Plenty of items will be “screened” here in the near future, and in this post I’ll share a few textual trailers to let readers know what to look forward to.

In addition to my own reflections and commentary several interviews will find their way here over the days and weeks to come. These include an interview with Van Norris of the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. Mr. Norris will discuss his chapter contribution to The Unsilvered Screen: Surrealism on Film (Wallflower Press, 2006), a chapter that looks at surrealism in American animation. The editors of this book, Graeme Harper and Rob Stone have also expressed an interest in discussion of the influence of surrealism in cinema.

Joshua Bellin of LaRoche College will talk about his book Framing Monsters: Fantasy Film and Social Alienation (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005). While sci fi and fantasy films have been the stuff of academic exploration, fantasy films have often been divorced from their historical and cultural contexts. Bellin provides a corrective to this, and as a fantasy film fan he does not shy away from critical analysis of films including the original King Kong, The Wizard of Oz, Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad trilogy, and Jurassic Park.

Film director Frank Woodword of Wyrd Productions will discuss his documentary Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown. As the title indicates, this film brings together academics, fans, and some of Hollywood leading fantasy filmmakers as they look at the continuing influence and legacy of H.P. Lovecraft on horror, sci fi, and fantasy. See a trailer for the film here.

Sean Cubitt of the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne, co-editor with Ziauddin Sardar of Aliens R Us: The Other in Scienc Fiction Cinema (Pluto Press, 2002), will discuss this book’s fascinating thesis as to how the social other is constructed through the genre of sci fi. Other topics addressed in the book include technology, apocalyptic futures, xenophobia, and the role of women.

A recent trip to Barnes & Noble to peruse the shelves of various book categories revealed an interesting book by Eric Nuzum in the cultural studies section titled The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires: from Nosferato to Count Chocula (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007). This is an interesting personal journey of Eric. a self-described pop culture critic and VH1 pundit, in an exploration of the pervasiveness of vampires around the world. Eric and I will talk about his book and his journeys in a future interview.

My bibliographical research also led me to find a book addressing a neglected topic related to horror and pop culture, that of the mummy. In the near future Dr. Jasmine Day will talk about her book The Mummy’s Curse: Mummymania in the English-speaking World (Routledge, 2006). This book is the most in-depth about “mummymania” in English. And to add another dimension, Day is an anthropologist who also has an appreciation for the growing body of academic literature on horror which she notes has also been an increasingly popular topic in the humanities in recent years. Our interview will make for an interesting interdiscipinary consideration of our fascination with mummy’s in horror cinema and beyond.

I hope my readers will find these and other topics of interest as TheoFantastique continues its celebration and exploration of the fantastic in popular culture.