"Monster on Campus" at the Harvard Film Archive Tonight

Details hyar:
Serious b-movie cineastes will recall Arthur Franz as a moon faced character actor who somehow became a leading man in more than a few science fiction movies of the 1950's.
Franz' best moment as an actor was playing the disturbed lead in "The Sniper" (1952).
Here he is directed by Jack Arnold who had all but single handedly ignited a second golden age of horror-science fiction films at Universal in the 1950's.

Pick of the Week

F.W. Murnau's silent classic "Faust" a triumph of German expressionist cinema on the order of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" izzat the Regent Theater tomorrow night at 8pm.
Details hyar:

Haunted Happenings in Today's Globe...

The Boston Globe's metro section today has a pretty good article on various alleged ghost sightings down in the Dighton area.
Occasionally the otherwise staid Globe can digh down deep and offer up some harmless fluffy nonsense.

Jesus Camp (2006)

This would be Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's documentary portrait of Pastor Becky Fischer the smiling hellfire preacherette who runs a summer camp program (ominously dubbed "Kids on Fire") for aspiring Christian Revolutionaries.
Films like this are always disconcerting, especially when we see impressionable children being drilled into mindless book-worshipper with a pronounced tendency for the entirely pagan veneration of George Bush's mortal person.
There is a great deal of christian rock, rap, television, cartoons and even religious heavy metal music all sorts of noisy distractions designed to wrap children up in an alternate god-centric culture.
This can be scary to watch to the unwary.
I however wonder if these kids who are being trained as religious zealots (in part to meet the fanciful threat of Islam aroused and militant) are really gonna stick with it? For the most part the range in age was from eight to about twelve, I'd love to see a follow up some ten years down the line to see if they are really so righteous, truculent and simple minded come age twenty.
Because lets face it, revolutionary christianity with all it's authoritarianism and hatred for the separation of church and state NEEDS all this manipulative sound and fury to survive.
Why?
It is to say the least a narrow minded, bossy, bleak and inhumane faith predicated on the promise of predestined life after death, a pledge that can revoked at any time on the whim of some wowser witch doctor.
So it stands to reason with theology demanding much and returning so little, there is desperate need to keep the kids in a perpetual religious fervor otherwise they might calm down enough to stop and think as to WHY the Pastor Fischer needs so many expensive techno-toys to preach her angry aggressive gospel.
Or else start watching Harry Potter DVDs.
Pastor Fischer may herself come across as a New American Cromwell screaming up a new generation of roundheads, but her speaking in tongues routine is strictly syllable by syllable out of Bob Tilton's book of religious nonsense.
She has a old message, i don't expect it wear well over time.
The other interviewees, the youth pastors and revivalists, looks fidgety and scared sometimes, they talked a good game about huge evangelical voting blocks but didn't seem convinced of their own omnipotence. Truth is, the serious fundamentalist sects have a problem with kids falling away as they grow older just like all the other denominations. Nothing in the fire of their faith seems to guarantee a successful lifelong conversion.

Brief Encounter on the Red Line Yesterday

I'm sitting there for seemingly an hour from South Station to Alewife, reading Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged".
Just before we get to Alewife the women in the next seat looks me in the eye and sez "THAT!" (pointing to my weighty paperback, a veritable bestselling doorstop) "Is my FAVORITE book in the whole world!"
And she smiled brightly and guilelessly.
To which I replied "Hmmmmmmphhhh" with a noncommital smile.
This was a polite way of saying Atlas Shrugged is interminable claptrap in extremis, written by a spiteful counter-bolshevik and features a heroine who apparently wants to copulate with a diesel locomotive.

A is always A folks, unless you are talking the Chinese alphabet....

Movies on a Menu in East Arlington has Reopened

under the sole leadership of Eddie Shaw.
I was there last Saturday and bought a few items just to get things rolling again.
Everyone should drop by spend some cashola and say hello to Eddie.
The link on the right will take you to their website with directions and everything...

Tamara Dobson aka "Cleopatra Jones"

died last week after a long battle with MS. Not a good actress, but nonetheless loaded with charisma and a steely willingness to do serious action scenes. Along with Adam West and Burt Ward, she holds the rare honor of having kicked Shelley Winters' villainous ass.
Ms. Dobson will be missed, she had style and class, six foot two and rarin' to go is how i'll remember her.

James Parker has an interesting article in today's Globe

on the rise and sudden expiration of "Dianalatry", the cult of the late Lady Diana Spencer, the one time Princess of Wales. Parker reports that by 2002 and the Queen's Jubilee, the Cult of Diana, which ran white hot in the Fall of 1997 had all but dissipated for a variety of reasons.
Now speaking as myself though, I can recall a few lingering cultish tributes to the Lady Diana from my own trip to London in the summer of 2002. Notably in the National Portrait Gallery there was a HUGE six foot by six foot lush portrait of Diana located directed across a hallway from a considerably smaller portrait of Queen Elizabth II with her notorious corgi dogs.
Felt like a rebuke to the current monarch over there in every way.