Early Summer, and A Taste of Things to Come
As is typical in these parts, we took a few months off to attend to pressing matters of school, work, and life. You’ve likely noticed the even-more contemporary web re-design. Senor B–. just taught a web design course, so no more 2006-era visuals. Only the cutting edge.
May. The beginning of summer, the portal onto the new horizon of excessive temperatures, indeed the retreat into the bowels of windowless, brazenly air-conditioned rooms. A time for immediate reflection, but for people still lucky (unlucky?) enough to be on a university schedule, also a time for the stoking of new projects.
My spring was busy. But first, I’m happy to report that my book (Ken Russell: Re-Viewing England’s Last Mannerist) has received some attention. There is a short “Recommended” review in May 2010 issue of the American Library Association’s publication Choice. You can view it via their free trial, or through a library’s databasing service. There is a thorough review in the April 2010 issue of the Journal of British Cinema and Television. A preview can be viewed here.
The conspicuous lack of material on VF can at least be partially attributed to the other little bits of writing I’ve done for diverse venues. A few are fully and freely accessible online. I reviewed the recent anthology A History of Visual Culture: Western Civilization from the 18th to the 21st Century, edited by Jane Kromm and Susan Benforado-Bakewell (Berg, 2010) for the Southwest Journal of Cultures. I wrote a lengthy, comparative review of James Chapman’s War on Film (Reaktion, 2008) and Tony Shaw’s Hollywood’s Cold War (Edinburgh UP, 2007) for Scope. Though written two years ago, it emerged in issue 16, and can be viewed here.
I reviewed John C. Tibbetts’s highly commendable book All My Loving?: The Films of Tony Palmer (2009) for the above-mentioned April 2010 Journal of British Cinema and Television. I have two short pieces in the May 2010 issue of Film & History, one about the film The London Nobody Knows (1967), the other a review of Robert Shail’s Seventies British Cinema (2008).
The Last Word: Live!
One of my big projects for this summer is a live, improvised/sketch show based on the Va Gazette (Williamsburg, VA-area newspaper) column “The Last Word.” This column, now in its 25th year, is a forum which prints anonymous comments from the local community. By turns earnestly personal and maddeningly vitriolic, these statements provide easily adaptable material for what promises to be a gut-wrenchingly amusing performance. The show is June 18th and 19th (a Fri. and a Sat.) at the Kimball Theater in Williamsburg, VA. Ticket information, including preorder, is on their calender. The whole shebang is brought to you by 1693 Productions.
Plenty more to come. Many projects, original VF shorts, and reviews of diverse items of diverse media in the pipeline.
is a Ph.D. student in the Critical and Cultural Studies program at University of Pittsburgh. He holds a B.A. from the College of William & Mary and an M.A. from North Carolina State University. He is editor of 
is a Ph.D. student in the Digital Media program at Georgia Tech where he does 
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