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How many times have I rewatched the show? I don't keep count because my rewatches are hardly in order, but I've reached the point where I now recognize the background actors.
Here's Dave Thomson as an unnamed, uncredited audience member in Siren and later as the candy man in Boo.
Dave's first IMDb credit is, of course, The X-Files.
Some relatively recent pics (2018) of the SCTV reunion special, courtesy of Dave Thomas’ website. All well and good but WHEN is Netflix finally gonna release this?! I mean it’s directed by Martin Scorsese!
Canadian Power Pop / Guitar Pop Group,Wave #wave #powerpop #bbmak #richardmarx #pluto
Penultimate 100% Biodegradable headlines a “Funguys” epic from Ian Edginton and Alan Burrows
Penultimate 100% Biodegradable headlines a “Funguys” epic from Ian Edginton and Alan Burrows
The penultimate edition of the digital anthology 100% Biodegradable is out now on Comicsy and Drivethru, featuring 46 pages of sci-fi/horror for just 69p/$0.99.
Editor David Hailwoodwill soon bow out on this great title, which has featured some terrific work by both established and new creators during its run, moving on to new projects. My thanks to him for including some of my tales – he’s been…
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Review: 100% Biodegradable #18
Review: 100% Biodegradable #18
Just in time for some Halloween time reading, Biomekazoik gives us yet another issue of this sci-fi and horror anthology comic. It features a diverse and interesting mix of six stories all with a pulpy fun feel. Fan of the series are sure to find what they love in it, but this is also a good time for new readers to give the series a chance given the time of year. First off, the background on the…
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I really don’t like The Biographical Dictionary of Film, but I can’t stop referencing it.
Today The LA Times published an article detailing over 30 women’s reports of Jame’s Toback sexually harassing them. I have never interacted with Toback, I’ve never even seen one of his movies, (and now I probably never will) but I’m going to take the opportunity to say something that has been on my mind for a while: a lot of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film by Dave Thomson is really creepy in it’s treatment of women and anyone else Thomson sees as “other”.
If this seems like it is a leap to far know that Thomson’s entry on Toback opens with:
Dear Jim,
You may not know it, but you are the best friend I feel obliged to include in this book. That may be a wretched position, for both of us. You are also one of the friends I value most in life.
I have the third edition of this book, published in 2002. I get the appeal to check back in on each edition to see how Thomson’s opinions on the careers of actors and directors change with their output. I’m kind of thrilled that he lists Celine and Julie Go Boating as one of his favorite movies (it’s one of mine too). And when there is a re-release or other cause for reassessment of an old movie, it’s good to pull out this book to read a baseline interpretation of it’s reception. It’s often an interesting counter point... but some of then entries on women are just so creepy and condescending. Reading the one on Jennifer Jones you can’t help wonder if he’s trying a petty revenge on her for refusing to let him interview her while he was writing his biography on David O Selznick, her second husband. How else do you explain passages like:
Selznick’s unquestioned adoration of meant that she was miscast: for her true range was narrow; her looks went quite early; and her own agonies mixed with her husband’s interference, lost her many good opportunities. But who else has survived such travails? Who knows how far she understood what was going on, or the effect she was having?
Maybe if Thomson was less dismissive of Jones’s suicide attempts he could gauge how much she understood of what was going on. But that would require seeing her as a person, not just a vessel through which roles are reflected. For another example of him revealing his shockingly low opinion of actresses look at this line from the section on Gene Tierney.
But in Leave Her to Heaven (46) she was ignited by John M. Stahl’s commitment to melodrama and by Technicolor. Her selfish girl in that film is frighteningly credible and she fully grasped the intensity of the astonishing staircase scene.
Why wouldn’t Tierney grasp the intensity of the staircase scene? It’s the movie’s climax, the point when other character’s suspicions are moved from, “that looks bad” to “there is something seriously wrong with this woman.” (He also chooses a pretty boring interpretation of what’s going on in Laura. The actual woman, Laura’s “ordinariness” is a surprise because most of the men in the film just want her as a reflection of themselves. With the exception of Dana Andrew’s detective, they aren’t interested in getting to know her as a person.)
He’s also pretty disinterested in and dismissive of women directors. When I first got the book I was offended by how dismissive he is Agnès Vardad’s Cléo from 5 to 7 (”...more photographs of two hours in a woman’s life than an organic structure. It also balances uneasily a morbid and sentimental view of the world and uses Cléo herself as another anxious but depersonalized lens, not pregnant but waiting for a medical verdict.”) See also his entries on Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino. (He really likes Lupino, but dismisses her work as a director to focus on her onscreen persona as an actor. You don’t have to do one to do the other...)
Also as to politics, it’s actually really weird. His very sarcastic entry on Ronald Reagan turns Reagan’s political career into more disappointing roles as an actor. It ends with “The fraudulence of the presidency was revealed so that the office could never quiet be honored again.” The book isn’t really about politics, so maybe this wouldn’t look so bad, except he doesn’t include any of the Hollywood Ten, and is generally dismissive of the effect that blacklisting had on the industry. Thomson is decisive and insightful in his criticisms of Frank Capra’s political fantasies (and I mostly agree with him), but elsewhere artificially distancing him in a way that reveals blind spots that shouldn’t be dismissed.
New 100% Biodegradable revives "Rourke of the Radlands", co-created by Wonder Woman artist Liam Sharp
New 100% Biodegradable revives “Rourke of the Radlands”, co-created by Wonder Woman artist Liam Sharp
Cover by Brett Burbridge The latest issue of the ace British digital anthology 100% Biodegradable (Issue 16) is on sale now and of course I’m delighted to report it includes a very special re-presentation of “Rourke of the Radlands” – a hard drinking, hot tempered sword and sorcery I co-created with Wonder Woman artist Liam Sharp back in the 1990s. Further Rourke of the Radlands stories are in…
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SF adventure "Skow Dogs" and Alan Burrows "Switchblade"debut in all-new 100% Biodegradable,
SF adventure “Skow Dogs” and Alan Burrows “Switchblade”debut in all-new 100% Biodegradable,
Cover by Dave Thomson Hot on the heels of the SF adventure “Death Duty” by myself, Dave Hailwood and Brett Burbridge in recent issues of digital anthology 100% Biodegradable comes another new story from the “WarWorldz” shared universe project – “Skowdogs“. In the WarWorldz universe, the once mighty Terran Empire is in decline and under attack, holding onto power with often ruthless force. Most of…
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