EXTREMELY LOUDON & INCREDIBLY CLOSE

A couple of months ago Your Humble Narrator had the honor to be almost the whole audience for a performance by the brilliant Loudon Wainwright III. My account of this odd experience is in this week's Phoenix New Times, along with some thoughts on Wainwright's memoir Liner Notes...

The Phoenix Film Critics Society, of which I am a proud founding member, released its 2017 award nominations this week. As always, some of the choices represent my nominations and some do not, but there are lots of movies worth seeing on the list.

One of my choices which is well represented is The Shape of Water, which leads the field with nominations for Best Picture and in 13 other categories. So...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...this week let's officially acknowledge the Amphibious Man from that movie, as depicted in this lovely poster art...

GILL POWER

Guillermo del Toro's latest, The Shape of Water, which opens here this weekend, features an amphibious humanoid creature. So, since the Creature of the Black Lagoon has already been a Monster-of-the-Week so many times...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...this week's honoree is a Gill-Man...

...from Jacques Tourneur's 1965 War-Gods of the Deep...

He looks like he could be a cousin of del Toro's Gill-Man...