Category Archives: Column: Film and TV
Column: Film and TV
Hate the player, not the game: Actors compete in the Kickstarter popularity contest
The internet is a place where people feel things deeply. Sometimes, those feelings are about Zach Braff. During the four days it took the Scrubs star and writer/director of Garden State to raise US$2 million dollars on Kickstarter to fund his next movie, numerous commentators felt it … Read more
Column: Film and TV
Architectures of cinematic wandering: Paris on film
‘One lives a film as one lives the space that one inhabits: as an everyday passage, tangibly.’ — Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion The art of cinema, with its oft-wandering camera lens, provides a perfect alternative to the experience of walking, an extensive promenade on screen. Walking … Read more
Column: Film and TV
Political Panic: Argo , Zero Dark Thirty and the hunt for the truth
‘Based on a true story.’ It is a phrase commonly superimposed on a black screen, utilised by the filmmaker to evoke a deeper level of resonance and authenticity before the first scene even plays out. In recent times, the adaptation of real-life events to film has become … Read more
Column: Film and TV
Hashtag qanda: Lazy debate in 140 characters or less
Television thrives on outrage. So does social media. Welcome to another instalment of Q&A! Week after week it putters along giving airtime to a collection of political figures that might as well work out the back at your local Red Rooster for all the name recognition they … Read more
Column: Film and TV
Hey world, redheads are people too
Two years ago when I dyed my hair red, I intended to have it only briefly as a transition to going dark brown. Immediately seduced by the look, I’ve been a redhead ever since. Thing is, I became not only a woman with red hair, but a … Read more
Column: Film and TV
The rom-com isn’t dead — it’s just a bit unstable
Several years ago, the romantic comedy was pronounced dead. In an Op-Ed piece for The New York Times, Sam Wasson pointed the finger squarely at Hollywood. Big studios were allowing the genre to drown in a sea of humourless mediocrity. On the surface, Wasson had a point: … Read more
Column: Film and TV
Award season: Oh, the horror
Everybody loves the Hollywood awards season. It’s a magical time of year when all your favourite stars get dressed up to the nines to receive awards honouring them for all their hard work – and I’m sorry, it’s only the second sentence and already I want to … Read more
Column: Film and TV
Kony 2012: The film of the year and why
Kony 2012 is the film of the year in the same way that Nancy Gibbs, writing in Time magazine in 1999, argued that Hitler was the person of the century. It is by no means the best film released in 2012, but more than any other film … Read more
Column: Film and TV
God in all things: Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s Hail
In an industry where marginalised social classes are routinely depicted as loveable larrikins, comical bogans or dangerous criminals and sexual predators, Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s Hail signals something of a breakthrough in Australian cinema. Based on the life and stories of Daniel P. Jones (who also performs the lead … Read more
Column: Film and TV
Monsters at 70: Tod Browning’s Freaks
Tod Browning’s 1932 film Freaks begins with a lengthy prologue recounting the ill treatment that ‘freaks’ have experienced throughout history: ‘their lot is truly a heart-breaking one…Therefore, they have built up among themselves a code of ethics to protect them from the barbs of normal people’. Browning’s … Read more
