The Godfather Trilogy
Adapting Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel, Francis Ford Coppola drew up several themes lying dormant within its pages and augmented them in a uniquely cinematic fashion to create a masterful saga.
Archive for 'Videocasts'
The Dark Side of the Screen
Although it can be traced to German Expressionism and French Poetic-Realism, Film Noir is quintessentially an American idiom. Not a genre but a mood, it centres on fatalistic dread.
Vikings – Final Season
How can Vikings bring its epic saga to a close? It began in 937 as a bloody conquest and ends nearly thirty years later on the shores of a new world. A story of ambition, love, and rage, its great quest was for tranquility.
Coen Country
This short video-essay details the recurring thematic concerns explored by the Coen brothers over the last five decades. Intercutting all nineteen their films, the characters appear to talk to one another across the stories.
The Gordon Willis Frame
Gordon Willis was one of cinema’s greatest artists. Regardless of genre, his style and technique were so singular he should be regarded as a cinematrograph-auteur.
The Hitchcock Gallery
This short video-essay compares various themes and techniques that Alfred Hitchcock developed over his career. With 40 titles, it includes every feature film Hitchcock made from 1934 through to his retirement in 1976.
Kubrick – Before and After
This video essay examines the films that influenced Stanley Kubrick (silent cinema, European arthouse, avant-garde etc.,) as well as the many films his work has since influenced.
Persona – After and Before
This short video-essay position Ingmar Bergman’s Persona in terms of what came after it and what went before. It shows how Bergman visualised his central theme of identity.
Vikings – King Alfred’s Rise and Bishop Heahmund’s Fall
How can Vikings sustain its drama? Battles are an option but what makes a good battle? It must be more than life and death.
Vikings – Ivar the Boneless and His Rise to Power
This is a short video-essay examining the power shift in Vikings’ Season 5. Which of Ragnar’s sons will succeed him to the throne?
Scorsese/Welles
This short video-essay compares and contrasts the ways both Martin Scorsese and Orson Welles present the corrupting forces of wealth and power. Their narratives may be similar but they yield different results.
The Application of Colour in Production Design
This extended video-essay examines the application of colour in production design from A Voyage to the Moon and Ben-Hur through to Avatar and Gravity.
Fifty Shades of Hate
This video-essay addresses the abuse inflicted by men against women in cinema. The films are critically acclaimed, Oscar winners and box-office hits. WARNING: It features scenes of extreme graphic violence.
American Trailers
This extended video-essay charts the development and possible future of the America movie trailer. Beginning in 1912, taking in the coming of television and suggesting where it might go in the age of the internet.
Moving Pictures: From Hollywood to Silicon Valley
This extended video-essay examines the innovations at the heart of cinema, focusing on how cinema is coping with the move from Hollywood to Silicon Valley.
The Journeys of Martin Scorsese
This video-essay celebrates the career of Martin Scorsese, showing how he has taken cinema as a means of telling stories and expanded it as a means of personal expression.
Spielberg’s Techniques
This video-essay examines Steven Spielberg’s career, from his days in television up until War Horse, and shows how he uses the disciplines of cinema to secure specific emotional responses.
Alien
This video-essay on Ridley Scott’s Alien examines the origins of horror and science-fiction and uses them to illustrate the disparate themes, ideas and influences that came to bear on the film’s creation.
Inception
This video-essay on Christopher Nolan’s Inception examines the themes of time and memory which serve as twin anchors to the film’s plot. These elements are also central to surrealism and the way it depicts dreams.
Blade Runner
This video-essay on Blade Runner examines how Ridley Scott visualizes the film’s numerous and seemingly disparate themes of urbanity, ecology, identity and mortality.
The Silence of the Lambs
This video-essay on Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs examines the phenomenon of looking and shows how central it is to the horror genre.
