The Cultural Gutter

dumpster diving of the brain

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

Black Women in Heavy Metal

The Black Girl Nerds Podcast discusses Black girls and women in the Heavy Metal industry with author and journalist Laina Dawes and Ursula “She-Wolf” Parson from Hear Evil News.

Join The Literary Resistance!

The Gutter’s own Founding Editor, Jim Munroe talks about creating an alternate reality game based on Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 for the Toronto Public Library.

Interview with Nalo Hopkinson

TVOntario interviews writer Nalo Hopkinson about utopian literature,  the ancestral experience of slavery, “noticing race” and the ideals of Toronto’s Caribana festival.

Interview with Jim Munroe

Jim Munroe appears on Radio Free Skaro to talk about his feature film, Ghosts With Shit Jobs.

Top Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2012

The Gutter’s own Chris Szego is quoted in Quill & Quire‘s list of Canadian booksellers’ top science fiction and fantasy for 2012! Chris manages Bakka Phoenix, Canada’s oldest science fiction and fantasy bookstore.

What’s New At No Media Kings?

CG Co-Founding Editor Jim Munroe and Matt Hamill have a new text game, Guilded Youth. Meanwhile, Jim’s latest movie, Ghosts With Shit Jobs, is now available on Xbox.

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; [...]

Bruce Campbell on TVO

TVOntario’s Saturday Night At The Movies interviewed Bruce Campbell when he was in Toronto for Bubba Ho-Tep‘s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival’s 2002 Midnight Madness Programme. (via Bruce-Campbell.com)  

Pulp, Comics and Games in TO!

This weekend’s the Toronto Comic Arts Fair plus the  Pulp Show and Sale at  Lillian H. Smith.  Visit both and our friends from The Hand Eye Society at TCAF’s  TIFF Nexus Comics vs. Games (trailer here).  Hooray for the Toronto Public Library!  

RIP, Jonathan Frid

Actor Jonathan Frid has died. He was best known as Barnabas Collins in the Gothic daytime soap opera, Dark Shadows. The New York Times has an obituary. And here is an interview with Frid on The Merv Griffin Show. Frid discusses playing Barnabas.  

Roger Corman, Vincent Price and William Shatner Talk Film

Some interviews with Roger Corman on his birthday.  Roger Corman and Vincent Price talk about horror films with Elwy Yost on Saturday Night at the Movies. Corman and William Shatner discuss The Intruder.  And Corman discusses film history and filmmaking–with some clips from his films.

Shatner on Shatner’s World

William Shatner talks about his book on CBC Radio’s Q and his world on NPR’s  Fresh Air.

“Whither Canadian Cinema?”

At Canadian Film Corner, Greg Klymkiw responds to Norman Wilner’s recent Now Magazine article, “Canuck Conundrum,” and Paul Corupe’s Canuxploitation blog post, “Canada’s Token 10?”:  “Celebration please, not castigation. Cineplex Entertainment is already doing a very good job in the latter department.” (via Mike White).

The Dead Kid Detective Agency Review

Ned Kelly, age 14, reviews, The Dead Kid Detective Agency, by Gutter Guest Star (and interviewee), Evan Munday.  Also, Kirkus reviews it, but Kirkus isn’t 14 years old.

RIP, John Neville

Actor John Neville has died. Gutter readers might be most familiar with his work in Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of  Baron Munchausen and in The X-Files.  According to the Guardian’s obituary, he was seen as a successor to John Gielgud and performed Alfie on the British stage before it became synonymous with Michael Caine on [...]

100 Years of Censorship

Silent Toronto‘s Eric Veillette takes a look at censorship and the Ontario Censor Board from 1911 till now.

Prisoners of Gravity

Straight from the secret vaults of TVOntario, it’s Commander Rick and Prisoners of Gravity, a Canadian tv show dedicated to speculative fiction and featuring a lot of Bakka-Phoenix, Canada’s oldest science fiction bookstore and managed by the Gutter’s Chris Szego.

Illustrated Wonder

An illustrated gallery of 1950s rayguns and a lovely, sweet and kinda steam punk illustrated marriage proposal by Joel Kimmel. (thanks, Humash!)

VARIETY PAK

Variety 80.jpg

It’s been just over a year since I became a partner in the Mayfair Theatre, Ottawa’s oldest operating cinema. We’ve shown a lot of films in that time (we average about 40 a month), and I’ve written the synopsis for almost every one.

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  • Of Note Elsewhere

    The Black Girl Nerds Podcast discusses Black girls and women in the Heavy Metal industry with author and journalist Laina Dawes and Ursula “She-Wolf” Parson from Hear Evil News.

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    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.”

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    The Atlantic profiles Spectral Motion, creators of monsters, “effects, and other mechanical grotesqueries that have since become household nightmares, if not names.”

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    A novelist takes revenge on writers he doesn’t like via wikipedia. Slate has the story. “Qworty’s edits undermine our trust in this great project. Qworty’s edits prove that Wikipedia’s content can be shaped by people settling grudges and acting out of spite and envy. Qworty alone, by his own account, has made 13,000 edits to Wikipedia. And Qworty, as the record will show, is not to be trusted.”

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    Diane Dooley writes about Mars’ need for women and ways to subvert it.

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    “[T]he mainstreaming of Jane Eyre as a vanilla romance, or even as an exploration of a woman’s pure, uncompromising, and uncomplicated (and religious! and feminist!) integrity, says all kinds of things about our inability to speak honestly about violence and sex.” More on Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, consent, sex and submission, here. (via K.A. Laity)

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