Science fiction, fantasy, comics, romance, genre movies, games all drain into the Cultural Gutter, a website dedicated to thoughtful articles about disreputable art-media and genres that are a little embarrassing. Irredeemable. Worthy of Note, but rolling like errant pennies back into the gutter. The Cultural Gutter is dangerous because we have a philosophy. We try to balance enthusiasm with clear-eyed, honest engagement with the material and with our readers. This book expands on our mission with 10 articles each from science fiction/fantasy editor James Schellenberg, comics editor and publisher Carol Borden, romance editor Chris Szego, screen editor Ian Driscoll and founding editor and former games editor Jim Munroe.

Popular Cinema in Bengal marks a decisive turn in studies of Bengali language cinema by shifting the focus from auteur and text-based studies to exhaustive readings of the film industry. The book covers a wide range of themes and issues, including: generic tropes (like comedy and action); iconic figurations (of the detective and the city); (female) stars such as Kanan Bala, Sadhana Bose and Aparna Sen; intensities of public debates (subjects of high and low cultures, taste, viewership, gender and sexuality); print cultures (including posters, magazines and song-booklets); cinematic spaces; and trans-media and trans-cultural traffic. By locating cinema within the crosscurrents of geo-political transformations, the book highlights the new and persuasive research that has materialised over the last decade. The authors raise pertinent questions regarding 'regional' cinema as a category, in relation to 'national' cinema models, and trace the non-linear journey of the popular via multiple (media) trajectories. They address subjects of physicality, sexuality and its representations, industrial change, spaces of consumption, and cinema’s meandering directions through global circuits and low-end networks. Highlighting the ever-changing contours of cinema in Bengal in all its popular forms and proposing a new historiography, Popular Cinema in Bengal will be of great interest to scholars of film studies and South-Asian popular culture. The chapters were originally published in the journal South Asian History and Culture.

In a nation singularly obsessed with politics on the one hand and cinema on the other, the point where the two intersect arouses avid curiosity and interest. What draws the larger-than-life personalities who entertain us on screen to the world of governance and politics off-screen? Neta Abhineta: Bollywood Star Power in Indian Politics traces this phenomenon through intimate and compelling portrayals of some of the most popular actors in Hindi cinema who have, from the years leading up to India?s independence in 1947, entered Indian politics for reasons ranging from a sense of social commitment to a desperate quest for a second chance at fame when their star power dimmed. Dilip Kumar, Nargis and Sunil Dutt, Rajesh Khanna, Jaya and Amitabh Bachchan, Shatrughan Sinha, Hema Malini, Mithun Chakraborty, Jaya Prada, Vinod Khanna, Govinda, Raj Babbar and Paresh Rawal are some of the more prominent names that feature in this engaging account involving film veterans, superstars and also-rans. Blending history with hard facts and entertaining anecdotes about personal and professional rivalries, clandestine romantic liaisons and cruel betrayals, Rasheed Kidwai?s latest offering presents a potent cocktail. With its clear-eyed perspective on the peculiar nature of Indian politics and its newfound addiction to social media, as well as fresh and fascinating insights into the power games that drive show business and politics, this book reveals what ensues when the two worlds ? as intensely alluring as they are dangerously fickle ? merge.

MERE PAAS...BOLLYWOOD TRIVIA HAI!The Indian cine-goer’s fascination for Bollywood is unending – and then there are those who really like to get their elbows into it dum lagaa ke! Which is why this book, stuffed with super-gyaan (yes, there is a science to the movies as well!) and sprinkled with quirky illustrations is a must-have for anyone in love with or just plain confused by all that goes on in Bollywood. Among the many masaaledar nuggets it features are:• The rulebook on how to plan a filmi elopement; • Fifteen jailers who terrorized prisoners (and the jailbreaks that had wardens quaking at the knees);• Colourful stories that reveal why people get drunk in the movies; • Ten on-screen detectives who had crime on their minds, even if they could never solve them; • Three ways suhaag raats unfold *cough* in Hindi cinema.And there’s much more! From tragedy and mystery to heartbreak and victory – Bollygeek opens up the obsessive, compulsive and addictive world of Hindi cinema like never before. You don’t want to miss out on this one!

This book is based on the iconic actor Dharmendra Ji and all his accomplishments and his journey. This book highlights his beginning, struggle, success, barriers and all his movies and all actors he worked with. Here the reader will embark on a pictorial journey of his life.