The Atlantic profiles Spectral Motion, creators of monsters, “effects, and other mechanical grotesqueries that have since become household nightmares, if not names.”
Rock Paper Shotgun‘s John Walker has been playing Neverwinter, and he’s been playing with other people–and he’s formed a RPS guild. “And for the first time in an online game, I don’t feel like the interfering hanger-onner, muddling my way through with the people who know what they’re doing. I mean – that absolutely still [...]
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 [...]
At Functional Nerds, J.T. Evans discusses Open Game Licensing, Paizo the Old School Renaissance and the future of Dungeons & Dragons. “’D&D Next’ might very well be ‘D&D Last.’”
“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 [...]
Midnight Madness Programmer and Gutter Friend, Colin Geddes, is interviewed (along with many others) about the history of midnight movies from El Topo and Eraserhead till now.
“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.
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 [...]
“As early as 1929 Kodak identified the potential for colour to affect the emotions. Whilst Kodak developed Sonochrome tints like Rose Doree to ‘quicken the respiration’ and Peachblow for ‘brief, joyous moments’, twenty years before, Méliès applied translucent aniline dyes to create spectacle and to provoke sensation in nascent cinema.” Wendy Haslem writes on the [...]
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 [...]
Pornokitsch‘s Jared Shurin is rereading K. J. Parker’s The Folding Knife for Tor.com. “[Y]ou can blitz through this book at face value and it is a hoot. But, as noted above, the fun is in the how. There are a hundred little hints and tricks and repetitions and nods and winks and nudges within The [...]
So many Adventure Time songs gathered in one place!
Sophia McDougall writes about “sexual assault and ‘Realism’ in popular culture.” (via @Pornokitsch)
The first of Colin Smith’s two-part interview with Kieron Gillen, the writer of comics such as Phonogram, Journey Into Mystery and the new Young Avengers. In this part, Gillen discusses Kid Loki and Journey Into Mystery: “I resisted defining myself as a fantasy writer because fantasy tends to be iffy. I became fine with it [...]
Boing Boing is publishing Elfquest: The Final Quest, the latest Elfquest storyline. It’s an ongoing fantasy/science fiction comic by Wendy and Richard Pini that’s been going since 1978. The previous storylines are available gratis for your reading pleasure at the Elfquest official site.
In considering a discussion about realism, grittiness and “grimdark,” in fantasy, Kate Elliott asks, “How does epic fantasy–and heroic fantasy, and however you wish to define or parse the categories–do in conveying the realities of consensual sex and love?” She continues: “To my mind, we lessen the story we are telling about human experience if [...]
“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 [...]
Emma Vossen examines Twilight hate and anti-fans, writing: “People have become eager anti-fans of the series, creating an active subculture that manifests in hateful dialogue and value judgements on a seemingly arbitrary slice of a very large pop culture pie.”
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.
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