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
Small Press Combo Attack
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.
It’s been just over a year since I became a partner in the Mayfair Theatre, Ottawa’s oldest operating cinema. We’ve shown a lot of films in that time (we average about 40 a month), and I’ve written the synopsis for almost every one.
You want comics? We got comics. Like, all of them.
by Ian Driscoll
Curious what the cover of Doom Patrol #89 (August, 1964, first appearance of The Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man) looks like? Or any other comic, for that matter? Check out the bottomless treasure trove that is the Grand Comic Book Database, home to over 150,000 scanned comic book covers and counting.
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.
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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.
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So much Milestone going on! Milestone creator Dwayne McDuffie talks with The Atlantic about "reinventing personal mythologies, pop-cultural representations of race and an investigation of what shapes our moral frameworks" and how much he likes writing romance. Meanwhile, Evan Narcisse shares his memories of Milestone Comics--with pictures.
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 