Starting tonight and running through December 17th, Edgar Wright is taking control of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Wright, director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, is programming a festival of his favorite movies, and it's a wonderful and eclectic bunch. He's calling the fest "The Wright Stuff," (also the name of a universally beloved screenwriting column on this very site), and he will be on hand to introduce several screenings with special guests. As always at the New Beverly, one of Los Angeles' absolute treasures, every screening is a double feature.

I'll just tell you about the screenings with special guests, all of which start at 7:30. But don't forget to check the website for all show dates and times. Tonight, Edgar and songwriter Paul Williams will kick off the event with two musicals -- Bugsy Malone and Brian DePalma's Phantom of the Paradise. December 5th, the first feature is Flash Gordon, with special guest (and ex-Bond) Timothy Dalton. The second feature is Mario Bava's Danger Diabolik, introduced by Edgar and the great Joe Dante. On December 7th, Edgar will introduce The Last Boy Scout and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with one of the finest action screenplay writers of our time -- Shane Black. December 10 is John Landis' An American Werewolf in London and Tremors (which I spouted my love for here). Landis will help Wright introduce his film. December 12th is Top Secret! (almost as funny as Airplane and The Naked Gun, in my opinion) and Woody Allen's Bananas, with David Zucker on hand. December 14th is the Roger Ebert - penned Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and Head, hosted by Wright and Micky Dolenz of The Monkees. And on December 16th, Wright will introduce Evil Dead 2 and an all time favorite of mine -- the Coen Brothers' Raising Arizona.

Here is a press release from Edgar with his thoughts on the included films. If you live in the Los Angeles area, there's really no excuse to miss this. See you there!

When movie nerds discuss Italian films, the first name that comes up is Federico Fellini, followed by perhaps Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica. Those were the five directors to whom Martin Scorsese paid tribute in his wonderful four-hour documentary My Voyage to Italy (1999). From there, more die-hard film buffs might throw in the political Gillo Pontecorvo, or the controversial Pier Paolo Pasolini, or Bernardo Bertolucci, who only made a few Italian films before swapping to English for good. Someone might even remember that Max Ophuls once made a couple of films in Italian. After a moment's recollection, someone might recall the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci. The Italian horror films would get mentioned last, and hardly anyone would suggest that horror director Mario Bava was the greatest of them all.

There are three reasons why Bava is not considered as highly as he should be. The main one is that he made mostly horror films, and we are not trained to see the artistry in that genre, just as we're not trained to see any artistry in erotic films or comedies, or any of the "body genres." Another reason is that, due to the Italian cinema's practice of dubbing, Bava's films have an "unprofessional" quality; the lips don't match the actor's line readings. This is commonplace in Italy due to many factors, but mainly due to the casting of actors with various dialects or from other countries. For example, see Luchino Visconti's dazzling epic The Leopard (1963), starring Burt Lancaster. On the Criterion DVD, viewers can watch either the Italian version with Lancaster dubbed by another actor, or the English version with Lancaster's voice and every other actor dubbed. Bava himself worked a roster of non-Italian stars, some of whom appear dubbed: Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, John Savage, Joseph Cotten, Elke Sommer, Telly Savalas, Michel Piccoli, Christopher Lee and Barbara Steele (the latter of which went on to appear in Fellini's 8 ½).

A while back we asked you to submit your film blogs to us for consideration in future Film Blog Group Hugs. And, wow! Did you ever come out in droves. I was flooded with submissions -- so many, I haven't made it through them all yet, but there are some promising blogs on my list now. Some of them, I've added to my already lengthy regular-read list, some I've put on a list for our team to pull from, and some of those, I'm pulling from today for this Blog Roundup -- consider it the best of the submissions I've had that I've managed to make it through so far. And hey, if you don't see your blog here, it doesn't mean we thought it was lame. It probably just means it's one of the 89,000 submissions I haven't had time yet to read.

(Note: I'm still looking for blogs with the following specific focuses: Pacific Northwest, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, horror, and geek. If that's you, email me your info at kim@cinematical.com).

On to the blogs!