About Ultra Culture

Illustration by Dan Meth for our Review of the Year 2009 zine

Ultra Culture is run by sexy blogger man Charlie Lyne. It was created on February 14th 2008 but only became as mind-blowingly brilliant as it is now in about May 2009. Since then, over a thousand blog posts have graced its front page, and only a small handful of those were lazy copies of recent Variety articles. It covers movies of every shape and size from all corners of the Earth, except those released theatrically in the UK by Disney. (It’s a long story — buy me a drink some time.)

In recent years we’ve also had a stab at print with our annual Review of the Year zine, and ‘live events’ with our regular Ultra Culture Cinema events at London’s ICA cinema.

Some things we love: unexpectedly amazing cinema trips, Lars von Trier, black and white movies on Blu-ray, anything involving Hugh Grant, back issues of Sight & Sound, completely dark screening rooms, getting stuff in the post, Eurotrip, the lead-up to the Oscars, the London Film Festival, unconventional aspect ratios and John Hurt’s voice.

Some things we hate: talking during the movie, Total Film poster quotes, people who use the phrase ‘so bad it’s good’, Incendiary, plot synopses, formulaic poster design, ‘after the jump’, the photo captions in Empire, the fact that no-one knows where the ICA is, the Best British Film category at the Baftas, and the Odeon on Putney High Street.

Ultra Culture wouldn’t exist without the support of a massive network of friends, writers, PRs, filmmakers and (of course) you, the humble readers. Thanks a million!