Category: Uncategorized

Voice over narration is sort of an established “no-no” in screenwriting workshops and dogma. But often, I find myself drawn to it none the less. Director Danny Boyle’s film Trainspotting is an adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel of the same name, which is more or less a collection of loosely related events which only really converge…Continue Reading Voice Over Narration in Trainspotting

In an interview with director Christopher Nolan, Anthony Kaufman dubs Memento a cool “meta-noir”. This  got me thinking about the evolution of terminology, and instead of creating new genres, like I dunno “kaleidescope cinema”, we interpret and re-interpret familiar genres and texts. The film noir aesthetic of low-lights and urban streets is replaced with slick editing…Continue Reading Memento – A meta-noir

In reflecting on my experience of The Sixth Sense, I read Scott’s blog for some coloring, if you will. It got me thinking about the ways in which the subtext of a film in certain formal elements such as sensory motifs (ie the visual repetition of the color red)  are meant to be interpreted and…Continue Reading Narrative Layers: Symbolism and Subtext

My second idea for my final research paper is to study a cross section of cinema that tell a narrative story set in the future. The central argument I am proposing is that the “future” represented in narrative cinema is an emulation of utopian or dystopian ideology contemporaneous with the production of the film. Some formative works…Continue Reading Paper Topic of the Future (idea #2)

Movies are the product of so many hands, so many voices and ideas and lights and chords and mistakes. Filmmaking is a collaborative art-form, requiring logistical feats and a group effort to accomplish and sustain the process and the glorious outcome. The various roles designated in traditional filmmaking procedures are incredibly varied – with infinitesimal skillsets to master in…Continue Reading The Allen and the auteur tradition

Horror movies have always entertained and fascinated me. The fantasy worlds created in each horror movie, weather it be zombie, vampire, serial killer, alien, or what have you, the narrative conventions vary immensely. I would like to focus on one type of horror film, perhaps a series by one director, and explore its partucular influences…Continue Reading Reasearch Paper Idea #1

  After doing some preliminary detective work of my own on The Singing Detective, (thank you Wikipedia) I’ve found that some interesting factoids about the series. According to creator Dennis Potter, the hospital segments were originally designated to be shot on video, whereas the Detective scenes were to be shot on film, and the flashbacks…Continue Reading Episodic narrative

I have trouble with labels. I have trouble with people who try to use labels. I have trouble with the things that are labeled. I have trouble with distinguishing what is a label in the first place. I just plain think that labels are trouble. Especially when they’re reductive and don’t accurately represent the things…Continue Reading Having your indie cake, and eating it too.

When Simple Men began, I waited with amusement, sure some kind of reveal would unveil the first scene to be a bad movie within the movie. But soon thereafter, I let go of this gut response and gave into what turned out to be a superb bad movie.  But what does bad mean, in this context?…Continue Reading Meta Bad

Apparently there are a total of 67 shots in Stranger Than Paradise. The titles that punctuate the film’s transitional moments underscore the thematic material of the movie (ie. “The New World”) and others simply glide us a year ahead in time. But there’s no excess here, no fancy editing tricks or slick effects. It is…Continue Reading Less is more – Stranger than Paradise Vs. Delicatessen