We live in the best of times in which we are able to learn about the world and its incredible diversity of cultures/beings/places/perspectives in a way never historically possible. We live in the worst of times when we are able to isolate ourselves completely from anything different from our own narrow view/conception of the world/reality. The choice is yours!
Taubin, Amy. "Free Range."Film Comment (July/August 2017) ["With Okja, Bong Joon Ho creates his most dramatically protean adventure yet—a work of interspecies friendship, galloping satire, and monstrous truths."]
Tsui, Curtis. "The Evolution of a 'Superpig': Designing Okja, from Start to Finish."The Current (July 14, 2022) ["A tale about a girl’s bond with her beloved “superpig”—an animal she must eventually rescue from the clutches of the evil corporation that genetically engineered her—Okja provided a new challenge: its shy titular creature needed to be a source of affection, not fear, inviting touching and cuddling while also maintaining a massive heft that would prove attractive to the greedy food industry. And because of the real-world setting of the film, which moves from the tranquility of the South Korean mountains to the commotion of New York City, Okja would need to seem plausibly realistic, yet also unlike anything existing in nature. The following images chart the evolution of the creature, as Bong and Jang tackled initial design concepts, incorporated feedback from collaborators, and continued to refine details until they arrived at the lovable superpig we see on-screen."]
Sie, Trish and April Wolfe. "Snowpiercer."Switchblade Sisters #9 (January 4, 2018) ["April talks to Pitch Perfect 3 director Trish Sie about Bong Joon-ho's frozen feature, Snowpiercer. They discuss the amazing performance of Tilda Swinton as the authoritative Mason, the commanding directorial style of Bong Joon-ho, and the train car on the Snowpiercer they'd most like to spend time in. Trish also talks about getting her start directing the famous OK GO "treadmill video" for the song 'Here It Goes Again' and what it's like taking over an existing franchise with Pitch Perfect 3. She also shares some fascinating tidbits about the eating habits of polar bears."]
Blackmon, Douglas A., et al. "Mass Incarceration."Throughline (August 15, 2019) ["The United States imprisons more people than any other country in the world, and a disproportionate number of those prisoners are Black. What are the origins of the U.S. criminal justice system and how did racism shape it? From the creation of the first penitentiaries in the 1800s, to the "tough-on-crime" prosecutors of the 1990s, how America created a culture of mass incarceration."]
DuVernay, Ava. "From Slavery to Mass Incarceration, Ava DuVernay's Film 13th Examines Racist U.S. Justice System."Democracy Now (October 3, 2016) ["Ava DuVernay’s new documentary chronicles how our justice system has been driven by racism from the days of slavery to today’s era of mass incarceration. The film, "13th," is named for the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery with the exception of punishment for crime. The United States accounts for 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its prisoners. In 2014, more than 2 million people were incarcerated in the United States—of those, 40 percent were African-American men. According to the Sentencing Project, African-American males born today have a one-in-three chance of going to prison in their lifetimes if incarceration trends continue. We speak to Ava DuVernay. Her previous work includes the hit 2014 film "Selma." With "Selma," DuVernay became the first African-American female director to have a film nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards."]
DuVernay, Ava, et al. "Ava DuVernay / Jamal Joseph."The Close-Up #93 (July 20, 2016) ["The Opening Night selection will be the new film from SELMA director Ava DuVernay, THE 13TH, which explores the American prison industry and the horrors of mass criminalization. Eugene Hernandez caught up with DuVernay in Los Angeles over the weekend to discuss the project. In part two of this week's episode, we're sharing an inspirational panel from last month's Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Following a screening of CHAPTER & VERSE, a film about a reformed gang leader who struggles to re-enter society after eight years in prison, director Jamal Joseph joined lead actor Daniel Beatty and producers Cheryl Hill and Jonathan Singer to talk about racism, gang violence, gentrification, and what it means to forge your own destiny in an outwardly harsh society."]
Gino, Francesca. "You 2.0: Rebel with a Cause."Hidden Brain (August 9, 2019) ["This week, we'll follow Gino on her mission to understand the minds of successful rule breakers. What are their secrets? And how can we discover our own rebel talent? "I think we really need to shift our thinking," says Gino. "Rebels are people who break rules that should be broken. They break rules that hold them and others back, and their way of rule breaking is constructive rather than destructive. It creates positive change.""]
Alien³ (1992) [Keep in mind that this is the third film in a series, Ridley Scott's 1979 Alien and James Cameron's 1986 Aliens. It is not necessary to have watched both of those films, but there would be major plotholes in this film if you haven't.]
Graeber, David. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House Publishing, 2011. [Was reading the 1st chapter of this book at the same time as I was preparing for the Fall 2012 Ethics/Film screening of Fight Club -- it changed the way I conceived of the meaning of the dramatic ending of the film: "By the same token, for the last five thousand years, with remarkable regularity, popular insurrections have begun the same way: with the ritual destruction of the debt records--tablets, papyri, ledgers, whatever form they might have taken in any particular time and place. (8)"]
Koski, Genvieve, et al. "Man Up, Pt. 1 - Fight Club."The Next Picture Show #186 (July 31, 2019) ["We’re looking at two films featuring underground fight clubs, secret identities, and male protagonists trying to reclaim their self-worth through violence, beginning with David Fincher’s Fight Club, which traffics in many of the same themes as Riley Stearns’ new The Art of Self Defense, albeit with decidedly more stylistic flourish. In this half of our toxic masculinity double feature, we dig into what made Fight Club so divisive in 1999, and what makes it seem so prescient today."]
---. "Man Up, Pt. 2 - The Art of Self-Defense."The Next Picture Show #187 (August 6, 2019) ["Riley Stearns’ new dark comedy The Art of Self Defense centers on an underground scene of fighters who engage in their own version of the transgressive tactics Tyler Durden plays with in 1999’s Fight Club, but both films are ultimately about the catharsis of violence. After digging into how The Art of Self-Defense spins the “fight club” premise to its own ends, we pit these two films against each other to see which reigns supreme!…Or, to determine what each movie has to say about their shared interests in misogyny, toxic masculinity, and the dehumanization of life in corporate America."]
Like Stories of Old. "Fight Club - How (Not) to Become a Space Monkey." (Posted on Youtube: November 16, 2019) ["Video essay on Fight Club; examining how charismatic leaders like Tyler Durden turn men into Space Monkeys."]
---. "The Myth of Heroic Masculine Purpose." (Posted on Youtube: February 28, 2022) ["A critical analysis of the myth of heroic masculine purpose, and its effect on men’s perception of manhood, and on their connection to others and to the world."]
Rushkoff, Douglas. "They Say."Coercion: Why We Listen to What 'They' Say'. (NY: Metropolitan Books, 1999: 1-26) [A question that is raised, for me, is why we so easily accept what "they say?" Here is media theorist Douglas Rushkoff's brilliant critical and self-reflective exploration of this question.]
Sevilla, Susanna. "Things Are Not What They Seem." (Posted on Vimeo: February 2015) ["A video essay on title sequences from Hitchcock and Fincher films. An exploration of motion graphic design from analog to digital."]
Zavodny, John. “I Am Jack’s Wasted Life: Fight Club and Personal Identity.” Movies and the Meaning of Life: Philosophers Take on Hollywood. eds. Kimberly A. Blessing and Paul J. Tudico. Chicago: Open Court, 2005: 47-60. [Professor has copy]
"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated egos." -- Alan Watts, The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)
LoBrutto, Vincent. "Defining Theme, Metaphor, and Character Through Color, Texture, and Environmental Design: Se7en." Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 280-285. [BCTC Library: PN1994 L595 2005]
Radatz, Ben. "Se7en (1995)."Art of the Title (July 10, 2012)
Sevilla, Susanna. "Things Are Not What They Seem." (Posted on Vimeo: February 2015) ["A video essay on title sequences from Hitchcock and Fincher films. An exploration of motion graphic design from analog to digital."]
