The HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast talks to director Stuart Gordon about Herbert West - Reanimator (
part 1,
part 2). A prolific director, Gordon is responsible for some of the
better adaptations of Lovecraft's work (and
From Beyond). Currently he is directing Reanimator star Jeffrey Combs as
Edgar Allan Poe in the one-man shoe Nevermore, which just finished a hugely successful run in LA and is now heading for Poe's hometown of
Baltimore.
posted by Artw
on Dec 25, 2009 -
23 comments
"On the clock striking twelve he appeared slightly agitated, but he soon recovered, walked twice or thrice along the coach house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed 'Halloa old girl!' (his favorite expression) and died... The children seem rather glad of it. He bit their ankles, but that was play..." So wrote Charles Dickens, describing the death of his pet raven "Grip," in a letter to a friend.
Grip has an interesting legacy. Having served as an eponymous character in Dickens'
Barnaby Rudge [full text] and subsequently inspiring Edgar Allan Poe's
The Raven [full text], Grip has the distinction of being named a
literary landmark. His
taxidermied body is on display in the Rare Book Department at the Philadelphia Free Library.
posted by amyms
on Aug 13, 2008 -
19 comments
I just finished up reading
The Turk by Tom Standage (briefly mentioned in passing
here) a biography of the chess-playing automaton that toured Europe and later the Americas during the pivotal transition from the 18th to the 19th century. The Automaton was invented as an exercise in national pride by
Wolfgang von Kempelen, who considered it a trifle compared to his experiments with
mechanical speech synthesis. As a celebrity, the automaton had historic encounters with Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon, Beethoven,
Philidor and Charles Babbage, and fictional encounters with the monarchs Catherine the Great, George III and Frederick II. Standage credits it with influencing the development of the
Difference Engine, the power loom, Poe's
mystery stories, and Barnum's
manipulation of the press. The myths surrounding have even caught
James Randi, who seems to have been unaware of a colleague's
reconstruction based on notes from the last owner.
posted by KirkJobSluder
on Sep 21, 2005 -
7 comments