Pop & Unpop Culture. The best in independent publishing.
Short films were once a mainstay of cinemagoing, playing as support to the main feature. Some were good, many were bad. The Orchard End Murder was excellent.
A critical look at the Netflix documentary series, Don’t F**k With Cats, which has earned both praise and opprobrium for its exploration of the case of Luka Magnotta.
Once upon a time it was common for quirky independent short films to play theatrically in Britain as support to a main feature. But this wasn’t the case for The Adventures of the Son of Exploding Sausage (1969), a quirky thirteen-plus-minute short that starred the Bonzo Dog Band. David Kerekes discusses the matter with Sausage writer/editor/director, David Korr.
David Kerekes bids a fond farewell to Neil Innes, the impish figure behind some well-known acts, including Monty Python, the Rutles, and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.
Scenes from the 2019 Offscreen Film Festival, Brussels. Nova Cinema.
One of the most controversial artists of the British adult comic movement in the 1970s and 1980s, ANTONIO GHURA created and self-published some of the funniest, most outrageous comics ever to make it into print. In this archive article/interview, David Kerekes discusses Antonio’s work and Underground publishing in Great Britain at a time when obscenity busts were commonplace.
The Beast of Chicago: The Murderous Career of H. H. Holmes (2004; Rick Geary). H. H. Holmes: America’s First Serial Killer (USA, 2004; dir. John Borowski). Review by David Kerekes
When the Comics Magazine Association of America established the Comics Code in 1954, not only was salacious, suggestive, violent and horrific content banished from comic books but an entire industry was decimated.
I stumbled across this image on one of my recent jogs around the internet. It is one of the most savage and arresting creations I have seen in a long time, and a beautiful representation of the Grand Guignol aesthetic (horror beyond horror, as I now call it).
Anyone with an interest in Grand Guignol, the theatre in Paris whose name is a byword for horror beyond horror, may care to know that its vicarious thrills are alive on the boards again thanks to some small dedicated theatre companies in London and indeed around the world.
Power Snatched artwork by L Jamal Walton
Power Snatched artwork by L Jamal Walton