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"...are looking at the stars."
-- Oscar Wilde
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This site is updated Thursday afternoon with a new article about an artistic pursuit generally considered to be beneath consideration. James Schellenberg probes science-fiction, Carol Borden draws out the best in comics, Chris Szego dallies with romance and Ian Driscoll stares deeply into the screen. Click here for their bios and individual takes on the gutter. Our Guest Stars shine here

While the writers have considerable enthusiasm for their subjects, they don't let it numb their critical faculties. Tossing away the shield of journalistic objectivity and refusing the shovel of fannish boosterism, they write in the hopes of starting honest and intelligent discussions about these oft-enjoyed but rarely examined artforms. Contact us here.


Recent Features


Disconnected Viewing

sita brahmin.jpegI don't have cable right now so I'm rewatching old shows and movies. A lot of them are animated. Such is my way. I'd like to have a nobler reason for rewatching them--something like when James revisited his favorite childhood books. And it's true—he did inspire me. But it's also true that I don't have cable.

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Hammering Away at the Here and Now

mapinternet-small.jpgLet's say you're the newly-sentient internet. How would you decipher the meaning of all the bits and bytes whizzing past you? And what about the real world outside your electronic realm?

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Pilgrim's Progress

Pilgrim 80.jpgFormer Comics Editor, Guy Leshinski has very kindly given us permission to reprint a prophetic interview with Bryan Lee O'Malley in 2005.  Will Bryan Lee O'Malley attain the Holy Grail of cartoonists? As Bryan says, "We'll see..."


There’s a girl sitting on the subway. She’s 16 or so, in a brown corduroy jacket and a pair of faded sneakers, her feet propped on the seat across from her. She’s absently brushing on lipstick, absorbed by Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life: Volume 1.

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The Cultural Gutter: Search Results

Results tagged “conventions and festivals” from The Cultural Gutter


Wil Wheaton Loves You

"It doesn't mean that Wil Wheaton doesn't love you": Jonathan Coulton explains a few things about Wil Wheaton to Wil Wheaton and the fans at PAX 2009--to the tune of "Code Monkey."
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Solomon Kane: Puritan Swordsman

Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane buckles his swash, fights the Devil's Reaper and becomes a puritan swordsman in, well, Solomon Kane--a much better action movie with Christian themes in which the hero is crucified than The Passion of the Christ.
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Symbol

Matsumoto Hitoshi has not made an art film, but it sure looks like one
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Grr, Argh, Trailer Round-up

Grr, argh! Here's a little undead creatures trailer round-up from the Toronto International Film Festival's Midnight Madness program:  DaybreakersSurvival of the Dead and [Rec]2.  Grr, argh!
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Here Comes the Madness

Midnght Madness starts soon. Start planning your schedule...
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NYAFF 2009 Video

Sad you couldn't make the New York Asian Film Festival this year with all its pink films, Minoru Kawasaki and Wai Ka-Fai? It's time to do something about it. Something sedentary, like watch the Q&A and festival fun from the comfort of your sofa or at your desk.
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NYAFF 2009 and Hypnotic Escapism

The New York Asian Film Festival wants to help you escape joblessness, global pandemics and despair. Why don't you let it? (Info here).
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Speaking with the Sensei

Miss the Toronto Comic Arts Festival? That's okay. Deb Aoki has a really nice long interview between Adrian Tomine and Yoshihiro Tatsumi. And some questions she asked Tatsumi-sensei herself.
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TCAF 2009

Miss the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this year? That's okay, Vepo Studios made a video. And while you're there, check out the profiles of artists like Evan Munday.
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Game Developers Conference: Golden Gate

Former Gutter Overlord and Games Editor, Jim Munroe, has written a really nice little text adventure set at the 2009 Game Developers Conference. Rock Paper Shotgun calls it an "[o]ddly human little thing which captures quite a bit about the human side of development."
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Starting a Film Festival?

"We once programmed a retrospective of old kung fu films at a local theater and our prints looked like a collection of ex-convicts who had been trained to sneak into occupied Europe and assassinate Hitler: scarred, battered, and problematic." Grady Hendrix's advice isn't past its expiry date.
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Cerise and Girl-Wonder Join Forces

Girls play games and boy are they pissed:  Cerise Magazine and Girl Wonder.org join forces for a women, comics and games special issue. 
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A Little More Weird Western

How about a little more of Kim Ji-Woon's The Good, The Bad and the Weird, my favorite Western, weird or not, in a while. Look at Jung Woo-Sung ride! (And watch out for some horse-tripping).

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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.
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Detroit Metal City: No Music, No Dream

dmc krauser 80.jpg

We live in a time of film adaptations of comic books massive and tiny, from Iron Man and The Dark Knight to Wanted and the upcoming Surrogates. But I don't need to see any more. I have seen Detroit Metal City and it is a testament to awesomeness.

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Response to Harassment in the Geek World

Comic Con Anti-Harassment Project and further discussion of the post we posted from Bully. Also, the Open Source Women Back Each Other Up Project, here and here. (thanks, Elizabeth!)
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Seriousness at ComicCon

Bully talks about sexual harassment at ComicCon. Pass it on.
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2008 Madness Begins

The 2008 Midnight Madness films have been announced.  If you're in Toronto then, you'll have a chance to see movies like Chocolate, Detroit Metal City, JCVD and The Burrowers (no trailer) on the big screen. I'ma be there.

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A Million Different Earths, A Million Different Movies

Grady Hendrix muses on the alternate cuts of films for different festivals, different countries and different regions.  "A million different earths, and on every one of them, an alternate cut of Days of Being Wild." 
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Hellboy and the Hobbit

Guillermo del Toro has a lot to say about Hellboy and hobbits at the L.A. Film Festival. (Really, it's an hour interview).
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Paw through our archives

Of Note Elsewhere
Wicked posters for Raleigh, North Carolina's Cinema Overdrive film series.
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Here are some pictures of the ladies reading comics for Read Comics in Public Day. As Gail Simone writes, "Take note everybody in comics!"  (For the record, Carol read Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service 5 on a sidewalk bench, but there's no photo).
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48 vs. 61 in Rintaro and Katsushiro Otomo's excellent bicycle racing short where the racers look kinda like Rintaro and Otomo. Also, damn fine music and possible steampunkery.
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Klingon opera has finally happened. Get an earful at Cinematical. (The musical part begins at about 2:15).
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Makiko Itoh has translated Satoshi Kon's farewell.
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View all Notes here.
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