I’ve been thinking about what “disreputable art” means in a time when nerds, fans, and geeks have won a kind of cultural hegemony. It was different when the Cultural Gutter was founded in 2003, before Iron Man (2008) launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Force awakened, and the […]
At Vulture, Marya E. Gates writes an excellent piece on Marilyn Monroe’s poetry and what the film, Blonde (2022) overlooks. “In one fragment, she contemplates how we can never really know what others went through in their early years and ‘what they drag with them.’ In another, she […]
Marya E. Gates has some thoughts on Andrew Dominik’s Blonde (2022), Marilyn Monroe, and the photography of Weegee. “Weegee would take this idea of distorted reality even further with his doctored images of celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, warping them ever so slightly, enough so that they feel off […]
Actor Lauren Bacall has died. Bacall is most famous for work with her first husband Humphrey Bogart, To Have And Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946) and Key Largo (1948), but she also starred in Douglas Sirk’s classic melodrama Written On The Wind (1956), co-starred with Marilyn […]
Actress Jane Russell has died at 89. She starred in films and television in every genre from noirs (Macao with Robert Mitchum) to musicals (Gentleman Prefer Blondes with Marilyn Monroe) to Westerns (The Outlaw). KPBS and The New Yorker have tributes.