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The Cultural Gutter

dangerous because it has a philosophy

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

Summer Fun Time Reading ’13

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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 and Me: A Life of High Adventure and Escapism

Mr. Harryhausen with his creations brought down to size.

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 [...]

RIP, Ray Harryhausen

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 [...]

“Think The Walking Dead has a Woman Problem? Here’s the Source”

At The Village Voice, Simon Abrams writes about The Walking Dead and its female characters.

The Words Got Stuck In My Throat

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“If I had a hidden microphone inside of my heart/I would turn the power on/It would amplify my love for you and swear to always love you/and you’d never be gone.” I love when old movies–that are not musicals per se–spotlight the performance of a song, because it’s symptomatic of a sincere desire to entertain [...]

Brains

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The first thing you have to understand is this:  I hate zombies. Truly, completely HATE them. Mine is a complex hatred, operating on more than one level.   At the core I am, as previously stated, a huge chicken. Zombies, for their part, are one of horror’s basic building blocks.  They’re practically terror ground zero. [...]

The Walking Dead, 1995

The opening credits for The Walking Dead, if the show were made in 1995. (via @ChastityBites)

Nancy A. Collins’ Swamp Thing

Author Nancy A. Collins talks about writing Swamp Thing at Hasslein Blog.  The Den of Geek writes a paean to Nancy Collins’ al-too-brief run. “As the run progressed, it became evermore enchanting, tense, witty and imaginative (not to mention the fact that it produced the first ever comic to be released under DC’s mature Vertigo [...]

The Monster in Me

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I’ve been spending a portion of my wee small hours (normally spent standing under a solitary street lamp on a lonely street, staring in melancholy reverie at my cigarette) revisiting old horror films. As a budding cult film obsessive, I cut my teeth on the horror films of cinema’s early decades. In the days before [...]

Terrifying Tales of Diminuitive Doom!

Monster Island Resort Podcast and Deadly Doll’s House of Horror Nonsense join forces to discuss the terror of the tiny in, “Evil Dolls, Trolls, Children and Other Short Villains!” Both Miguel and Emily are fellow members of The Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit.

Twilight’s Anti-Fandom

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.”

Ray Harryhausen’s Collection, Documented

The Documentation Officer for the Ray Harryhausen collection shares some of Harryhausen’s film materials.

10 Comics I Liked In 2012

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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. [...]

“Wildman! Study of the British Bigfoot”

Cryptomundo goes in search off… The British Bigfoot. (via @mattstaggs)  

Krampus Papercraft!

Make yourself two little Krampusse just in time for Krampusnacht! Krampus 1 and Krampus 2.

Part Human, All Sasquatch

MSN/MSNBC is reporting on bigfoot mitochondrial DNA and here at The Gutter, we really don’t care that there is no evidence shared yet: “For her study, Ketchum obtained three “whole nuclear genomes from purported Sasquatchsamples. The genome sequencing shows that Sasquatch mtDNA is identical to modern Homo sapiens, but Sasquatch nuDNA is a novel, unknown [...]

Clip from The Host 2 / Gwoemul 2

Here’s a clip from Bong Joon-ho’s The Host 2/ Gwoemul 2 (sequel to the 2007 film, The Host / Gwoemul). More river monster + a little behind the scenes look.

Genesis of the Cultural Gutter

Way back in 2003, Jim Munroe conceived of a SXSW panel, “Why I Dig Working In The Cultural Gutter” and the Cultural Gutter is one of the results of that discussion. Heath Row’s Media Diet has a transcript of that panel.  

Conversations In The Dark: Frankenstein

B-Sol from Vault of Horror and Miguel from Monster Island Resort team up to discuss the Universal Studios monsters. First up, Frankenstein. (If you feel the urge to write us to explain that “actually, the creator is Frankenstein, please see this article. Thanks).

Riffing Zombies and Incredible Time Travellers

I’ve missed the spooky month of October by one day, and probably rotted my brain on too much Rifftrax. In lieu of coherent thoughts, here is a compilation of recent observations.

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  • Of Note Elsewhere

    Support Manos The Hands of Felt–The Master will be pleased.

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    At Sequart, Julian Darius makes the case that Star Trek: Into Darkness damages the Star Trek franchise and that “Starfleet must be destroyed.” (via Mike White)

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    This tumblr collects many bad jokes kids have invented.

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    “It’s easier to tell the same stories everyone else does. There’s no particular shame in it.

    It’s just that it’s lazy, which is just about the worst possible thing a spec fic writer can be.

    Oh, and it’s not true.”

    Kameron Hurley writes about lazy writing, cannibal llamas, female soldiers, and women here. (Thanks, James!)

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    Patton Oswalt’s multi-franchise super-movie described in his Star Wars filibuster from Parks and Recreation, animated.

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    Corrigan Vaughan writes an open letter to “Fans of Geek Things“: “I appreciate that you think I have a nice rack and that some of you even find my friends and I to be pretty. That’s very kind. I’m not, however, super in love with the fact that having a rack at all seems to preclude me from being considered a ‘real’ fan.”

    ~

  • The Book!

    From ETC Press

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