Take 2 Guide on Spielberg Published and Available on Amazon-Another major honor for Wonders in the Dark, Joel Bocko, John Greco, Ed Howard and Roderick Heath

by Sam Juliano

Take 2 Publishing has released its first project on Kindle, and this comprehensive labor of love is now available on kindle through Amazon at a price of $9.99.  The project is the brainchild of John Pruzanski, who worked feverishly over many months to assemble reviews on director Steven Spielberg’s films from both the professional and blogger ranks.  Such Spielberg supporters like Jonathan Rosenbaum, Joseph McBride , Matt Stoller Seitz and James Bernardinelli are featured in multiple reviews, while stellar work from my colleagues John Greco, Joel Bocko, Ed Howard, Roderick Heath and several others have been published right alongside them.

Two reviews that I wrote for Wonders in the Dark (War Horse on January 2, 2012 and A.I. Artificial Intelligence on May 13, 2009) were included in this definitive collection that has greatly enhanced the Spielberg literature.  John Greco’s superlative review on Jaws in there as are several by the brilliant Joel Bocko including essays on Jaws, E.T., Duel and Schindler’s List.  And what with the Spielberg archives at Only the Cinema holding a whopping ten reviews on the director, Pruzanski and his enthusiastic editor Adam Zanzie of Icebox Movies has performed some glorious plundering there to bring Howard’s incomparable scholarship to a wider fan base.  Writer Extraordinaire Roderick Heath is also well represented with his own stupendous comprehensive coverage of the director with essays that were originally published at Ferdy on Films and This Island Rod.

Congratulations to all connected with this remarkable project.  Pruzanski has plans to move forward on other directors, and has tentatively named Woody Allen as his next subject.

Here is the amazon link to the Kindle guide:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Take2-Guide-Steven-Spielberg-ebook/dp/B00IUQVUPK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396649531&sr=8-1&keywords=take+two+publishing+steven+spielberg

Read Full Post »

Henry 9 ’til 5 – 1970, Bob Godfrey

by Allan Fish

(UK 1970 6m) not on DVD

Defeating boredom and its vicissitudes

p/d Bob Godfrey w Stan Hayward m John Hawksworth

voices by Bob Godfrey, Monika Ringwald

Whenever I think of Bob Godfrey’s little gem I am reminded of my favourite Terry Gilliam animation from Python. The one with the middle-aged, nagged man sat in front of the gogglebox, out of which bashers, scrubbers and suckers emerge to try and pull his eyes out of his sockets. After surviving this attempted involuntary eyectomy, we hear a shout from the kitchen; “Henry, turn that television off, you know it’s bad for your eyes.”

The name Henry might have something to do with it, but in truth Godfrey was, along with Borowczyk and Lenica, surely one of the antecedents of Gilliam’s anarchic animation style. Just watch Godfrey’s The Do It Yourself Cartoon Kit, a near classic in itself, which not only uses similar techniques nearly a decade earlier, but even had faint echoes of Python’s famous ‘Blackmail’ sketch.

Read Full Post »