Tag: cinema
Subjectivity and Objectivity in Film: Kagemusha, Booze and the Boundaries of Cinema
There’s a great scene in the Kurosawa movie Kagemusha (1980) where two of the three unifiers of Japan, Oda Nobunaga and Ieyasu Tokugawa, meet to discuss business. Nobunaga, who has been Westernised all the way down to his armour, offers Tokugawa a glass of European wine. His comrade takes it and has a sip ……
‘They Came Together’ and the Death of the Indie
There was a time when teenage boys wore jackets and ties to go to birthday parties. There was a time when what we now call a Happy Meal cost under a dollar. And there was a time when the term “Indie Film” meant something. Of course, all those things are ancient history by now. You’ll…
Horror Cinema and the Female Villain: The Perpetuation of Female Victimisation
Monsters have long dominated the realms of the gothic and horrific, both in literature and the cinema. What’s more, these monsters are often male, seeking out women to overtake or destroy. Subsequently, the most common image of women in horror has been a pose of utter victimisation – the scream. In a seminal article entitled…
Rambo Revisited: From First to Final Blood
As the media erupts with slightly affectionate derision at the thought of another Rambo film, now seems like the perfect time to engage in a defense (sort of) of Sylvester Stallone’s flagship movie series, the Rambo tetralogy (soon to become a pentalogy). And why not defend the adventures of John Rambo? No, he may not…
Debating the Auteur Theory: An Argument Against
The second of a two-part debate between CURNBLOG’s Simon Butler and Jonathan Eig on the legitimacy of the Auteur Theory. See Part One here. Let’s go to the source. Andrew Sarris, writing in the Introduction to his seminal book The American Cinema: “Not all directors are auteurs. Indeed, most directors are anonymous. There is much…