Category: Articles
Notes on Stanley Kubrick: Filmmaker, Artist, Voyeur
These notes were generated after seeing the catalogue of a major exhibition currently on at the Museum of New York City called Through a Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs. It shows the young Kubrick’s expert eye in about 300 photographs, most from his precocious days as a Look photographer when he joined the staff at…
Einstein’s Film at Warner Brothers: Feb 3, 1931
It’s very hard to explain one’s enthusiasm about a film or particular piece of film because one is steered by the sum of one’s life experience at that point, and everyone’s experience is different. I will try and explain why the below clip is one of my favourite films of all time. It crosses all…
Ten top picks at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival this July
Two years ago I was lucky enough to attend the first annual Melbourne Documentary Film Festival as a media partner. Looking at the vast array of high-quality Australian and international documentaries they had on offer, I knew that I was seeing the beginning of something special. Last year my good fortune continued when I was offered…
Sex and Tragedy: Hollywood’s Hypocritical Treatment of Gay Characters
Why does it always seem that mainstream American filmmakers are perfectly fine with showing homosexual relationships and even gay sex onscreen … as long as the characters don’t wind up with individuals of the same genders at the ends of the movies? A look at a selection of relatively high-profile pictures tells a rather perturbing…
Musical Snares, Part II: ‘Excalibur,’ Wagner and the Context of Melody
Anyone care to explain why music from Richard Wagner’s seminal opera Tristan und Isolde, which tells the story of the doomed love between Arthurian Knight of the Round Table Sir Tristan and the already married queen Iseult, is used to accent scenes featuring the fellow warrior Lancelot and his lord’s wife Guinevere in John Boorman’s…