Among the worthies honored by the Kennedy Center and the White House last night were one Mr. Melvin Kaminsky, i.e., Mel Brooks, and one Mr. Robert De Niro. The introduction for Mr. De Niro is not online, but President Obama’s description of Mr. Brooks is, and it’s a doozy.
Since I don’t have anything on from the presentation featuring the president and Mr. De Niro, I’ll have to go with his on-air meeting with another important personage.
Just for the record, the non-movie honorees were jazz great Dave Brubeck, opera singer Grace Bumbry, and, yeah, Bruce Springsteen. The show will air on CBS on December 29.
Tipped off by my super-secret contact in the funny book world, I learn that CHUD’s Devin Faraci has stolen the images that follow from Harry Knowles Twitter feed. So, in turn, I’m stealing these from Devin. He’s had these up for a couple of weeks in any case, so I don’t think I can be accused of grand theft blog post.
Anyhow, if you know your silver age comics and your movies you’ll get this instantly. If not, all I can say is that here are the covers of the five “issues” of “Inglourious Basterds” as they might have been drawn by seminal comic book artist Jack “King” Kirby some time in the late sixties or early seventies. Behold the magnificence.
Now, embedding this particular video today might be in slightly poor taste…okay, it’s actually and definitely in deliriously bad taste…but if I’m going to post Eli Roth’s hysterically disturbing fake trailer for a thankfully non-existent seventies slasher flick called, “Thanksgiving,” what better day is there to post it? You’re probably not at work, but FYI, NSFW. Slasher violence, culinary gore, gratuitous grainy film stock, and gruesomely brief sex and nudity follows.
And here’s a brief but fun little promotional film covering the fake trailers shot for Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s “Grindhouse” by Roth, Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead“), and Rob Zombie (“The Devil’s Rejects,”). Shame the damn thing didn’t make any money.
Mr. Roth and I are of similar ethnic/religious background and, though I’d probably be too squeamish to see an actual Eli Roth horror film based on the holiday that kicks off the Days of Atonement — and I’d definitely be too chicken to cross the ADL picket lines that would be set up in front of every movie theater and video store that dared to feature it — but I love his idea for a Rosh Hoshannah-based slasher flick. I even have a tag line ready: “May you be inscribed in the book of…death!” All I need to do know is to figure out the Yiddish for “bwa-ha-ha-ha” and I think we’re halfway to another trailer.
