Cagney's Chaney Sees the Light of Day After a Decade

I thought I'd point out today that James Cagney's excellent Lon Chaney biopic The Man of a Thousand Faces (1957) is being released to DVD tomorrow. The late Cagney classic has been out of circulation since 1998, when it was initially released at the dawning of the digital video age. Since then, it's become very hard to come by, so if you've never seen it, nows your chance.

Although in my opinion the finest leading man of the Hollywood studio era, Cagney grew weary of the endless gangster roles he was so damn good at. And so this project was close to his heart, a chance to stretch his acting chops and show moviegoers all he could do. Some balk at the schmaltziness and general whitewashing of Chaney's career (par for the course for most biopics at the time), but for my money this is one of Cagney's best performances, and that covers a lot of ground.

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Well, I don't know about you folks, but I've been spending most of the night on YouTube immersed in the national treasure that was George Carlin. It's become cliche when a public figure passes to say that the world will be a little emptier without them, but in this rare case it is literally and irrefutably true. We've really lost something here--one of the greatest humorists in American history, in point of fact. Carlin was scheduled to receive the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor this November, and I don't think it's any stretch at all to imagine that ol' Sam Clemens would be damn proud of George Carlin and his body of work. Enjoy:

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John Landis Enters the Crypt

There I was, feeling a little bummed out that Diary of the Dead is thus far getting only a limited release of 42 theaters nationwide--with the closest one to me being 35 miles away--when, lo and behold, this life-affirming news comes over the wire.
Variety reported last night that John Landis, best known to horror aficionados as the director of An American Werewolf in London, will be stepping in to helm the biopic "Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines," based on the life of the famous EC Comics and Mad Magazine publisher.
As you probably have guessed, I am a big fan of EC Comics (that's my favorite Tales from the Crypt cover, by the way.) It all began back in the 1950s when my dad first discovered them as a kid. Fast-forward 30 years later, and he passed along the love for those gore-soaked pages to me, his only begotten son.
The picture is expected to focus on the rise of EC Comics in the '50s, and in particular the First Amendment battle that ensued when his horror comics were targeted by the U.S. Senate for their "harmful influence" on kids like my dad. As another life-long fan of EC and classic horror in general, I'm hoping for Landis to knock this one out of the park.
Now all I need is for Diary of the Dead to go wide next weekend...

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Viggo Mortensen to Play Edgar Allen Poe?

Cinema Blend broke the news yesterday that Sylvester Stallone has offered the lead role in his long-rumored Poe biopic to Viggo Mortensen of Lord of the Rings fame. Looks like this one is pretty solid, and Mortensen is apparently interested. But as with any project these days, who knows what impact the writers' strike may have.

Never noticed the uncanny resemblance till I put these two pics side-by-side. Kinda eerie. Which would please Poe, I suppose.

*11/16 UPDATE* Viggo Mortensen fansite Viggo-Works.com is reporting this rumor to be patently FALSE. Who's got the story straight here? Time will tell. Thanks to the anonymous commenter for tipping me off to this one.

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Roman Polanski Biopic in the Works

The life of legendary auteur/kid-toucher Roman Polanski is being brought to the big screen, according to an item in The Hollywood Reporter. Polanski's tumultuous life is certainly tailor-made for movies: a Holocaust survivor, he suffered through his wife's murder at the hands of the Charles Manson cult, then got busy with a 13-year-old girl and fled the country to escape statutory rape charges, never to return.
The Polish filmmaker is known for breaking throguh in the United States thanks to a trio of films that helped to redefine the horror genre during the 1960s: Repulsion, The Fearless Vampire Killers and of course the movie that made Satanism cool, Rosemary's Baby.
The unauthorized biopic is being made by writer/director Damian Chapa, whose greatest accomplishment thus far might be his one-year marriage to Natasha Henstridge. Chapa will begin shooting the film for Amadeus Pictures in January.

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