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
The Biography of Ebony White
"People
don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book."
--Malcolm
X / Malik El-Shabazz, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (As Told To
Alex Haley)
Running
from 1940-1952, Will Eisner's The Spirit
was a newspaper insert back when publishers could afford to do such
awesome things. It features Denny Colt, a detective who comes back to
life to fight crime from his secret hide-out in Wildwood Cemetery.
The Spirit is indeed
everything good anyone has ever written about it—all the joyful
adventure, groundbreaking art and genre play. But then there's Ebony
White, the Spirit's African-American sidekick and driver, all eyes
and lips and minstrel show dialect. And I can barely look at him, even though I know
I should.
Time to check in with a few small-press books. This is where where a lot of people get their start, and it’s
also where the books can live quite happily apart from the concerns of multinational conglomerates.
Right.
So you’ve joined the RWA, and are enjoying the information and
advocacy your membership entitles you to. But National’s a long
way off, and RWA headquarters is in Texas, and you’re starting to
get a little lonely. So what do you do? You join your local
chapter. Where I live, that means the Toronto Romance Writers.
Scott McCloud is doing a crazy road tour for his new book, Making Comics, complete with family blog and entertaining video podcasts (with interviews of writers and artists) done by his kids.
John Hodgman and Patton Oswalt face off in an epic geek-off for WFMU. Bester'ed, Bova'ed-- two geeks enter, one geek leaves.
~
A young woman releases demons and then has to trap them up again with her grandfather's camera in the webseries, Camera Obscura. The trailer looks promising.
Symbol. It's a metaphysical, lucha-loving film by Hitoshi Matsumoto. It's especially funny if you've seen art films with a someone sitting in a plain white room.
~
Kathryn Bigelow won a best directing Oscar for The Hurt Locker. Time for a retrospective. Here's the trailer for Near Dark and some clips. Point Break (i.e. Keeanu Reeves best movie). Jamie Lee Curtis in the cop thriller, Blue Steel. The premillennial tension of Strange Days. The Pirelli ad, Mission Zero. And her sub movie, possible the manliest of genres, K-19: The Widowmaker. She also wrote an episode of The Equalizer.
~
View all Notes here. Seen something shiny? Gutter-talk worth hearing? Let us know!
"People
don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book."
Time to check in with a few small-press books. This is where where a lot of people get their start, and it’s
also where the books can live quite happily apart from the concerns of multinational conglomerates.
Right.
So you’ve joined the