Tag: movies
Blood and Bandages: Paramedics on film
For most of my life, I have only ever seen ambulance crews and paramedics portrayed in two ways on film. They were either the much respected platoon medic, featured in so many war films, particularly American ones, or the laughable buffoons of English comedies, in particular, the ‘Carry On’ series. In the latter, ambulancemen were…
Elvis Presley and the movies: Watching ‘The King’ at work
I never gave Elvis Presley much thought until the Christmas of 1961, when my older sister broke down in tears after opening the Blue Hawaii soundtrack album. I got a pair of bongos that same morning, and played along on them to the record. I had seen Elvis the previous year in the western Flaming…
Remembering Robocop: The smouldering dystopian wreck of 80s avarice
There has never been, so far as I can recall, a period in my life during which I have not been obsessed by the cinematic form in some way or other. And while my tastes have continued to evolve or change over time, there have been a handful of films that have travelled with me…
Hallucinations on film: Six startling unrealities in cinema
Some of the most memorable scenes in the cinema have involved hallucinations seen by movie characters, and although one could argue that film itself is an apparition – an imaginary product consumed as popular art – it’s hardly redundant to crow about the best such images on the screen. Here are six of the…
Fugitive visions: Foreign film and the new iconography
One perfect shot does not a bad film fix. I learned this many years ago during a screening of Alek Keshishian’s With Honors (1994), a Sven Nykvist-lensed flick that, if I remember correctly, featured among the generally dreary sequences an incredible, blink-and-it’s-gone image of a church towering behind Brendan Fraser’s character. It didn’t make the movie watchable,…