Month: October 2025

Some notes on upcoming film-watching

My film watchlist has achieved truly preposterous dimensions over the years, and especially over the last year or so as I’ve started getting back into film-watching and accruing a bunch of new things that have just blown the watchlist up even further. I need to start making some inroads into it, and I need to start being a bit more methodical about it… to which end I’m going to go through some box sets and other collections I’ve started but haven’t finished, of which I have several… I mean, I bought four such boxes in the last Severin sale, each of which had four titles in it that I haven’t seen, and I’ve got forthcoming two sets of early Hitchcock (though at least I’ve previously seen some of those), a bunch of other Imprint boxes I’ve barely glanced at, giallo sets from Arrow and Vinegar Syndrome, and a shit ton of martial arts stuff, mostly in those big Shawscope collections from Arrow…

So I’ve acquired an awful lot over the last year or so, and, let’s face it, I’m still doing so… I mean, if the companies are going to insist on putting out stuff that grabs my attention, I’m not going to tell them not to. Vinegar Syndrome’s putting Alraune out? How can I refuse? And I have a ton of stuff I want to rewatch, too, on top of the stupid amount of unseen stuff, so there’ll be more of that too as I upgrade some older holdings. But getting the list of unseen titles down is much more important, so I’ve got to focus on new watches over rewatches. Maybe a one-in one-out type thing, only one rewatch for whatever number of new ones, so I can try and get the list back down to marginally less unmanageable numbers.

Accordingly, I’m also declaring an end to the Century of Cinema challenge. It’s been directing almost all my viewing this year, apart from a handful of titles I did rewatch independent of the challenge, and frankly it’s been getting in the way… cos I kept feeling like I should be pursuing that first, but I have so much other stuff that wouldn’t count towards it and which, frankly, I’d rather have watched instead. So that kind of reached the point where I’d go for days not watching anything, only watched two things in all of September. So Century of Cinema is over at about 60% done. Unfortunate but I think it’s the only way ahead. My own fault, of course, cos I should’ve remembered how shit I am at this sort of thing… I mean, I suppose this project to cut my watchlist down is a challenge of that kind, too, but it’s self-imposed and there’s no real guidelines I need to stick to…

So just how many unseen titles are we talking about? As of right now… 2138, per the spreadsheet where I keep track of these things. Fucking hell. On the plus side, a substantial chunk of those are actually shorts, so I suppose at least those won’t take too long to finish off? And a similarly big chunk is stuff I’ve downloaded that I may never actually watch and should probably cross off the list. Sigh. Anyway, at least I’ve made a public record here of just how bad the watchlist is at this point, and once I’ve added the things that should be here in the next few days I need to let it never get that bad again…

7 years of Jamal

Less happily, yesterday was also the anniversary of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, on the orders of Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman who, you know, literally got away with murder because of governmental chickenshitness… which is part of why there’s been quite some stink about the Riyadh Comedy Festival, the latest Saudi attempt to cosy up to the West by, you know, kind of buying the co-operation of a bunch of American comedians like Bill Burr, Dave Chappelle, Jimeoin, Jim Jeffries, Aziz Ansari, Jimmy Carr and Louis C.K., with the latter being a particularly obnoxious double bill… there’s been a lot of disappointment at the people going, especially towards Pete Davidson, whose father died after the September 11 attach which you may recall Saudi had something to do with, and even more towards Bill Burr… the latter’s become highly regarded among leftist critics in recent months; a comment he made earlier this year about billionaires being “put down” obviously went over well, and he’s specifically targeted other people in the past for doing the exact sort of thing he’s doing now. I presume billionaires are better if they’re paying Bill…

To be honest, comedy is not something I pay much attention to, so until recently I’ve only been dimly aware of some of the bigger names, then Marc Maron did a big attack on the Rogansphere, i.e. the mob of comics beholden to noted giant intellect and right-wing stooge Joe Rogan that mostly hangs around the Austin scene where Rogan holds sway. So that introduced me to a few more who’ve also been invited to partake of the Riyadh festival, so I’ve got more reasons to not like them other than just what I’ve now seen of their work. But I’ve always known some of the bigger ones, like I said; Dave Chappelle, for example, that noted admirer of queer and trans people, is someone I actually used to admire back in the day. Less so now, though:

Dave Chappelle criticized the status of free speech in the United States while on stage at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia.
The comedian was one of more than 50 performers participating in the event, which has come under fire for being held in a country which has been accused of human rights violations and an oppressive regime.
“Right now in America, they say that if you talk about Charlie Kirk, that you’ll get canceled,” Chappelle told an audience of 6,000, according to The New York Times. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m gonna find out.” He then added, “It’s easier to talk here than it is in America.” […]
Given Chappelle is, obviously, a comedian, anything he says on stage can arguably fall under the rubric of, “well, he was just kidding.” But his comments are, at the very least, rather ironic. In Saudi Arabia, media outlets are licensed by the government and there is a long list of prohibited speech — from anything that inflames public opinion against the state, to promoting any non-Islamic religious expression or speech that supports activist causes. (For instance: In 2022, student Salma al-Shehab was sentenced to 34 years in prison for retweeting women’s rights activists on X; she was later given a reduced sentence amid global outcry).
Even the comedy festival had purported speech restrictions, with comedian Atsuko Okatsuka posting a list of deal terms for appearing at the event which included forbidding any criticism of religion or the Saudi royals.
One comedian, Tim Dillon, says he was disinvited to attend the event for an unearthed joke that he previously made about Saudi Arabia — which arguably sends the message that if you wish to be invited to the Riyadh Comedy Festival in the future, you better not make jokes about the country even when you’re back home.

So the “freedom of speech” thing is transparent bullshit and Dave knows it. He got bought by the Saudi government just like the rest of them did. And Mohammed bin Salman will keep carrying on as usual because no one will do anything about him, and Jamal Khashoggi will continue to turn in his grave for nothing.

100 years of Stooky Bill

Yesterday marked the 100th anniversary of J.L. Baird finally getting television right. He’d actually demonstrated the technology a few months earlier, but it was at an even more primtive stage at that point. on October 2nd 1925, he finally got a recognisable image, firstly of the Doctor Who-immortalising Stooky Bill, then of the factory’s office boy William Taynton, who offered a charming reminiscence of the big day for its 40th anniversary, as recounted in this article (with video of him, too—good grief, another piece of vintage BBC vision they actually kept!). The article also offers this fascinating snippet of what he did before making TV when he couldn’t serve in WW1:

Instead, he began work for an electricity company while retaining a fiercely entrepreneurial streak. Inspired by a short story by his idol, science-fiction writer HG Wells, he attempted to make artificial diamonds out of carbon by using huge amounts of electricity. He succeeded only in knocking out part of Glasgow’s power supply. As for a disastrous homemade haemorrhoid cure, it was a textbook example of the type of activity that would have future television presenters warning, “Don’t try this at home.”

…How the FUCK can you write a phrase like “disastrous homemade haemorrhoid cure” without explaining exactly what went wrong with it? Or maybe we’re better off not knowing? Either way, happy hundredth, JLB, your particular technology might’ve had a limited future but you proved it worked nonetheless, and you were right about just how far it would spread one day…

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1914)

Finally reviewing the 1914 version on the blu-ray with the previously reviewed 1929 version. I understand why this one has been considered more Feuillade than Doyle, because frankly that’s exactly what it is (the plot device of two characters disguising themselves as each other is apparently straight out of Fantomas, which I don’t recall but then again I haven’t watched it in years); it has bugger all to do with Doyle’s book, really. Holmes only gets involved in the story about a third of the way through when he discovers someone (who turns out to be the villain of the piece) is posing as him at Baskerville Hall, and he decides to investigate. That’s not the least that the film deviates from the book (the play it was based on went further and even incorporated bits of Poe); Watson does appear (contrary to my earlier impression) but only for a minute or so and apparently no one even knows who played him, while the titular hound—a rather friendly-looking Great Dane—has almost as little to do with proceedings. Even Sir Henry seems like a non-event. Characterisation is definitely not the strong point here. I do think the film (which was lost for decades and only reappeared in 2005) might be better thought of if it had been called anything other than The Hound of the Baskervilles; definitely no lost masterpiece, not particularly advanced even for 1914 and the acting is inclined somewhat to ham, but the set designs are fairly nice and some of the camerawork (an early job for Karl Freund) is inventively handled. Still glad I watched the 1929 version first, though; if nothing else a comparison shows just how far technique progressed in those 15 years.

And would Doyle have cared that much about the differences from the book anyway? When William Gillette wrote his own Sherlock play in 1899 he asked Doyle for permission to marry Holmes off, and Doyle said Gillette could do whatever he wanted. Would Doyle have been bothered by this, well, bastardisation of his work? Did Doyle even know about it? It wouldn’t be the last time a German film company would be a bit cavalier with international copyright (looking at you here, F.W. Murnau)…

NEW AAMON!

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned Ethan Klein on here before; suffice to say I think he’s a pretty shabby individual who was probably never an especially good guy, but since the October 7 attack by Hamas his non-stop Israel apologism, accompanied by grotesque racism towards Arabs (including his own former friend and co-host Hasan Piker), has frankly turned him into one of Youtube’s least pleasant inhabitants. The longer it’s gone on, the more he seems to be overwhelmed by main character syndrome, and his fondness for lawsuits against his critics isn’t helping him any either. I look better and younger at 50 than he does at 40. Hate ages you, indeed. Suffice to say Aamon gives him what he deserves.