There's More Countdown to Halloween Fun in Pylon-Land to Be Had!

Looking for some more Countdown to Halloween fun today (whatever day that happens to be that you are visiting this page)?

On my animation website, Cinema 4: Cel Bloc, I have a new post about a longtime Halloween favorite, Walt Disney's classic Mickey, Donald and Goofy vs. spooks romp, Lonesome Ghosts (1937). Goofy quite literally says, "I ain't afraid-a no ghosts!" in this film, and with our three heroes trying to remove a quartet of pesky creeps from a haunted house, you can bet that if this film isn't a direct inspiration for Ghostbusters, it at least had some residual influence on its creation.

You can read all about Lonesome Ghosts by clicking here.

But that's not all! My writing partner and pal, Aaron Lowe and I have a Stephen King blog called We Who Watch Behind the Rows. Our ritual is to take a written work by King, read it, and then discuss it back and forth. Once the book is done, we then tackle any film adaptations (and even their sequels) made from that written work.

Our concentration for October is on King's first published novel (not his first written, mind you), 1974's Carrie, which many of you may know even better from the 1976 film directed by Brian De Palma. We will tackle the De Palma film in the coming weeks, but for now, we have published our discussion of the novel on our website. For me, it was the first time in roughly thirty years that I have read the book, and for Aaron, who has actually read far more of King's works than I have, it was his first crack at this book.

To read our discussion of Carrie [The Novel], click here.

And keep checking back here at The Cinema 4 Pylon every day throughout October. You never know what you might find here!

RTJ

Flickchart Comment #17: Stardust (2007) over Carlito's Way (1994)

Spent a fair amount of time in the past doing my Pacino impression from Carlito's Way, which doesn't involve any clumsy attempts at replicating his voice. It required a prop with which to perform it as well -- an escalator, in fact -- and I believe the last time I pretended to be Al Pacino fending off assholes on a falsely, incredibly long Grand Central escalator was on the actually incredibly long escalators at Universal Studios Hollywood in 1994. No dialogue for me, just action. A solidly stupid, action impersonation.

As a film, though, Carlito's Way has pretty much stood for me as the last time I was fully caught up in a Brian De Palma film without irony thoroughly soaking the entire viewing. Stardust, on the other hand, disappointed me from the standpoint that I much preferred the novel (but that is usually going to happen with Gaiman stories), though the film itself is a pretty good time that I have already revisited a couple times since.

Going off of current influence (I haven't seen Carlito's since it debuted), I am going to fly via Stardust.

Join in the fun with me at http://www.flickchart.com/Cinema4Pylon