Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Negation Aspiration vol. 73
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Thursday, October 26, 2017
We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 332
Horror Franchises Impacted By Potential Weinstein Company Collapse
The Weinstein Company’s Dimension Films quietly put sequels to both Clive Barker‘s Hellraiser and Stephen King‘s Children of the Corn into production two years ago. It was done as a bid to retain the rights with allegedly no intention of a release. Us horror fans have suffered through this for decades now (with Inferno, Hellseeker, Deader, and Hellworld) and it’ll be interesting to see if both franchises will be freed from the grasp in the event of a bankruptcy...And what about the various films acquired and shelved that still haven’t seen the light of day, including the French horror Livide? [pictured above]
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Sunday, October 22, 2017
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Awww Yeah vol. 68
Inside a Secretive Group Where Women Are Branded
Each woman was told to undress and lie on a massage table, while three others restrained her legs and shoulders. According to one of them, their “master,” a top Nxivm official named Lauren Salzman, instructed them to say: “Master, please brand me, it would be an honor.”...A female doctor proceeded to use a cauterizing device to sear a two-inch-square symbol below each woman’s hip, a procedure that took 20 to 30 minutes. For hours, muffled screams and the smell of burning tissue filled the room....Both Nxivm and Mr. Raniere, 57, have long attracted controversy. Former members have depicted him as a man who manipulated his adherents, had sex with them and urged women to follow near-starvation diets to achieve the type of physique he found appealing....State medical regulators also declined to act on a complaint filed against another Nxivm-affilated physician, Brandon Porter. Dr. Porter, as part of an “experiment,” showed women graphically violent film clips while a brain-wave machine and video camera recorded their reactions, according to two women who took part. The women said they were not warned that some of the clips were violent, including footage of four women being murdered and dismembered...She said it had been formed as a force for good, one that could grow into a network that could influence events like elections. To become effective, members had to overcome weaknesses that Mr. Raniere taught were common to women — an overemotional nature, a failure to keep promises and an embrace of the role of victim, according to Ms. Edmondson and other members....Submission and obedience would be used as tools to achieve those goals, several women said. The sisterhood would comprise circles, each led by a “master” who would recruit six “slaves,” according to two women. In time, they would recruit slaves of their own. “She made it sound like a bad-ass bitch boot camp,” Ms. Edmondson said......
Sunday, October 15, 2017
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Awwww Yeah vol. 65
Asia Argento, Who Accused Harvey Weinstein of Sexual Assault, Shares Scene From Her Film Inspired by His Alleged Actions
Argento, an actress born in Rome, played the role of a glamorous thief named Beatrice in the crime drama “B. Monkey,” which was released in the U.S. in 1999. The distributor was Miramax. In a series of long and often emotional interviews, Argento told me that Weinstein assaulted her while they worked together.
At the time, Argento was twenty-one and a rising actress who had twice won the Italian equivalent of the Oscar. Argento said that, in 1997, one of Weinstein’s producers invited her to what she understood to be a party thrown by Miramax at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc, on the French Riviera. Argento felt professionally obliged to attend. When the producer led her upstairs that evening, she said, there was no party—only a hotel room, empty but for Weinstein: “I’m, like, ‘Where is the fucking party?’ ” She recalled the producer telling her, “Oh, we got here too early,” before he left her alone with Weinstein. (The producer denies bringing Argento to the room that night.) At first, Weinstein was solicitous, praising her work. Then he left the room. When he returned, he was wearing a bathrobe and holding a bottle of lotion. “He asks me to give a massage. I was, like, ‘Look, man, I am no fucking fool,’ ” Argento said. “But, looking back, I am a fucking fool. And I am still trying to come to grips with what happened.”
Argento said that, after she reluctantly agreed to give Weinstein a massage, he pulled her skirt up, forced her legs apart, and performed oral sex on her as she repeatedly told him to stop. Weinstein “terrified me, and he was so big,” she said. “It wouldn’t stop. It was a nightmare.”
At some point, Argento said, she stopped saying no and feigned enjoyment, because she thought it was the only way the assault would end. “I was not willing,” she told me. “I said, ‘No, no, no.’ . . . It’s twisted. A big fat man wanting to eat you. It’s a scary fairy tale.” Argento, who insisted that she wanted to tell her story in all its complexity, said that she didn’t physically fight him off, something that has prompted years of guilt.
“The thing with being a victim is I felt responsible,” she said. “Because, if I were a strong woman, I would have kicked him in the balls and run away. But I didn’t. And so I felt responsible.” She described the incident as a “horrible trauma.” Decades later, she said, oral sex is still ruined for her. “I’ve been damaged,” she told me. “Just talking to you about it, my whole body is shaking.”
Argento recalled sitting on the bed after the incident, her clothes “in shambles,” her makeup smeared. She said that she told Weinstein, “I am not a whore,” and that he began laughing. He said he’d put the phrase on a T-shirt. Afterward, Argento said, “He kept contacting me.” For a few months, Weinstein seemed obsessed, offering her expensive gifts.
What complicates the story, Argento readily allowed, is that she eventually yielded to Weinstein’s further advances and even grew close to him. Weinstein dined with her, and introduced her to his mother. Argento told me, “He made it sound like he was my friend and he really appreciated me.” She said that she had consensual sexual relations with him multiple times over the course of the next five years, though she described the encounters as one-sided and “onanistic.” The first occasion, several months after the alleged assault, came before the release of “B. Monkey.” “I felt I had to,” she said. “Because I had the movie coming out and I didn’t want to anger him.” She believed that Weinstein would ruin her career if she didn’t comply. Years later, when she was a single mother dealing with childcare, Weinstein offered to pay for a nanny. She said that she felt “obliged” to submit to his sexual advances.
Argento said that she knew this contact would be used to attack the credibility of her allegation. In part, she said, the initial assault made her feel overpowered each time she encountered Weinstein, even years later. “Just his body, his presence, his face, bring me back to the little girl that I was when I was twenty-one,” she told me. “When I see him, it makes me feel little and stupid and weak.” She broke down as she struggled to explain. “After the rape, he won,” she said.
In 2000, Argento released “Scarlet Diva,” a movie that she wrote and directed. In the film, a heavyset producer corners the character of Anna, who is played by Argento, in a hotel room, asks her for a massage, and tries to assault her. After the movie came out, women began approaching Argento, saying that they recognized Weinstein’s behavior in the portrayal. “People would ask me about him because of the scene in the movie,” she said. Some recounted similar details to her: meetings and professional events moved to hotel rooms, bathrobes and massage requests, and, in one other case, forced oral sex.
Weinstein, according to Argento, saw the film after it was released in the U.S., and apparently recognized himself. “Ha, ha, very funny,” Argento remembered him saying to her. But he also said that he was “sorry for whatever happened.” The movie’s most significant departure from the real-life incident, Argento told me, was how the hotel-room scene ended. “In the movie I wrote,” she said, “I ran away.”
Monday, October 9, 2017
NERRRRRRRRRRD! vol. 63
the first 6 pages of DC Comics DOOMSDAY CLOCK
if you're unaware (and if you are, than i am truly envious), DOOMSDAY CLOCK is DC Comics dementedly absurd, obliviously vindictive attempt to drain more blood from the scabbed over gutters of a finite story that is 30 years beyond its conclusion.
a move both bottomless in its cynicism and labyrinthine in its desperation, DC is tying Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons seminal Watchmen into their already corpulent mainstream superhero multiverse, which has long since swapped out the imaginative speculation of its late 20th century inception for the stay-the-course brand synergy associated with any number of franchised mediocrities pocking the culture of this new century like holographic tombstones.
it's become amusing watching this Goliath of the industry fall flat on its face every time its attempted to spin Moore and Gibbons work into yet another overmarketed corporate product line, but it's also frustrating to see them swallow up all the attentive energies that could be directed toward something new and fresh.
check out Black Mask Studios or something. they got a book called Gravetrancers coming out that looks pretty nifty. or Avatar Press, who put our NEW works from Alan Moore that equal (and perhaps even eclipse) the work he's done for DC. even Image Comics has evolved leaps and bounds beyond where they were 25 years ago.
get over Marvel and DC brands aighty.
if you're unaware (and if you are, than i am truly envious), DOOMSDAY CLOCK is DC Comics dementedly absurd, obliviously vindictive attempt to drain more blood from the scabbed over gutters of a finite story that is 30 years beyond its conclusion.
a move both bottomless in its cynicism and labyrinthine in its desperation, DC is tying Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons seminal Watchmen into their already corpulent mainstream superhero multiverse, which has long since swapped out the imaginative speculation of its late 20th century inception for the stay-the-course brand synergy associated with any number of franchised mediocrities pocking the culture of this new century like holographic tombstones.
it's become amusing watching this Goliath of the industry fall flat on its face every time its attempted to spin Moore and Gibbons work into yet another overmarketed corporate product line, but it's also frustrating to see them swallow up all the attentive energies that could be directed toward something new and fresh.
check out Black Mask Studios or something. they got a book called Gravetrancers coming out that looks pretty nifty. or Avatar Press, who put our NEW works from Alan Moore that equal (and perhaps even eclipse) the work he's done for DC. even Image Comics has evolved leaps and bounds beyond where they were 25 years ago.
get over Marvel and DC brands aighty.
Sunday, October 8, 2017
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 111
Here's How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream
A cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals the truth about Steve Bannon’s alt-right “killing machine.”
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Awww Yeah vol. 64
I have always taken the position that the men's magazines — from the glossiest and most sophisticated to the rawest and raunchiest — represent the brute reality of sexuality. Pornography is not a distortion. It is not a sexist twisting of the facts of life but a kind of peephole into the roiling, primitive animal energies that are at the heart of sexual attraction and desire.
- Camille Paglia
- Camille Paglia
Camille Paglia on Hugh Hefner's Legacy, Trump's Masculinity and Feminism's Sex Phobia
Sunday, October 1, 2017
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