Notes and scribblings

Saturday, 31 October 2026

October 2026

Happy Halloween! 🎃

Films that I've watched over the Halloween season in 2026.

1/10/26: The Ghoul (Sodsri Phakdeechit, 1940)

3/10/26: Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968)

4/10/26: Phase IV (Saul Bass, 1974)

5/10/26: The Shiver of the Vampires (Jean Rollin, 1971)

6/10/26: The Demon Within (Masayoshi Sukita, 1985)

6/10/26: The Lake (Lindsey C. Vickers, 1978)

7/10/26: The Mannikin (Don Thompson, 1977)

8/10/26: The Pit and the Pendulum (Roger Corman, 1961)

9/10/26: Dreams in the Witch House (Stuart Gordon, 2005)

11/10/26: The Mummy (Karl Freund, 1932)

11/10/26: Possibly in Michigan (Cecelia Condit, 1983)

12/10/26: The Changeling (Peter Medak, 1980)

13/10/26: I’m Dangerous Tonight (Tobe Hooper, 1990)

13/10/26: Lady of the Lake (Bill Etra, 1974)

13/10/26: Tarry-Dan Tarry-Dan Scarey Old Spooky Man (John Reardon, 1978)

14/10/26: Dr. Renault’s Secret (Harry Lachman, 1942)

15/10/26: The Doll’s Revenge (Lewin Fitzhamon, 1907)

15/10/26: The Black Tower (John Smith, 1987)

18/10/26: Tokyo Blood (Gakuryu Ishii, 1993)

19/10/26: How to Make a Monster (Herbert L. Strock, 1958)

20/10/26: H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror and Other Stories (Ryo Shinagawa, 2007)

21/10/26: The Possessed/La donna del lago (Luigi Bazzoni, Franco Rossellini, 1965)

22/10/26: Dementia 13 (Francis Ford Coppola, 1963)

23/10/26: The Last Man on Earth (Ubaldo Ragona, Sidney Salkow, 1964)

24/10/26: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (The Producer's Cut) (Joe Chappelle, 1995/2013)

24/10/26: Halloween: 25 Years of Terror (Stefan Hutchinson, 2006)

25/10/26: Cruel Tale (Gaston Modot, 1930)

26/10/26: Planet of the Vampires/Terrore nello spazio (Mario Bava, 1965)

27/10/26: Panic in Year Zero! (Ray Milland, 1962)

28/10/26: The Pit and the Pendulum (Alice Guy-Blaché, 1913)

30/10/26: Creepshow 2 (Michael Gornick, 1987)

31/10/26: Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1978)

Books Read:

Night of the Living Dead (BFI Film Classics) by Benjamin A. Hervey

H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life by Michel Houellebecq

Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King by Caroline Bicks

Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles Beaumont

Red Scare: The Making of Tobe Hooper's I'm Dangerous Tonight by Stan Giesea

George A. Romero: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series) by Tony Williams (Editor)

The Inner Room (Faber Stories) by Robert Aickman

The Model by Robert Aickman

Wednesday, 30 September 2026

September 2026

Best First Viewings:

Story of a Love Affair (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1950)

In Water (Hong Sang-soo, 2023)

Le Canapé Rouge (Éric Rohmer, Marie Rivière, 2005)

The Day She Returns (Hong Sang-soo, 2026)

JLG/JLG: Self-Portrait in December (Jean-Luc Godard, 1994)

The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis, 1961)

Hard, Fast and Beautiful! (Ida Lupino, 1951)

No. 5 Checked Out (Ida Lupino, 1956)

Jacaranda Joe (George A. Romero, 1994)

Les Valseuses (Bertrand Blier, 1974)

The Docks of New York (Josef von Sternberg, 1928)

The Regeneration (Raoul Walsh, 1915)

Torment (Alf Sjöberg, 1944)

Heritage of the Desert (Henry Hathaway, 1932)

A Poet Goes North (1968)

Thunder Birds (William A. Wellman, 1942)

Books Read:

Hojoki: Visions of a Torn World by Kamo no Chōmei

The Diamond Bikini by Charles Williams

Éric Rohmer: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series) by Éric Rohmer, Fiona Handyside (Editor)

The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo

Stamboul Train by Graham Greene

Bill Forsyth: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series) by Lloyd Sachs (Editor)

Avoiding Anxiety in Autistic Adults by Luke Beardon

Monday, 31 August 2026

August 2026

Best First Viewings:

Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts (Mikio Naruse, 1935)

The Man I Love (Raoul Walsh, 1946)

The River’s Edge (Allan Dwan, 1957)

The Sands of Dee (D.W. Griffith, 1912)

The Sniper (Edward Dmytryk, 1952)

Reprisal! (George Sherman, 1956)

Witness in the City (Édouard Molinaro, 1959)

I Graduated, But… (Yasujirō Ozu, 1929)

The Fear (Allan Dwan, 1912)

Books Read:

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Edward G. Seidensticker (Translator), Thomas J. Harper, (Translator & Afterword), Charles Moore (Foreword)

If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King

Andromeda and Other Poems by Charles Kingsley

Louise Brooks: A Biography by Barry Paris

Tokyo Story (BFI Film Classics) by Alastair Phillips

The Future of Truth by Werner Herzog, Michael Hofmann (Translator)

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Bashō, Nobuyuki Yuasa (Translator)

Quotes

“MOVIES RESURRECT THE BEAUTIFUL DEAD…” - SUSAN SONTAG/"Shadows by the film folk, masses by the good people." - James Joyce, Finnegans Wake/“The task I'm trying to achieve, above all, is to make you see.” - D. W. Griffith/“The cinema will gradually break free from the tyranny of what is visual, from the image for its own sake, from the immediate and concrete demands of the narrative, to become a means of writing just as flexible and subtle as written language.” - Alexandre Astruc/"GOOD CINEMA IS WHAT WE CAN BELIEVE AND BAD CINEMA IS WHAT WE CAN'T BELIEVE." - ABBAS KIAROSTAMI/“FILM LOVERS ARE SICK PEOPLE” – FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT/"CINEMA IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FRAUD IN THE WORLD.” – JEAN-LUC GODARD/“FILM SHOULD BE LOOKED AT STRAIGHT ON, IT IS NOT THE ART OF SCHOLARS BUT OF ILLITERATES.” – WERNER HERZOG/“FILM AS DREAM, FILM AS MUSIC. NO ART PASSES OUR CONSCIENCE IN THE WAY FILM DOES, AND GOES DIRECTLY TO OUR FEELINGS, DEEP DOWN INTO THE DARK ROOMS OF OUR SOULS.”- INGMAR BERGMAN/"Cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. It's a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream." - Federico Fellini/"RELATING A PERSON TO THE WHOLE WORLD: THAT IS THE MEANING OF CINEMA." - ANDREI TARKOVSKY./"Film will only become an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper." - Jean Cocteau/"THE CINEMA IS AN INVENTION WITHOUT ANY FUTURE" - AUGUSTE AND LOUIS LUMIÈRE/"FILM AS AN ART IS FINISHED. IT’S DEAD. . . . LET’S JUST READ. IN SUCH A ROTTEN WORLD, ONLY BOOKS WILL SAVE US. ONLY BOOKS." - OKI’S MOVIE (2010)/"THERE IS NO CRISIS IN CINEMA. THERE ARE NEGATIVE PERIODS. THERE ARE TIMES WHEN SOME FILMS ARE RECEIVED WELL AND OTHERS AREN'T. THE PAST TEACHES US THAT SOME FILMS WERE RECEIVED BADLY, WHILE OTHERS GO SAILING ON." - VITTORIO DE SICA/"FOR ME, THE CINEMA IS NOT A SLICE OF LIFE, BUT A PIECE OF CAKE." - ALFRED HITCHCOCK/“CINEMA IS FREUD PLUS LUMIÈRE.” - PHILIPPE GARREL/“Art has nothing to do with morality, convention, or moralizing.” - Patricia Highsmith/"Films can illustrate our existence... they can distress, disturb and provoke people into thinking about themselves and certain problems. But NOT give the answers." - Joseph Losey/“A love story, three scenes of suggested horror and one of actual violence. Fadeout. It's all over in less than 70 minutes.” - Jacques Tourneur/"Cinematographic action should not contend itself with the personal, but stretch beyond the human to the domain of nature and dream." - Germaine Dulac/“CINEMA CONTAINS EVERYTHING. IT JOINS WRITING, PAINTING, MUSIC. IT IS THE MOST COMPLETE ART.” - Juliet Berto, Ciné-Bulles, 1986/"I estimate the final disappearance of cinemas as taking place around the year 2020, so in fifty years time there will be nothing but television." -Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970/“I hope I wasn’t too pessimistic. But film is really a fragile art.” - Lotte Eisner