this kind of thing.

But then, as the saboteur is almost certainly mentally deranged… why would he care about that?

Thanks very much for the information, Davie. I wish I hadn’t missed that last post on the blog. Yes, thanks go to the blogger and let’s hope for a return of the blog. I’ll carry on with my occasional Pet posts. By the way, Goodbye Mr. Chips with Pet is on Turner Classic Movies TODAY at 11 ET.

The (non-Web) Host

The Host is a Korean horror movie from last year. Maybe it’s a guy’s flick, but if you can stomach some graphic gore it’s very well made and is worth seeing.

Here are two short scenes I’ve spliced together from The Host. The dialog in the hospital scene is very funny. The Korean actress is Du-na Bae, who is so enjoyable in the Japanese comedy Linda, Linda, Linda. Caution! The second scene is gross.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/SEP07/TheHost.flv 448 252]

The Host is a partial remake to the previously-blogged Godzilla, which in turn was inspired by The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. But another, perhaps less obvious, acknowledgment must be made to Them!, which I consider to be the absolute best of the 1950’s Sci-Fi flicks, along with Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and The Thing, which I haven’t blogged yet.

Unlike The Day The Earth Stood Still, Them! really moves along, as directed by Gordon Douglas, despite having many scenes with conversations and meetings. Not only is there a fun mix of humor and horror in Them!, it’s undoubtedly where the idea in The Host came from, of kids being endangered in a sewer.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/SEP07/Them.flv 400 300]

I think this entry has more links to previous posts than any other I’ve done so far!