Festivity, Revels, and Nocturnal Dalliances
Todd Stadtman’s vast, voracious appetite for the beautiful and strange art of the world pushed me beyond limitations I would have otherwise settled within. “I still have a lot to discover. “I still have a lot to discover” is one of the best feelings in the world, and Todd instilled it in me almost daily.
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I have not touched a tarot deck since high school. My relationship with such things has always been casual. But as the human race continues to reel about in its own filth, I’ve begun to rethink my association with certain interests.
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On the Cultural Gutter, I’m writing about apocalyptic scifi and horror from the normally well-behaved Japanese film studio Shochiku. Shochiku was most closely identified with shomin-geki, dramas about the lives of everyday people, and the undisputed master of such films was Shochiku director Yasujiro Ozu. But a studio can only exist for so long on movies in which a middle-aged
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By adulthood, I couldn’t even remember why I hated Condorman. I could only remember that I did. That was just too much like those stories where two sides have been killing each other for so long that they can no longer even remember why they are fighting.
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Before he was “King,” he was Nathaniel Adams Coles. In the 1930, he put together a rowdy jazz trio that was a lot different than the Nat King Cole most people know.
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The Slow Grind Fever series is a fascinating collections of creepy, crawly R&B in a minor key; some songs and artists major hit makers…others mysterious and obscure. It’s proper music for smoky juke joints, rowdy house parties, and dangerous liaisons.
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In the 1950s, film began to move away from romantic or bombastic orchestral scores and toward a more varied landscape. One of the styles that started making its mark on cinematic soundtracks during this period was jazz.
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A pioneering work of “space age pop,” Music out of the Moon was a collaboration between arranger Les Baxter, composer Harry Revel, and theremin player Samuel Hoffman.
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This is no unique story. Soul Discharge was the gateway for a lot of people who, like me, saw it one day and wondered what the hell it was.
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Langston Hughes’ autobiography, The Big Sea, deserves to be counted among the great works of travel literature. Also, there is Jocko the monkey.
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On Diabolique: My three-part article, “Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio,” examines A Chinese Ghost Story, the original story by Pu Songling, and the Shaw Brothers’ Enchanting Shadow.
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Back in the day, Jimmy Wang Yu was one of my favorite punching bags, and I’m glad I was never a punching bag for him. Because I hear he was actually pretty tough.
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On Diabolique, I’m writing about the surreal Polish fantasy film The Hourglass Sanatorium and the malleable nature of how we remember our past.
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On Diabolique, I am writing about the Czech fantasy film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and how it reflects Czechoslovakia during the rebellious Prague Spring.
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On the Cultural Gutter, I am Searching for Odin, My Love — one of the most expensive, most lavish, most boring, and most infamous anime flops of all time.
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