Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Other People’s Pulp


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Not good, but very hard to kill: Blade of the Immortal

Hiroaki Samura’s dark fantasy Blade of the Immortal was the last manga that I bought regularly before I decided it was too expensive a hobby, and I did not like the local fandom anyway. The fact that the Italian publisher of the series went belly up halfway through the comic’s run was also part of my decision to let it go, and with it let go of the whole hobby for a decade or two.

But now, as I am digging into the Amazon Prime Video catalog, I was quite surprised finding there is an animated series, released as an Amazon Prime Original, and it can be viewed in Japanese with subtitles.
Well, why not?

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Another War of the Worlds: Revolt (2017)

As part of my plan to milk the Amazon Prime Video subscription for all it’s worth, and as a way to take a break from the rowers’ bench to which I’ll be chained for the next twenty days, I dug into the science fiction offer of Prime and came up with the very generically titled Revolt, from 2017.

And what the heck, this is a nice little SF movie, that looks and plays a lot better than the official budget of 4 million dollars might lead us to expect.

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The adventure movie renaissance that never was

This post is essentially me writing trying to put some order in my ideas.
(also, it goes online with only two recycled images, because my connection is playing up)
Take it for what it is.
My friend Lucy did a post, on her blog, about The Mummy, the 1999 movie featuring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. She pointed out hos it was originally planned to be a low-budget B, and then turned into an 80-million dollars blockbuster that made an inordinate amount of money but failed to launch a true and proper old-style adventure movie renaissance.

And she’s right. Consider all the low-budget (but fun) Indiana Jones clones we got in the 80s – movies that tried to re-capture the thrill and wonder of the original Spielberg film with lower budgets and inferior talent. Where are the Mummy clones post-1999?

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Jane Austen and the Wolfman

It was ten months ago that I mentioned The League of Extraordinary Ladies Writers, a crowdfunding project of the French publisher Les Moutons Electriques – a series of novellas pitching famous writers against classic monsters.
At the time I was too broke to support the crowdfunding, but even without me the project landed 195% of the target figure, and despite some delays due to the COVID-19 thing, now the books have finally hit the shelves.

And how could I resist?
After all, it’s for a good cause – to wit, the improvement of my shaky French skills.
So I went, and bought myself a copy of Jane Austen contre le Loup-garou…

And boy do I need exercise!

But the good news is, when the story is intriguing, well-written and smart, we feel compelled to go on even if some words baffle us. Marianne Ciaudo, who wrote this 130-pages romp, is certainly a fine writer.

And so off I am, to 1800 Hampshire, in a story that, for its patently ridiculous premise, is turning out to be tight, suspenseful and scary, with more than a nod at the old Hammer movies.
And a great exercise.
Looks like I’ll have to get the whole series, in the end.
But Jane Austen comes first…


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Hunting the Kamongo in the Black Lagoon

I was home alone for lunch, so I cooked myself a bowl of rice, and then I watched The Creature from the Black Lagoon, from 1954. Because it’s a movie I like, because it’s been a long time since last I watched it, and because in a couple of weeks I’ll have to record a podcast about it and I want to sound smart and say intelligent stuff.

And as I was quietly enjoying the show, something suddenly … ah!

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