The Cultural Gutter

dangerous because it has a philosophy

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." -- Oscar Wilde

Interview with Takashi Miike

The Hollywood Reporter interviews director Takashi Miike about his new film, Shield of Straw: ” In Japan now, films are very safe. When I was young and went to old cinemas, they had a distinctive feel, an adult smell about them. As you got in your seat and the lights went down, there was a [...]

KPBS’ Midday Movies: The Geek Roundtable discusses Remakes

At KPBS’ Midday Movies, Beth Accomando, Miguel Rodriguez and Ian Forbes discuss film remakes: “Remake, sequel, prequel, reboot, reimagining – whatever you want to call it, Hollywood does love to return to something familiar. So what makes a good remake? Is it really a bad thing to remake an old film? Is this a new [...]

Secret Agent, Detective, Genius, Jerk: Modernizing Sherlock Holmes

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A man with dark wavy hair wakes up in an iron-framed bed in the middle of a windowless room. He leaps out from under the white sheets and stares intently at a corner of the white ceiling. Suddenly, gracefully, he spins to defeat an invisible opponent in four swift motions, finally falling to his knees [...]

LEGO Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad as a Lego Adventure Game.

Superman and Transcending Reality

“Words like ‘realism’ and ‘dark’ and ‘gritty’ get bandied about Hollywood as if the only merit a story can have is in its verisimilitude, but that’s a lie. Emotional honesty transcends reality; it’s what allows disbelief to be suspended, and yet what makes a story stay true.” Writer Greg Rucka writes more about Superman and [...]

Anime in 1987

“1987 was a remarkable year for manga adaptations. Not remarkable in volume—manga adaptations were nothing special in themselves—but for the commonalities that emerged. This year, we would find anime reaching for a measure of subtlety.” More at The Golden Ani-Versary of Anime.

“Think The Walking Dead has a Woman Problem? Here’s the Source”

At The Village Voice, Simon Abrams writes about The Walking Dead and its female characters.

Id Critics and Conspiracy Theories

“Room 237 is like an act of revenge from a filmmaker upon the critics,” writes Robert Greene in his review. And The Verge’s Adi Robinson interviews Room 237 director Rodney Ascher on The Shining, interpretation and conspiracy theories. “[Room 237 is] about what happens when the movie leaves the filmmaker’s hands, and the audience is [...]

Maybe You’re My Love

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[In April, the Guttersnipes like to mix it up a little.  This month, Romance editor Chris Szego writes about anime] Only those with excellent social standing and those from filthy rich families are lucky enough to spend their time here in the elite private school, Ouran Academy.  The Ouran Host Club  is where the school’s [...]

The Dragonlance Chronicles: Innovative, Ubiquitous and Terribly-Written

At Pornokitsch, Jared takes a look at The Dragonlance Chronicles’ influence on contemporary fantasy: “[C]ool or not, Dragonlance has done more than almost any other post-Tolkien property in influencing fantasy. Its narrative and conceptual tropes can be found in every nook and cranny of the genre, and much of the modern low fantasy resurgence can be traced [...]

Following How Your Dreams Make You Want To Be

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I’m going to talk a bit about Adventure Time, but I want to tell a story first. When my nephew was a toddler, he liked to play princesses with his mother and me. Usually, we were all beautiful princesses. Once, to show his displeasure, his mother was a “Bad Princess,” which actually was kind of [...]

“So I wrote a book”

Elmore Leonard talks about writing, Westerns, crime fiction, adaptations and Justified. “They made me an executive producer on the show, and executive producers don’t’ really do anything. I thought, ‘How can I sit here and collect money and not do anything?’ So I wrote a book, Raylan.”

Brains

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The first thing you have to understand is this:  I hate zombies. Truly, completely HATE them. Mine is a complex hatred, operating on more than one level.   At the core I am, as previously stated, a huge chicken. Zombies, for their part, are one of horror’s basic building blocks.  They’re practically terror ground zero. [...]

“Classical Filmmaking: The Theme that Drives all of Sam Raimi’s Movies”

Matt Singer explores two elements that recur in all of Sam Raimi’s films, Pandora’s box and, “The Classic,” a 1973 Delta 88. “Using The Classic to play Uncle Ben’s car may have just been a fortuitous way for Raimi to shoehorn in his beloved trademark, but in the larger context of his career, it imbues [...]

Orson Welles On Suspense

A collection of Orson Welles’ appearances on the old time radio show, Suspense, including “The Most Dangerous Game” and “The Hitchhiker.”

Stepping Back with The Great And Powerful Oz

“With such a rich tapestry on and off the Oz page, it’s depressing that 2013 finds our return to Oz burdened with a reluctant hero (the dominant kind in the 21st century), and not one of Baum’s plucky young heroines. In a bitter reversal of Baum’s stories, ‘Great and Powerful’ casts the women as the [...]

Superman vs. The Ku Klux Klan

Listen to Superman defend Tommy Lee and his family from the Ku Klux Klan in the 1946 Adventures of Superman storyline, “The Clan of the Fiery Cross” at the Internet Archive.

RIP, Ray Cusick

Production Designer Ray Cusick has died. Cusick is most famous for creating Doctor Who’s nemeses, The Daleks, but he also worked on Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple (1985 & 1987), Cold Comfort Farm (1968) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1975). The BBC reports on his death and the creation of the Daleks here and here.

The Monster in Me

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I’ve been spending a portion of my wee small hours (normally spent standing under a solitary street lamp on a lonely street, staring in melancholy reverie at my cigarette) revisiting old horror films. As a budding cult film obsessive, I cut my teeth on the horror films of cinema’s early decades. In the days before [...]

Horror Talk interviews Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe Lansdale

“Writing and reading are not all of me, but it’s an important part of me. I am thinking about slowing down a little, but we’ll see if that happens. I’ve thought about that for years, and sometimes I do slow a bit, but then I start right back.” Joe R. Lansdale talks more about ebooks, [...]

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  • Of Note Elsewhere

    This tumblr collects many bad jokes kids have invented.

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    “It’s easier to tell the same stories everyone else does. There’s no particular shame in it.

    It’s just that it’s lazy, which is just about the worst possible thing a spec fic writer can be.

    Oh, and it’s not true.”

    Kameron Hurley writes about lazy writing, cannibal llamas, female soldiers, and women here. (Thanks, James!)

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    Patton Oswalt’s multi-franchise super-movie described in his Star Wars filibuster from Parks and Recreation, animated.

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    Corrigan Vaughan writes an open letter to “Fans of Geek Things“: “I appreciate that you think I have a nice rack and that some of you even find my friends and I to be pretty. That’s very kind. I’m not, however, super in love with the fact that having a rack at all seems to preclude me from being considered a ‘real’ fan.”

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    The Black Girl Nerds Podcast discusses Black girls and women in the Heavy Metal industry with author and journalist Laina Dawes and Ursula “She-Wolf” Parson from Hear Evil News.

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    The Hollywood Reporter interviews director Takashi Miike about his new film, Shield of Straw: ” In Japan now, films are very safe. When I was young and went to old cinemas, they had a distinctive feel, an adult smell about them. As you got in your seat and the lights went down, there was a feeling of excitement: What if the film is scarier than I thought it’s going to be? You’re taken into that world. Nowadays, you can sit in the theater and know it’s going to be safe. That’s good for business, but not for filmmaking.”

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