Commentary track on ‘Johnny Got His Gun’ (1971) blu-ray from Imprint

Commentary track on ‘The Gambler’ (1974) blu-ray from Imprint

https://viavision.com.au/shop/the-gambler-1974/

Review at DVDBeaver

Review at Blu-ray.com

Publication: The Black Prince

My review of Adam Roberts’ 2018 novel The Black Prince, based on an original screenplay by Anthony Burgess, was published at the blog of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation on March 22.

It begins:

“The 1960s was a fine decade for films on the Plantagenets and Tudors, from Becket (1964) and The Lion in Winter (1968) to A Man For All Seasons (1966) and Anne of the Thousand Days (1969). Anthony Burgess’s unproduced screenplay The Black Prince, written in 1970 for the producer Michael Holden, similarly attempts the English history genre, although Burgess’s work was not derived from a successful contemporary play. Less dialogue-dependent than those others and more panoramic, his screenplay is keener to drag us through the medieval muckheap of war, plague, and truly revolting meals. ‘Our aim is to diminish the pretentions of the fourteenth century,’ Burgess notes. He succeeds….”

Continue reading at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation blog.

Publication: Lewis Lux (a novella)

Last seen in 2016’s Lewis L’Amour, Arthur James Lewis returns for another comic misadventure.

Lewis intends to spend the summer of 2019 at his regular table at Le Jardin d’Eden in Edinburgh. On a diet of croissants and coffee, under the Gérard portrait of Madame Récamier, he will write Maranatha: Above the Eagles, his latest magisterial novel of Ancient Rome.

Alas, Lewis’s tranquility is disturbed by yet another family crisis — the threat of repossession of their home. Ever resourceful, Lewis races across Europe to recover a long-lost antiquarian book he once loaned to his PhD supervisor. Its purported value will neatly pay off the family debt, but repossession from the elusive Professor Ballantyne will not be easy. Luckily this time Lewis is accompanied by his seven-year-old grand nephew, Jerzy, who is just as eager to save their home.

From the piazzas of Venice to the deserts of Almería, Lewis Lux concludes a trilogy of comic novellas that began with Lewis and Loeb (2013) and is collectively titled Three Roads to Rome.

This novella will be available for a limited time as an ebook at Smashwords and at Amazon.

[NO LONGER AVAILABLE]

Publication: Three Dangerous Summers

My new research article ‘Three Dangerous Summers: Orson Welles’s Unrealized Hemingway Trilogy’ has been published in the Fall 2020 issue of The Hemingway Review. It examines three Orson Welles film projects left in varying states of incompletion at his death: The Sacred Beasts, The Other Side of the Wind, and Crazy Weather.

The abstract: Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles shared a romantic enthusiasm for Spanish traditions, particularly bullfighting. Nevertheless, Welles rejected Hemingway’s influential interpretation of the corrida as well as the macho archetype the writer had established for the foreign aficionado. This article draws on new archival research to examine three distinct film projects Welles developed in his later years that imaginatively engaged with Hemingway’s personality and his legacy. These projects were left in varying states of incompletion, which has meant that an important theme in Welles’s late work has remained largely invisible until recent years.

Here is a link to the article (access required) at Project Muse

Publication: Thunder of the Sun (a story)

A new story.

Morton Pike, worldwide bestselling author of historical sea novels, has lived a life of luxury and globe-trotting adventure. But now Pike is 83 and things have changed. His lifelong readers hate his new books, sales are falling, and his family life has become a tangle of bitter feuds and lawsuits.

Amid this turmoil, two ambitious juniors from Pike’s literary agency have a provocative idea. Can they persuade Pike to allow ghostwriters to write his novels? The deal could be worth a fortune, but will Pike be willing to abdicate his throne?

Set on Pike’s estate on the remote tropical coast of Queensland, ‘Thunder of the Sun’ tells the story behind the bestsellers.

Available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon

[NO LONGER AVAILABLE]

“A snobbish young man with more confidence than sense, a hard-working woman with a young son, a greedy old man grasping tightly to life… Matthew Asprey Gear lifts the lid on the seamy world of blockbuster fiction and finds that it stinks. Sharp-eyed, sardonic, and funny, this is a tale to gasp at and laugh over in equal measure.” – David Manderson, author of Lost Bodies (2011)

[Cover design by Anna Sark, based on a modified photograph by Vicuna R (CC BY-SA 2.0)]

Podcast appearance: ‘F for Fake’ on The Projection Booth

 

On August 26 I appeared on Episode 482 of The Projection Booth podcast to discuss my book on Orson Welles and his great essay film F for Fake (1973). Listen here. I appear in an interview with Mike White around 1:06:30.

At the End of the Street in the Shadow: Review by the Times Literary Supplement

Sarah Jilani’s review of At the End of the Street in the Shadow: Orson Welles and the City appeared in the March 10, 2017 issue of the Times Literary Supplement. She writes that the book “offers enjoyable revelations for anyone familiar with Welles’s work.”

Read more HERE

 

At the End of the Street in the Shadow: Review by Film International

Tony William’s long review of At the End of the Street in the Shadow: Orson Welles and the City, appeared in Film International (vol. 14, no. 2).

He writes:

Amazingly, the author has not only brought a new positive slant to those frequent academic cityscape studies that now flood the critical landscape, but has also added some relevant aesthetic, cultural and political innovations to the field of Welles studies that distinguish this treatment in its own right as well as provoke insightful readings of neglected films, such as The Trial (1962)…. Far more modest in scope in comparison to recent mega-page studies of Welles, it nevertheless supplies some very important innovations to understanding the director’s work that will make it yet another additional ‘essential reading’ in the critical canon….the book provides both a wealth of new information and fascinating evaluations and
interpretations… a work that is both innovative and original.

At the End of the Street in the Shadow: Review by Afterimage

Matthew Moore’s review of At the End of the Street in the Shadow: Orson Welles and the City appeared in the latest issue of the US journal Afterimage (issue 44.3, 2016). Moore writes:

“If one beholds Welles’s oeuvre as one of the most multifaceted sets of modern artistic expressions, then surely one will find this newest book an enjoyable and stimulating read….  A generous number of stills, some diagrams, and a short dialogue excerpt enhance the study, fleshing out the idea that Welles’s modern cinematic vision was urban and cosmopolitan par excellence.”

For more, see HERE.