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• Oh man … I totally forgot about the Val Lewton blogathon, and now I’m way too busy with Sundance prep to write something up. In any case, it starts today, to coincide with the TCM premiere of Val Lewton: The Man In the Shadows. I saw Kent Jones’ doc (narrated by Martin Scorsese) at Telluride, and it’s definitely a must-see for fans of films like Cat People and I Walked With A Zombie who want a taste of Lewton’s lesser-known works.
• Anyone could have guessed that last night’s Un-Golden Globes would be “weird”, but who could have guessed that it would have moved so many journalists to lapse into poetics? First Variety likened the experience to a dream; then, the NY Times topped their coverage with this photo of an unusually long-faced E! anchor, with a caption pointing up his supposed existential dilemma. Now, David Poland’s getting into the act, with this revelation: “I don???t really like ghosts as much as I enjoy the living.”
• A week or so ago, Jurgen Fauth mentioned that he’d bought an URL that he didn’t know what to do with. He’s since figured it out: IDrinkYourMilkshake.com has now become a web portal dedicated to aggregating discussions??????and inevitable video mashups, as above??????concerning There Will Be Blood. Act now, and you can even get an @idrinkyourmilkshake.com email address!
• Bob Westal ponders Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. “Could this film be the next Duck Soup combining the silliest comedy and the sharpest satire?”

News hit the web late Friday that Maila Nurmi, the actress, model and TV host best known as Vampira, died last week at the age of 86. As always, David Hudson at GreenCine has the most comprehensive round-up of obits; I thought I’d do my part by rounding up a few video clips that demonstrate the original Goth queen’s impact on pop culture. Above, you’ll find a short clip of Vampira’s memorable appearance in Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space. Click through the jump for Vampira minutia courtesy of Tim Burton, Glenn Danzig and more.

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Under discussion:

Eyes Wide Shut  (1999)

BloodRayne  (2006)

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale  (2008)

There are a number of accomplished actors who have worked with infamously bad filmmaker Uwe Boll: Sir Ben Kingsley; Geraldine Chaplin; Clint Howard. And many of those actors have worked with some great filmmakers. Yet who would think to ask Kingsley how Boll compares to Spielberg or Polanski, or Chaplin how Boll compares to David Lean or Robert Altman, or Howard how Boll compares to his brother Ron. Well, Shawn Adler of MTV Movies Blog decided that it would be really amusing if he asked Leelee Sobieski to comment on any similarities between Boll and Stanley Kubrick. Surprisingly, she managed to squeeze out a decent answer — at least considering she’s on camera to wholeheartedly promote her and Boll’s film In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale and has to say something nice about the director.

Sobieski may not be the best person to ask, though. She was only 15 when she appeared in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, and that film isn’t even considered to be on par with the filmmaker’s regular work. Still, she obviously understands the clear distinctions between “the greatest filmmaker of all time” and “the worst director of all time,” as Kubrick and Boll are respectively labeled, and she gives a good response in saying that both ask a lot of questions and both deserve respect for getting things done and not being lazy. As for the rest, its a cop-out, though a good save publicity-wise, but still makes perfect sense as an apples vs. oranges kind of comparison. Even Kingsley, who has been in his share of terrible films (only one of which is Boll’s Bloodrayne) and likely has to defend his choices all the time, would probably say something along the same lines as Sobieski’s claim that people want to be stimulated in a “plethohra” of directions and that there’s room for intellectual films and “great” action movies.

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