Category: Articles
The Lonely Cinephile: How Laurel and Hardy introduced me to robot monsters and slime people
I blame my grandfather for this. Him and all those damn Laurel and Hardy movies he taped off TCM. Much like a heroin addict taking that first hit, my future was pretty much mapped out. Oh sure, I had other nerdy hobbies that made up for my lack of friends or a social life through…
Movies that motivate: The greatest sporting films of all time
Tears, cheers and jeers – the cinematic path of a sports movie can be full of wild variables and vastly different emotions. While some are good and a few are great, most, sadly, are well, just plain…crap! There’s a litany of failed products – mostly American baseball, football or basketball-based to be honest – and…
BFI Gothic: The dark heart of film
The British Film Institute programmes seasons at the Southbank Centre London and special events around the UK often. It’s a key part of what they do, and they do it well. However, BFI Gothic is by far the most exciting season of screenings and events I’ve been witness to. The UK wide celebration of film…
Stanley Kubrick: Remembering the past, present, future, and the eternal return of the family in four films
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Stanley Kubrick may have been correct in assigning Richard Strauss to the apes and Johann Strauss to the spacemen. Standing somewhere in the middle of this evolution, I wonder which creature has it worse, the screeching primate or the cosmic amphibian. Certainly, our robotic dullard of the future could…
Halloween Horrors: 13 Zombie Classics
Tomorrow marks the dawn of Halloween, a celebration that I was never entirely privy to as an Australian child. Each year its arrival was made apparent, not by the marching of costumed children through the streets, but by the sudden avalanche of American Halloween television specials that poured through the small screen into our living…