Seattle’s superhero community is planning on attending May Day demonstrations, just in case. Here’s footage from superhero Phoenix Jones’ Phoenix cam at last year’s demonstrations. Update: Report and footage from May Day, 2013
“In a good heist film, the heist always goes wrong.” Andrew Nette shares his favorites.
At Wildgrounds, Kevin Ma shares his most enjoyable “bad” film and most enjoyable “good” film of 2012.
The New York Times profiles Frank Serpico: “Pacino played Serpico better than I did.” (via Andrew Nette)
In 1978, Elmore Leonard followed Detroit Homicide’s murder felony unit, Squad 7 and wrote a story about it for The Detroit News Sunday Magazine. (Thanks, @booksadventures)
Enjoy full-on awesomeness as The Raid is recreated in stop-motion animation. (Thanks, Colin!)
Every April at the Gutter, the editors switch things up. This week Comics Editor Carol writes about tv. ‘Ware ye spoilers! “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like for everything inside me that’s denied and unknown to be revealed, but I’ll never know. I live my life in hiding. My survival depends on it.”–Dexter [...]
Hangul Cellulloid interviews director, writer and actor, Ryoo Seung-Wan about his earlier films, including Die Bad; his current film, The Unjust; his upcoming, The Berlin File; and whether Korean films are inherently violent.
Scholars are combing digitized records from London’s Old Bailey and discovering fascinating trends in plea bargaining, divorce and bigamy in the 1800s.
It’s Twitch round-up time. Supporting martial artists Mike B. and Russell Wong take the lead kneeing and kicking people in the chest in Thanapon Maliwan’s The Sanctuary. Lee Byung-Hun, Kimura Takuya and Josh Hartnett go to Hong Kong and walk the line between the police and organized crime in Tran Anh Hung’s I Come with [...]
“Where Hollywood’s films were full of urban grit and cinema verité style, Bollywood’s were full of blinding color and outlandish levels of artifice. This did not, however, deter Indian B movie king Mohammed Hussain from forging ahead with a remake of Don Segal’s Dirty Harry – one in which he attempted to meld those two [...]
The Deleted Scenes webcomic takes a look at W. E. Coyote v. ACME Corporation.
Generally speaking, Romances are divided into two broad groups: contemporary and historical. Those distinctions are somewhat fluid. For instance, although it used to refer to anything set after 1900, ‘contemporary’ now encompasses anything set after World War II. ‘Historical’, meanwhile, covers everything else.
“She came from the Orient to seduce middle-aged white men who don’t shave.” Grady has a few things to say about the Zhang Ziyi and Dennis Quaid film, The Horsemen.
CSI: North Pole? Christmas cards starring a disturbed Santa and Chad Vader? Blame Society Productions mainlines the Xmas spirit.
Early in Eddie Campbell’s painterly “picture novel,” The Black Diamond Detective Agency, the main character, Jackie Hardin, says, “We thought we had all the time in the world…. Tomorrow can take it all away” (7). And with the implied death of a young daughter and a bucolic description of Lebanon, Missouri, prefaced with the description, [...]
The adage has it that truth is stranger than fiction. I swear that’s true in Mexico. One of my favourite writers, hardboiled crime novelist Paco Ignacio Taibo II, has to struggle to keep up with the absurd plot of his beloved nation. Although Taibo is a fine writer, I come to him more for his [...]
Since the first Cro-Magnon man set foot in the limestone caves of Lascaux, we have has a bittersweet relationship with cool, dank places. They provided mankind with much needed shelter from the elements, yet in their dark recesses they also supplied material for our nightmares — whether they materialised as a flesh-ripping cave bear or [...]
I’ve noticed recently that otherwise good stories have been let down by their endings. It’s partly due to the expectations of the audience: you can imagine any kind of ending you want, but when the ending finally arrives, it’s been narrowed down to a single one of those possibilities and it might not be as [...]
For those of you who paid for your copy of Tony Hawk 4 (Aspyr, 2003) on the PC, here’s what you missed. Running INSTALLER.EXE in the pirated version brings up a window that shows a flat-monitor screen hanging painting-style on what looks to be a castle wall. A bouncy-yet-mournful synth tune plays in the background. [...]
