In a couple weeks is the Turner Classic Movie film festival in Los Angeles.  They have a very exciting lineup including some very big guests.  I will probably be going to at least one of the film showings.   The last day they are showing Metropolis,  I will definitely try to get into see that.  Here’s and article all about this latest version including a piece of film they found in South America that had be missing since the 1920’s.

This week I watched the film The Magician (1926)  It centers around a magician who needs the blood of a virgin to create life.  It was a pretty dark movie for the time.  One of my favorite parts was the giant demon statue one of the characters was carving during the film.  The book came out years before the movie, and the character of the magician was based on Aleister Crowley.  I thought that was interesting since my Aleister Gurdeff character is based on him and another esoteric man from the period.  When the book came out Aleister wrote a letter that was published in Vanity Fair Magazine.  He accused the author of plagiarism, but also succeeded in enhancing his own mysterious reputation. Here’s a quote from his letter, “I found phrase after phrase, paragraph after paragraph, page after page, bewilderingly familiar…”

“Bewildering,” I love that, what a ham.