HPLFF: September 11, 2010 • Warner Grand, LA California

CthulhuCon: October 1-2-3, 2010 • Hollywood Theatre, Portland Oregon

After fourteen successful years of sell-out crowds in Portland, Oregon, the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival® arises in Southern California on Saturday, September 11, 2010 from 2pm-10pm at the classic Warner Grand Theater in historic San Pedro. The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival promotes the works of H.P. Lovecraft, literary horror, and weird tales through the cinematic adaptations by professional and amateur filmmakers. The festival was founded in 1995 by Andrew Migliore in the hope that H.P. Lovecraft would be rightly recognized as a master of gothic horror and his work more faithfully adapted to film and television.

The Los Angeles Lovecraft Film Festival will feature six of the best films that played in Portland over the last 14 years.

CthulhuCon will feature Caitlín R. Kiernan, Ellen Datlow, William F. Nolan, Richard Lupoff, Michael Shea, and others.

With The Interactive Lovecraft, affectionately known by the internal codename Project Space Squid, students and alumni of the Vancouver Film School are creating a cutting-edge transmedia interactive magazine experience for the tablet marketplace, incorporating text, video, and games that will include adaptations of five seminal Lovecraft stories: The Call of C’Thulhu,Dagon, The Dunwich Horror, The Rats in the Walls, and The Music of Erich Zann.

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

Like the two genres to which so many of their films pay homage, it’s the dialogue — snappy, rapid-fire, off-kilter — that strings together the dark screwball comedy noirs of the COEN BROTHERS. From Gabriel Byrne’s smart talk in Miller’s Crossing to the yah-sure-yer-darn-tootin of Fargo, the words take center stage. Well, words and White Russians and wood chippers and hair jelly and hula hoops and extortion and blackmail and kidnapping. Always with the kidnapping.

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

Oh, ALAN MOORE (1953- ), how do we love thee? Let us count the ways. 1. V for Vendetta. 2. Watchmen. 3. Promethea. 4. Lost Girls. 5. D.R. & Quinch. 6. Voice of the Fire. 7. All those “Future Shocks” for 2000 A.D. back in the ’80s. 8. The simple fact that he’s held the title of Most Revered and Respected Creator in Comics (By Pros & Fans Alike), de facto, for more than two decades. Need we say more? Okay: 9. Devotee of Glycon, a snake-deity-slash-sock-puppet that probably never existed. 10. Performance art involving same. There: a veritable decameron of strangeness.

What’s new: While Moore has disowned all the Hollywoodizations of his work, it will nonetheless be of interest to many that the trailer for the film adaptation of Watchmen, the seminal “deconstructing superheroes” graphic novel, has just been unveiled today.

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days! Today we resume after a two-week break with the legendary STANLEY KUBRICK (1928-1999).

Dairy-based Beethoven-fueled ultraviolent rape-a-thon? Acid trip space pregnancy? Thermonuclear protonazi doomsday over precious bodily fluids? Mask-clad Cirque du Scientologist orgypalooza? Vietnammy soap-sock blanket party Pyle-on? Humberty Humberty cross-country lollipopping? Snow-induced secluded-hotel indoor unwelcome lumberjacking? Who is Spartacus? I am Spartacus. No, I am Spartacus. No, I am Spartacus.

What’s new: Warner Bros. releases DVD documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures.