My inexorable climb towards becoming King of All Edmonton Media continues! About a year ago, I started doing short segments on Edmonton AM, the morning show on the local CBC radio station devoted to so-called "Hidden Gems"—terrific but little-known movies currently available on DVD. Doing them has been a lot of fun: Ron Wilson, the host of the show, is a great guy and a very skillful radio pro, and the challenge of having to boil down my thoughts about a movie to five or six minutes has had a positive effect on my writing (although you wouldn't realize it from the way these blog entries have been rambling on and on lately).
This week, the CBC rewarded me with my own page on their website, where they'll be archiving my segments... along with a photo that likely will kill any romantic fantasies my female readers currently have about me. Right now, there's only one review there—my take on the black-hearted 1961 noir Blast of Silence—but hopefully they'll be adding more soon. I've tried to pick movies that are genuinely under-the-radar titles, but which still aren't too alienating or "difficult" for a general audience. And I'm pretty pleased with the eclectic array of titles I've been able to talk about: my previous "Gems" include Helvetica, The King of Kong, Idiocracy, and Great World of Sound. I have to say, the producers have given me an amazing amount of freedom to pick which movies I want to talk about, and haven't pressured me in the slightest to make my choices less obscure.
I appear on the show every other Thursday, so try checking back in a couple of weeks and, if everything goes right, there should be a new clip ready to fire up your RealPlayer plug-ins.
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