The Unseen Line: Cinema as Geometry
When everything is shown, little is felt. * * * Cinema has always been described through movement – of images, of time, of bodies across space. Yet what if its[…]
Category: Theory
Marxism · Philosophy · Politics · Sports · Theory
Mao and Moneyball: A Case Study in Cinematic Contradiction
Bennett Miller’s 2008 film Moneyball depicts the unfolding on-screen of a contradiction. Moneyball as an idea is a theoretical understanding of how the game of baseball works (based on a[…]
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Philosophy · Theory · Thrillers & Action · Uncategorized
The Unconscious with Bond and Lacan: Definition by Deviation
This article argues that the paradox of James Bond’s character (that he accords with the idea he represents precisely by deviating from it) is central to a Lacanian understanding of[…]
Dance · Drama · Exile and Displacement · Poverty · Theory
Dancing Diagonals: Movement and Far-Away-Ness in Fernando Frías de la Parra’s Ya No Estoy Aquí (2019)
One of Frías de la Parra’s masterstrokes is to highlight the similar ways in which Monterrey and New York (otherwise such radically distinct cities) are brimming with diagonal lines: in[…]
Experimental & Underground · Horror · New Media · Societal Trends · Theory · Thrillers & Action · TV & Streaming
A Spectre in the Participatory Panopticon: The Database Horror of Unfriended: Dark Web
The encounter between the lead characters and The Circle evokes a wider sense of anxiety regarding the extent to which we upload information about every area of our lives into[…]
Anarchism · Franchises & Series · Horror · Mental Illness · Mystery · Theory · Urban Conflict
Framing the Mentally Ill: An Anarchist-Theoretical Understanding of Two “Jokers”
This article aims to demonstrate the ways in which media interests at the levels of cinematic production through to their journalistic reception work to control and marginalize certain progressive ideologies[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian · Directors · Theory
Inhabiting the Frame: Building as Body in Tsai Ming-Liang’s Stray Dogs
When Lee’s daughter asks her new caretaker why the apartment is such a mess, she answers, “A house is like a person. It gets sick, grows old. The cracks in[…]
Books · Theory · Work and Workplace
Book Review: The Process Genre: Cinema and the Aesthetic of Labor, by Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky
Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky, The Process Genre: Cinema and the Aesthetic of Labor. 2020. Duke University Press, $28.95. Watching someone work is hypnotizing. We might not always enjoy working, but something[…]
Comedy · Literature and Film · Theory · Writers & Critics
Whodunit? Poe and Dr. Strangelove
The oblique reference to Poe by means of the double POE acronyms, then, can be seen as linking the fundamental prophecy of Dr. Strangelove with the much earlier secular prophecies[…]
Directors · Theory · Writers & Critics
“Letting the contemporary run through you”: The Film Criticism of Olivier Assayas
One of Assayas’s most ferocious articles he ever wrote (and also one of the most theoretical) attacks le cinéma publicitaire – a film aesthetic (associated in France with Jean-Jacques Beineix[…]
Drama · Theory · Writers & Critics
André Bazin and Graham Greene (and Alfred Hitchcock): Some Points of Contact
Bazin would always harbor reservations about The Third Man, but, due to that film, Greene’s presence would continue to loom large in discussions of Orson Welles, who was, of course,[…]
Comedy · Film Technology & History · Franchises & Series · Theory
The Phenomenology of the Grotesque: Jackass 3D’s Cinema of Stereoscopic Attractions
Stereoscopic experience, therefore, drastically alters the positioning of the viewer in relation to diegetic content, creating the illusion that the body of the spectator is immersed within the screen planes[…]
The Architecture of Horror: Space, Light, and Atmosphere in Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar
We encounter filmic atmosphere vaguely, imperceptibly, but emotively and reflexively; a movie is a mood. Hereditary and Midsommar creep into our consciousness through subtle shifts in light, sound, and camerawork.[…]
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