Jane Austen responds to Michael Chwe naming her a master of Game Theory.
Kotaku remembers Sean Smith, an Information Management Officer for the US State Department killed in Benghazi, Libya. He was also Vile Rat, a famous/infamous high level player in Eve Online.
The 1920 film, Daughter of Dawn has been restored. Daughter of Dawn is set before European settlers landed in the Americas and features a cast of 300 Kiowa and Comanche actors, including the children of Quanah Parker, White and Wandada Parker, and also includes footage of the Tipi with Battle Pictures, an important part of [...]
The Gutter‘s own Carol Borden wrote a review of Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines for the 2012 ActionFest Blog: “I’ve seen reviews suggesting this movie is a great one to show your daughter or niece, and it is. But it’s not just about letting little girls know that they can be heroes, [...]
“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 [...]
Tom & Lorenzo look at the fashion–and its implications–in Mad Men‘s first episode of season 6: “[W]e’re on the cusp of 1968, in the wake of the Summer of Love; a time when design, but particularly fashion design, exploded all over the masses in a way it hasn’t done before or since.”
The Flapper Girl has amazing resources on Twenties and Thirties art, design, illustration, millinery, and, especially, Flappers. Meanwhile, The Library of Congress has a sweet selection of articles on “The Rise of the Flapper!“
Andrew Nette writes about the trial and death of Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary.
Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones –a 1990 documentary about composer and musician Quincy Jones is online and complete.
Mad Men‘s latest ad was created by veteran illustrator, Brian Sanders. The New York Times profiles Sanders and a little bit of illustration in the 1960s. “Illustrating for and watching the series was doubly meaningful for him, Mr. Sanders said, because Mad Men depicts a world he was once very much a part of. ‘The [...]
“[T]here is a sound narrative logic behind the sustained popularity of this impossible person in tights. There is one appeal whose effectiveness has remained operative since 1939.” Acephalous explains “[h]ow to teach the interrelatedness of historical context and audience via Warren Ellis’s Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth.” (via @aytiws)
“This, then, is the story of Maxwell Knight—the man called M—and a cuckoo called Goo. Knight was a tall, patrician British intelligence officer in charge of MI5 departments dealing with counter-subversion on home ground. And yes, as ‘M’ he was the inspiration for James Bond’s controller.” Helen MacDonald recounts the story in an excellent piece. [...]
“In essence what Fleming was proposing was a team of authorised thieves and looters – mavericks who would operate ahead of the forward troops and who were instructed to do whatever necessary to capture enemy intelligence, equipment or personnel.” James Bond creator, Ian Fleming also created a special unit a commando unit for British Naval [...]
When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven insane by fear and horror, and when chaos has become supreme law, then the time will have come for the empire of crime.” –The Testament of Dr. Mabuse “[W]hatever factors come into play in the cases that we have studied, the conclusion is inescapable [...]
TVOntario interviews writer Nalo Hopkinson about utopian literature, the ancestral experience of slavery, “noticing race” and the ideals of Toronto’s Caribana festival.
Vintage Ninja offers, “A 1962 Point of View” on “ninjutsu”–including covers and pages from an out of print copy of Jay Gluck’s Zen Combat. My favorite line, “The ninja never swaggered.”
The trailer for White Scripts And Black Supermen: Black Masculinities In Comic Books, a documentary directed by Jonathan Gayles. And there are some extended interviews at the documentary’s YouTube Channel.
“Thursday, September 21st, 1939, radio station WJSV in Washington, D.C., recorded their entire broadcast day — from sign on, to sign off.” You can listen at The Internet Archive. (via @SteveSilberman)
At Comics Alliance, David Brothers takes us on a walk through Black history in comics from Krazy Kat; Orrin C. Evans’ All-Negro Comics; Billy Graham’s Panther’s Rage; Hardware and Milestone Comics to now.
Dion Fortune and the Fraternity of the Inner Light protected Britain from Germany’s occult attacks during World War II. Read more here. (via @mattstaggs)
keep looking »
