The Cultural Gutter

beyond good and bad, there is awesome

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

WJSV, Washington

“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)

Reservoir Dogs at The Projection Booth

Mr. White and Mr. St. Mary have an in-depth look at Reservoir Dogs at The Projection Booth podcast. Special Guests: podcaster Jamie Jenkins, Film Threat‘s Paul Zimmerman and Reservoir Dogs executive producer, Monte Hellman. Special features include, Mike White’s video, “Who Do You Think You’re Fooling?” comparing Ringo Lam’s City On Fire and Reservoir Dogs, [...]

Using Fantasy To Be Better Than We Are In Real Life

Goopyicon4

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.

Boy Band Madrigal

Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay performs–as a boy band–the madrigal, “Come again sweet love”  written by John Dowland. (thanks, alex!)

50 Wonderful Things in 2012

Linda Holmes shares 50 wonderful things at NPR’s Monkey See blog.

Making The Blues Brothers.

At Vanity Fair, Ned Zeman explores the history of The Blues Brothers. “It is October 1979, and The Numbers are not to [Lew] Wasserman’s satisfaction. The culprit is Universal’s big-ticket production The Blues Brothers, a movie that pretty much defies logic and description. Some call it a musical; others, a comedy; others, a buddy movie; [...]

“Protest Style”

HAPS puts PSY’s protest style in context.

The Dark Tower, Videogame Soundtrack Edition

Speaking from recent experience, I don’t recommend getting a cold/cough/(something virulent and archaic, like consumption?) that sticks around for 4-5 weeks. It kinda sucks. With reduced brainpower, I’ve been watching a lot of Rifftrax (“There can be only one?? You should have mentioned that earlier!”). Fun, but not much to say, except that, yup, Highlander [...]

Weird R. Kelly Tales

Tales from R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet told by actor Michael K. Williams and drawn by Kagan McLeod.

The Last Minstrel Show

Joe Lansdale writes about the last minstrel show in East Texas.  “I never saw any African-American minstrel shows, but I heard about them from those who had. I certainly saw a white minstrel show. I saw it in a time when public places sported ‘white’ and ‘colored’ water fountains and restrooms, and when restaurants that [...]

John Carpenter’s Halloween

At Funny Or Die, John Carpenter presents, “John Carpenter’s Halloween!”

“This Land Is Mine”

Animator of Sita Sings The Blues, Nina Paley, has a new short, “This Land Is Mine,” concerning, “a brief history of the land called Israel/Palestine/Canaan/the Levant” set to, “This Land Is Mine” sung by Andy Williams. (Via Cartoon Brew)

Cage + Cage

Nicolas Cage performs John Cage’s, “4’33″.”

“Uncle Pervy’s K-Pop Playlist”

John Seabrook, aka, “Uncle Pervy,” created an overview of K-Pop video for all your booty-shaking, synchronized dance needs. Make sure to click through to his article on Korean pop music for The New Yorker. (via @sammy2lighters)  

“Berberian Sound Studio and Cathy Berberian”

At Sparks in Electrical Jelly, Jez Winship writes about Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio, Peter Cargill and the late Trish Keenan of Broadcast, who provide the film’s soundtrack, and the film’s namesake, the great experimental vocalist and composer, Cathy Berberian. It includes fascinating experimental scores for Berberian’s comic-strip derived and cartoon-influenced, “Stripsody,” as well as [...]

Mad Men + Rick Astley

The cast of Mad Men is never gonna give you up. (Thanks, Mark!)

Interview with Carrie Brownstein

Carrie Brownstein talks about Portlandia, Wild Flag, and nostalgia. “[A]s we went into the second season and now the third, the analogy we used was a record. Your first album can be a series of singles – like “here’s our opening thesis” – and you have a couple of hits. It might not be cohesive [...]

Ben Wheatley’s Viral Videos and Rob Zombie’s Ads

Kill List director and suspected Pirate Captain Ben Wheatley has been secretly making commercial videos for years. Siân Elizabeth-Anne just happens to have gathered all Wheatley’s booty in one place, The Vanguard programme blog. Or most of it. Meanwhile, at the Midnight Madness blog, Chad Eberle has collected evidence of Rob Zombie’s secret life as [...]

RIP, Jerry Nelson

Muppet performer and puppeteer Jerry Nelson has died. Nelson performed Count Von Count, Snuffleupagus, Sherlock Hemlock, Fat Blue/Mr. Johnson, the female Koozbanian and Herry Monster on Sesame Street. He also performed Floyd Pepper, Camilla the Chicken, Lew Zealand and Dr. Julius Strangepork on The Muppet Show and movies and Gobo on Fraggle Rock. The LA [...]

What is Gangnam Style?

“PSY does something in his video that few other artists, Korean or otherwise, do: He parodies the wealthiest, most powerful neighborhood in South Korea. Sure, he uses physical humor to make it seemingly about him, a man who wants to project glamour but keeps falling short…But ultimately, by declaring ‘Oppa is Gangnam Style,’ he turns [...]

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  • Of Note Elsewhere

    Kate Elliott asks, “How much sex is too much sex in your science fiction and fantasy?” (Thanks, James!)

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    NPR’s Monkey See blog shares a look at Adventure Time. “Adventure Time insists on emotional honesty.” (via @profmdwhite)

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    Recent shenanigans The Cultural Gutter has been involved in: The lost Drive-In Mob Movie S.P.E.C.T.R.E. on Monster Island; a transcript of the Shaitani Dracula tweetalong organized by The Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit; and the ongoing Twitter game/story, “Tonight On Mad Men.”

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    At Vern Reviews The Films Of Cinema, Outlaw Vern offers “one Seagalologist’s perspective on the ‘vulgar auteurism’ debate”: “The practitioners are trying to bring recognition to artists who they think are marginalized, but they’re accidentally creating a ranking of ‘vulgar auteur’ beneath ‘actual auteur.’ And that also shines a spotlight on the idea’s most glaring weakness: even the most establishment of the critical establishment have always worshipped directors who were at some point considered lowbrow–Hitchcock, Fuller, Peckinpah, DePalma.”

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    Pornokitsch finishes determining essential epic fantasy, with statistics, graphs and lists of their selections. Nice to see Homer in there.

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    David Simon shares the best deleted scene from the fifth season of The Wire. (via @pornokitsch)

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