Ar The Brattle Theater for a screening of

"The Hound of the Baskervilles" starring Basil Rathbone on Friday night, starring Peter Cushing!
This is Hammer version and a fine film IMHO but I'd still love to see Universal's adaptation starring Basil Rathbone on the big screen.
Anyhow, Cushing makes a very good Holmes with his clipped delivery and falcon profile...the only major plot hole is the off screen escape and capture of the killer convict "Seldon" which becomes a very clumsy device for plot exposition. Conan Doyle handled these trifles with so much more panache.
The whole thing reminded me to track down some of the Holmes adaptations Cushing did for the BBC in the late 1960's including the seldom adapted "Study in Scarlet" which generally gets short shrift do to it's low view of Mormonism.

Bad Poets Society comes in for some publicity...

You can read Victoria Cheng's article here:


Well Blogger.com isn't fully compatible the Mac OS and at the same time, Kinko's PCs are incredible slow and unreliable...they wouldn't even let me cut and paste a simple URL!
"Ease of use" and "reliability" are largely bygone notions in today's technological civilization...and that is NOT a good thing!
Thus I had to revise this post the next day! From work where at least I can cut and paste and do a hotlink without falling into full scale ranting and raving.

Anyway it's a good article please read it.

T-Minus 24 Hours and Counting (give or take) til the 2007 Bad Poets Society

Hope you can all make it there...we've got our poems picked and our readers all set. We've also cracked the listings at Boston Globe Calendar and the Phoenix's coveted "8 Days a Week" column.
So we are in good shape.
Anyhow the balloon goes up tomorrow night at 8pm at the Speigel Auditorium 56 Brattle Street Cambridge MA, admission a mere $5...it's the worst know comedy event in Boston that has somehow lasted seven long years.
See you there!

I leave you with a short appetite builder courtesy the one and only William McGonagall:
Sunlight Soap
You can use it with great pleasure and ease
Without wasting any elbow grease;
And when washing the most dirty clothes
The sweat won't be dripping off your nose
You can wash your clothes with little rubbing
And without scarcely any scrubbing;
And I tell you once again without any joke
There's no soap can surpass Sunlight Soap;
And believe me, charwomen one and all,
I remain yours truly, the Poet McGonagall.

Who knew he wrote advertising copy? Seems like a good fit for his technique I'd say.

All Soul's Day

It was my habit in the lead up to Halloween to rent two titles from the now closed Video Oasis in East Cambridge courtesy of the late Dennis Arruda's incomparable horror film collection.
Typically I'd get a classic, something like "The Mask of Fu Manchu" starring Boris Karloff and something weird and obscure like "Blood Shack" directed by Las Vegas own Ray Dennis Steckler.
In no other video store north of New York could I have such choices.
All gone now...so I'm thinking about Dennis tonight, not in sad way but happy that I had access to such an amazing collection of movies for so long.

Somehow we must move forward, the best of times are always just ahead.

Rest in Peace Dennis.