Mailbag: Jesse Walker, author of the review of the new Georges Melies DVD that I discussed earlier wrote in to clarify my misreading of his review:

You make a perfectly reasonable point about the way the director combined his effects with stories. He did a number of pure trick films as well, of course, but you're right that he was an important innovator when it came to putting those special effects into a storytelling context.

You misread me, though, when you say I think he was "trying to imitate the more mainstream filmmakers." What I wrote was that on those occasions when he stopped doing the sorts of films that made him great and started imitating the more mainstream filmmakers, he did his worst work. I don't think was true of the majority of his films (or, at least, of the majority of the films I've seen).