Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
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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Searching for Odin, My Love
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.
Read moreNo Place in Space
On Cultural Gutter, we’re taking a trip to the future to discover that there’s No Place in Space as we explore the Soviet science fiction film To the Stars By Hard Ways. The movie begins with a group of cosmonauts on a routine mission. They happen across a derelict spaceship filled with what appear to be a group of genetically
Read moreThe Bastard Swordsman Saga
Near the end of its lifespan, Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers studio decided that no film was too weird, resulting in a late-in-the-game deluge of utterly bizarre martial arts fantasy films.
Read moreIsland of Death
Island of Death still has the power to shock and entertain in a hilariously debased, grubby way. Twists are heaped upon perversions until the whole thing threatens to collapse into one giddily irredeemable pile of filth.
Read moreKung Fu Zombie
Kung Fu Zombie, , one of the films that inspired the creation of Teleport City, pits Billy Chong against an indestructible living dead martial artist with flaming hands and feet.
Read moreThe Return of Captain Invincible
A washed-up, alcoholic superhero must pull himself out of depression to defeat Christopher Lee in one of cinema’s first deconstructions of comic book superheroes. It also happens to be a musical.
Read moreJames Bond vs. the ’80s
We are increasingly left with a sort of bland guy who just happens to be named James Bond — which, in a way, might be bringing the character back around to how Fleming originally imagined him, as an anonymous blunt instrument into whom a reader could pour his or her own identity; a characterless cypher of a man who might not be interesting but to whom interesting things happened. But honestly, by the middle of the 1980s, with decades of suave, awesome James Bond under our belts, did anyone really want an anonymous 007?
Read moreMusic from Forbidden Kingdoms
This quartet of releases from Sublime Frequencies explores music from countries that have been traditionally off-limits — Myanmar, Shan Province, North Korea —or struggled with decades of oppression and violence—Cambodia.
Read moreS & M Hunter
Liking it may make me a horrible person. Still, it won’t prevent me from maintaining my regular program of affectionately patting all human beings under four feet tall on the head, slinging old ladies over my back two at a time to carry them across the street, and cooking elaborate meals for homeless people.
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