Tag: film
Time travel and film: Examining a science fiction sub-genre
Despite the popularity of time travel as a narrative device, it’s amazing just how few truly great films there are in this science fiction sub-genre. The concept of time travel has played a pivotal role in science fiction since the late nineteenth century, when it was most frequently used as a mode for exploring either…
Sex and the movies: The age of anticlimax
We need better sex scenes in the movies. You may laugh. Even snicker. But it’s a problem. Sex scenes today, in general, stink. True, this is a broad statement, and there are many exceptions. I wonder, though, if filmmakers in the not-so-new millennia often view such content as obligatory, like a car chase in an…
Cinema and combat: Is filming a great battle scene a lost art?
Is filming a great battle scene a lost art? I pondered this question recently after watching The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) in all its lengthy, kill-the-orcs-in-creative-ways glory. Director Peter Jackson certainly knows how to helm an epic contest—the thrilling defense of Gondor in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) is…
Shakespeare’s history plays: Precursor to the film franchise?
Ahh, the film franchise. A popular film with interesting characters and a decent premise soon spawns a sequel, then becomes a trilogy, and so on, until it becomes unprofitable, unpopular, or both. If the franchise is based on a book series, every effort will be made to keep the money factory running as long as…
Cinema and ‘The Sopranos’: When two forms collide
Television, and the experience of watching television, have undergone a radical shift in the twenty-first century. While the internet promises (or threatens) to make the experience of watching broadcasted TV entirely redundant, as well as altering the viewing experience irrecoverably from that of a weekly drip feed to that of a televisual binge, the quality…