There's a major announcement at Tim Lucas' Bava Book Blog regarding the release date of his Bava book.

Donna is amazing. Tim too. :P I really, really regret not pre-ordering.....but now I'm going to start freeing up the credit card space I'm going to need for this essential tome.

Super special congratulations, and thank you to the Video Watchdog team.
I hope you treat yourselves to a really special celebration for this acheivment. You deserve it!

Congratulations, Tim and Donna!

Wow! Even though I've only ever seen one Bava film, I've had a bizarre compulsion to buy this book for years. I hope it's not too late to order.

Congrats to the Lucases!

I'll have to get in touch with them about a change of address -- I've moved at least four times since my pre-order.

Yay! I'm very happy for Tim and Donna and anxiously await getting my copy when the time comes! Looking at the weight, I'm sorta glad it won't be in time for my vacation, as I doubt I would be able to take it on the plane with the weight-limit! :lol:

Yes, mucho congrats to Tim and Donna!

Gosh, how long ago did I pay for this? 5 years ago or more? I can't even remember at this point, but I do still have that nifty Bava bookmark you guys sent out to loyal buyers.

At 12 pounds a pop, I see quite a bit of profit being eaten up by the shipping costs alone. And to consider all the work and effort put into this thing over the years, this was obviously a labor of love and not simply a financial-profit prospect by any means. Can't wait to finally see this giant tome!

12 pounds! Since I like to read in bed, I guess I'll have to:

1) Reinforce the bed with a house jack
2) Buy a used iron lung to rest the book on

Congratulations, Tim! Mile grazie, Donna!!!

Like others here, it feels like so long ago that I paid the pre-order fee. The world has changed a bit since and I've only had my Bava-Karloff bookmark to remind me of the book, guarding my place in the adventures of Philip Marlowe as I ride the subway. For a few years now, the only Bava Book Update I wanted to hear was "Your copy has been packaged and shipped."

But this is wonderful to hear. It takes some of the sting out of the Dark Sky KBK calamity. I'm looking forward to rolling Tim's book out into Central Park on a handtruck this summer for a nice long read on the grass.

Well, I just paid for the book back in December--December of 2000! It's been a long and winding road, but we're almost there! Will I have trouble clearing shelf space for it? Nope, I'll just move out that "other" Bava book!

Thanks, everyone.

Donna and I are "taking it easy" by attempting to connect HD equipment to our entertainment center -- sweating, cursing, hitting our heads, getting tangled in wires, yelling at inquisitive cats climbing on everything, only to get a picture with no sound, or sound with no picture. This promises to be our second full day of this sport.

The 12 pound weight sounds more daunting than it is. The STANLEY KUBRICK ARCHIVES book is slimmer and weighs less, but I never take it out of its box because it's so difficult to handle and read. The Bava book's readers may need to pump a little iron before it arrives, but I promise a very approachable reading experience. Though, as with Bava's films themselves, you may be so overwhelmed by the onslaught of imagery that it may take you awhile to become receptive to the narrative level.

John McElwee wrote me yesterday to ask if I could think of a bigger book devoted to a single director, or indeed any cinematic subject. I have an OXFORD HISTORY OF WORLD CINEMA that's 800-something double-columned pages with comparatively few illustrations. Russ Meyer's A CLEAN BREAST (whose pre-order customers waited 10 years for its delivery in some cases) spreads 1213 pages across three volumes, but it has very large type and is printed on very thick paper stock. Ernesto Gastaldi tells me that "colossal" books like mine are called "mastodontico" in Italy, but unless someone can think of another book comparably vast, I think I may have unwittingly created the "mastodontico de mastodontici."

If anyone can think of other examples, I'd like to hear about them.

Might you want to call Guinness?

Or at least drink one.

Wow, this is great news.

Now GET TO WORK ON THE JOE SARNO BOOK!

:P

I was actually woodshedding on a Sarno book project, but I've decided to leave that task in Michael Bowen's capable hands. The liner notes he's already written for the RetroSeduction Cinema releases show that he is The Guy. I will never fully heal from this experience and am fairly confident that I'll never write anything else like the Bava book -- probably not enough years left in my life, for one thing. I have regular venues for writing about film, which I will maintain, but I most want to focus on doing more in fiction and screenwriting.

Let's not forget that anthology of prior VW pieces, which I think you mentioned on your blog some time back. Given the number of quality articles you've written for VW, that could be a massive compendium if you wanted it to be. So, you'd only have four film books to your credit, but two of them would be longer than most other critic's entire written works. Not a bad achivement.

I do intend to also start collecting my past work in a series of books, which is something that work on the Bava book always prevented me from doing till now. I could publish compendiums of different kinds of writing, or I could publish a big book of reviews, a book of articles and essays, a book of interviews, and even the first volume of a Blog book. My blogs alone represent close to 1,000 pages of material. My concern is to give the Bava book its due time in the limelight and not to glut the market by releasing too much of my backlog at once. These releases need to be well planned and timed thoughtfully.

I appreciate your encouragement!

Maybe whilst taking a stroll on a nice beach somewhere...

I've been keeping my Mario Bava bookmark at my computer now for over a year. For those who aren't familiar, Tim and Donna sent out really nice bookmarks to those folks who pre-ordered.

I've kept it at my computer to serve as a reminder of what will soon be a reality; the release of this highly anticipated biography. And now, only a few months away all of the waiting is about to pay off.

Thank you so much Tim and Donna.

Check the Bava blog today for some tantalizing visuals. Well, anyway, I'm tantalized.

I was going to repost that photo of Tim reading the thing, but some sneaky blogger code prevents me. That book is huge!!

BAVA BOOK BLOG..

Egods. HUGE! That photo of Tim is priceless, and goes along very well with the "did I write all this?" line a few sentences above :).

Donna's smile is infectious. I could be in the most foul mood and all I have to see is a photo of Donna Lucas smiling and it brings me right out of it. Can't wait for the book, congrats Tim and Donna :)

Vincent

Beautiful, Team Watchdog, beautiful! Congrats, once again.
I'm seriously busy working on freeing up my card for this!

Amazing!

Once again, congrats to you and Donna, Tim -- can't wait to read it!

Tim! That book is going to eat you!! Run, man! Run!!!

But Tim, in earnest, much congratulations and thanks to you and Donna for all your hard work and achievement. I am seriously thinking now about where I'm going to display the book in my home.

Thanks, everybody. Today we got a box of the high-res proofs for the first 900 pages. I was able to page through the low-res signatures last night in about three hours. I spent the same amount of time going through the first 300 pages of the high-res; it's completely absorbing. I am consistently amazed at how all of the visuals have been improved upon -- sharper, bolder colors, textures, everything. Donna employed occasional drop shadows behind some photographs and they look like they're actually hovering just off the page.

It's funny, but only now have I realized that a couple of items I wanted to include in the book somehow failed to make the final cut -- including a giant Italian GLI INVASORI poster that was torn while being photographed and had to be very carefully digitally reassembled. There's bound to be somewhere else these things can surface, further down the road.

And Vincent, that was a very sweet thing to say about Donna -- and she sends her thanks! :)

I suspect this is the first book ever published that fits the author's name WIDTH-wise on the spine. Awesome.

boy, Tim, all I can is "DANG!" I can't wait to see this thing!

I had forgotten all about that bookmark that I received (mumble mumble) years ago. I wonder what the heck I did with that....stuck it in Throat Sprockets, most likely.

"..the Bava book is scheduled to arrive on our doorstep on July 30 -- Mario Bava's birthday..."

So when can WE expect it to arrive on OUR doorsteps? :D