Waiting for the Apocalypse: On the Past, Present and Future of Cinephilia, Part 2 Lina Jurdeczka July 23, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features "Let's not talk about the good old times, but the bad new ones." - Bertolt Brecht In recent years the cinema has frequently been talked about as a lost cause. Regardless of the fact that home viewing was...
‘All Those Wonderful People Out There in the Dark’: On the Past, Present and Future of Cinephilia: Part 1 Lina Jurdeczka July 14, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features 1 Comment There is a scene in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (2003) when the three main characters race through the Louvre in Paris, attempting to break a world record. A direct reference to Bande à Part (1964),...
A Short History of the Period Drama, Part Three: Tear Up the Script (or, the present day) Sophie Wing June 15, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features Long before the superhero movie took the words "gritty reboot" and revolutionised a genre, period drama was working quietly away in the background doing exactly the same thing. As the '90s gave way to a...
A Short History of the Period Drama, Part Two: Merchant Ivory (or, the ’80s and ’90s) Sophie Wing June 8, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features 1 Comment Ask someone what they think of when you mention 1990s period drama and they might just say "Merchant Ivory" - even if they don't know what that means. Launched in 1961, the production powerhouse has become...
A Short History of the Period Drama, Part One: Faith to the Text (or, the 1940s) Sophie Wing June 1, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features Period piece. Costume drama. Historical epic. Any way you slice it, it's been around about as long as cinema itself. Of course, in those days what we now consider quintessential period drama was practically...
Behind The Rules Of Dogme 95 Cameron Ward May 29, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features - "Thus I make my VOW OF CHASTITY" - Dogme 95 (sometimes known as Dogma or Dogma 95) was an avant-garde movement in film production started by Danish-born directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg in...
Big Screen/Small Screen: Orphan Black, Dr Strangelove, and a lot of Buster Keatons Calum Baker May 19, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features With the recent return of BBC America's brilliant cloning drama Orphan Black - and its award-winning star Tatiana Maslany - we explore the long tradition of screen actors playing several different characters...
O Father, Where Art Thou? – Part 3: The Superhero Film Chris Davies May 9, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features 3 Comments From Ancient Greece to Star Wars, the Bible to Breaking Bad, throughout history the father figure has been a major feature in dramatic storytelling. This is especially evident in film, but in post-9/11...
O Father, Where Art Thou? – Part 2: The Historical Epic Chris Davies May 7, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features 4 Comments From Ancient Greece to Star Wars, the Bible to Breaking Bad, throughout history the father figure has been a major feature in dramatic storytelling. This is especially evident in film, but in post-9/11...
O Father, Where Art Thou? – Part 1: The Combat Film Chris Davies May 5, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features 4 Comments From Ancient Greece to Star Wars, the Bible to Breaking Bad, throughout history the father figure has been a major feature in dramatic storytelling. This is especially evident in film, but in post-9/11...
Big Screen/Small Screen: Mad Men and the Movies Calum Baker April 12, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features 2 Comments From The Apartment to Planet of the Apes, by way of Lane Pryce’s beloved The Bridge on the River Kwai: In advance of the Mad Men Season 7 premiere this Sunday, ORWAV takes a look at all things cinematic in...
Conspiracy And Corruption – Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God Cameron Ward March 24, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features 3 Comments - "My most grievous fault" - Mea maxima culpa - my most grievous fault. American documentary director Alex Gibney is long known for his meticulous examination of deep-seated institutional corruption....
The Celluloid Ceiling: International Women’s Day In Film Sophie Wing March 8, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features 2 Comments HOLLYWOOD Hey, you. Do you know how much 2013's female-fronted movies made at the box office? No? Care to guess? With their totals combined, major Hollywood films like Gravity, The Hunger Games: Catching...
Absurdity And Violence in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth Cameron Ward February 17, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features - "The animal that threatens us is a cat." - Yorgos Lanthimos' darkly subversive 2009 drama Dogtooth offers no easy answers. In this respect, and many others, this freakish tale of parental autocracy...
The Unique Body Horror Of American Mary Cameron Ward January 29, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features - "She’s an artist." - Following on from the Grindhouse-inspired Dead Hooker in a Trunk, Jen and Sylvia Soska (Twisted Twins Productions)'s American Mary rejects the tired cliches of "feminist...
