Hello!

— some fun news here in hot and dry Los Angeles, weather that I wish I could sent Texas way.

Apparently we could be expecting a Criterion Blu-ray of Ikarie XB-1 in the future, as a number of weeks back the label even put out a list of Czech titles that would be brought to the U.S.: Janus Films to Bring 30 Classic Czech Films to the States. However, no mention is made of specific disc releases for any of them yet. For the last fifteen years or so, a common litmus test for what Janus/Criterion will release on disc has been if the show appears on the TCM cable channel, with a Janus logo. That recently happened with the Wim Wenders science fiction epic Until the End of the World. Hope springs eternal

Hopefully this next link will be taken in a humorous, not blasphemous sense — Gary Teetzel has discovered someone selling Vincent Price ‘St. Vincent’ Novena candles online. Good taste doesn’t come with the purchase — the little green bottle Vincent is holding bears a skull ‘n’ crossbones, indicating a vial of poison. The historical Saint didn’t poison anybody, and reportedly died on the rack. Link presented as an unsolicited public service by Ban Savant Now (BSN), a leading nonprofit.

Correspondent “B”, who sometimes goes by the mysterious moniker woggly knows that I am a big 3-D enthusiast, and so asked me to give a brief shout-out for the 3-D Funhouse: Recent Restorations
from the 3-D Film Archive event that begins Friday at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Third-Dimensional masterminds Bob Furmanek, Greg Kintz, and Jack Theakston are returning to MoMA to present their restorations of GOG, Those Redheads from Seattle, September Storm, Dragonfly Squadron and the Archives’ 3-D Rarities compilation. The show is being organized by the Museum’s Dave Kehr. Messrs. Furmanek, Kintz, and Theakston presented many of the Rarities shorts at a MoMA program a few years ago. “B” lets me know that he’ll be trying to see GOG on the big screen.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson