Author Archive for: ‘Tim Groves’
Giving up the Ghost: Spirits, Ghosts, and Angels in Mainstream Comedy Films
Katherine A. Fowkes, Giving up the Ghost: Spirits, Ghosts, and Angels in Mainstream Comedy Films Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. ISBN: 0 8143 2721 4 (paper) 202pp US$ 24.95 (Review copy supplied by Wayne State University Press) Uploaded 1 November 2000 The daemonic has been a powerful theme in art, attracting frequent critical attention. In cinema studies writers such …
Read MoreVertigo
Charles Barr, Vertigo. London: BFI publishing, 2002. ISBN: 0 85170 918 4 87pp UK£8.99 (pb) (Review copy supplied by BFI publishing) If ever a film deserved its own monograph, it would appear to be Vertigo (USA 1958). It has become a cinematic icon, revered by cinephiles, reworked, quoted or plagiarised by other filmmakers, and even canonised by its critics, as Virginia Wright …
Read MoreMurder by Imitation: The Influence of Se7en’s Title Sequence
The serial killer film is nothing if not prolific: Robert Cettl discusses over six hundred examples in his annotated filmography, Richard Dyer argues that there are over two thousand serial killer films, and the IMDB lists more than 3500 film and television titles. [1] As with any genre, the serial killer film is marked by its typicality. Indeed, Philip Simpson …
Read MoreThe Un/forgiven Director
Uploaded 1 March 2001 The growing literature on Unforgiven (US 1992) suggests that the film attempts to examine several intersecting concerns. [1] These include generic issues pertaining to the western, such as heroism, justice, violence, and myth-making, as well as screen violence generally, the inequity of gender relations, and contemporary socio-political parallels. However, this criticism tends to identify the most siginficant aspect …
Read MoreScreen Studies Conference Dossier: Introduction
This special dossier contains research originating from the “Sea Change: Transforming Industries, Screens, Texts” conference, which was staged at Victoria University of Wellington in November 2016. This highly successful event was the inaugural conference of the Screen Studies Association of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (SSAAANZ). As the conference title suggests, this gathering of some eighty experienced and emerging scholars …
Read MoreEntranced: Affective Mimesis and Cinematic Identification
The cognitive approach to affect or emotion in cinema has made an important contribution to this area of film studies in recent years. Cognitivism has proven useful in the study of affect in particular genres such as horror,[1] as well as understanding how viewers might experience filmic emotions more generally.[2] However, there is a potential problem with some cognitive approaches: …
Read MoreThe Vampire Lectures
Laurence A. Rickels, The Vampire Lectures. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. ISBN: 0 8166 3392 4 (pb) 358pp US$17.00 (Review copy supplied by University of Minnesota Press) Uploaded 1 December 2001 The recent popularity of Anne Rice’s novels and the television series Buffy: The Vampire Slayer (USA 1997) indicate that, no matter how many vampires we stake, the undead …
Read MoreEndless Night: Cinema and Psychoanalysis, Parallel Histories
Janet Bergstrom (ed.), Endless Night: Cinema and Psychoanalysis, Parallel Histories. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. ISBN 0 520 20748 3 305pp Au $33.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) Uploaded 30 June 2000 Endless Night: Cinema and Psychoanalysis, Parallel Histories is an anthology of eleven essays emanating from a 1993 UCLA conference. Janet Bergstrom explains in her …
Read MoreAngels and Demons: The Death and Life of John Carpenter
2018 marked the fortieth anniversary of John Carpenter’s pivotal slasher film Halloween (1978) and the release of yet another sequel, Halloween (David Gordon Green, 2018), in which Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), now a grandmother, is determined to eliminate her brother Michael Myers after he escapes from prison. Since 2005 there have been a range of other remakes, prequels and …
Read MoreVertigo and the Maelstrom of Criticism
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) is a site of cultural fascination. Brian de Palma has remade the film twice (Obsession [1976], Body Double [1984]), while it has been reworked or quoted in films such as Twelve Monkeys (Terry Gilliam, 1995), Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992), and Color of Night (Richard Rush, 1994). Chris Marker pays tribute to Vertigo (“a film I …
Read More