This site is updated Thursday at noon 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.
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. Click here for the writer's bios and their individual takes on the gutter.
Recent Features
Squeeze Play
Romance
and sports don’t mix. That’s the conventional wisdom, anyway.
It’s one of those weird rules, hidden and unarticulated, that seem
to underly any given genre. It’s a tenet that gets passed down to
new writers, not as gospel so much as in the form of a mild warning.
It’s not that books about athletes are uninteresting, the wisdom
would have it; it’s that they’re unsellable. Readers won’t
care about them, so editors won’t buy them.
Unlessyou’re Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Then all bets are off.
It's a big office, and dark, which makes it feel
even larger, cavernous. The theme from Dr. Who (Delia Derbyshire’s 1963
version) reverberates in the space, buzzing up your spine like a telegraph
signal.
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.
Ah, the perennial music nerd topic, Desert Island Discs. On the Beatles' Help: "This album falls on the trailing edge of their original Beatlemania phase and the beginning of their brief folk-rock/art-pop phase (a phase I wish had lasted a little longer before they went pepperdelic)."
Dr. Julius T. Roundbottom, gentleman of science, reports on a paper he delivered to the Adventurer's Club a pack of "close-minded fools more interested in the rush of adrenaline than actual science." (thanks, Steven!)
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Grady Hendrix writes about missing the point in martial arts and action movies, especially Ashes of Time: "Character, dialogue and subtext are important parts of the
moviegoing experience, but there's another more primal language that's
harder to parse and that's the language of action."
~
Scroll down for some rap based on Welcome Home, Brother Charles, a film about a Black man castrated by a white cop who gets revenge when his penis grows back.
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"I've been on the road so long. I want a home." My favorite trailer for Johnnie To's stealth Western, Exiled.
Romance
and sports don’t mix. That’s the conventional wisdom, anyway.
It’s one of those weird rules, hidden and unarticulated, that seem
to underly any given genre. It’s a tenet that gets passed down to
new writers, not as gospel so much as in the form of a mild warning.
It’s not that books about athletes are uninteresting, the wisdom
would have it; it’s that they’re unsellable. Readers won’t
care about them, so editors won’t buy them.
