Hello!

Always there to pitch in when CineSavant’s powers of detection go slack — which is always — advisor and moral conscience Gary Teetzel followed through on my interest in the unseen French film L’Inconnu de Shandigor and located a link to a fancy coming attraction promo, which may or may not be adapted from an original 1967 trailer. Deaf Crocodile Films and the cinematheque Suisse present a four-minute trailer for a new 4K release of Jean-Louis Roy’s The Unknown Man of Shandigor, described as a ‘surreal espionage thriller,’ and starring Daniel Emilfork, Serge Gainsbourg, Marie-France Boyer and Howard Vernon.

A press release states that Deaf Crocodile will partner with OCN Distribution / Vinegar Syndrome for the first-ever U.S. Blu-ray release of the film in January 2022.

It looks like it could be terrible or a lot of fun — it depends on whether it has a real sense of humor or is content to play visual games. The visuals could be in the same spirit of comic-book graphics taken to a delirious extreme in Mario Bava’s Diabolik… but the trailer’s artsy ‘semaphore’ style for intertitles also suggest games like Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville. I’ll have to find out for myself.

Gary warned me that I might be insulted by the trailer. An unspeakably cruel line of narration reads, “A pack of vampires, of reptiles, of centipedes … and we call them savants?“

Also forwarded by Gary, an outfit called the Corridor Crew has re-edited and visually augmented some movie scenes to create a montage that basically asks what would happen If James Bond Weren’t So Lucky.

It’s a little confusing to me, what with various Bonds (Dalton, Lazenby) killing others (mostly Connery), and I’m not sure it has any point to make — but it is a fun laser-slice of CGI effects manipulation.

And finally, helpful correspondent George Fogel responded to Yannie Tan’s take on ‘Cat Concerto with another take on the same cartoon,
Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 (with ‘Cateen Cadenza’).

I did a picture search to figure out if ‘Cateen Cadenza’ is a joke on ‘Cat Concerto’ or not … what if the unnamed pianist called himself Cateen?  A picture search identifies him as the highly talented Hayato Sumino.

I know the composition has been used everywhere, often in parodies of classical music. The image that comes to my mind is Dolores Gray singing “Remember” in It’s Always Fair Weather. Now can I call myself cultured, or what?

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson