Tag: CoKoCon

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Biweekly News Roundup 2023-08-13

Personal / Website News

Black Emanuelle Boxset Unboxing

Severin Films recently released a titanic boxset of the Laura Gemser Black Emanuelle films. I, of course, did an unboxing article of it.

I also bring up prior incarnations of Black Emanuelle DVD releases. Check out the write up here.

Citation News

There’s been an uptick in work being cited lately and I am here for it!

Firstly, my essay “Lost Nights and Dangerous Days: Unraveling the Relationship Between Stranger Things and Synthwave” from Uncovering Stranger Things has been cited in the essay “‘Dad, every serial killer is somebody’s neighbor!’ The Problem of White Supremacy in Summer of ’84” by Erika Tiburcio Moreno and published in the edited collection The ’80s Resurrected: Essays on the Decade in Popular Culture Then and Now.

The book was published by McFarland in March earlier this year. More info can be found on the book’s product page at the McFarland website.

Next, Hannah Mueller’s essay “Male Nudity, Violence and the Disruption of Voyeuristic Pleasure in Starz’s Spartacus” from The New Peplum has been cited by James K. Beggan in his essay “Why is he there? Male presence in a sexually explicit magazine geared towards heterosexual men” that was published in the Porn Studies journal.

The New Peplum
Cover art for The New Peplum

If you have access the essay can be read at the journal’s page at Taylor and Francis.

New Episode of HP Lovecast

A new episode of our monthly Transmission program is now online.

For July we interviewed Chelsea Pumpkins, editor of the horror anthology AHH! That’s What I Call Horror: An Anthology of ’90s Horror. The episode can be streamed via our Buzzsprout page, the embedded player below, or through your podcast app of preference.

HPLCP Transmissions – Ep 24 – Chelsea Pumpkins – H. P. Lovecast Podcast

CoKoCon Schedule

The schedule for CoKoCon 2023 is starting to take shape! You can find Michele and I on the following panels:

  • Saturday Sept 2 9pm – Fiesta Ballroom 2: From EC Comics to Shudder: Horror Comics That Excite and Scare Us
  • Sunday Sept 3 6pm – Coronado: Creepy, Crawly, Otherworldly Bumps in the Night, or Cosmic Horror Films
  • Monday Sept 4 1pm – Coronado: 1pm: Weird West in Popular Culture

I’ll be on premises the entire con, so feel free to hunt me down to say hi! Michele and I will also have a table we were sill be selling and signing books.

Publishing Recap

Below is a recap of my publishing endeavors so far in 2023.

Published in February, this collection contains my essay “Dance or Dēcēdere: Gladiator and Industrial Music Sampling.”

Vernon Press Product Page

Published in May, this issue of Weird Tales contains my essay “When the Stars are Right.”

Weird Tales Product Page

Published in late March, the first issue of the zine Footage Fiends, contains my essay “Analisi Della Cosa: Found Footage in Caltiki and Italian Theater Going Practices.”

Limited to 50 physical copies.

Order via Patreon.

Essay about mimetic desire in Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulhu in Dark Dead Things #2/

Order via Dark Dead Things website.

Miscellaneous Tidbits

New Acquisitions

Kino Lorber just had a summer sale on their Blu-rays so I took the opportunity to pluck up some Italian films for the library.

The Last Hunter I already had on DVD, from Dark Sky Films. In fact, here is my copy autographed by Antonio Margheriti’s son, Edoardo Margheriti:

I did a presentation on The Last Hunter at the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association conference waaaaaaay back in 2010. Not my best presentation and still very green at being an academic, but the text of it can be read at my Academia.edu account.

Ironmaster I have not seen. It sounds like an Italian sword and sorcery flick, but in a prehistoric age. I am a fan of Umberto Lenzi’s work so this should be a fun watch.

Lastly is Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, which I also have not seen. I’ve seen the iconic image of Sophia Loren slipping off her stockings that I feel like I’ve seen the film. I always think of Mastroianni from Divorce, Italian Style.

Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew Commentary

Matt Page, author of 100 Bible Films, has recorded a commentary for Paolini’s 1964 Biblical peplum, The Gospel According to St. Matthew. The commentary and be streamed from YouTube. Criterion Collection recently released a Pasolini boxset that contains this film.

Call for Papers

Michael Torregrossa has a few CFPs out there. I’m sharing them here to help get the word out. Check them out and consider submitting!

Beowulfs Beyond Beowulf: Transformations of Beowulf in Popular Culture (Panel)

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture and the Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture Association

Organized by Michael A. Torregrossa, Richard Fahey, Carl Sell, and Benjamin Hoover

Call for Papers – Please Submit Proposals by 30 September 2023

55th Annual Convention of Northeast Modern Language Association

Sheraton Boston Hotel (Boston, MA)

On-site event: 7-10 March 2024

The Old English epic Beowulf remains an important touchstone for connecting us to the medieval past, yet it also has continued relevance today through its various transformations in cultural texts (especially works of popular culture). Our hope with this session is to expand our knowledge of these works and assess their potential for research and teaching. 

Please visit our website Beowulf Transformed: Adaptations and Appropriations of the Beowulf Story (available at https://beowulf-transformed.blogspot.com/)  for resources and ideas. 

The full call for papers (with complete session and submission information) can be accessed at https://tinyurl.com/Beowulf-Transformed-NeMLA-2024.  

Session Information

Over a millennium old, the story of Beowulf is disseminated primarily through its editions and translations and its transformations. These three types of Beowulfiana represent a massive corpus of over 1000 works according to the Beowulf’s Afterlives Bibliographic Database; though, as medievalists, we tend to focus on the first two categories rather than the last concentrating on scholastic pursuits rather than entertainments. Consequently, many are often surprised by the variety and vitality of this corpus and its vast potential for research and teaching.

New versions of the Beowulf story feature in all forms of modern mediævalisms, yet (as is true with most medieval texts) research continues to focus primarily on depictions of Beowulf on screen (about 100 examples according to the Internet Movie Database). We hope in this session to expand our view of Beowulf’s reception by creators and look more deeply at the text’s wider use. 

We are particularly interested in explorations of the adaptation and/or appropriation of the text, its characters, and its themes in works of fiction (at least 250 examples according to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database and much more recorded by the Beowulf’s Afterlives Bibliographic Database) and comics (at least 380 examples according to the Grand Comics Database), as well as their representations in new and neglected works on screen (including film, television, entertainment consoles, and the Internet). Additional versions of Beowulf can be found in works of creative, performative, and visual arts that also need more attention. 

We hope to make our conversation productive. Therefore, we request that submissions highlight the ways the new text transforms the old (for example as interpretations or appropriations of the poem or as an intertext for another work) as well as its value in furthering the Beowulf tradition rather than focusing solely on any perceived defects. 

Please see our website Beowulf Transformed: Adaptations and Appropriations of the Beowulf Story (at https://beowulf-transformed.blogspot.com/) for a growing list of ideas, resources, and support. 

All proposals will also be considered for a themed issue of the open-access journal The Heroic Age: A Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe.

Please address questions and/or concerns to the organizers at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com.

Submission Information

All proposals must be submitted into the CFPList system at https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/20596 by 30 September 2023. You will be prompted to create an account with NeMLA (if you do not already have one) and, then, to complete sections on Title, Abstract, and Media Needs. 

Notification on the fate of your submission will be made prior to 16 October 2023. If favorable, please confirm your participation with chairs by accepting their invitations and by registering for the event. The deadline for Registration/Membership is 9 December 2023.

Be advised of the following policies of the Convention: All participants must be members of NeMLA for the year of the conference. Participants may present on up to two sessions of different types (panels/seminars are considered of the same type). Submitters to the CFP site cannot upload the same abstract twice.(See the NeMLA Presenter Policies page, at https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention/policies.html, for further details,)

Thank you for your interest in our session. 

Again, please address questions and/or concerns to the organizers at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com.

For more information on the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, please visit our website at https://MedievalinPopularCulture.blogspot.com/.  

For more information on the Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture Association, please visit our website at https://popularpreternaturaliana.blogspot.com/.

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News

Biweekly News Roundup 2023-06-25

Personal / Website News

Citation News

The New Peplum, specifically Kevin Wetmore’s essay, was referenced in Ancient Rome on the Silver Screen: Myth versus Reality that was published this past May by Rowman and Littlefield.

More information on this book can be found at the publisher’s product page.

CoKoCon 2023

Michele and I will be participants at CoKoCon 2023 this upcoming Labour Day. Michele will be vending a table with her journals and our books. Panels we are on will TBD. More info to come but keep an eye on the CoKoCon 2023 website for the most current news.

Publishing Recap

Below is a recap of my publishing endeavors so far in 2023.

Published in February, this collection contains my essay “Dance or Dēcēdere: Gladiator and Industrial Music Sampling.”Vernon Press Product Page

Published in May, this issue of Weird Tales contains my essay “When the Stars are Right.”

Weird Tales Product Page

Published in late March, the first issue of the zine Footage Fiends, contains my essay “Analisi Della Cosa: Found Footage in Caltiki and Italian Theater Going Practices.”

Limited to 50 physical copies.

Order via Patreon.

Miscellaneous Tidbits

Joan Jocson-Singh Website

Joan Jocson-Singh, who I had the honor of interviewing about her book, Heavy Music Mothers: Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptions (read here), has just revamped and updated her website, On the Shelves. Check it out!

CFP: Heavy Metal & Global Premodernity II

There’s a brand new call for abstracts for the second Heavy Metal and Premodernity conference. Details are as follows:

Last year, the first manifestation of Heavy Metal & Global Premodernity forged an international fellowship of scholars working in a rich array of disciplines, along with musicians, artists, and journalists, in order to critically explore how metal music and its scenes throughout the world have engaged with the history, mythology, literature, and art of premodern and precolonial cultures. Through panel presentations, roundtable discussions, and unstructured and multilingual social hours, we shed light from a variety of perspectives upon metal’s entanglements in such areas as precolonial Mexico, the ancient Near East, classical Greece and Rome, and medieval Europe and Byzantium.

Here is last year’s conference program and website, and a playlist of the recorded sessions.

Next year, we hope to expand and enrich our fellowship. We invite contributions/proposals for engagement from all interested individuals working inside or outside the academy, including musicians and journalists involved in metal scenes anywhere in the world. We especially welcome those from backgrounds historically underrepresented in either academia or metal. You don’t need an advanced degree or know how to play guitar. If you have a topic of interest you would like to explore, we want to hear from you!

We welcome abstracts for panels and individual presentations, creative and traditional in form and varying in length, related to metal’s reception of the history and culture of any period, people, and place from premodern and precolonial worlds. We define global premodernity as human culture of any period roughly prior to 1600 CE, and we have chosen this delineation to be inclusive of texts, traditions, and narratives outside of the traditional study of classics or biblical studies, which often ignores the rich cultural history of the majority world and narratives outside standard eurocentric education.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, to following:

  • Premodern or neoclassical art, architecture, dress, symbols, and/or other material culture in album artwork, music videos, promotional photography, and live performances
  • The incorporation of premodern music and/or instruments into metal songs
  • The reception of historical, literary, and religious and philosophical texts and ideas in song lyrics
  • Issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, and the reception and inclusion of premodern and contemporary women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and other historically marginalized groups
  • Political activism of musicians who engage with premodernity
  • Interviews and/or auto-ethnographies of fans, musicians, (photo)journalists, and/or scholars
  • Methodologies in the study of metal’s reception of premodernity
  • Pedagogical strategies for teaching premodern history and cultures with metal songs
  • Performance and creative demonstrations of music.

Please send abstracts and any questions to metalpremodernity@gmail.com. The submission deadline is 2 October 2023.

Abstracts should be roughly 300 words maximum, and include author name and affiliation (if appropriate).

We are concerned to make the conference as accessible as possible to disabled people and those for whom English is not their first language. Captions will be supplied, but if you have other access needs for presentation please mention these upon submission of your abstract and we will work with you to fulfill these.

Charlotte, Jeremy, & Shamma

Call for Submissions: Three Stooges Zine

Will Sloan is looking to start a zine about The Three Stooges and is looking for submissions. Here is the flyer:

And here is the text:

Call for Submissions: The Journal of Stoogeological Studies: an Unauthorized Three Stooges Fanzine.

Are you a knucklehead? Do you find yourself a “victim of circumstance”? Is your head so full of thoughts and opinions about the life and art of the Three Stooges that a hammer and buzzsaw can barely sent it?

We want YOU to contribute to the world’s greatest Three Stooges Fanzine!

What we want:

  • Reviews
  • Essays
  • Interviews
  • Biographical Studies
  • Personal Essays/Autobiography
  • Journalism/Reportage
  • Poetry
  • Fiction
  • Art/Comics

Suggested Topics:

  • Anything and everything to do with Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Shemp Howard, Joe Besser, “Curly Joe” DeRita, Ted Healy, and of course, Jerome “Curly” Howard
  • Stooge and Stooge-adjacent movies and TV shows, from the Columbia Shorts Department to Kook’s Tour and beyond
  • Stooge supporting players, directors, coworkers
  • Personal stories of your relationship with the Stooges’ work
  • The Robonic Stooges
  • Stooge comic books, records, failed TV pilots, merchandise, and other ephemera
  • Three Stooges Coffee (particularly the “Three Bean Blend,” although the “Angry Moe” blend has its good qualities)
  • Sociopolitical musings on the Stooges and race, class, gender, sexuality, and other academic lenses

Send submissions to editor/publisher Will Sloan at thewillsloan@gmail.com. Feel free to get in touch if you want to workshop a pitch. Submissions are due Sunday, August 13th at 9pm PST.

Will Sloan

Categories
News

Biweekly News Roundup 2022-09-11

Good day everyone!

I am revamping my news roundups for the time being. I don’t think I am quite prolific enough to merit a weekly aggregation, so instead I’ll be switching to biweekly. Think that will also help reduce the clutter of news articles at my website. I’m doing some other changes as well, so read on!

Personal / Website News

Not changing anything in the “Personal / Website News” section. If anything, they might get longer (such as this week’s) as I’ll be sharing more news in each biweekly post.

New Website Articles

I’ve published two articles at my website over the past two weeks.

First is my write up of the Bacardi Mai-Tai recipe that appears in the 1973 Bacardi Party Book.

I haven’t quite written enough essays here on cocktail and tiki culture, so I felt one was overdue. I’ve got a handful of other cocktail pamphlets like this from the 70s, so expect some more write ups of a similar ilk in the future.

Next, there is a new issue of Weird Tales that will be coming out very soon. This issue will focus on the sword and sorcery genre so I thought it would be awesome to help do my part to promote the issue by doing some micro interviews with some of the authors and poets within. I put out a call on social media for interested parties and this aggregation of short-form interviews is the result.

The article currently contains interviews with Brian W. Matthews, Teel James Glenn, Dana Fredsti, and Dave Fitzgerald.

H. P. Lovecast Podcast Updates

For August we got a little off track with H. P. Lovecast as we had to hunker in and prep for CoKoCon (see below) and other projects. This means that while August had only one episode of H. P. Lovecast (our dive into Douglas Wynne’s collection Something in the Water and Other Stories), September will have three episodes!

First, we have a Fragments episode that contains our interview with Wynne about his new collection, Something in the Water. The episode can be streamed at the H. P. Lovecast Podcast Buzzsprout page, via your podcast app of preference, or via the embedded player below.

HPLCP Fragments – Ep 18 – Douglas Wynne Interview – H. P. Lovecast Podcast

Second, our primary episode for September will be on the movie, Prince of Darkness, direct by John Carpenter. This episode will drop on Sunday the 18th. This episode will act as a companion episode to an upcoming Fan2Fan appearance (see below).

Personal collection.

Finally, for September’s Transmissions episode, we will be interviewing Ian Welke about his new novel, Union Station, and Brenda S. Tolian about her debut short story collection, Blood Mountain. That will drop the last day of September.

Other Podcast News

I met up with Bernie Gonzalez and Joshua Pruett to record some back-to-back Fan2Fan Podcast episodes.

In no particular order, three episodes were recorded:

  • Discussion on John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness
  • Top Five Vampires Films
  • Top Five Halloween Films

Our forthcoming H. P. Lovecast Podcast episode on Prince of Darkness will act as a companion episode to the Fan2Fan In the Mouth of Madness. Check out both episodes when they are online!

For Scholars at the Edge of Time later this month, (Thursday, September the 22nd), Michele and I will be discussing Son of Samson.

Personal copy of the recent Kino release.

Finally, to have on the radar, I’ll be doing a reading on the HWA New York Chapter’s Galactic Terrors vidcast. That will be in November.

All of these appearances, along with their publish dates (if known) have been added to the Podcast Index page. As always, if you feel like I’d make a great guest on your podcast, please feel free to reach out to me at vnvdiak@gmail.com.

Miscellaneous Tidbits

I am going to cease doing peplum-specific news go forward. While one of my expertise is peplum, my interests run in a variety of subject matters. Instead, I’ll have a section called “Miscellaneous Tidbits” (temporary name until I can think of another) where I’ll post news relevant to my research or projects I’m working on. Could be peplum, could be something else.

However, if folks do have their own peplum news they want to share with me to promote here, I am still very much available to do that. I am here to help others.

Blog and Adventures

I’ll be adding a new section that will appear time-to-time, and that will be “Blog and Adventures.” I’ll kick it off for this post with a re-cap of CoKoCon.

CoKoCon 2022 Experiences

CoKoCon is a Phoenix fan convention in the old school sense of the early days of fandom: smaller, more intimate crowd taking over a bit of hotel convention space. This is the first in-person version of CoKoCon since 2019 due to the pandemic.

Hal C. F. Hastell and Dee Hastell are the two primary folks behind CoKoCo. Despite us being still fairly new to the Phoenix area and not really knowing anyone, they extended an invitation to us to be on a few panels. We are both extremely flattered and appreciative. Michele and I wound up on two panels: Pre-Code Hollywood Horror Films, and Swords, Sandals, Sorcery, Planets and Other Worlds.

Our first panel was Saturday and we got to the Tempe Double Tree around 9am-ish. This was our first appearance at any sort of public event, let alone a con, since the Covid Pandemic started. We were a little bit nervous as we both have evaded getting Covid thus far. We were so relieved that CoKoCon has strict mask mandates and vaccination or negative Covid test requirements. We felt so much better: everyone was masked, all spaced out. We felt super safe.

We also got a cool swag bag filled with books, stickers, and other goodies. There was also a nice program booklet which had our brand new H. P. Lovecast Logo as an advert! We were pumped.

The Pre-Code Hollywood Horror Films panel started at 10:0am. Hal was the moderator with Michele and I as panelists. Michele is an expert on silent cinema, particularly the city symphony genre, but because of her interest in mummies, she had seen a lot of Universal Horror films. So, she was the big subject matter expert. I’m not too much of a specialist of the period, but know enough since it is all precursor to my Italian genre film/exploitation film studies (but I do love Busby Berkeley musicals). We spent all August prepping for the panel by watching quiet a few Pre-Code horror films: Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), Kongo (1932), King Kong (1933), Island of Lost Souls (1932), and Life Returns (1934). Michele watched a plethora of even more films.

Pre-Code Horror from our collection.

I suspect this might have been a panel that Hal had wanted to do for a while, and it turned out to be a lot of fun. We talked about how transgressive and ahead of their time these movies were compared to the films released in the years following the Hayes Code going into proper effect. We all agreed that Life Returns was a terrible film while Kongo was the most controversial and squeamish film we all saw. Definitely worth an experience.

After the panel we meandered around the con for a little bit. We ran into Beth Cato, steampunk author and baker extraordinaire. She gave us ooey gooey delicious cookies and a ribbon for our con badges that proclaimed we had taken part of her baked delectables.

We visited the dealers’ room which housed a handful of authors with tables along with the art that was up for auction. We met authors Adam Gaffen and David Lee Summers.They were cool folk and of course, we had to pluck up some books (can’t walk away empty handed!).

Michele and I returned Monday for the Swords/Sandals/Sorcery/Other Worlds Panel which was at 1:00 pm. This is a panel of Michele’s own creation which she has moderated at other cons, such as Long Beach Comic Con and LA Comic Con. I brought the sword and sandal knowledge while artist Gilead brought the sword and sorcery expertise. I believe this was the first time Michele had an artist instead of a writer on her panel, so it was nice to get a different perspective.

Gilead is an amazing artist. I had to purchase his original painting “Ziggurats and Tentacles” which was part of the art gallery/auction.

“Ziggurats and Tentacles” by Gilead. Now hanging in our living room.

This panel was a lot of fun. Gilead brought a list of sword and sorcery resources (websites, podcasts, Discord servers, etc.) and invited folks to copy it and check them out. He was super knowledgable about all facets of sword and sorcery.

Overall, CoKoCon was. a blast. It was a low-key event for us, which is exactly what we needed during these pandemic times. The 2023 conference is already being planned and has GoH information at the CoKoCon website. We will definitely be back!

The CoKoCon Facebook page is uploading photos, so keep an eye there for photos of the event.

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News

News Roundup W/E 2022-08-28

Personal / Website News

Sylvia Kristel Book Review

My book review of Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol by Jeremy Richey is online.

Personal Copy

My write up can be read here. I really loved this book, so I hope yall check it out.

Fan2Fan Podcast Apperances

The folks at Fan2Fan Postcast have two new episodes online with me as a guest!

The first is on Conan and Beastmaster and the second is on Deathstalker 2, Ator, and Yor: The Hunter from the Future. Click the links and have a listen! Consider giving Fan2Fan a follow on Twitter.

CoKoCon Next Weekend

Scifi/Fantasy/Fan convention, CoKoCon, is next weekend!

The PDF of the program book is online and can be read here.

Michele and I will be on two panels over the course of the event:

Horror & Sci-Fi from Pre-Code Films
Saturday, Sept. 3rd
10:00 am – 11:00 am
Fiesta Ballroom 2

Swords, Sandals, Sorcery, and Other Planets
Monday, Sept. 5th
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Fiesta Ballroom 1

We hope to see yall there!

Scholars from the Edge of Time

Michele and I are prepping for the Pre-Code Horror Panel at CoKoCon so we are mad dash revisiting some pre-1934 films. One of them was King Kong. For our Scholars from the Edge of Time appearance this month we focused our episode on that. That episode is on YouTube and can be watched here.

For September we will be discussing Son of Samson on the show.

Categories
News

News Roundup W/E 2022-07-31

Personal / Website News

Art Boozel Book Review

Jennifer Croll has done some unique and inventive takes on cocktails and cocktail culture, with Free the Tipple: Kickass Cocktails Inspired by Iconic Women in 2018 and her recently published this past spring, Dressed to Swill: Runway-Ready Cocktails Inspired by Fashion Icons.

Personal copy of Art Boozel

Art Boozel is Croll’s book from 2021, and it’s fantastic. I’ve done a few cocktails from the book and enjoyed them so I though I’d do a book review. The write up can be read here.

New Episode of H. P. Lovecast

August has just ended so that means a new Transmissions episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast.

Thumbnail by Michele Brittany

For August we focused on the recently published horror anthology, Even in the Grave. For our normal episode we discussed Trevor Firetog’s “What’s Your Secret?” and Steven Van Patten’s “Blind Spot.” That episode can be found at our Buzzsprout website.

HPLCP Transmissions – Ep 14 – Carol Gyzander, Trevor Firetog, and Steven Van Patten – H. P. Lovecast Podcast

We conclude the month by not only interviewing Firetog and Van Patten about their stories, but also returning guest Carol Gyzander who co-edited the book. This episode can also be found at our Buzzsprout website, at the embedded player above, or streamed via your podcast app of preference.

CoKoCon 2022 Panel Appearances

Michele and I will make an appearance at CoKoCon 2022 over Labour Day weekend.

CoKoCon is a local (Phoenix) sci-fi/fantasy fan con. More info on the con can be found at CoKoCon website, along with ticket and guest news.

Michele and I will be appearing on three panels over the course of the con. The schedule is below, but I also have the information on my Conference Appearances page:

Horror & Sci-Fi from Pre-Code Films
Saturday, Sept. 3rd
10:00 am – 11:00 am
Fiesta Ballroom 2

Your Mom is Lovecraftian: Why Cosmic Horror is So Hard to Get Right
Sunday, Sept.4th
9:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Coronado room

Swords, Sandals, Sorcery, and Other Planets
Monday, Sept. 5th
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Fiesta Ballroom 1

Scholars from the Edge of Time

New episode of Scholars from the Edge of Time is now online! This one is on YouTube, so you get to see my acting like a doof. In this episode I talk about the sword and sorcery film, DragonHeart, but also bring up Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire and Troma films.

Categories
News

News Roundup W/E 2022-07-24

Personal / Website News

CoKoCon 2022 Panel Appearances

Michele and I will make an appearance at CoKoCon 2022 over Labour Day weekend.

CoKoCon is a local (Phoenix) sci-fi/fantasy fan con. More info on the con can be found at CoKoCon website, along with ticket and guest news.

Michele and I will be appearing on three panels over the course of the con. The schedule is below, but I also have the information on my Conference Appearances page:

Horror & Sci-Fi from Pre-Code Films
Saturday, Sept. 3rd
10:00 am – 11:00 am
Fiesta Ballroom 2

Your Mom is Lovecraftian: Why Cosmic Horror is So Hard to Get Right
Sunday, Sept.4th
9:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Coronado room

Swords, Sandals, Sorcery, and Other Planets
Monday, Sept. 5th
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Fiesta Ballroom 1

Scholars from the Edge of Time

Michele and I will be appearing on our month Scholars from the Edge of Time show later this week. We will be talking about the 1996 film Dragon Heart. Keep an eye out for link to stream.

General Neo-Peplum News

Wind Rose Review

Hal C. F. Astell has a new review of a neo-peplum release.

This is on Warfront by the Italian power/folk/Viking metal band Wind Rose. The review can be read at Apocalypse Later.

Recent Acquisitions

Arrived last week was my pre-order of the Kino Blu-ray Maria Montez & Jon Hall Collection.

Personal Copy.

This collection contains a toga and sandal film, Sudan, and a tiki film, White Savage (also known as South of Tahiti). Excited to check out all three, hopefully even do a write up on them here at my website. DVD Beaver did a review with screen caps at everything, so check that out.

Categories
News

News Roundup W/E 2022-07-17

Personal / Website News

Ben-Hur Boxset

Brand new article here at my website!

Folks seem to like unboxing articles, so I did one for the 50th anniversary Blu-ray boxset for Ben-Hur. Check it out!

McFarland Pop Culture Book Sale

Michele’s and my publisher, McFarland, is having a sale on their pop culture line of books. If you use the code “POPCULT22” during check out, you’ll get 25% off pop culture titles. The promotion ends July 31st.

The New Peplum

A few books I am in/edited are pare of this sale. Here are the direct product page links:

CoKoCon 2022 Panel Appearances

Michele and I will make an appearance at CoKoCon 2022 this labour day weekend!

CoKoCon is a local (Phoenix) sci-fi/fantasy fan con. Michele and I will be appearing on a few panels. More info to come, but for now, check out the CoKoCon website for ticket information and guest news.

General Neo-Peplum News

Viking Article at Inverse

Neat article about Viking women at Inverse called “A Maiden King? Dust and Bones Mat Reveal the True Power of Viking Women” by Sarah Sloat.

Categories
News

News Roundup W/E 2022-07-10

Personal / Website News

Holy smokes, this was a prolific and active week!

I Am a Barbarian Writer and Illustrator Interview

I had the honor to interview Tom Simmons and Mike Dubisch, the creative team behind the comic book adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel I Am a Barbarian.

Personal copy.

The interview can be read here.

New Episode of HP Lovecast

New episode of HP Lovecast is online!

Ep 52 – Even in the Grave: Trevor Firetog and Steven Van Patten – H. P. Lovecast Podcast

This is the first episode of our themed month on the anthology, Even in the Grave. In this episode we take a look at “What’s Your Secret?” by Trevor Firetog and “Blind Spot” by Steven Van Patten. The episode can be streamed at our Buzzsprout website, via the embedded player above, or at your podcast app of preference.

For our transmissions episode this month we will be interviewing editor Carol Gyzander, and contributors Firetog and Van Patten. Stay tuned!

Short Film: Dinosaur Joke

I made a short film and put it on YouTube!

I bought a box of Trix cereal this past week, and on the back, to promote the new Jurassic Park film, there were cutout dinosaurs and pop up trees, inviting you to make a movie with the back of the box. I don’t know how many kids actually do these things, but I decided I would! So, give it a watch, and maybe a like or a comment. It was silly, but a fun thing to do.

Fan2Fan Podcast Appearances

The folks at Fan2Fan had me back on their podcast for two (2!!) new episodes that dropped this past week!

The first episode is about sword and sorcery cartoons of the 80s, which can be heard at the Fan2Fan Libsyn page (or via your podcast app of preference).

A chance to show off my autographed animation cell of Teegra from Fire and Ice!

The second episode is an entry in their series where they ask folks about their dream Saturday morning cartoon lineup. You can hear mine here.

Here’s four of my dream line up! Gotta listen in to hear the rest.

Sincere thank you to Pete and Bernie for having me on their show. It has been a wonderful experience and I always appreciate their support.

CoKoCon 2022 Panel Appearances

Michele and I will make an appearance at CoKoCon 2022 this labour day weekend!

CoKoCon is a local (Phoenix) sci-fi/fantasy fan con. Michele and I will be appearing on a few panels. More info to come, but for now, check out the CoKoCon website for ticket information and guest news.

General Neo-Peplum News

Blog Entries at DMR Books

Here a listing of genre relevant blog articles at DMR Books this past week:

Red Sonja Blu-ray/4K

Red Sonja is getting a nice, steenbok, Blu-ray/4K release! Article at Collider.