By Gary M. Kramer. Writer/director Russell Brown makes short, sharp films that investigate how and why friends treat each other badly. His enjoyable feature debut Race You to the Bottom (2005) had two BFFs taking a tour through wine country and cutting each other down over the course of their […]
Berlinale Report, 7 February – 17 February 2013
By Yun-hua Chen. Against a backdrop of the Berlinale bear, the film festival opens with Wang Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster (2012), the five-year’s lavish-looking work of the president of the international jury. During the ten-day celebration of cinema, the city was honoured by the glamorous presence of international stars every […]
The Shining 2.0 or: How New Media Changed Film Analysis
By Hampus Hagman. In Iron Man 2 (2010), Tony Stark discovers that his deceased father has left behind coded sketches for a revolutionary new element that could not be realized during his lifetime due to technological limitations. It is up to the son to decode these and use the means […]
Truth in Pop Art: An Interview with Donny Miller
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “Remember, you can have anything. You just have to think it. Just kidding, life isn’t that simple.” (Donny Miller) Donny Miller is one of the more interesting visual artists working today; he’s active not only in graphics and painting, but also video art, performance art, and […]
Fallen City (2013): A Sundance Review
By Jacob Mertens. In the summer of 2008, the Great Sichuan Earthquake rattled China’s cage and left a death toll of nearly seventy thousand people. Within this massive scope of destruction, the city of Beichan, once home to twenty thousand, was obliterated in a fleeting moment. The earthquake wiped Beichan […]
Oz the Great and Powerful
By Cleaver Patterson. Several films have attempted to revisit Frank L. Baum’s magical land of Oz, since Judy Garland first walked the yellow brick road over seventy years ago. So, considering such efforts as the dubious Michael Jackson / Diana Ross vehicle The Wiz (1978) and a Muppet television version […]
Stoker: Paying Homage to Uncle Alfred
By Cleaver Patterson. Some people seem predestined to play certain roles. Seldom, however, do you find a complete cast so perfectly suited to their parts as that of Stoker (2013), the new gothic thriller from Korean director Park Chan-wook. Holding the unfortunate accolade of being the last work on which […]
A Note on the Digital Implosion
An account on the difference between celluloid and the nowaday omnipresent digital film experience by Mats Carlsson. I would argue that the fear of the digital (felt by some) and the claim of a different feel attributable to the digitalized watching experience, grounds itself on a level other than that […]
Streaming: Movies, Media, and Instant Access
February 27, 2013
Wheeler Winston Dixon presents his new book. Film stocks are vanishing, but the image remains, albeit in a new, sleeker format. Today, viewers can instantly stream movies on demand on televisions, computers, and smartphones. Long gone are the days when films could only be seen in theaters: Videos are now […]
Life of Pi (2012)
By Jacob Mertens. Can images invoking a sense of awe bring a man closer to God? If so, then Ang Lee’s Life of Pi could have rested easily as its titular character raged aloud to an unseen deity, watching as lightning struck the ocean, its light spreading through the water […]