Thanks for checking out THE MOVIE NIGHT DIARIES for the week of April 20th, 2010. DIARIES is a weekly casual review of a film of interest to the author.

This week’s selection is Dementia 13, a 1963 shocking suspense film produced by Roger Corman and co-written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

This tale of gothic horror surrounds the slow demise of an aristocratic Irish family. The aging matriarch of the Haloran clan, Lady Haloran, resides in her worn family castle on the ancestral estate in a remote region of Ireland along with her three sons: Richard, Billy, and John. All three boys have spent time abroad, and have now returned home at their mother’s request to commemorate the death of their younger sister, Kathleen. For each of the seven years since her daughter’s death, Lady Haloran memorializes Kathleen by re-enacting the day that she was put to rest. Each year her sons return home to participate in the morbid play. This year her eldest son John is accompanied by his American wife, Louise. Louise is convinced that Lady Haloran is unbalanced and is shocked to discover that she has neglected her three sons in the distribution of the family fortune. Unexpectedly, John dies on the family estate. Louise hatches a plan — a plan to drive Lady Haloran over the edge and secure her share of the fortune in the wake of her husband’s death. However, Louise’s plan quickly goes awry when she discovers things may not appear to be as they seem to be on the family’s sprawling estate. Soon, Louise is convinced that the late Kathleen Haloran is still alive and may be haunting the castle in this excellent and chilling film that is one of the earliest works of the renowned director Francis Ford Coppola.

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It has been a long road to get this review finished. Several months ago I finally got up the nerve to bug local film critic Colin Covert of the Star Tribune about checking out my site. Over the years I have attended numerous screenings that he has also been at and naturally we’ve discussed many of these films afterwards. After enough time we’ve developed enough of a rapport to occasionally rag on each others preferences but I’ve never pimped out anything of my own, as that would require gumption, so I was a bit apprehensive when I approached him that fateful Saturday morning.

It turns out that I had nothing to worry about as Colin was immediately interested in my little undertaking. We talked about the goals of my site and some of the movies I had enjoyed so far for a good solid 15 minutes when he quickly offered up his own recommendation for me to watch, The Saragossa Manuscript. He quickly described the film and remarked that not only was it Jerry Garcia’s favorite film, but that it had an ending that would “Peel your brain back!” Now I didn’t quite know what that meant, but it sure sounded awesome. All that was left was for me to simply track down this rare gem.

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As I wrap up this first year of Where the Long Tail Ends I want to offer my thanks and appreciation to everyone who has visited, commented, encouraged or simply lurked on the site over this past year. It has been a fun experiment so far, and it seems that you all are enjoying the with me as much as I am. Hopefully anyways.

I’d also like to extend thanks to Derek for his contributions. I know you have had less opportunity to contribute then you had hoped, but I view everything you add to the site as a bonus. And as long as you keep it up, I will gladly wheel you away from danger when the inevitable zombie apocalypse strikes.

As for you Christian, my most half-hearted of thanks for continually writing better columns then me. If you weren’t so irritatingly likeable I would totally hate you for such behavior.

And of course, to Anna, who has sat through hours of my horrible selections, refused to watch my decent ones and who’s lectures of “Its T-H-E-I-R, Idiot!” from the next room keep me grounded and nearly grammatically correct. Nearly.

As for the next year my little Droogs, I have several goals in mind. Most deals with cleaning up the site (reducing and reorganizing the ads, finding and implementing a better site design when I get the chance, creating a usable archive page with downloadable content) and making it easier to navigate and look at. I have been doing some tinkering, but hopefully over the next year I can add a few more features that will be to everyone’s benefit. But the most difficult goal that I hope to accomplish is starting up my own podcast (or two as the case may be). The ideas for them are pretty fun, and hopefully during the next year I can eventually get one or two recorded. Needless to say the topics they will cover should fit in nicely with what we have been doing here so far.

But what about the films you ask? Well I will promise this. We have had a serious shortage of ninja content on this site and I promise that after next year that shall no longer be the case. I will also watch and review films that do not contain ninjas, but at this point it is up for grabs on which genre (Ninja vs Non-ninja) will outnumber which.

But that is the future yet to come, while next up is a film that is from the future soon to be. It is an obscure, yet cherished, Polish film that was recommended to me by none other then the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s film critic Colin Covert to watch for this site. It is best known for being Jerry Garcia’s (as well as many other famous type people’s) favorite film, and thanks to Garcia, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola it was finally made available on DVD just a few short years ago. And while it may be lacking in ninjas, it does counter by having cannibalistic gypsies, foolish Frenchmen, waking dreams, evil spirits, possibly incestuous lesbian Muslim sisters, exorcisms and The Spanish Inquisition to offer to the viewing public who is able to make it through the entire three hour running time.
That means next week’s film is The Saragossa Manuscript.

With the summer blockbuster season starting up that only means one thing, it is really hard to find a decent movie that has a budget under $100 million at the theater. With Iron Man leading the charge and Speed Racer attempting to dazzle everyone into unconciousness their isn’t a lot of fare to find. But one of my favorite movies of this rather dry year is finally starting to get a semi-wide release this week, that film being Son of Rambow. It’s a fun, sweet and decidedly low budget affair about two young boys who attempt to film their very own sequel to Rambo: First Blood. While not a great movie, it certainly is an enjoyable one that provides slightly heavier entertainment compared to the typical summer blockbuster.

But the real problem is with DVD releases this week. As we are hitting the middle of May it means we are now starting to see the films from earlier this year start trickling down the DVD pipeline, and considering how awful the year has been so far, it isn’t surprising that their is practically nothing worth recommending this week. Their is a solid re-release of the Indiana Jones trilogy, but it isn’t eye popping by any means. Youth Without Youth is an absolute mess of a film as isn’t worth anything more then a rental for even die hard Francis Ford Coppola fans. So with the well practically dry my recommendation this week is the little Canadian action film that could, Bon Cop Bad Cop.

As always trailers are after the break!

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