Links, a book review, and blog news

Last things first: I have decided to take part in National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) this year. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it's a literary event in which a bunch of writers around the world get together and attempt to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. Well, 50,000 is the minimum, anyway; I'm told that this number is a relatively small one for the average novelist, but the challenge, obviously, comes in putting together a draft of a novel in such a constrained time period. 

I'm gonna devote a significant amount of time towards doing this, therefore I likely won't be around here as often as I normally am. I won't be completely absent, though. I've got two blogathon posts on deck in November, for one thing. Also, I plan on writing smaller, capsule reviews on any and all current movies seen in November, including Nebraska and Dallas Buyers Club (and possibly All is Lost too, if I don't get to it this month). If anything major happens in the movie world that I feel like commenting on, I may say a few words about it, but don't count on that. Basically, it's gonna be light around here while I compete in NaNoWriMo, but I will have stuff for you, so keep checking in. Things will return to normal by December.

Next: I've sung the praises of my friend and fellow film blogger Jacqueline and her blog, Another Old Movie Blog, in the past. If you've been there, you know that she is also an accomplished author, with a handful of novels to her credit. She recently held a contest where the prize was one of her novels, and yours truly won, so I got a free copy of Meet Me in Nuthatch.

Think Cold Turkey meets Midnight in Paris: the residents of a dying Massachusetts town called Nuthatch, in a desperate attempt to keep their community alive, adopt a scheme in which they makeover their town and themselves as if it were the year 1904, just like the film Meet Me in St. Louis, which is set during that year. Unexpected complications, however, ensue.

I've always enjoyed Jacqueline's witty and playful style of writing in her blog, and I'm glad to state that it's also on display here. She knows New England well, and she brings Nuthatch to life with little details as well as larger ones. It sounds like the kind of small town you might encounter while on your way to or from Boston or Hartford or Providence. The characters are distinctive without being stereotypically eccentric, like you might expect in a novel like this, and she's got a good ear for dialogue. It's not a nostalgia-fest, nor is it maudlin. It's light, but it's deep enough that you'll care about the characters. It's a nice story, and it's just under 200 pages, so it won't even take you long to read. Give it a try.

Your links:
Aurora has the news that one of the old Loews movie palaces in New York is set to show movies once again.

From the New York Comic-Con, Will reports on a panel about old-school action cartoons from Hanna-Barbera.

Danny from Pre-Code.com has been writing about horror movies from the pre-code era this month. Here's one example: White Zombie, with Bela Lugosi.

From Brazil comes the blog Critica Retro. This is a recent piece on watching English movies dubbed into Portugese. If you have Google Translate, it should automatically translate the blog into English for you.

Another blog I've been following recently, called Virtual Virago, has the story of a gay actor from the Golden Age named Laird Cregar.

Next month will see the release of the first of two massive volumes of what's being called the definitive Barbara Stanwyck biography. Here's an interview with the author.

The Museum of the Moving Image has an exhibit featuring photos of film projection booths.

PJ Soles remembers the original Carrie.