News from Slackerwood: Lovecraft and Shakespeare
Filed under: News From Slackerwood
- H.P. Lovecraft's birthday is on Sunday. You can celebrate the horror author's special day with a film marathon at Alamo Downtown, which includes the silent film Call to Cthulhu, a Night Gallery episode called "Pickman's Model," a number of short films, and the made-for-HBO film Cast a Deadly Spell. What, no Re-Animator?
- Irvine Welsh, author of the book Trainspotting, will attend a screening of the movie adaptation on Sunday night at Alamo Downtown. If you buy his latest book, admission to the movie is free.
Several new indie films have found their way to Austin this week: Lower City and The Oh in Ohio open at Dobie, while Jailbait plays at Arbor. In addition, the IMAX/3D version of Superman Returns will screen this week at the Texas State History Museum. If you want to see that trendy new movie with the reptiles on aircraft, Alamo Drafthouse is offering "Snakes on a Plate" as a special menu item.
- Director Allison Anders will be in town next week -- she's on the Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund panel. As a result, TFPF is showing Gas Food Lodging on Monday night at Alamo on South Lamar, with Anders in attendance. Best of all, admission is free.
- The Paramount is showing a variety of good movies as part of its Summer Classic Film Series: Black Orpheus on Monday, a double-feature of Black Narcissus and The River on Tuesday and Wednesday, and a Toshiro Mifune double of Samurai Saga and Throne of Blood (pictured above) on Thursday and Friday.
- Alamo Downtown is showing The Beales: Grey Gardens Revisited on Monday and Tuesday nights. The documentary contains footage shot for the classic documentary Grey Gardens but never used.
- In the mood for Strange Brew? If you see the film at Alamo Downtown on Tuesday or Wednesday night, you get a free pint of Elsinore Beer with admission. Too bad this isn't showing the same night as Throne of Blood so you could enjoy an evening of unusual Shakespeare adaptations.
- The final Austin Film Society 20th anniversary screening takes place on Wednesday night: Andrei Tarkovsky's 1975 non-narrative film The Mirror.
- Flicker Austin is holding its bimonthly evening of short films on Thursday night at Alamo Downtown. All films shown have originated on film, whether it's Super 8, 16 mm, or 35 mm.
- Tickets are still available for Alamo Downtown's Monday, August 28 reprise of the Ultimate Garlic Experience, in which you enjoy a five-course garlic-laden meal while watching two Les Blank films, Garlic is as Good as as Ten Mothers and Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. Alamo will even have chefs in the aisles sauteeing garlic. I went to the last Ultimate Garlic Experience and had a wonderful evening, but I wasn't allowed in the house until I changed my clothes in the garage.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-18-2006 @ 9:02AM
Peter Nellhaus said...
For some of us, our introduction to H.P. Lovecraft was the Roger Corman film, "The Haunted Palace". The title was from a Poe poem but the story was from Lovecraft's "Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward".
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8-18-2006 @ 11:24AM
Lance Mazmanian said...
Have you ever seen H.P. Lovecraft's grave-marker?
I can't say whether this is a permanent part of his "installation," or whether it's a joke of a fan, but here it is...
http://www.mazmanian.net/lovecraft.jpg
Anyone who digs Lovecraft must run, not walk, to your nearest rare books dealer and pray they have paperback copies of the various Clark Ashton Smith paperbacks.
http://www.eldritchdark.com/misc/bibliography/Bibliography_Index
Note that he and Lovecraft were good friends. Lovecraft even included Smith in at least one of his books, as an inside joke. I believe the reference was "The Priests of Cl'Arkashton," or something similar.
L.
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8-18-2006 @ 5:57PM
yogster said...
Oh, the grave marker's real enough, but the stuff on the back is graffitti, well meaning, I am sure, but it was not meant to be there. When I was there last (8 years ago), someone had written "That is not Dead Which Can Aeternal Lie, And With Strange Aeons E'en Death May Die"
on the obelisk facing HPL's grave. Interestingly, HPL is not buried under his marker, but somewhere near it, more back towards the tree they believe.
I was just arguing with a friend that HPL was more influential than Poe, or pretty much any other writer.
Noone has the depth of influence that Hpl has had. Even if most people have never heard of him, they have been touched by someone's interpretation of his ideas.
He is everywhere if you look hard enough, which is kind of fitting for a scribe of the Old Ones, who's 'hands are at men's throats, yet they feel them not."
Happy Birthday HPL!!!!
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