Spooky Times With Shelley Winters

Greetings!

I can’t believe October is more than half over and spooky season is flying by. Which reminds me… I still need to carve my jack o’ lantern and finalize my Halloween costume. Do you have your Halloween costume picked out yet? If so, tell me what it is in the comments below.

Have you listened to my third annual Cinematic Crypt Spooky Radio Special yet? If not. There’s still plenty of time to boogie woogie under the pale moonlight. My podcast, Cinematic Crypte is available to listen wherever you catch pods or here at MovieJawn.

The 33rd Annual Philadelphia Film Festival is in town and I am catching a few flicks that I missed out on seeing at Toronto International Film Festival and Fantastic Fest. In case you missed it, I shared a preview here of the Philly Film Fest earlier this month and recommended some flicks to catch.

In terms of movies I have not seen yet, I am most excited to watch The Brutalist. This movie somewhat has become my white whale this festival season. I have been wanting to catch a glimpse and just have not been able to. By the time you read this, I will have finally caught this elusive motion picture and in the best possible format: 35mm.

The Brutalist is a three hour and thirty five minute epic (there’s an intermission, all hail the cinema gods) written by Brady Corbet (Vox Lux) and Mona Fastvold and directed by Brady Corbet. It stars Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce and tells the tale of architect László Toth and his wife Erzsébet. The couple are fleeing post-war Europe in 1947 and are looking to start over in America, when their lives are forever altered by an affluent mystery man.

I am incredibly intrigued by this plot and especially love to check out anything Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce are doing. Each of them seem to make a lot of interesting choices in terms of productions they are involved with. Also, for those that have heard me yammer on about my hotel script that I have been writing for over fifteen years, Adrien Brody is the person I have in my mind when I think about my main character Fletcher Little. This screenplay is desperately calling to be completed and, well my creepies, it will be done in due time. More on all this on another day.

This week I am proud of… understanding that is perfectly a-OK to take a coffin break. This does not make me weak, this does not make me a quitter… I am refueling and taking care of myself. After all, even vampires need to sleep at some point.

In terms of writing, I am really happy with the Creature Features Disc Dispatch series that I have been doing over at MovieJawn.

• Squirm was equally parts gross and fascinating, read here 

• Zoltan… Hound of Dracula is necessary viewing for those looking for their next pet to be a vampiric doggo, read here 

• Kingdom of The Spiders managed to capture me in its web, read here

This week I recommend checking out… Shelley Winters’s memoir, Shelley Also Known as Shirley.

Shelley Winters is one of my favorite actors to have graced the silver screen. In my Cinematic Crypt episode 039 about the film The Night of The Hunter I dropped in on everyone’s favorite village doctor and my fellow classic coroner, Dr. Ashley Jane Carruthers to slice open and dissect Shelley Winters’s performance in the illustrious noir and only feature film from Charles Laughton. It was the research that I conducted for this episode that led me to the existence of her memoir. I was absolutely thrilled to have found a copy on my recent adventure to Austin, Texas compliments of Half Price Books (thanks for taking me to this place of wonder Liz Locke). Now that I have started reading this book, I can’t put it down. Shelley was such an incredible person and I love learning more about her life. If you are able to track down a copy for yourself, I highly recommend it.

Here are a few of my favorite Shelley Winters performances:

• A Place in The Sun (1951)

• The Night of The Hunter (1955)

• The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

• Do it Debbie’s Way, Class 1 (1983)

Happy you are here. xx. goodbye.

Tell a friend.