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 he first brought his creations to frame-by-frame life on the big screen. That makes sense. So how can I really say anything of worth when I say that I was also profoundly influenced by the artistry of Ray Harryhausen? With modesty, and a story about Clash of the Titans. Continue reading…
See All Categories
- Comics (120)
- First (7)
- Guest Star (45)
- Movies (34)
- Notes (2112)
- Romance (76)
- Science-Fiction (116)
- Screen (58)
- Videogames (71)
Recent Features
Ray Harryhausen and Me: A Life of High Adventure and Escapism
Things That Change You Forever
I have a ghost story of my own. At least, I have a ghost-cat story.
My final year as an undergraduate was spent in relative splendor. My friends and I lucked into tenancy in the house of a professor on sabbatical. Twelve foot ceilings! Built in bookshelves! Three cats! Real, grown-up furniture! Wait… let’s get back to the cats. The professorial family had three cats and a dog, though the dog was sent to a friend with a farm (later, they told us later that we clinched the lease when they told us that cat care was part of the deal and our response was, “Aw, we don’t get the dog?”).
So. Three housemates, three cats. One morning around the (solid oak!) table, we were chatting about the cats’ sleeping habits. Two of the cats routinely slept in my room, the third with one of the others. Feeling a little left out, the third roommate said, “That’s okay, because Ghost Cat slept on my bed last night.” Continue reading…
Secret Agent, Detective, Genius, Jerk: Modernizing Sherlock Holmes
A man with dark wavy hair wakes up in an iron-framed bed in the middle of a windowless room. He leaps out from under the white sheets and stares intently at a corner of the white ceiling. Suddenly, gracefully, he spins to defeat an invisible opponent in four swift motions, finally falling to his knees in front of an empty chair, hands outstretched.
There’s something about the way Benedict Cumberbatch plays the lead role in the BBC series Sherlock that seems like it could be Holmes’ fantasy version of how a brilliant detective behaves. Continue reading…
My New Weapon of Choice
In April, the Guttersnipes like to mix it up a little. This month, Comics Editor Carol Borden writes about romance.
“You hit him with a frying pan,” he said to her. “How come you didn’t grab a knife?”
“The frying pan was closer.” Her eyes slid away. “It’s not like I had time to pick a weapon. It’s not like the frying pan is my weapon of choice.” –Agnes And The Hitman (27)
Growing up in a town where Elvis was sighted post mortem, I despised and mocked The King. Now, I have held wakes in his honor. I used to only like punk. Then I used to say I liked everything but country. Now I don’t even bother arguing that I’m listening to “Americana,” not country. It is a truth universally acknowledged that something I once despised I will come to appreciate and, often, love. So when both Chris and alex recommended Jennifer Crusie, the author of many romance novels, and in particular her collaboration with Bob Mayer, Agnes And The Hitman, I knew I needed to read it. Continue reading…
On The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
“Of course I have a copy of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes on video, but I don’t watch it very often. I even have, on tape now, the audio and video versions of those missing scenes. But it comforts me to know that they are still incomplete, and that there remain other scenes from [...]
Scouting the Orientalist Fantasy of a Perfect Chinese Restaurant
Scouting NY writes of the difficulty of finding a Chinese restaurant that satisfies directors’ ideas of a Chinese restaurant in New York, because that restaurant doesn’t exist. “Literally every time I get asked to find a Chinese restaurant, it’s the same description. ‘I want a place with really over-the-top Chinese decor,’ our director will say. [...]
Looking Back on 25 Years of Star Trek: The Next Generation
“The Next Generation awakened in me a feeling of terrible and suffocating yearning — that hopeless childish escape wish that’s the wake of a certain kind of fantasy. That feeling that in a different world you’d be happy. I carefully recorded each episode on our VCR — I remember buying the VHS tapes, in cellophane-wrapped [...]
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 [...]
The 5 Stages of Star Wars Fandom
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance and Star Wars. (Thanks, B-Sol!)
Unboxing the Past
The Gamer Hermit reminisces about his first experience with D&D and unboxes a mint set. ” My sojourn into the magical world of fantasy role playing games began back in the summer of 1981. My brother had just returned home from his enlistment in the Air Force and…out of the blue one day…asked me if [...]
Gallant Past, Gallant Future
Keith at Teleport City reviews Gallants, the new kung fu film starring several old Shaw Bros. regulars and finds “a film that looks to the past without pandering to it or being trapped by it, resulting in a movie that is uplifting and bittersweet, and ultimately, a refreshingly honest meditation on growing old, feeling obsolete, [...]
What’s the Matter with Comics?
Comics at the Big Two are in rough shape. Greg Burgas and Chris Sims see similar problems (nostalgia, Kurt Busiek) creating more problems (blandness, resistance to change, retcons, killing of heroes of color to replace them with white heroes of the Silver Age…). We noted Chris’ article before, but it’s worth reading with Greg’s.
“A Cosmic-Scale Meta-Textual Ghetto”
Chris Sims writes a thought-provoking article about how DC’s universe reboots are fueled by fan nostalgia that shoves characters of color aside in favor of white “legacy” characters and unintentionally builds “a cosmic-scale meta-textual ghetto.” Read it.(And this little addition to it).
I Can See Forever
It’s like the 1980s are a black hole and the event horizon reaches forever: The A-Team, The Karate Kid, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Tron, Ghostbusters, Conan The Barbarian, Red Dawn, Short Circuit and Wall Street.
The Necessary Elements for UFO to be a Hit
Purple wigs, gull-wing doors and lack of affect–Todd from 4DK provides “a list of some elements from the [1960s British] TV series [UFO] that, if they were to be included in the movie, would lead me to forgive a multitude of sins.”
A Perfect Frame
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, [...]
Read Only Memories
I’m fairly suspicious of nostalgia, and I hate how advertisers leverage our emotions to sell us the same products twice. So while I’m happy that people are rediscovering videogames from their youth, and that the games and their blocky aesthetic are mushrooming up all over the culture, I wonder about the retro-gaming phenomenon. Are these [...]
Of Note Elsewhere
“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!)
Patton Oswalt’s multi-franchise super-movie described in his Star Wars filibuster from Parks and Recreation, animated.
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 Hollywood Reporter interviews director Takashi Miike about his new film, Shield of Straw: ” In Japan now, films are very safe. When I was young and went to old cinemas, they had a distinctive feel, an adult smell about them. As you got in your seat and the lights went down, there was a feeling of excitement: What if the film is scarier than I thought it’s going to be? You’re taken into that world. Nowadays, you can sit in the theater and know it’s going to be safe. That’s good for business, but not for filmmaking.”
The Book!
Obsessive?
Weekly Notifications
Search the Gutter
What We’re Talking About
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
action
adaptation
animation
art
Canada
capitalism
China
comedy
comics
fandom
fantasy
feminism
film history
games
geekery
gender
history
horror
interviews
Japan
martial arts
monsters
movies
music
RIP
romance
science fiction
space
superheroes
the ladies
trailers
tv
UK
USA
video
writing