There's a pretty big difference between "Hollywood-influenced" and Hollywwod-set. This more like The Big Knife than The Big Sleep.

Seconding the recommendation for Velvet. It's got a great concept. Imagine that Moneypenny had been a deadly field agent who stepped down to a desk job after she killed someone she was close to in the late 50s. Now, in the early 70s, someone frames her for the murder of the latest 007, and MI6 chases her across…

Slavery was fairly common throughout much of Africa (not just the Northern part) until the 1930s. Eradication of the inland slave trade was a major excuse that Britain used to justify its colonial expansion in the 1880s and 1890s.

I thought "blacklisted" was an amusing term. At any rate, whatever the blockage was, it seems to be gone now (as I've said, it was oddly specific, just blocking me from starting new threads on that particular topic).

Some of the people commenting appear to hate NPR in general and APHC in particular as much as local loon Orson Scott Card does. OSC has devoted more than one column in our weekly conservative rag The Rhinoceros Times to explaining to his readers why PBS is actually good and he's not selling out to the liberals by…

Yep, because I'm an old fuck, I was an adult during the Satanic Panic. I wrote a column for a local arts tabloid pointing out that at least the 50s "witch hunts" reflected fairly rational 20th century fears — there really were (a few) spies from a Communist nation actively working against us (even though most of…

I know that this tends to be true of weekly TV reviews in general, but this sure is long on plot summary and short on critical analysis, or even aesthetic appreciation. You'd never know from these reviews what a visually striking show this is, the heir to Terence Fisher and Mario Bava in way little else in the last…

Something that I wish more memorials took note of is that he was the last of the great MALE horror icons, but not the last icon. Barbara Steele is still very much with us.

Both he and Niven seem to have done in real life what Wayne and Flynn did on the screen. The American movie star who came closest was Lee Marvin, a decorated Pacific vet, but he wasn't doing commando stuff.

How does he sing a duet with himself? Is the role doubled?

I'd been wondering why Ethan kept translating Lupus as Hound rather than Wolf. Apparently Logan has been reading up on werewolf lore.

Yeah, I thought of that adaptation, too. And Sadako in Ringu, of course.

Ten paragraphs of strident humorless butthurt whinging about how women do nothing but rant and whine. A real Lee Marvin style paragon of don't-give-a-damn masculinity, you are.

Not to mention a twatnabulous hoopleheaded pedophile apologist..

Women did not "dominate" the "mainstream pulp fiction industry," a phrase which is both nebulous and contradictory (ARGOSY, ADVENTURE and BLUEBOOK were arguably "mainstream," but none of the horror, SF, fantasy, "spicy," western, hero or mystery pulps were). Dorothy McArdle at WEIRD TALES was the rare woman among…

The constant misuse of "pulp fiction" is a particular bee in my bonnet. 50s paperback originals and Men's Adventure magazines are not "pulps," nor are the digest-sized science fiction magazines that flourished in that decade.

A local geek-oriented coffeeshop and cinema was having a raunchy trivia fundraiser for HIV Education and I got invited to host a round. I chose "Erotic" Fan Fiction as my subject because I thought it would be funny to read paragraphs aloud and ask the audience who the people and/or creatures fucking were.

Yes, her fake persona was actually interesting, and made her more so.

The show does Victorian London better than any genre film or TV episode I've seen in decades. Kudos for having daylight scenes, sometimes even morning ones. Plus, the depiction of restaurants, shops and the routines of upper middleclass life seem uncommonly convincing. I loved the Gossamer Palace. The burgundy…

And sorry back, as I wasn't chiding you, but agreeing that the recapper seems obtuse.