Tag: film
(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…
The Big Bang: Cinema and The Bomb
Ever since the first use of atomic weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the idea of the effects of a nuclear war and its post-apocalyptic aftermath has been the subject of numerous film treatments. From giants ants, mutated by radiation fallout in the deserts of the American south-west in Them!…
Free to Play: E-Sports and the Gaming Revolution
Free to Play is a sports documentary in a familiar form; it follows the lives of a number of hopeful competitors approaching a huge tournament. These sorts of documentaries are a common method of celebrating a sport; they present an event as a humanised piece of history and offer a view into the world of…
13 Great Movie Androids, Cyborgs and Robots
Everyone loves lists and movies. I love mechanical life forms too. So I’ve rolled all three into one with a little engineering spin. This list is by no means comprehensive – it’s simply thirteen of my favourite androids, cyborgs and robots. 13. Blinky – BlinkyTM (2011) BlinkyTM is a short film about a boy,…
Group Offences: Braveheart and the future of prejudiced pictures
The worst thing I ever heard at the movies was laughter. This oft-merry sound reached me, to my dismay, at a Manhattan showing of Mel Gibson’s historical epic Braveheart (1995) nearly 20 years ago. I was watching it in the theatre, surrounded by other New Yorkers, when a scene came up in which King Edward…