Category: Articles
Death is Not the End: Big Hero 6 and the Big Cheat
This is not so much a film review or article, but a beginning, an initial exploration. I’m fascinated by how technology and the fear of death are becoming increasingly entwined in Western culture. There are no easy lessons to draw, but I wanted to write something about how mainstream cinema interacts and deals with such…
The Reboot Fallacy: Why Every Film is a Remake
We forget, within a modern societal structure, that the propagation of culture is often achieved through re-enactment or retelling. When oral tradition was the dominant social form, prior to the written word, the most famous, most important and the most socially relevant stories or mythologies were the ones being retold at festivals, around campfires and…
B-horror and the Rise of the Scream Queen
The b-movie or b-picture was a product of the Golden Age of Hollywood (arguably the 1930s-1950s, more or less) and really took off with the introduction of the “double feature” at cinemas. The b-picture was the more cheaply produced, not always feature length, curtain-raiser at double feature events. Several genres were represented in the…
For Young and Old: The Greatest Living Directors Sorted by Age
I recently wrote a piece choosing the four most significant directors from each of eleven countries. I referred to the lists as Mount Rushmores. (You can read it here, if so interested). The response I got, with dozens of fans telling me just how wrong I was, has inspired me to do it again. This…
The Camera on Film: Seven Films about Photographers
Perhaps because I have long had an interest in photography, and collecting cameras, films about this subject have always attracted my attention. There have been many films about early cinema pioneers, and the ubiquitous ‘film within a film’ theme offers many examples. However, this article is about still photographers, and how they have been represented…