Extra! Extra!

I’m eagerly awaiting my contributor’s copies of THE CAT AND THE CANARY and THE VALIANT ONES from Masters of Cinema, THE SCARFACE MOB and Arrow and the John Farrow box set from Imprint, but here’s Luigi Comencini’s MISUNDERSTOOD (INCOMPRESO) from Radiance. Doing a video essay for this was a great excuse to delve deeper into the director’s intermittent but obsessive tackling of the subject of childhood. After my first project for Radiance didn’t go terribly smoothly, but worked out fine in the end, it was reassuring that MISUNDERSTOOD was plain sailing all the way. A real pleasure.

STOP PRESS: and here’s THE SCARFACE MOB in my grubby hands at last. I really enjoyed digging into Comencini and Phil Karlson’s other work and their source material for these two productions. Thanks due to Laura Wiggett, who edited both of these.

Cut Up

David Cronenberg’s NAKED LUNCH, restored and on limited edition 4K and Blu-ray from Arrow — with a video essay by yours truly, featuring Luke Aspell and Fiona as interviewees, among many other exciting extras.

This was a delight to do — it’s a favourite Cronenberg for me. When I asked editor Chase Barthel if there was a filmmaker he’d particularly like to make an extra feature for, he immediately volunteered Cronenberg’s name — and then, within what seemed like months but was probably months, this project fell into collective lap like an insect typewriter from heaven. In the world of Cronenberg, you can definitely have a collective lap.

You can buy it with money.

Essays in Darkness

Got my copy of SO DARK THE NIGHT from Arrow. I wrote an essay for this one, and am delighted to be included in the package along with Farran Smith Nehme & Glenn Kenny (commentary track) and Imogen Sara Smith (video presentation). There was a delay in publication with this one so I’d completely forgotten what I’d written: I was relieved to find it not too shoddy. Peter Bogdanovich’s interview with Joseph H. Lewis was a great help, as was finding out a little about the credited screenwriters.

It’s a fine, offbeat noir and I recommend it. Funnily enough, I was just watching noir pixie Steven Geray in I LOVE TROUBLE (1948), an enjoyable Chandler knock-off helmed by S. Sylvan Simon and written by TV’s Roy Huggins (The Fugitive, The Rockford Files) where he was more typically cast as a louche club owner. If you’re used to seeing him do that kind of thing, Geray’s multiple departures from type in SO DARK will *astound* you.

So Dark The Night [Blu-ray]