Incoming Poe Film

News recently leaked of Viggo Mortensen and Sylvester Stallone finalizing plans for a film based on the life of Edgar Allan Poe. Directed by Stallone, the movie will likely feature Viggo playing the great writer, and sounds like it will be more biographical than prior adaptations. A faithful Poe biopic (well, faithful as can be coming from Hollywood and action-driven Stallone) would be most welcome. Though that isn't to say the less authentic, serious movies were bad.

Just last year, Stuart Gordon produced an excellent mini-movie entitled, "The Black Cat," as an episode for the second season of Masters of Horror. In my opinion, it was probably the best episode of the entire season, and an easy finalist for champion of all the Masters installments released thus far. The movie cast cult actor Jeffrey Combs (who has now played both Lovecraft and Poe) as the troubled writer, and was a ficiontalized account of how Poe visualized his tale, "The Black Cat." Even through the fiction, Gordon effectively wove in true elements of Poe's impoverished life with his ill wife, Virginia. The DVD release of this one is cheap enough--about $10.00 and even less online--and of sufficient quality to warrant a buy, if you care to tide yourself over until the Stallone film hits theaters in a year or two.

-Grim Blogger