Category: Articles
Strangers When We Meet: Getting to know Richard Quine
Fifty years from now, when they update the film history textbooks, which current directors will merit a section? Some of the older vets are obvious. Scorsese and Spielberg. Almodovar and Von Trier. Zhang Yimou. Household names to film connoisseurs. What about Francis Lawrence, Shane Black, Chris Buck, Pierre Coffin, and Zack Snyder? They directed (or…
Robin Hood versus Batman: Vigilantes and Villains
Robin Hood and Batman have always had a lot in common; aside from their penchant for dressing up, their main point of commonality is that they share a particular brand of stylish vigilante justice. Both the caped and capped crusaders are driven by isolation and personal tragedy, each working outside the accepted laws of the…
Narrative Cinema, From the Modernity Thesis to New Digital Technologies: Traffic in Souls, Avatar, and Beyond
How do you feel about 3D cinema? About CGI, and other SFX? Touchy subject, right? But hardly a new one. Opinions about the development of cinema and even the changing technologies of cinema have been up for debate since the very beginning. As new technologies invade how we experience life more rapidly than ever before,…
Breaking the Fourth Wall: From Alfie to The Wolf of Wall Street
Ah, the fourth wall: that invisible barrier between the audience and the stage that allows us to suspend disbelief. Breaking the fourth wall – addressing the audience directly – is probably as old as theatre. After all, doesn’t Puck turn to the audience at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to assure us everything…
(Mis)reading Film: Jaws and The Onion
I enter into evidence a biting satire of analysis run amok: The Onion has produced a range of very funny videos that provide pseudo-critical responses to popular films, which are as much parodies of their subject as they are satires of the nature of critical analysis itself. In this video from last year, The Onion…