The Cultural Gutter

taking the dumb out of fandom

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

The Art of Horror Movie Music

Stephen Thrower writes a retrospective soundtracks and composers for horror movies spanning from Psycho to the present, and ends with a call for more innovation and “a neat draft of madness.” (via @AwesomeBMovies_)

Ennio Morricone Conducts

Ennio Morricone conducts and soprano Susanna Rigacci solos on themes from three Sergio Leone Westerns:  Once Upon A Time In The West, A Fistful of Dynamite and The Good, The Bad, The Ugly–including, “The Ecstasy of Gold.”

Happy Birthday, Ennio Morricone!

It’s Ennio Morricone’s 82nd birthday. To celebrate, let’s listen to a little music. “Pazuzu,” “Valmont’s Go Go Club,” two songs from Death Rides A Horse and “The Ecstasy of Gold” (conducted by Morricone himself).

Ecstasy

Ennio Morricone conducts an orchestra, choir and two soloists in a hair-raising, in a good way, performance of “Ecstasy of Gold” from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

The Sound of Our Impending Future!

Teleport City is preparing the way for the future and/or retro-future we’ve all been waiting for. Pack your go-bag to “Music for Departure Lounges” and taxi your way on out with “Music for Espionage and Space Defense.”

The Spaghetti Western Orchestra

Got enough Ennio Morricone in your life? I thought not. Presenting the Spaghetti Western Orchestra performing, “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.”  Their website’s here. (thanks, Colin!)

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  • Of Note Elsewhere

    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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    The Atlantic profiles Spectral Motion, creators of monsters, “effects, and other mechanical grotesqueries that have since become household nightmares, if not names.”

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    A novelist takes revenge on writers he doesn’t like via wikipedia. Slate has the story. “Qworty’s edits undermine our trust in this great project. Qworty’s edits prove that Wikipedia’s content can be shaped by people settling grudges and acting out of spite and envy. Qworty alone, by his own account, has made 13,000 edits to Wikipedia. And Qworty, as the record will show, is not to be trusted.”

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    Diane Dooley writes about Mars’ need for women and ways to subvert it.

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    “[T]he mainstreaming of Jane Eyre as a vanilla romance, or even as an exploration of a woman’s pure, uncompromising, and uncomplicated (and religious! and feminist!) integrity, says all kinds of things about our inability to speak honestly about violence and sex.” More on Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, consent, sex and submission, here. (via K.A. Laity)

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