Hello!

We start off with something interesting courtesy of a circulated link from Joe Dante.

It’s a new Guardian article by Dalya Alberge about a film Charles Chaplin was actively working on when he died in 1977. Its screenplay is reportedly going to be published.

The biggest hint in the article is that the film is “a fantasy about “Sarapha, a beautiful creature with wings, a bird with a human body, which has the power to cure illness and bring peace to the world.”

I say bring it on for real.

Another un-filmed movie project associated with Charles Chaplin has already been published, in a book dealing with critic/screenwriter James Agee. It’s a full script for an ‘atom war’ idea that Agee hoped Chaplin would film. This was in the late 1940s, just before Chaplin went into exile.

The ‘lost screenplay’ is printed in Wrankovics’ book Chaplin and Agee. The balance of the book is about Agee’s efforts to rescue Chaplin from the cultural lynch mob that tarred him both a pervert and an anti-American Red.

And long-time correspondent Lee Kaplan contributes something very pleasing, a clip to a terrific animated short subject that will get us in a good mood for El dí de los muertos. Without words, it defines the meaning of a Day of the Dead holiday altar.

It’s a brief man & dog story by … Victoria México?  An early title card that appears on the video is Xolo, defined as a breed of Mexican dog. It was a sacred animal for the Aztecs, full name Xoloitzcuintle.

The film is very touching, and very much in keeping with the sentimental, positive meaning of the holiday. Dog lovers uninterested in the feline epic Flow may be charmed.

And you .. Who is waiting for you? … take me to the river…

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson