Culture
And They All Died Happily Ever After: Cozies, Grimdarks, and Modern Morality
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Those familiar with Game of Thrones will recognize the hallmarks of โgrimdarkโ storytelling. In a grimdark world, morals are flexible. Dark aesthetics and gritty details dominate. Todayโs hero could be tomorrowโs villain, if external circumstances change. Given the headlines of the past few years, the moral uncertainty of such stories has a โripped from the…
Ferrari Performs an Opera of Capitalism and Comes Up Loud
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Movies are loud. They are often written and written about in clamorous verbiage: they leer and loom, assault, pummel, and thunder. They are religion and sex strapped together into a rig of worshipful attention, all spectacle satiation and ritual subjugation. Before every contest, the screen starts at black. Our heart races. The device ignites. Letโs…
Mr. Monkโs Last Case is a Sweet and Thoughtful Return to the Classic Series
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Itโs been fourteen years since we last saw Adrian Monk. Monk, the anxious, observant detective protagonist of the USA Network series of the same name, which ran eight seasons from 2002 to 2009, was a prime-time treasure, one of the greatest detectives in the annals of TV. Played to gentle, humorous (but never mocking) pathos…
The Best Young Adult Mysteries, Thriller and Horror Novels of 2023
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The young adult mystery continues to thrive, along with plenty of YA horror thrillers, and this year was distinguished by quality storytelling, careful constructions, and social justice elements placed front and center. Whether you want to defeat the monsters or be the monster, solve the murder or get your own deadly vengeance, 2023 has an…
Memory, Place, and Hauntings: On Torontoโs Seedy Seventies-Era โSin Stripโ
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In the late 70s my family emigrated to Toronto and stayed for two years. In those days, downtown was notorious for its Sin Strip. Four blocks concentrated on Yonge between Gerrard and Dundas. They were loaded with strip joints, adult bookstores, rub โnโ tugs and movie theatres which, according to The Globe and Mail, made…
Crime Novels About Cursed Films
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In 2023, two new novels, and one older title, were published in a niche of the detective/thriller genre concerning, to coin a term of art, โsinister ๏ฌlms:โ ๏ฌlmsโoften lost, frequently silent, and usually scaryโthat have proven deleterious to their cast and crew during and after production and/or have a deleterious e๏ฌect upon audiences unlucky enough…
The Enduring Appeal of Murder and Mystery: A Brief History
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โThou shalt not kill,โ commands the King James Bibleโ without, as opponents of capital punishment like to point out, riders or qualifiers. Curiously, this translation of an injunction in the ancient Hebrew Torah did not lead the list of Yahwehโs rules; it arrives after other warnings, such as no swearing and no bowing to the…