Reason interviews The Venture Bros.’ Jackson Publick. “The basic idea of The Venture Brothers was taking the world of Jonny Quest and jumping back into 30 years later, seeing how someone who grew up like Jonny — with that kind of space race enthusiasm and disregard for other cultures — would turn out. Dr. Venture [...]
It’s hot and the air already feels like unset Jell-O, but you still have some time to prepare for summer, because all the list-happy magazines and websites tell me, summer must be prepared for. Dig out your seersucker suit! Bob your hair! Find that most fashionable bathing suit–might I suggest a kicky Twenties number? You’ll [...]
Ray Harryhausen passed away last week. This has been noted by people more qualified than I to discuss the master of stop-motion magic—Rick Baker, Adam Savage, Todd Masters, George Lucas, Peter Jackson, and more. The superhuman talent and perseverance evident in a Harryhausen effects sequence can easily be seen in countless visual effects artists since [...]
Special effects master, Ray Harryhausen has died. Ray Bradbury pays tribute to Harryhausen. All of Harryhausen’s creatures in 4 and a half minutes. Harryhausen talks about King Kong, Willis O’Brien, George Pal and his own career in 1991. John Landis interviews Harryhausen for the Bradford Animation Festival 2010. TCM remembers Harryhausen. And Leslie Hardcastle interviews [...]
New clip promoting Venture Bros. season 5.
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 many Adventure Time songs gathered in one place!
“As a Black man in American, I brought something to the screen that hadn’t really been there before.”Jim Brown talks about his film career, making the transition from football to film and producing films in two parts of a documentary by Spike Lee. Here and here.
The Documentation Officer for the Ray Harryhausen collection shares some of Harryhausen’s film materials.
Instead of raving about Satyajit Ray’s well-known-outside-of-India projects like the Apu Trilogy (Pather Pancahli/Song of the Little Road, Aprajito/The Unvanquished, and Apur Sansar/The World of Apu) or Jalsaghar/The Music Room (available through Criterion), I want to rave about his fantastic fantastical 1968 children’s film Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne/The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha.
“Silent Shadow of the Bat-man” is a 1920s Batman story created from clips from silent film.
Beloved shipmates, Joe Hill has started a Moby-Dick big read along. The New Bedford Whaling Museum is holding its annual Moby-Dick Marathon today. And the Moby-Dick Big Read Podcast is still downloading a chapter a day with such dauntless readers as Tilda Swinton and ! It’s enough to keep you from knocking off gentelmen’s hats [...]
Tales of derring-do! Girl adventurers! Occult mystery! Infernal foes! Secrets revealed! Pirates! Love, loss & betrayal! Intricate art bound in lovely hardcovers! Indie going mainstream! Original creations! It’s been an incredible year for comics. So many good ones that I can’t even begin to claim to know what would be the best comics of 2012. [...]
Director, producer, writer, effects pioneer and puppeteer Gerry Anderson has died. Anderson created the Supermarionation television series: Thunderbirds, Fireball XL5, and Stingray He produced the live-action series: UFO, The Protectors and Space: 1999. The Guardian has an obituary and two letters remembering Gerry Andreson’s legacy. And here’s Craig Ferguson’s tribute to Fireball Xl5.
Hero Complex has an algebraic article about Adventure Time!
“The first book I read was Carter Brown’s The Unorthodox Corpse. The Fryer Library (at University of Queensland) had a battered copy and I loved it.” Pulp Curry talks with Toni Johnson Woods about Australian pulp fiction.
Part of me dies under my overalls I close my eyes and a woman calls From a nightmare… Shave…shit…a shower and a shoeshine That’s it…sack time Everybody looks like Ernest Borgnine. He’s there, unexpectedly, in John Cooper Clarke’s punk poem ‘Thirty Six Hours“, blaring through the speakers as I write in the middle of the [...]
“[It] strikes me as a bit counterintuitive that I would enjoy Derek Yu’s Spelunky as much as I do, while I remain estranged from Dark Souls. Aren’t both games super-cruel dungeon crawls, presenting maddeningly difficult challenges while swiftly and severely punishing the slightest error?” Jason McIntosh ponders the differences in how each game frames the [...]
Lonely serial killer and film smarty Harry S. Plinkett reviews the Star Wars prequels: The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith. Trenchant analysis aside, current favorite segments are his love advice to Anakin and “Citizen Vader”–starts here and continues. (Trigger warning for those sensitive to ladies held captive in basements [...]
Comics Editor Carol did a quick review of Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines for the ActionFest Blog. “[I]t’s not just about letting little girls know that they can be heroes, that they can be anything they want. It’s about knowing that as adults we have great power and great responsibility. We can [...]
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What, it’s June already? I’m sure a I had a whole year here a minute ago. In any case, summer means humidity, allergies, and a sad lack of home AC. This year, it also means squirrels in the roof (don’t ask. No, really).
