This week Trailers from Hell celebrates the films of Akira Kurosawa. First up, director Brian Trenchard-Smith discusses Rashomon (1950) in just over the time it takes to play the trailer.
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, [...]
“In a good heist film, the heist always goes wrong.” Andrew Nette shares his favorites.
It seems like when people think of comics, they think of superheroes, but there was a long time when crime and comics were synonymous. And now it seems like some of the best comics around are crime books. There’s a new golden age, a new crimewave in comics. I’ve been meaning to write about it, [...]
Elmore Leonard talks hats and adaptations, sometimes both.
“It’s nice to hear all the old songs, isn’t it?”–the Devil, The Black Rider I was surprised to hear the old songs in Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century: 1910 (Top Shelf, 2009). I probably shouldn’t have been. The chapter title, “What Keeps Mankind Alive” distracted me, but I kept [...]
Back in the day, HK studios assumed films with male leads couldn’t cut it in the theaters. So during the 1960s spy era, Hong Kong had Jane Bond films featuring masked spies in catsuits way before Maggie Cheung in Irma Vep. TarsTarkas gathers the resources all in one place, all you have to do is [...]
Bully! 1910 is Now with preview pages from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen–Century: 1910.
I love shiny new things. I’m also getting more ruthless about my time than I used to be. Those competing impulses get resolved in a simple activity that everyone does naturally: following writers who have proved themselves in the past. On that note, here are a few follow-up visits to Gutter pieces of the past. [...]
Fighting the Thieves’ Guild. Beautiful wenches, dazzling swordplay, heaps of treasure, dark spells. Where do all these cliches come from? A lot of them are from people who ripped off Fritz Lieber, who could write circles around just about anybody. And show us a good time doing it too.
With issue 82, Catwoman’s time as a title is done. At least for now. Devon at Rack Raids has a nice little testimonial.
When I first took the screen beat at The Cultural Gutter, I vowed never to do a list article. But promises, like Corningware, are made to be broken.
There’s a scene at the end of the film of Jane Austen’s Persuasion (the Ciaran Hines version, natch) that I love. In it, the hero holds out his hand, and the heroine takes it. That’s it, just two people holding hands. What makes it so powerful is what led up to that quiet moment – [...]
I get sucked in very easily by books that are smooth on the surface. If a book has glossy enough writing and a well-paced storyline, then I’m almost always a sucker for it. But when a book also has something intriguing going on underneath the surface, then I feel like my optimism has been rewarded [...]
Hong Kong was winner of the year and Thailand was loser of the year over at Kaiju Shakedown. But in a world with Johnnie To in it, we’re all winners.
In 2001, Catwoman was everything I ever wanted in a comic. I admit I was a sucker for her new look. A woman’s stompy black boots are her pride and Catwoman’s boots were stompy, black and flat after years of thigh high Pretty Woman stilettos. Not to mention that zippers with rings, black leather, kitty [...]
When you’re put behind the crosshairs of a gun, do you assume you have to shoot to kill? Better still, do you have to shoot to win? For the majority of First Person Shooters, that is certainly the case. What if you were given the choice to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, but still be able to [...]
If you had unlimited power – magical power as a wizard, or even unlimited built-in power like Superman – what would you do with it? Would you act responsibly and protect us regular folks? Or would you become greedy and try to take over the world, like a super-villain? Pop culture takes those two extremes [...]
It’s an idea whose time has come: Ninjas vs. Pirates! Sounds homebrew too: “Almost all scenes in NVP were shot in front of 9 sheets of 30-cent green posterboard in a 12′x13′ apartment living room, lit with $12 Wal-Mart halogen work lights.”
While I wait in the lobby of one of the largest game studios in the world, I watch someone go through to the inner sanctum. The shiny barrier, with transparent doors that whir apart at the wave of a card-pass, looks familiar — I think I’ve seen the devices being used as turnstiles in a [...]
keep looking »
