Next Thursday: The John Huston Blogathon!

On Thursday, August 5, the John Huston blogathon will officially begin. And, wouldn't you know it, guess who is planning on overseeing the ceremony?

You guessed it... John Huston HIMSELF! In this video, Huston expresses delight over our decision to celebrate his 104th birthday.

(just for laughs)

But in all seriousness, if you haven't done so already, would you mind putting one of the two available banners into your sidebars to promote the event?

As it stands, you can use either the banner I myself created:



Or you can always use Ivan J. Shreve Jr.'s banner, which is a nice fit for small sidebars:



And although it is not required, I would also very much appreciate any blog posts created to remind others around the blogosphere about the event. I'm sure there are still one or two Huston cinephiles out there who haven't yet gotten word of this ceremony.

By the way, I should probably explain how the blogathon is going to work. Each day I'll be posting a new Contributions page, so that you can post links to your blogathon pieces. Since I know Blogger has been eating up comments lately, however, if you'd like you can always shoot me your link via an email.

Don't forget about the mission of the blogathon, either: was Huston an auteur, or just a great studio director? YOU decide!



Right now I'm scrambling to watch as many Huston films as possible before the big week begins. To my utter joy I found out that Freud (1962), for which Huston basically had to beat the living nonsense out of Montgomery Clift just to get some kind of performance, is available in 14 parts on YouTube. Since the film is not available on DVD this is something of a life-saver--though YouTube is of course not a quality place for watching films (as I discovered when I had to write about Kubrick's Fear and Desire back in February for the Film Preservation blogathon). So, Freud is available online--but don't tell the YouTube administrators! Shhhh...



Again, ladies and gentleman--only one more week!