John Simonton, was a hero of mine when I was a kid he created the Paia electronic kit company in 1967, and he has just died after a battle with cancer.

If you were a teenager in the 1970s and couldn't get dad to buy you a Moog, the Paia kit was a way to get your own synth going. You had to build it and I did!

Paia became popular again when the current DIY trend built up steam. I began an e-mail correspondence with him and got to tell him how much getting his catalogs in the mail meant to me. He was so sweet and kind. If you ever had a problem with figuring out a circuit, he was always at the ready to give a helping hand.

Actress Wendie Jo Sperber, who starred opposite Tom Hanks on TV's "Bosom Buddies" and was in all three "Back to the Future" films, Steven Spielberg's "1941," Robert Zemeckis' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," and Neal Israel's "Moving Violations" and "Bachelor Party," "Murphy Brown," "Private Benjamin," "Will & Grace" and "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter."

I was a big fan of hers and was so excited when my x-wife discovered Wendie and her were seeing the same therapist. They became fast friends in their time killing moments waiting in the lobby.

She contracted cancer and battled it for eight years, but now has died.

Okay, enough sad stuff!

It's been movie day for me and my eyes are sore!

I watched:

"Vincent Price: The Sinister Image"

I love Vincent Price. My best friend was named after him! Another friend made a movie with him!

His extraordinary career spanned over five decades, and covered every media: film, television, radio, theater. "Three Skeleton Key" (1958, 30 min.), a radio drama from the series "Escape," is amazing!

I also watched, "Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Power of Women in Hollywood"
If you are as much a fan of silent cinema as I am, you have to see this!

Women had a profound impact on early cinema, and this documentary demonstrates what a force these women were. I adore Mary Pickford's movies because she has such a wide range of personas. Now I can see that the complexity of her roles were also due to Frances Marion's inventive and iconoclastic screenplays.

Then:

"Spartacus: The Bonus Materiall"

This companion disc to Stanley Kubrick's epic masterpiece includes deleted scenes, vintage newsreel footage, cast interviews (from 1960 and 1992), behind-the-scenes "gladiator school" footage, the 1960 documentary The Hollywood Ten, archival blacklist documents, storyboards, production stills and promotional materials, Kubrick's sketches and the original theatrical trailer.

I had to see this!

"King Kong: Special Edition: Bonus Material (1933)"

This companion disc to the precedent-setting monster movie includes a trailer gallery, "The RKO Story: Birth of a Titan," "The Making of Kong, Eighth Wonder of the World," "The Origins of King Kong," "Willis O'Brien and Creation," "Cameras Roll on Kong, The Eighth Wonder," "A Milestone in Visual Effects," "Passion, Sound and Fury," "The Mystery of the Lost Spider Pit Sequence," "King Kong's Legacy" and "Creation" (1931 test footage).

Do not miss this, if you want to see how special effects were done and have affected the way movies are done now! Also amazing in this disc is Peter Jackson weight transformation! I loved his crew recreating lost scenes with new stop motion effects, but I would also loved to have learned his diet technique!

Also...

Everyone in the know, knows... J-Horror means...Jerry Horror! Yay!

Do a little compare-n-contrast between the trailer for the Weinstein Co's remake of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Pulse" and the trailer for the original.

They seem to have no qualms about the occasional lifting of exactly the same frames from the original...

The remake...

The original...

I think you should get this if you haven't already!

Here's a trailer for a new film my friend Aaron and I will be making in Thailand. This is a very fresh, new, sneak peek just for you!

You might need Quicktime to view it!