Category: Articles
Dark Knight Hype: A Story Of Expectations Told By A Reformed Fanboy
I had tears streaming down my face at the close of a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises on a stormy Thursday July night. In one of the film’s final scenes, Batman’s loyal butler Alfred peered over the grave of a not-dead Bruce Wayne and began to weep, expressing his sorrow at having failed…
The Fabulous Forties: 5 Short Films That Can’t Be Missed
Who decreed that feature films run two hours? Though there may be some organic rationale based on how two hours fits into an evening’s entertainment, there’s no rule that I know of that requires 120 minutes. The very first movies ran about 60 seconds, depending on how fast the camera was cranked, because that’s how…
The 100 Greatest Australian Films: Cinema Down Under
Why write a list of the 100 greatest Australian films? While recently browsing through a book on the history of Australian cinema, it occurred to me that most Australian film buffs and cinephiles actually have a very limited concept of the nation’s cinematic output. Except for those films that first garner significant positive attention internationally,…
A History of the Found Footage Film: The Good, the Bad, and the Box Art
It has been fifteen years since The Blair Witch Project, and the found footage genre has settled into a bit of a rut. It is a very restrictive form, best suited to horror and suspense, and most filmmakers discover eventually that it would be nice to break away from the central conceit that everything the…
Showing Good Judgment: The Judge, The Mute and Awaara
Want to hear a really bad idea? Take an example of something from two different cultures and then develop broad conclusions about those two cultures based on the examples. This, in terms of logic, leads to an inductive fallacy, sometimes referred to as the fallacy of the lonely fact. Trust me on this. I am…