What is it about self-destruction that is so compelling? It feels terrible on all the obvious levels, sure, but on some deep, barren, emotional plane where the wind howls endlessly through the stunted trees, it’s also terribly satisfying. Somehow it feels right, even when it clearly looks wrong. […]
It takes a special sort of person to be haunted. It also takes a special sort of person to be a haunting. This is the unquiet thing looking up at me from the bottom of Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black, although I’ll admit that reading is influenced […]
For those of us who did not grow up watching Bollywood films (and maybe even for those of you who did, depending on how closely an adult monitored what you were watching when or after this film came out), there is a particular threshold that each of us […]
This essay has some plot details and some swears in it. Proceed accordingly, my friends. ~~~ “I don’t know what I should have done. I never had to save the world before.” ~ Rita Farr Somewhere in west central Ohio, Black drag diva Maura Lee Karupt (Alan Mingo, […]
Consider the following: Tone deaf Barney Fife’s lurching tenor could peel the bark off trees, but he brags himself onto the choir right before a state competition. Unable to convince Barney to take a speaking role or sit the performance out, Sheriff Andy Taylor tasks him with the […]
It’s not terribly high in historical accuracy, but Sikandar is wonderful to behold and thoroughly thought-provoking about empire and political virtue from pre-Independence India. Sikandar manages to be completely entertaining while still indulging in lesson-dispensing from Aristotle, who as the film opens is in Persia with Sikandar and […]
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The Cultural Gutter 