The Cultural Gutter

the cult in your pop culture

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

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. [...]

“Toshiro Mifune, Japan’s John Wayne”

Movie Morlocks‘ Kimberly Lindbergs explores Toshiro Mifune’s influence on Westerns, Westerns’ influence on Akira Kurosawa, and Red Sun, a Western directed by Terence Young and starring Toshiro Mifune, Charles Bronson, Alain Delon and Ursula Andress.  

RIP, Tony De Zuniga

Comic artist Tony De Zuñiga has died. Zuñiga is best known as co-creator of Jonah Hex and Black Orchid.  Not only did he leave us with some fine art, but Zuñiga worked hard to get recognition for fellow Filipino artists.  Comic Book Resources has an obituary and a gallery of his work.  Here’s a video [...]

A Hero To Some

“He was a hero to some, a villain to others, and wherever he rode people spoke his name in whispers. He had no friends, this Jonah Hex, but he did have two companions: One was death itself… The other, the acrid smell of gunsmoke…” I’ve meant to write about Jonah Hex for a long time [...]

Most Anticipated Asian Films of 2011

Wildgrounds breaks down their most anticipated films of 2011.

Let The Bullets Fly

The bullets fly in Weng Jiang’s new Asian Western set in 1920s China:  Let the Bullets Fly.  It stars Chow Yun-Fat, Carina Lau and Weng Jiang himself. And though that sure sounds like Chow Yun-Fat, word is Mr. Chow has been dubbed. It would make a nice double feature with The Good, The Bad, The [...]

“Tresspassing on Sacred Ground”

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As part of TCM‘s Race & Hollyood: Native American Images on Film” festival, Movie Morlocks has posted part 1 of an essay on Native Americans in horror movies from The Werewolf a 1913 Canadian silent to J.T. Petty’s The Burrowers and Twilight: New Moon: “The inclusion of Native Americans into actual horror movies boils down [...]

Asian Western Round Up

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This month we’re mixing it up at the Gutter with each editor writing about something outside their usual domain. This week Carol Borden writes about movies. She can normally be found here. The world is clamoring for more Asian Westerns. Or at least I am.  I’m talking Thai, Chinese, Japanese and Korean Westerns. They seem [...]

Interview with Joe Lansdale

Champion Mojo storyteller Joe Lansdale talks about what makes him a champion: a crazy number of upcoming stories, a Jonah Hex animated short and his mighty understanding of the publishing industry.(Thanks, Chuck!)

Josh Brolin is Jonah Hex

Here’s some pictures of Josh Brolin looking kinda pretty as everybody’s favorite Weird Western bounty hunter, Jonah Hex.  (See comics covers for less pretty). Cinematical is worried they’ll be pulled down.

John Wayne Can’t Save You

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This month we’re mixing it up at the Gutter with each editor writing about something outside their usual domain. This week Carol Borden writes about movies. She can normally be found here. Blood Red Earth has been on FEARnet for weeks now. A horror movie set in the Old West with a Native American cast? [...]

Stick to the Man in his Regions!

The Man got you down? Too focused on his “Regions?” Won’t let you watch US content outside the US? Saving your searches? Well, I’m not recommending anything. Just saying Hotspot Shield might’ve done some good and it might help you watch some fine programming here and here.  And don’t forget here.

Blood Red Earth at FEARnet

Feel all the horror of tainted meat as FEARnet streams J.T. Petty’s Blood Red Earth, the Lakota-language prequel to The Burrowers. 

Blood Red Earth

Get ready to squirm–there’s a prequel to The Burrowers, the sure-to-be-squicky, Lakota-language Blood Red Earth.

The Burrowers Trailer

Some say The Burrowers is like The Searchers. Kinda is. The Burrowers is also a weird western and it hit me hard. Here’s the trailer.

Good, Weird, no Bad

Tears of the Black Tiger, Sukiyaki Western Django and now Kim Jee-woon’s The Good, the Bad and the Weird, starring Song Kang-ho, Lee Byung-hun and Jung Woo-sung.  Asian Westerns are where it’s at.

Not So Happy Ending

King puts himself in the story; he also screws with the happy ending formula.

Talk about a long journey. Stephen King wrote the first line of a short story called “The Gunslinger” in 1970, at the beginning of his career, and the first volume of the Dark Tower series was published in 1982. Nearly 35 years after its humble beginnings, the series has come to its conclusion with the [...]

  • Of Note Elsewhere

    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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    “In a column just as true today as it was at the time of its writing, this reprint from the February 1998 issue of Game Developer magazine by game designer J.C. Herz blasts the industry conservatism and the retreading of familiar ideas.” Read it at Gamasutra.

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