How well do you really know old Arty? It all began with the Welsh: The The Annales Cabriae (inside) and parts of the Welsh oral tradition (later collected into the Mabinogion) give a very different picture of the popular King Arthur than contemporary readers are familiar with: no Lancelot, three or four different Guens, no love triangles or Holy Grails. A look at the vast scope of the Arthurian legend. [more inside]
posted by kittenmarlowe on Dec 19, 2011 - 30 comments

Six Dialogues with Leuco by Cesare Pavese. The Flood, The Beast & The Witches, three dialogues by Cesare Pavese. Poems. Poems. Poems. Poems.
posted by OmieWise on Sep 9, 2011 - 1 comment

Leonard Michaels' "The Zipper": Rita Hayworth is never seen disrobed in the movie, though it is threatened more than once. The atmosphere of dark repression and mysterious forces – the mood or feeling of the movie – might be destroyed by the revelation of her body. It scared me as she began her striptease dance in the nightclub. I didn’t want everybody to see her body, or even to see that Rita Hayworth had a body. [more inside]
posted by Trurl on Sep 5, 2011 - 14 comments

The AV Club feature Gateways to Geekery is all about the best places to start on some of pop culture's most complex and nuanced artists and genres, including Randy Newman, The Who, Monty Python, steampunk, Sherlock Holmes and 90 others. [more inside]
posted by Apropos of Something on May 25, 2011 - 41 comments

Richard Matheson—Storyteller - To mark the publication of a book of tribute stories writer and editor Richard Bradley has been blogging about the author's 60 year writing career- covering I Am Legend, Duel, and The Incredible Shrinking Man, not to mention Somewhere in Time (full index here). Of course Matheson is probably most famous for his contributions to the Twilight Zone, being one of it's three major writers and scripting Nightmare at 20,000 feet. Twice.
posted by Artw on Jan 4, 2011 - 25 comments

Wha be tha blake prevy lawe
That bene wantoun too alle tha feres?
SHAFT!
Ya damne righte!

(Obligatory secondary links).
posted by swift on Oct 25, 2005 - 22 comments

Everyone is talking about Clint Eastwood's new movie, Million Dollar Baby (trailer). What you may not know however is that the movie was based on a short story in a book by the name of Rope Burns: Stories From The Corner by the late F.X. Toole (aka Jerry Boyd). The book by the way was called, "...the best boxing short fiction ever written," by James Ellroy of L.A. Confidential fame. Back in 2000 Toole gave an amazing interview on Fresh Air about spending the last 20 years of his life as a cut man and the last 40 years of writing while trying to overcome his fear of rejection before getting his first book published at age 70.
posted by pwb503 on Jan 18, 2005 - 19 comments

The biology of B-movie monsters ; ancient Greek curse and love magic; the correspondence of Elizabeth I and James VI; Egil Skallagrimsson, poet and killer; the mythology of Harry Potter; Pinocchio's cultural heirs; Tiananmen's legacy; experimental art in China; the question of Hatshepshut's character. Articles courtesy of the Fathom Archive, 2000-2003.
posted by plep on Jan 15, 2005 - 11 comments

"First, look up the most popular and critically-acclaimed books, movies, and music on Amazon. Click on 'Customer Reviews,' and sort them by 'Lowest Rating First'..." The Amazon.com Knee-Jerk Contrarian Game.
posted by reklaw on Jul 2, 2004 - 48 comments

GLAMORLUX Cool Collections ~ vintage photos, movie posters, book covers and album covers from Hollywood's golden era.
posted by crunchland on Jun 28, 2003 - 6 comments

On The Road... coming to a theater near you (scroll down in link). Francis Ford Coppola is working on a film adaptation of Kerouac's classic (?), starring Brad Pitt. Genius? Heresy? I can see the Barnes & Noble tie-ins now...
posted by serafinapekkala on Aug 29, 2002 - 54 comments

Alexandre Dumas on film This AP/CNN article says Dumas’ books make good movies, but aren’t being read as much as they used to be. Do the changes the movies make improve the books, or would more faithful adaptations be better?
posted by kirkaracha on Feb 2, 2002 - 15 comments

Daema kicks some serious ape butt The sequels to Pierre Boulle's original Planet of the Apes novel are, apparently, leaving something to be desired. Lets invent some and raise the tone, shall we? Planet of the Jeeps: An astronaut lands on a planet and gets rammed in his Nissan Micra at an intersection by a Simian driving a Sport Utility Vehicle. Director Tim Burton gets slated by the critics - "Good Science Fiction should show us things we've never seen before".
posted by RichLyon on Aug 26, 2001 - 19 comments

Tales for the L33+. Because the l33+ need to understand classic literature, too.

Chris has done several other Flash movies, and you can download Tales for the L33+ from the listings page as a ZIP file, if you decide you like it and want to watch it again and again while saving his site from the same bandwidth-sucking fate as that one song with the squirrel and the weeeeeeeeee! and the strife and the Ron Jeremy and all that.
posted by jason on Aug 21, 2001 - 1 comment

Don't make Hunter mad. Hunter S. Thompson doesn't think the production company that optioned The Rum Diaries is doing a very good job. And he tells them. Man, does he tell them.
posted by cfj on Mar 10, 2001 - 14 comments