Category: Notes

The Disturbing Nature of Ultraman

A meditation on Ultraman and Ultraman in manga form, drawn by “horror comics auteur” Kazuo Umezu:  “The boys who read this would grow up to read even more outlandish and violent mens’ comics; the girls would have a whole sub-genre of girls’ horror comics, jam-packed with beheadings, defenestrations, […]

Honest and Dishonest Swearing

In 1969, Joanna Russ spoke to the Philadelphia Science Fiction Convention  about taboo words, their honest and dishonest uses and the unearned thrill:  “I want to be able to use dirty wordies without shocking anybody. I want to write about the subjects they refer to without shocking anybody. […]

Is Boring Bad?

Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott defend the slow and the boring film, giving as examples, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Dargis sees them giving space for thought. Scott sees “protests against the deep…[as] mask[ing] another agenda, which is a […]