Hooray hooray hooray!  The Weibang review is up, and I am a little bit smarter about Chinese history.  Good times all around.  Next on board is the Savage/Joboulian film, which hopefully will see a review a little bit faster since I won't need to spend two days in the library before I can write about it.

Got the Savage film in the mail today, after a month of shipping confusion.  Hooray!

In more productive news, I'm done viewing the film and a review is pending, hopefully to be up tomorrow.

I'm going to die if I don't get some sleep, though.

Hooray, the Ebert review is finished and posted!  It's not exactly a monster of a review, but it wasn't exactly a monster of a book.  Regardless, we're moving on.

There may be a new section to the site here soon... I'm not exactly sure.  But I figure, what could it hurt, right?  Right?

I'm very tired.

I'm almost finished with the Ebert, I swear!  Really!

I wanted to take a second and pause, however, to thank the amazing Fallulke-Elskeren, who has been an enormous help in aiding me to get my hands on some of the rarer, older materials for the project.  While F-E doesn't have a website to link to, she has been sharing her impressive knowledge with the world all over the internet anyway; she has informative articles scattered all over on everything from the differing translations of Leroux's novel to Charles Garnier's writings on the opera to research techniques for the student seeking to learn more about this classic of Gothic literature.  As a fellow student, I tip my hat to her and encourage everyone interested in background material on the Phantom story to investigate her tireless research.

In other news, it's my anniversary today (four years... seems like just yesterday I was trying to shut the door in his face), so I may not be as productive as I possibly should be.  But you only get one of these a year!

Holy shit, am I failing to keep up the pace this week.  Between weddings, internet outages and squalling sick kittens, everything's been a real mess around here.  I'm about halfway through the Ebert and hope to have it finished tomorrow, with the review to follow as soon as possible; until then, I'm comforting myself with the knowledge that I've gotten a bunch more materials and the next few should whizz by.

First of all, I forgot to blog it yesterday when I posted the Kopit/Yeston musical review.  Shame on me and my absent mind.  It's there, it's larger than life, etc.  Moving on to movie critics now (uh-oh... about to realize my own inadequacy, methinks).

Second of all, and this is the cool part, Maury Yeston himself dropped by and gave me a little insight into his musical and its origins.  His comments have been appended to the end of my review, and my starstruck haze is following me around at work like a little cloud of positivity.

I'll be updating the links page today, but other than that it's business as usual.  Oh, and much love to those two or three people who are valiantly trying to have conversations on the messageboard.  Someday there will be people to talk to--I hold out hope!

The effervescent Jennifer Linforth, up-and-coming author and all around interesting internet presence, posted a wee little interview with me over at her blog.  I feel all grown-up and relevant-like.  It's nothing that anyone who's been reading the reviews probably hasn't heard before, but go show her a little love, anyway--she has plenty of Phantom-related resources over there, and is well worth your time.

The Ryan review is finally posted, miserable though it might have been.  I'll be moving on to the Yeston/Kopit musical now, and anxiously awaiting my new materials in the mail--it's been a while since I ordered and I'm starting to get worried.  I don't exactly have money to throw down the drain, here.

In my internet travails, I stumbled across this little opinion piece about the various film adaptations of the Phantom story.  While I obviously have my own, somewhat different opinion in some areas, it's nevertheless an interesting read.  It's very much a layman's interpretation of the various movies, but a valid one nonetheless.  I'm particularly interested in that quote that he attributes to Kopit--I'd like to see if that's true, as it would explain some things about the wildly divergent plot in his versions of the story.

In other news, I just realized that the Phantom blowing himself up and sealing himself in or behind the rubble, which I was theorizing about in the case of the Perkins/Daughton graphic novel, is a direct import from the Guest/Mathieson film.  Shame on me for not noticing that when I wrote the review.  I'll be editing to reflect it.

A wee little review for the Eternity Comics piece is up.  Alas, my internet is out at home, so updates will be brusque as I sneak them in on company time.