While others may be betting on college basketball this month, I’ll be donating to my favorite Internet radio stations. One of them is Debbie Daughtry’s Boss Radio 66.
Debbie says Tom Hanks will be back on Wednesday March 15, with more of his Songs from the Back of the Station Wagon.
Another preview for the Roy Lichtenstein documentary, WHAAM! BLAM!
WHAAM! BLAM! Trailer from James Hussey on Vimeo.
The director called [David] Barsalou’s research a “goldmine,” and added the film wouldn’t have existed without his work.
https://www.thereminder.com/localnews/chicopee/barsalous-research-featured-in-new-documentary/
A few weeks after the Beatles released the White Album, the Rolling Stones had Beggar’s Banquet, with a cover that was only slightly less white.
The original, abandoned idea for the cover — a toilet — appeared years later, with the release of the album on CD.
The Beatles were releasing the White Album when the Move with Roy Wood, before Jeff Lynne joined, had this one.
The decades-old expression “Talk to the Hand” was considered a dismissive, impolite gesture. Which of course didn’t stop my boss from using it on everybody who reported to him.
I’ll use the cover of The Flash #163, the first issue of the title I ever bought, to say “talk to the hand.” I’m not doing it to be impolite, but to say I’m going to stop blogging for a while.
There isn’t a technical problem with the site like last time, and in fact my hosting plan is about to renew for another year. But circumstances being what they are, I need to put the blog on hold and focus on some personal matters.
Something I featured recently deserves to be mentioned more on Turner Classic Movies — Old Time Radio shows that were adapted from movies of the time.
In 1950, Alfred Hitchcock introduced a radio play of his 1944 film Spellbound. The Theramin sound gets to be a bit much, but it’s an interesting adaptation. Five years later, the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents began its long run.
For now, there is a complete copy of Spellbound available on YouTube. The movie includes the famous dream sequence that was created in collaboration with Salvador Dali. In the finished film it was directed not by Hitch, however, but by William Cameron Menzies, who has been the subject of some recent posts.
https://youtu.be/lNThFiBh7Ck
https://scalar.usc.edu/works/the-space-between-literature-and-culture-1914-1945/vol14_2018_king
On a related note, Donald Spoto died a couple of weeks ago. I read Spoto’s Hitchcock biography, The Dark Side of Genius, as soon as it came out in paperback, 39 years ago. I remember reading it on airplanes and in hotels while traveling on business. I was halfway through the book when I accidentally left it in the seatback pocket of a plane while in a rush to catch a connecting flight. Realizing my mistake, I had just enough time to buy another copy at an airport bookstore to continue my reading on the next flight. That copy I didn’t lose.
To me, Spoto’s take on Hitch smacked of him having a thesis that was more like an agenda, and force-fitting some facts to back it up. I had a similar reaction to David Michaelis’ biography of Charles Schulz.
