Tag: film
On the second day of Christmas: Five horrifying Christmas classics
On this side of the world the nights are getting dark and long, and much time is spent settling down with mince pies in front of the television screen. But as one might expect, too many viewings of It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) have resulted in a sickly sweet feeling from which I’ve found myself…
On the first day of Christmas: Cinema IS Christmas
It is a common misconception in many countries that Christmas Day is the last of the twelve days of Christmas – in actual fact it is traditionally the first day. It’s quite likely that this general misunderstanding has largely been fostered by retailers who have little use for a twelve day Christmas campaign that commences…
Early Superhero Movies: 1920 to 1948
I’m no expert on superhero films and even less on the comic books that spawned them, but the recent release of The Dark Knight Rises on Blu-ray started me thinking about the historical development of the cinematic superhero. As a result, I’ve come across what appear to be some of the earliest incarnations of cinematic…
Casino Royale(s): The Forgotten Bonds
Thought Sean Connery was the first James Bond? In honour of the recent release of Skyfall, here are a couple of Bond films that you may not know about. Casino Royal (1954) The first screen adaptation of a James Bond novel goes all the way back to 1954, when CBS decided to create a television…
A look back at the moving image: From Silence to CGI
There is no doubt that this is the era of the moving image. Since the 1860s, with the invention of the zoetrope, an unstoppable wave of innovation has taken this infant technology and built it into the definitive mode of communication for the twenty-first century. Now we are increasingly unlikely to go a single day…