Michigan director Sam Raimi in 1981 with a tiny budget and main actor Bruce Campbell shot the story of a powerful ancient book and the consequences of citing from it aloud in the Tennessee woods. The horror movie The Evil Dead was first presented at the Cannes festival in 1982 (where Stephen King praised its […]
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Author: Dr. A. Ebert
From Ameche to Zozzled: A Glossary of Hard-Boiled Slang of the 1920s through the 1940s by Joe Tradii...
The hard-boiled fiction from the 1930s and the many films noir later, apart from several other similarities, shared a special gangster jargon and streetwise language that lent an extra air of authenticity to those works. As the many weird expressions, prohibition-time lingo, proverbs and often sexists, racist and plainly offensive words used there quickly went […]
Popular Music in the Nostalgia Video Game. The Way It Never Sounded by Andra Ivănescu (2019)
Without doubt, video games have become part of popular culture; with some aspects of the game culture also introduced (and marketed) in the non-virtual present in the form of merchandise, costumes, action figures and so forth. It is a huge market – while gaming now has obtained the status of a cultural practice – worth […]
Bill Monroe: The Life and Music of the Blue Grass Man by Tom Ewing (2018)
When Bill Smith Monroe of Rosine, Kentucky, at the age of eight decided to play an instrument like many in his musical family did, nobody imagined he would forever change country music. As singer and instrumentalist he not only revolutionized mandolin playing as he could play the instrument faster than anybody else: he was the […]
Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return by Antonio Sanna (2019)
Finally, while a huge fan community worldwide was hoping for more than two decades for a continuation of the tales of Agent Dale Copper in the Twin Peaks universe, in 2017 Showtime aired the series‘ third season. Twin Peaks The Return, with all episodes co-written by Mark Frost and David Lynch, did not disappoint audiences. […]
The Northern Soul Scene by Sarah E. Raine et al. (eds.) (2019)
Only a few recent local dance scenes gained enough influence on a global scale, so they could be called some sort of movement; with powerful and addictive rhythms, strong horn sections, strings, highly emotional (shouted) lyrics, an overall richly decorated studio sound, a positive outlook (in the lyrics), a genre of late-1960s soul music, played […]
Weird Fiction in Britain 1880 – 1939 by James Machin (2018)
Author James Machin, visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art, London, introduces the first study on how weird fiction was developed in England by blending Victorian supernatural literature and Gothic horror tales. Instead of a complete survey of the genre, he concentrates on some key writers and certain rather unknown authors who, contrary to […]
The Star Wars Archives: 1977–1983 by Paul Duncan (2018)
The Star Wars universe, presented in nine movies and several spin-offs so far, animated TV series, comic books, novels and other media is a fantastic location. What the first three episodes, Episode IV: A New Hope, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, and Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (that are still held in high […]
America Goes Hawaiian. The Influence of Pacific Island Culture on the Mainland by Geoff Alexander (2...
What began on the American mainland in the 1850s, when the first hula dancers were presented to the public and what was promoted by Hawaiian music only a few years later – the promise of paradise on earth, an Eden in endless summer – the Hawaiian way of life, for the vast majority of Americans […]