Disney’s "Alice" To Launch Big Awards Campaign

HR GIGER BAR

The Museum Bar, which took two years to complete, opened its doors with a ribbon cutting ceremony on April 12th, 2003, to a select group of invited friends, artists, collectors, coworkers, and members of the media. Guests began arriving to the long anticipated event the day before, taking the opportunity to tour the museum beforehand. The next morning, the population of the small village of 300 inhabitants, literally doubled in a matter of hours, with the arrival of devotees from countries near and far, from Austria, Germany, Hungary, Italy, France, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Chile, Israel, and the United States. The schedule of events for the day included another opening in the H.R. Giger Museum Gallery for the Swiss artist Martin Schwarz, the on-site printing of two limited edition prints to commemorate the day, speeches and dedications, ending the day with a special dinner, followed by nighttime projections of Giger’s artwork on the façade of the museum.

Forrest J. Ackerman on Great, Early SF Movies

http://www.youtube.com/v/dNuCTQe7Dpk?fs=1&hl=en_US

Forrest J Ackerman – Ackermansion tour

http://www.youtube.com/v/5WFRsm0-PTc?fs=1&hl=en_US

William Friedkin: ‘The Exorcist’ cast was ‘a gift from God’

By all accounts, director William Friedkin was a man possessed in 1973. The director had already earned a reputation as a fire-breathing perfectionist on the set of the 1971 film “The French Connection,” but he was even more intense, manipulative and volatile while making his follow-up, “The Exorcist,” the unnerving adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s hugely popular novel. Friedkin browbeat studio executives when they tried to eliminate an expensive on-location shoot in Iraq, and at one point dissatisfied with star Max von Sydow’s work, he pulled Blatty aside and told him to write the actor out of some key scenes and put him on the next plane back to Sweden. No one was safe from Friedkin’s wrath except, perhaps, little Linda Blair, the 12-year-old who giggled and slurped on milkshakes between scenes where she channeled Satan.

Friedkin’s extended director’s cut of the film has just hit stores on Blu-ray in a lavish new package from Warner Bros. that celebrates the horror film as a masterpiece for the ages — and, in hindsight, it may well deserve that treatment. The film, routinely cited as “the scariest movie ever made,” was nominated for 10 Oscars, including best picture and best director, and won four Golden Globes, among them the trophies for best picture, best director and best actress for the precocious Blair. On-screen, the film smothered any trace of showbiz artifice or Hollywood haunted-house clichés, and Friedkin is quick to correct people who call it a horror film — he prefers “theological thriller.”

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The Exorcist: Extended Director’s Cut Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/v/yiG3SPYZLmA?fs=1&hl=en_US

Sylvia Plath part 1 of 6

http://www.youtube.com/v/Zexu2SMUIdU?fs=1&hl=en_US

New Poem Reveals Platt’s Suicide on Hughes

The New Statesman publishes a previously unseen work by the late poet laureate.

Ted Hughes, pictured in Maine, USA in 1978. All images copyright The Estate of Ted Hughes.

In tomorrow’s New Statesman, which has been guest-edited by Melvyn Bragg, we publish a previously unseen poem by Ted Hughes. “Last letter” is a poem that describes what happened during the three days leading up to the suicide of his first wife, the poet Sylvia Plath. Its first line is: “What happened that night? Your final night.” — and the poem ends with the moment Hughes is informed of his wife’s death.

Hughes’s best-known work is 1998′s Birthday Letters, a collection of poems that detail his relationship with Plath. Though the published poems make reference to Plath’s suicide, which occurred in February 1963, when she and Hughes were separated but still married, none of them addresses directly the circumstances of her death. This, then, would appear to be the “missing link” in the sequence.

The earliest draft of “Last letter” held in the British Library’s Ted Hughes archive appears in a blue school-style exercise book, which is believed to date from the 1970s. The book contains drafts of several poems that appear in Birthday Letters. A more refined draft of the poem is found in a hardback notebook. After drafting poems by hand several times, Hughes would usually type out poems when they were near completion, adding notes in the margin where necessary.

Below are images from various drafts of the poem:

John Lennon Google Doodle

http://www.youtube.com/v/TYHCeUfoAnw?fs=1&hl=en_US

Harlan Ellison — Pay the Writer

http://www.youtube.com/v/mj5IV23g-fE?fs=1&hl=en_US