Dialogic Cinephilia - March 24, 2021

Brown, Ellen, Paul Jay, and Richard Wolff. "The Public Banking Revolution." TUC Radio (February 9, 2020) ["Does Public Banking Work – Project Censored named The Public Banking Revolution one of the top 25 most censored stories of 2020. The independent media pointed out that a public banking system on a national scale could finance the Green New Deal, as Roosevelt’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation did. A state or city based Public Bank can keep money local and fund projects like affordable housing and infrastructure without concern for maximizing profits or shareholder returns. A living example for such a bank already exists for 100 years in the Bank of North Dakota. Economist Richard Wolff appreciated Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approval of a bill allowing local governments in California to establish public banks. Wolff said if people only knew how public banking works they would campaign to get them established. Professor Richard Wolff is the founder of Democracy at Work and host of their nationally syndicated show Economic Update. Longtime critic of the private for profit banking system, Ellen Brown, campaigns to return control of money and credit to states, cities, and communities."]

Can't Get You Out of My Head (BBC: Adam Curtis, 2021: 6 episodes) ["Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World is a six-part series that explores how modern society has arrived to the strange place it is today. The series traverses themes of love, power, money, corruption, the ghosts of empire, the history of China, opium and opioids, the strange roots of modern conspiracy theories, and the history of Artificial Intelligence and surveillance. The series deals with the rise of individualism and populism throughout history, and the failures of a wide range of resistance movements throughout time and various countries, pointing to how revolution has been subsumed in various ways by spectacle and culture, because of the way power has been forgotten or given away."]

Chee, Alexander. "What Minari Means to Me." Gen (March 3, 2021) [Lee Isaac Chung’s film took me through his past and into my own family’s story"]

Cleaver, Sarah Kathryn and Mary Wild.  "Climax Review." Projections #8 (October 3, 2018)

---. "Psychopathy (A Clockwork Orange & Nocturnal Animals)." Projections #6 (September 26, 2018) 

Cobbina, Jennifer E. "Hands Up, Don't Shoot." This is Not a Pipe (November 7, 2019) ["Jennifer E. Cobbina discusses her book Hands Up, Don’t Shoot: Why the Protests in Ferguson and Baltimore Matter, and How they Changed America with Chris Richardson. Cobbina is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. She received her PhD in criminal justice at the University of Missouri – St. Louis in 2009. Dr. Cobbina’s areas of expertise center on police-community relations, youth violence, and concentrated neighborhood disadvantage, with a special focus on the experiences of minority youth and the impact of race, class, and gender on criminal justice practices. Her research also focuses on corrections, prisoner reentry and the understanding of recidivism and desistance from crime. Her mixed-methods qualitative and quantitative research predicts recidivism and desistance outcomes and also explores offenders’ perceptions regarding how they manage reentry and integration back into the community. Her scholarship is centered on improving the reentry outcomes of individuals with a felony record and/or has been formerly incarcerated. Her goal is to produce research that is theoretically informed, empirically rich, and informs criminal justice policy and crime control practices. Dr. Cobbina’s research has been published in a number of academic journals, including Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Crime and Delinquency, Criminal Justice & Behavior, British Journal of Criminology, and Journal of Crime and Justice."]

Cohn, Jonathan. "The Burden of Choice." This is Not a Pipe (December 20, 2020) ["Jonathan Cohn discusses his book The Burden of Choice: Recommendations, Subversion, and Algorithmic Culture with Chris Richardson. Cohn is an assistant professor of digital cultures and head of the digital humanities program at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on digital culture and history, critical algorithmic studies, film and media, postfeminist and postracial discourses…and television. With Dr. Jennifer Porst, he is co-editing Very Special Episodes: Event Television and Social Change (Rutgers, forthcoming) on the history of how the television industry has confronted traumatic events and cultural change. In the meantime, he is thinking a lot about what differences might exist between algorithmic and AI culture, and the experiences of incoherence endemic to our current moment. In an effort to make our relationship with AI more collaborative, ethical and egalitarian, he is also creating a program to help humanities scholars co-write and research with AI."]

Hollander, Nancy, et al. "The Mauritanian: Film Tells Story of Innocent Man Held at Guantánamo for 14 Years Without Charge." Democracy Now (March 8, 2021) ["A new feature film, “The Mauritanian,” tells the story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian man who was held without charge for 14 years at the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo and repeatedly tortured. We speak with Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who says the film is not just about his struggle. “This is not my movie. This is the movie of so many people,” he says. “Some of the people who were kidnapped after 9/11 were tortured to death. They did not have a chance to tell their story.” We also speak with Kevin Macdonald, director of “The Mauritanian”; Nancy Hollander, the lead lawyer for Mohamedou Ould Slahi; and actor Tahar Rahim, whose portrayal of Slahi earned him a Golden Globe nomination."]

Knight, Sam. "Adam Curtis Explains It All." The New Yorker (January 28, 2021)

McGhee, Heather. "'The Sum of Us': Heather McGhee on How Racism Undercuts the American Dream for Everyone." Democracy Now (March 19, 2021) ["Amid a national reckoning with structural racism and the dangers of white supremacy, author Heather McGhee’s new book details how racism in the United States hurts not just people of color but also white people. In “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together,” McGhee details how zero-sum thinking has worsened inequality and robbed people of all stripes of the public goods and support they need to thrive. We speak with McGhee about the cost of racism, Republican voter suppression efforts and what people can accomplish when they come together in solidarity across racial lines. “Fundamentally, racism has been the most powerful tool wielded against the best of America — against American democracy, against cross-racial solidarity, against the American dream itself,” says McGhee."]

Dialogic Cinephilia - March 16, 2021

Biagetti, Samuel and Sonia Saraiy‪a‬. "Through a Glass Darkly: The 1980s Through Current Television." Historiansplaining (February 17, 2020) ["What is with the spate of 1980s themes on current "prestige" television? Is it Gen. X. nostalgia for their youthful days in suburban malls? Or something more? Television critic Sonia Saraiya discusses how our unresolved identity crises seem to have led us into a fascination with the last years of the Cold War, and with the secret mistakes and machinations that took place on both sides of the old Iron Curtain."]

Fawaz, Ramzi. "The New Mutants." This Is Not a Pipe (February 22, 2018) ["Ramzi Fawaz discusses his book The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics with Chris Richardson. Fawaz is assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The New Mutants won the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies Fellowship Award for best first book manuscript in LGBT Studies and the 2017 ASAP Book Prize of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present. His work has been published in numerous journals including American Literature, GLQ, Feminist Studies, Callaloo, and Feminist Review. He is currently co-editing a special issue of American Literature with Darieck Scott titled "Queer About Comics," and co-editing Keywords in Comics Studies with Deborah Whaley and Shelley Streeby for NYU Press. His new book Queer Forms, explores the relationship between feminist and queer politics and formal innovation in the art and culture of movements for women’s and gay liberation. Queer Forms will be published by NYU Press."]

Fhlainn, Sorcha Ní. "Postmodern Vampires." This Is Not a Pipe (November 26, 2020) ["Sorcha Ní Fhlainn discusses her book Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture with Chris Richardson. Ní Fhlainn is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and American studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom. She is a founding member of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies and author of Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture (Palgrave, 2019). She has published widely on socio-cultural history, subjectivity and postmodernism in Film Studies, American studies, Horror studies, and Popular Culture. Previous books include Clive Barker: Dark imaginer (Manchester UP, 2017), and The Worlds of Back to the Future: Critical Essays on the Films (McFarland, 2010), and articles in Adaptation (Oxford UP), and Horror Studies (Intellect). She is currently leading a research project and writing a monograph on the popular culture of the 1980s."]

Hampton, Timothy. "Bob Dylan's Poetics: How the Songs Work." Berkeley Book Chats (April 17, 2019) ["The 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature recognized Bob Dylan as a major modern artist, elevating his work beyond the world of popular music. In his book Bob Dylan's Poetics (Zone, 2019), Timothy Hampton (Comparative Literature and French, Townsend Center director) focuses on the details and nuances of Dylan's songs, showing how they work as artistic statements designed to create meaning and elicit emotion. Locating Dylan in the long history of artistic modernism, Hampton offers both a nuanced engagement with the work of a major artist and a meditation on the contribution of song at times of political and social change."]

Kunkle, Sheila. "Parasite and the Parallax of Social Relations Under Capitalism." Crisis Critique 7.2 (2020) ["This paper offers a psychoanalytic film analysis of director Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 film Parasite, which engages Slavoj Žižek’s concept of a “political parallax.” The analysis reveals how social (class) relations under Capitalism are anamorphically distorted and structured by way of an unsymbolizable gap. Ultimately, achieving a parallax view allows us to see that it’s not capitalism that breeds parasites; rather parasitism is already there, inherently built into capitalism in the form of an internal excess. Thus, capitalism itself becomes the parasitic system that perpetuates both the fantasy of freedom and the fetishization of class difference, which, paradoxically obfuscates class struggle itself."]

Nestle, Marion, et al. "Let's Ask Marion: What You Need to Know about the Politics of Food, Nutrition, and Health (University of California Press, 2020)." New Books in Food (January 13, 2021) ["Marion Nestle describes her new book as “a small, quick and dirty reader for the general audience” summarizing some of her biggest and most influential works. Let’s Ask Marion: What You Need to Know About the Politics of Food, Nutrition, and Health published September 2020 by University of California Press, was written in conversation with Kerry Trueman, a blogger and friend. Trueman’s questions served as prompts to organize Nestle’s 800-1000 word summaries in approachable and engaging prose. Readers familiar with Nestle’s groundbreaking Food Politics will recognize many of the ideas and information, but this new pocket-sized and affordable volume serves as an introduction for undergraduate students or readers new to Food Studies. However, Nestle does cover some new material in her explanation of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, especially the campaign for Zero Hunger. Nestle also summarizes how nutrition advice has changed in the last few years by thinking about food in categories ranging from unprocessed (corn on the cob) to ultraprocessed (Nacho Cheese tortilla chips). This reevaluation makes it easier to identify foods that are acceptable to eat without excessive focus on micronutrients. In the conversation, Nestle addresses the ethics of marketing food to children, food as a human right and access in the Covid era, the possibility of a National Food Policy Agency, the politics of food banks, and the promise of regenerative agricultural practices. Nestle concludes by talking about the pleasures of food and eating and how to establish a “loving relationship” with food that doesn’t include fear, guilt, or anxiety about nutrition. Marion Nestle is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University, and the author of books about food politics, most recently Unsavory Truth."]

West, Stephen. "Frederick Hayek - The Road to Serfdom." Philosophy This! #139 (February 11, 2020)

Yuen, Nancy Wang. "Reel Inequality." This is Not a Pipe (December 7, 2017) ["Nancy Wang Yuen discusses her book Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism with Chris Richardson. She is an Associate Professor and the Chair of the Sociology Department at Biola University. She is the author of Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism (2016), the first book to examine the barriers actors of color face in Hollywood and how they creatively challenge stereotypes. Along with a team of researchers, she pioneered the first study of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders on television (2005/2006) and the 2017 study, Tokens on the Small Screen: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Prime Time and Streaming Television. Dr. Yuen is an expert speaker on race and media, appearing on BBC World TV, NPR and The Washington Post. "]

Queen - Bicycle Race (Official Video) from dj pop on Vimeo.

Adelante Film Club - March 4, 2021

The Big Ideas of Kubo

 
The Problem of Other Minds - How Cinema Explores Consciousness


Okja - Understanding the (Im)Morality of Animal Consumption

Dialogic Cinephilia - March 1, 2021

Andrade, Patrícia Mourão de. "Bacurau: On Blood and Museums." Crisis Critique 7.2 (2020) ["The museum has a central role in the Brazilian film Bacurau, directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles. Inserting the small village of Bacurau in a long and ongoing history of colonial resistance in the backlands of Brazil, the museum holds the iconography of popular struggle in the region, as well as the weapons used on past confrontations, which remain available for future ones. This essay broadens the discussion of Bacurau’s museum to present-day Brazil in the aftermath of the presidential elections of 2018—when the far-right got into power. Arguing for a museological stance similar to the one in the film, this essay proposes that such a stance is a way to respond to the rise of authoritarianism in the country. A ‘museological stance’ is thus presented as an alliance between the living and the dead as a means for conjuring up new futures. It presupposes the cannibalization of the stories of violence in aesthetical, political and psychological ways. Completed in November 2019, a post scriptum was added to the essay in April 2020; reevaluating the meaning of an alliance between the living and the dead after COVID-19."]

Due, Tannarive. "Us." Switchblade Sisters #165 (December 31, 2020) ["Tananarive Due, the producer of the groundbreaking doc ‘Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror,’ joins April Wolfe to discuss Jordan Peele’s ‘Us.’"]

Haddad, Lisa B. and Nawal M. Nour. "Unsafe Abortion: Unnecessary Maternal Mortality." Reviews in Obstetrics and Gynecology 2.2 (Spring 2009): 122 - 126.

Laine, Tarja. "Anger, Grief, and Dark Humour: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri as an ‘Emotional Hybrid.'" Crisis Critique 7.2 (2020) ["This article approaches Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) as an emotional hybrid, of which the aesthetic strategies convey and embody three inextricably intertwined affects: anger, grief, and dark humour. It argues that the emotions of the protagonists are all consuming, because these are entangled in such a way that it enlarges their personal traumas and prevents them from working through their grief and anger. It analyses anger, grief, and dark humour in the film to demonstrate that these affects are not separate, but intertwined throughout the narrative trajectory of the film in an aesthetically coherent and concise manner. The article hopes to show that this hybrid affective quality does not function as a marker of tension between different emotions. Rather, it facilitates dynamic fluctuation between these emotions, thus opening up avenues for different courses of action by the characters, which in turn are affectively recognised by the spectator. In this way the hybrid emotions function as an organising principle of the film’s aesthetic structure organically from within, rather than as elements attached to the film externally. This operational logic makes Three Billboards a remarkable film in its affective-aesthetic orientation, both towards its own world and towards its spectator."]

López, Cristina Álvarez & Adrian Martin. "The Thinking Machine #45: Roll and Rock." de Film Krant (December 16, 2020) 

Williams, Missouri. "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Duszejko?: On Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead And Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor." Another Gaze (February 1, 2021)

Adelante Film Club - February 26, 2021

 Arts and Faith Top 100 Films (2011)

Top 25 Films of 2020

The Columbia Film Language Glossary (also Film Clips illustrating the terms)

Developing a "critical eye":

Ideas: Implicitly Pretentious. "The Big Ideas of Kubo and the Two Strings." (Posted on Youtube: November 6, 2019)

Aesthetics: The Cinema Cartography "Colour in Storytelling." (Posted on Youtube: July 29, 2015)

For further study - developing a critical eye:

Beyl, Cameron. "Christopher Nolan: The Dark Knight." (Posted on Youtube: April 28, 2020)

---. "Christopher Nolan: The Dark Knight Rises and the Apocalyptic Epics." (Posted on Youtube: November 28, 2017)

Booy, Miles. Interpreting Star Wars: Reading a Modern Film Franchise. Bloomsbury Academic, 2021 (excerpt, pages 1 -25)

The Cinema Cartography. "Breaking the Rules: The French New Wave." (Posted on Youtube: May 28, 2015)

---. "The Cinematography That Changed the World." (Posted on Youtube: July 31, 2020)

---. "Composition in Storytelling." (Posted on Youtube: January 22, 2016)

---. "Editing in Storytelling." (Posted on Youtube: December 9, 2016)

---. "Groundbreaking Films That Defied Cinema Convention." (Posted on Youtube: December 29, 2020)

---. "Lighting in Storytelling." (Posted on Youtube: May 22, 2020)

Clothes on Film [Christopher Laverty's website devoted to the art of costume design in film and television.]

Film Analysis 2.0 ["The Film Analysis Guide was developed to meet the needs of faculty and students at Yale University who are interested in becoming familiar with the vocabulary of film studies and the techniques of cinema. The user can either read the complete document or search out a particular topic of interest. — Related links within the Guide are provided as appropriate, as are links to film clips illustrating the topic or term in question."]

Filmsite ["Tim Dirks created the popular filmsite.org website, aka Greatest Films, in mid-1996, and soon, it will celebrate its landmark 25th anniversary in 2021. He has been writing about and reviewing films on the site ever since. Tim originated Filmsite and has remained its sole contributor, manager, and editor - he adds significant content to the site spanning all the years of cinematic history, often writes blogs and other film-related articles, and has engaged in a number of on-camera interviews about film. ... The site includes rich reference material including Academy Awards history, film genres, film terms, film history by decade, trivia, and lots of lists of 'best' films, stars, scenes, quotes, resources, posters, etc."]

Dialogic Cinephilia - February 22, 2021

Bowen, Peter. "'The Violence in the Film is Simply a Reflection of the History of Human Beings': Writer/Director Jim Jarmusch and Actor Forest Whitaker on Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai." Filmmaker (November 17, 2020)

Dunn, Rob. "Home Alone, with 200,000 Friends." American Scholar (February 5, 2021) ["As we in the United States approach a full year of spending even more time than usual at home, and away from friends and family, we’re all a little bit lonely. But even though it might feel as if your immediate family and your pets are the only signs of life in your house—you’re not as alone as you might think. The modern American house is a wilderness: thousands of species of insects, bacteria, fungi, and plants lurk in our floorboards, on our counters, and inside our kitchen cabinets—not to mention the microbes that flavor our food itself. The trouble with wilderness, however, is that we always want to tame it. Cleaning, bleaching, sterilizing, and killing the organisms in our houses has had unintended—and dangerous—consequences for our health and the environment. Biologist Rob Dunn, a professor in the department of applied ecology at North Carolina State University, joins us to impart some advice about how to graciously welcome these unbidden guests into our homes."]

Heeney, Alex, Lidsay Pugh and Orla Smith. "Explorations of Rape Culture in Promising Young Woman and The Assistant." The Seventh Row #73 (January 6, 2021) ["This week on the podcast we discuss two explorations of rape culture that approach the topic in very different way. We look at Emerald Fennell’s stylish revenge thriller Promising Young Woman and Kitty Green’s The Assistant, a portrait of a young woman working in a misogynistic office environment."]

Heeney, Alex, et al. "Steve McQueen's Small Axe." The Seventh Row #72 (December 30, 2020) ["To cover Steve McQueen’s ambitious Small Axe series, we have assembled one of our most ambitious episodes of the year. We discuss each film (or episode?) of McQueen’s series and how they work together to form a cohesive whole."]

Koski, Genevive, et al. "Blackkklansman/Malcolm X (Pt. 1)."  The Next Picture Show #144 (September 4, 2018) ["Spike Lee’s new BLACKKKLANSMAN is an urgent call to look to the past to understand the present, an approach it shares with many of Lee’s films, though perhaps none as strongly as his 1992 epic biopic MALCOLM X. The films revisit two different chapters in 20th-century history, and star two different members of the Washington family — Denzel and his son, John David — but both are pure Lee in both their narrative motivations and their filmmaking technique. In this half, we consider what makes MALCOLM X the rare cradle-to-grave biopic that works, how Lee finds the dynamism in near-constant speechmaking, and whether Angela Bassett elevates a thankless role, or simply channels its innate nuance. "]

---. "Blackkklansman/Malcolm X (Pt. 2)." The Next Picture #145 (September 11, 2020) ["Though BLACKKKLANSMAN is, like MALCOLM X, drawn from real life, Spike Lee’s newest film takes more liberties in telling its ostensibly true story (something that’s drawn criticism from some corners). And also like MALCOLM X, it’s a film set in the past that’s commenting, often directly, on the present. Together the two films give us a lot to talk about, from their respective uses of speechmaking and divided identities, to their perspectives on white allies."]

Lash, Dominic. "'A fair curve from a noble plan': Certain Women." Movie #9 (2021) 

THE WES ANDERSON COLLECTION CHAPTER 8: THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL from RogerEbert.com on Vimeo.

Dialogic Cinephilia - February 9, 2021

Guaraná, Bruno. "'A Few Years from Now' in Western Pernambuco: Bacurau’s Vision of the Future." Film Quarterly 74.2 (2020): 77-80.

Heeney, Alex, et al. "Are Men Ok? Masculinity, Mental Health, & Addiction in Another Round and Oslo, August 31st." Seventh Row (December 15, 2020) 

King, Shaka. "Judas and the Black Messiah: Director Shaka King on Fred Hampton, the Black Panthers & COINTELPRO." Democracy Now (February 1, 2021) ["A highly anticipated new feature film, “Judas and the Black Messiah,” tells the story of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and William O’Neal, the FBI informant who infiltrated the Illinois Black Panther Party to collect information that ultimately led to Hampton’s killing in 1969 by law enforcement officers. The film is premiering at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and stars Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton, LaKeith Stanfield as O’Neal and Martin Sheen as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Shaka King, the film’s director and co-writer, says focusing on Hampton and O’Neal was a way “to make 'The Departed' inside the world of COINTELPRO,” referring to the decades-long illegal FBI program to undermine Black and radical political organizations. “I just thought that that was a very clever vessel and intelligent way to Trojan-horse a Fred Hampton biopic.”"]

Seitz, Matt Zoller. "The Wes Anderson Collection, Parts 1 - 7." Roger Ebert (October 14 - 25, 2013)

West, Stephen. "The Frankfurt School: Erich Fromm on Love." Philosophize This! #150 (January 30, 2021) [A discussion of Erich Fromm and his book The Art of Loving.]

Tuning the Brain with Music - Official Trailer from Filmoption International on Vimeo.

Dialogic Cinephilia - January 29, 2021

Gardner, Caden Mark. "Bridging the Gaps in Trans History: A Conversation with K. J. Rawson." Current (January 27, 2021) ["Since launching in 2016, the Digital Transgender Archive has functioned as an international collaboration among more than sixty colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, public libraries, and private collections. Gathering a wide range of trans-related materials, including photos, magazines, newspaper clippings, and newsletters, the website opens up new possibilities for those who research trans history and those who seek to educate on the topic. The wealth of archival materials it contains shows the root of evolving identities, language, and perceptions tied to current concepts of being transgender. The DTA shows trans history and culture as it was, the small but vibrant pockets of brave people who defied social norms. Often these narratives have been intentionally hidden from mainstream society or ignored by the public at large, but access to this archive opens a door to seeing how communities and individuals reacted to the world around them."]

Hayes, Tyler. "The Imaginary Corpse (Angry Robot, 2019)." New Books in Science Fiction (April 16, 2020) ["Tyler Hayes's The Imaginary Corpse (Angry Robot, 2019) offers an escape from the unending stress of the Covid-19 pandemic with three simple words: plush yellow triceratops. Nothing could be farther from our collective coronavirus nightmare than the Stillreal, where Hayes’ protagonist, Tippy (the aforementioned triceratops), runs the Stuffed Animal Detective Agency. Which is not to say that the book doesn’t have its own nightmares or traumas; they’re just softened by the fact that all the characters are imaginary friends created by people (“actual people, out there in the real world,” as Tippy explains) who are forced to abandon them after suffering a horrible trauma (domestic violence, child molestation, and fatal car accidents, to name a few). So even though Tippy is a cheery sunflower yellow, his nature is informed by a violent incident that led his creator, eight-year-old Sandra, to surrender him to the liminal world of the Stillreal. There, he solves crimes that happen to other imaginary friends, like his roommate (a disembodied hand), or the hotelier (a towering eagle in a stars-and-stripes apron) whose inn serves as a rest stop for new arrivals. The Imaginary Corpse is a mashup of fairytale, comic book, noir and science fiction, making it thoroughly unclassifiable. “I set out from the beginning knowing this was a book for adults,” Hayes says. And yet it’s a noir with fuzzy edges. “The choice to make the book kind was one of my biggest driving goals… This is a kinder world than a lot of fictional worlds, than often our world is. I stuck hard on that, on the idea of community, the idea of compassion, the idea of empathizing and accepting people where they are.”"]

Martin, Adrian. "That Obscure Object of Desire: Desire, Denuded." Current (January 7, 2021)

Dogtooth (Greece: Yorgos Lanthimos, 2009)

Dogtooth (Greece: Yorgos Lanthimos, 2009: 94 mins)

Aaron. "Dogtooth." Letterboxd (October 16, 2014)

BBC News. "George Orwell's 1984: Why It Still Matters." (Posted on Youtube: June 10, 2019) [Discusses language and interpellation - relates to Dogtooth's themes.]

Benton, Michael. "Dogtooth." Letterboxd (Originally written September 21, 2011)

Concannon, Philip. "Review - Dogtooth (Kynodontas)." Phil On Film (May 22, 2010)

Dick, Philip K. "If You Can Control the Meaning of Words, You Can Control the People Who Use the Words." (Excerpted from "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later": 1978)

Jameson, A.D. "A Review of the Relatively New Movie Dogtooth (Kynodontas)." Big Other (July 16, 2010)

Kaufmann, Anthony. "It's Happening Here: Trump's America and Totalitarian Dystopias." Keyframe (November 17, 2016)

Lise. "Dogtooth." Letterboxd (Feb 14, 2011)

Singer, Leigh. "Dogtooth Gives Off a Serious Bite." Fandor (November 26, 2018)

Tafoya, Scout. "The Post-Punk Cinema Manifesto: Side A." and "The Post-Punk Cinema Manifesto: Side B." Vimeo (2017)

Williamson, Ben. "On Parenting, Media, Education and Phobias." DML Central (February 14, 2011)

The Virgin Suicides (USA: Sofia Coppola, 1999)

The Virgin Suicides (USA: Sofia Coppola, 1999: 97 mins)

Abbott, Megan. "The Virgin Suicides: 'They Hadn’t Heard Us Calling.'" Current (April 18, 2018)

Cleaver, Sarah Kathryn and Mary Wild. "Depression (The Virgin Suicides & I, Daniel Blake)." Projections (August 27, 2018) 

Cline, Emma. "The Virgin Suicides Still Holds the Mysteries of Adolescence." The New Yorker (October 2, 2018)

Hancock, James, Mikhail Karadimov and Brittany Starna. "Sofia Coppola & The Beguiled." Wrong Reel #285 (June 24, 2017)

Koski, Genevieve. "The Virgin Suicides is a window into Sofia Coppola’s fixations." The Dissolve (June 23, 2015)

Lennon, Elaine. "Sofia Coppola: A Cinema of Girlhood." Offscreen 21.6 (June 2017)

Phipps, Keith and Tasha Robinson. "Forum: The Virgin Suicides." The Dissolve (June 25, 2015)

Smith, Michael Glover. "He Said/She Said Director Profile: Sofia Coppola." White City Cinema (July 8, 2013)

"Sofia Coppola." Director's Club (August 20, 2017) ["In this episode, the Director's Club looks at the films of Sofia Coppola (a.k.a., "The Good One"), whose movies had a dreamlike feeling of melancholy isolation, level of visual composition, and focus on young womanhood that was evident from the start of her career. We're joined in our journey through her film work (that takes us from L.A. to Tokyo to Versailles to the Civil War South) by Rebecca Martin, an ultra-promoter of film appreciation in the Chicago area and host of Now Playing Network's "Fresh Perspective.""]

Spencer, Michelle. "Three Visual Patterns in Sofia Coppola's Films." A Place for Film (June 1, 2017)

Loneliness of Sofia Coppola from movement_of_time on Vimeo.

Dialogic Cinephilia - January 24, 2021

Bird, Katie. "Feeling and Thought as They Take Form: Early Steadicam, Labor, and Technology (1974-1985)." Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies 7.1 (2020) ["The video essay “Feeling and Thought as They Take Form: Early Steadicam, Labor, and Technology (1974-1985)” explores the first decade of stabilizer technologies and techniques. In surveying the industrial histories of two competing devices, the Steadicam and the obsolete Panaglide, I demonstrate how now codified norms of craft labor practice around stabilizer’s aesthetic and generic forms emerged amongst a diverse range of media and eclectic techniques. I investigate well-cited films in early stabilizer shots such as The Shining, Days of Heaven, and Halloween while emphasizing the ubiquity of the tools across different genres (from roller disco to horror), modes of production (Hollywood, international art house, independent, amateur), television, and non-narrative filmmaking (commercial, industrial, and training videos). The choice of materials serves to expand and disrupt our notion of technological emergence and stylistic origin narratives through showcasing works directed by auteurs alongside amateurs and operated by beginners and advanced practitioners. I foreground the discourse, labor, and names of stabilizer camera operators to offer an alternative explanation for how critical analysis and specatorial description allows viewers to experience embodied stabilizer aesthetics."]

Lee, Kevin B. "Explosive Paradox: On Platoon." The Cine-Files #15 (Fall 2020) ["The most mentioned video essay in the Best Video Essays of 2020 Survey conducted by Sight & Sound Magazine" - it is a reflection of his experiences watching Oliver Stone's 1986 movie Platoon in the theater with his family."]

McGoff, Jessica. "My Mulholland: On Mulholland Drive." The Cine-Files #15 (Fall 2020) ["The second-most mentioned video essay in the Best Video Essays of 2020 Survey conducted by Sight & Sound Magazine" - it is a reflection on the impact David Lynch's 2001 movie Mulholland Drive had on the author at 13 and now.]

Rich, Jamie S. "Hannah Arendt - Criterion Channel." Criterion Confessions (December 23, 2020)

Dialogic Cinephilia - January 22, 2021

Botton, Alain De. "The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships." On Being (February 9, 2017) [This is a wise discussion about personal relationships that has ramifications for how we relate in general to the broader world! Doesn't this seem like something that should be taught at an early age and that we should be having very frank discussions about. Lets dispel the myths/mystification surrounding personal relationships!]

Davies, Paul. "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life (University of Chicago Press, 2019)." New Books in Science, Technology, and Society (December 24, 2020) ["What is life? For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental question, for life really does look like magic: even a humble bacterium accomplishes things so dazzling that no human engineer can match it. Huge advances in molecular biology over the past few decades have served only to deepen the mystery. In this penetrating and wide-ranging book, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name; it is a domain where biology, computing, logic, chemistry, quantum physics, and nanotechnology intersect. At the heart of these diverse fields, Davies explains, is the concept of information: a quantity which has the power to unify biology with physics, transform technology and medicine, and force us to fundamentally reconsider what it means to be alive—even illuminating the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe. From life’s murky origins to the microscopic engines that run the cells of our bodies, The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life (U Chicago Press, 2020) journeys across an astounding landscape of cutting-edge science. Weaving together cancer and consciousness, two-headed worms and bird navigation, Davies reveals how biological organisms garner and process information to conjure order out of chaos, opening a window onto the secret of life itself."]

Farley, Robert, D'Angelo Gore and Brooks Jackson. "What President Biden Inherits: A raging virus, a struggling economy and a fast-growing mountain of debt." Fact Check  (January 20, 2021) [Also a referendum on Donald Trump's legacy as President.]

Dialogic Cinephilia - January 19, 2021

Armstrong, Karen. "The Lost Art of Scripture." Radio West (December 31, 2020) ["Sacred text – with their often ambiguous wording and metaphorical meanings – are ready-made for differing interpretations from various groups. In her book, The Lost Art of Scripture, Karen looks into the history of these texts, showing how religious practitioners' relationships with them have changed, and how many of us have lost sight of what they were originally written for."]

Edwards, Lydia and Fred Wiseman. "Documenting Democracy: Fred Wiseman’s City Hall." Open Source (November 19, 2020) ["What Fred Wiseman found in Boston City Hall is not what he was looking for. The master of documentary film is famous for his almost innocent camera eye that unlocks visual drama in big institutions — the New York Public Library, the Paris Opera, or in his early days: Bridgewater State Mental Hospital in 1960s Massachusetts. So why not finally get inside the modern brick and concrete fortress of official life in his hometown, and see what’s going on in the faces, the meeting rooms, the tone of voice in local affairs. What he found was simpler than all that. It was the un-Trump in the un-Washington. An almost astonishing civility, good humor, what looks like good faith in the hundreds of negotiations every day that keep a community going, and growing."]

Lee, Jason. Nazism and Neo-Nazism in Film and Media. Amsterdam University Press, 2018. ["This timely book takes an original transnational approach to the theme of Nazism and neo-Nazism in film, media, and popular culture, with examples drawn from mainland Europe, the UK, North and Latin America, Asia, and beyond. This approach fits with the established dominance of global multimedia formats, and will be useful for students, scholars, and researchers in all forms of film and media. Along with the essential need to examine current trends in Nazism and neo-Nazism in contemporary media globally, what makes this book even more necessary is that it engages with debates that go to the very heart of our understanding of knowledge: history, memory, meaning, and truth."]

Thompson, A.C. "From Charlottesville to the Capitol: Trump Fueled Right-Wing Violence. It May Soon Get Even Worse." Democracy Now (January 15, 2021) ["As security is ramped up in Washington, D.C., and state capitols across the U.S., the FBI is warning of more potential violence in the lead-up to Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20. Federal authorities have arrested over 100 people who took part in last week’s deadly insurrection at the Capitol, and The Washington Post reports that dozens of people on a terrorist watch list — including many white supremacists — were in Washington on the day of the insurrection. “This was something that had been coming for a long time,” ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson, who covers right-wing extremism, says of the January 6 riot. “If you looked at the rhetoric online … it was all about revolution, it was all about death to tyrants, it was all about civil war.”"]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Think on this, for 19 years we have been repeatedly torturing and imprisoning hundreds of people without a trial or defense, on no more evidence than hearsay from people that were paid large sums for turning them in. 19 years later there are still 55 prisoners there. This is just the tip of iceberg of rendition centers we have operated around the world. This systemic imprisonment and torture is a horrific state act that is symbolic of the rot in our democracy. Every time you think why are they doing this when you reflect on bad things happening in our culture/nation, think to yourself, we have let Guantanamo Bay Detention Center remain functioning for the last 19 years.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2021

 "MLK Day Special: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words." Democracy Now (January 18, 2021) ["Today is the federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was born January 15, 1929. He was assassinated April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just 39 years old. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War. We play his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, which he delivered at New York City’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, as well as his last speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” that he gave on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated."]

"Martin Luther King, Jr. (Preacher/Activist/Philosopher)." Dialogic Cinephilia Archive (Ongoing Online Archive)

Adelante Film Club

Robin Williams - In Motion (6 mins: Aladdin; Awakenings; Dead Poets' Society; The Fisher King; Good Morning Vietnam; Good Will Hunting; Jumanji; Mrs. Doubtfire; Popeye; What Dreams May Come) Advanced study Robin Williams legendary 2001 appearance Inside the Actors Studio 

10 Actors on Acting (12 mins: Matt Damon/Ben Affleck/Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting; Alan Rickman in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows; Jessica Chastain in Crimson Peak; Michael B. Jordan/Chadwick Boseman/Lipita Nyong'o in Black Panther; Tom Hanks in Castaway)

Mise-en-scene (10 mins: Moonrise Kingdom)

Trailer for Black Panther
Black Panther: Costumes Merge African History with Afro Futurism (3 mins)

Trailer for Amelie
The Beauty of Amelie (5 mins - how careful mise-en-scene works to create iconic images and characters)

ENG 282: Spring 2021 Responses, Discussion Boards and Personal Tracks

Exemplary Letterboxd Responses:

Kylon Bibb: Blade Runner: A Dark City Where Anyone Could Be No Human and Blade Runner 2049: A Sequel and Its Attention-Grabbing Opening Sequence

Bryant Carlson: Inside Out

Caden Healander: Her: Appreciating our Humanness

Caden Healander: Frances Ha: Ticking Time Trance

Peyton Owens: A Ghost Story

Peyton Owens: Fruitvale Station

Nicholas Hayden: Call Me By Your Name: Love When You Least Expect It

Kylon Bibb: Enemy: Part 1 - Two Contrasting Sides of the Same Coin: An Adulterous Cycle; Part 2 - When a Spider Recognizes its Betrayer

Kylon Bibb: The Artist: A Relic of the Past

Chelsea Morgan-Ritchie: Cloud Atlas: The Miscellany of Souls

Chelsea Morgan-Ritchie: Odd Man: Phillip K. Dick's Radio Free Albemuth

Chelsea Morgan-Ritchie: Pan's Labyrinth: The Path of Morality and the Roads that Wind Us

Caden Healander: Tomboy: A Review on The Importance of Language and Respect.

Caden Healander: Heartbeats: Six Types

Caden Healander: Waltz with Bashir: Signal Flare

Caden Healander: Pan's Labyrinth: The Importance of Fiction

Caden Healander: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: “Let Me Tell You About My Boat” and Other Sad Times

Kylon Bibb: Lady Vengeance: Stylistic Changes Avert Disappointment

Sarah Patrick: Pan's Labyrinth: Magic Is There For Those Who Believe

Kelsey Mink: The Return: The Movie of Endless Meaning

Bryant Carlson: A History of Violence: No Good Cup of Joe in Philly

Graham Pickering: Good Night, and Good Luck: Words Matter

Chelsea Morgan-Ritchie: Hard Candy: Cat, Mouse, Crime, or Punishment

Nathan Foster: Hero: A Swift, Beautiful Sword

Caden Healander: Memories of Murder: Memories of Brutality

Isabelle Gray: The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Kylon Bibb: 3-Iron: Communication Through the Absence of Dialogue

Kylon Bibb: The Royal Tenenbaums: Anderson's Visual Presentation

Emily Hoover: Oldboy

Bryant Carlson: Mulholland Drive: The Road Less Traveled

Chelsea Morgan-Ritchie: Memento: The Sovereignty of the Mind

Caden Healander: Hedwig and the Angry Inch: The Origin of Self Love

Caden Healander: "I Used to Be Gay Once": But I'm a Cheerleader.

Vladimir Gundorin: The Cuckoo

Bryant Carlson: American Psycho 

Chelsea Morgan-Ritchie: "In the Mood for Love: Better to Have Loved and Lost ..."

Letterboxd Responses:

Micaela Missildine 8 (Hugo; Tabu; Parasite; Guardians of the Galaxy; Inside Out; Kubo and the Two Strings; Okja; Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse) (Grade: 80)

Caden Healander 10 (But I'm a Cheerleader; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Memories of Murder; The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou; Pan's Labyrinth; Waltz with Bashir; Heartbeats; Tomboy; Frances Ha Ha; Her) (Grade: 100)

Nathan Foster 4 (Hero; Brick; Children of Men; Nomadland) (Grade: 40)

Chelsea Morgan-Ritchie 10 (In the Mood for Love; Memento; Mystic River; Hard Candy; Film Matters Interview-3 credits; Pan's Labyrinth; Radio Free Albemuth; Cloud Atlas) (Grade: 100)

Graham Pickering 10 (American Beauty; Donnie Darko; Whale Rider; Good Night, and Good Luck; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; Wendy and Lucy; Winter Bone; Detachment; Fruitvale Station; Boyhood) (Grade: 100)

Bryant Carlson 10 (American Psycho; Mulholland Drive; A History of Violence; Superbad; Shutter Island; The Cabin in the Woods; Django Unchained; Interstellar; Inside Out) (Grade: 100)

Jannet Ojeda 10 (The Sixth Sense; A Beautiful Mind; The Pianist; Brokeback Mountain; Pan's Labyrinth; Slumdog Millionaire; Social Network; Hugo; Moonrise Kingdom; Prisoners) (Grade: 100)

Kelsey Mink 10 (Donnie Darko; The Return; Hard Candy; Little Miss Sunshine; District 9; Jennifer's Body; The Skin I Live In; Gone Girl; Inside-Out; Nocturnal Animals) (Grade: 100)

Sarah Patrick 10 (The Virgin Suicides; Spirited Away; Hard Candy; Pan's Labyrinth; Zodiac; Mother; Hugo; Wadjda; Ida; It Follows) (Grade: 100)

Emily Hoover 10 (The Invitation; Fight Club; City of God; Oldboy; V for Vendetta; Zodiac; Jennifer's Body; The Cabin in the Woods; Django Unchained; Get Out) (Grade: 100)

Hailey Meeker 3 (Battle Royale; Beasts of No Nation; Bomb City; The Wolf of Snow Hollow) (Grade: 40)

Ananda Casals (Grade: 0)

Jamil Ford (WD)

Kylon Bibb 10 (The Royal Tenenbaums; 3-Iron; Lady Vengeance; Stake Land; The Artist; Enemy; Short Term 12; Blade Runner; Blade Runner 2049; Slow West) (Grade: 100)

Tucker Lee Miller 9 (Dogville; The Incredibles; Pontypool; Shutter Island; The Cabin in the Woods; Django Unchained; Guardians of the Galaxy; Creed; Arrival) (Grade: 90)

Graham Pickering 10 (Donnie Darko; American Beauty; Whale Rider; Good Night, and Good Luck; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; Wendy and Lucy; Winter's Bone; Detachment; Fruitvale Station; Boyhood) (Grade 100)

Slade Gish (Grade: 0)

Bradley Sebastian (WD)

Isabelle Gray 10 (The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Me and Earl and the Dying Girl; Shutter Island; The Cabin in the Woods; Fruitvale Station; Parasite; Annihilation; Interstellar; Arrival; The Miseducation of Cameron Post) (Grade 100)

Cameron Young 10 (Good Night, and Good Luck; Children of Men, The Social Network, District 9, Hugo; Moonrise Kingdom; Grand Budapest Hotel; Kill the Messenger; Tesla; Isle of Dog) (Grade 100)

Vladimir Gundorin 10 (Three Kings; The Cuckoo; Million Dollar Baby; Hugo; Django Unchained; District 9; Moon; Guardians of the Galaxy; Hugo; Black Book) (Grade: 100)

Nicholas Hayden 7 (Silver Linings Playbook; It Follows; Guardians of the Galaxy; Call Me By Your Name; Black Panther; Uncut Gems; Joker) (Grade: 70)

Peyton Owens 10 (Superbad; Zodiac; Winter's Bone; Tomboy; Fruitvale Station; Guardians of the Galaxy; Inside Out; A Ghost Story; A Quiet Place; Spider Man: Into the Spiderverse) (Grade: 100)

Jayvin Jones 10 (Slumdog Millionaire; 13 Assassins; Attack the Block; Warrior; Django Unchained; Guardians of the Galaxy; Creed; Bladerunner 2049; Black Panther; Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse) (Grade: 100)

Personal Tracks:

Caden Healander: -Perspectives on WWII/Fantasy that reflects reality/Animation/Color (specifically Wes Anderson)/Soundtracks as a tool in film/LGBTQ+

Chelsea Morgan-Ritchie: Mind-Bending; Deep Emotional Narratives

1-31; 32-62; 63-93; 94-124; 125-155; 156-186; 187-217; 218-248; 249-279; 280-310; 311-346; 347 - 382; 385 - 420; 421 - 456

Dialogic Cinephilia - January 13, 2021

Knafo, Danielle. "The New Sexual Landscape and Contemporary Psychoanalysis (Confer Books, 2020)." New Books in Psychoanalysis (August 17, 2020) ["The sexual landscape has changed dramatically in the past few decades, with the meaning of gender and sexuality now being parsed within the realms of gender fluidity, nonheteronormative sexuality, BDSM, and polyamory. The sea change in sexual attitudes has also made room for the mainstreaming of internet pornography and the use of virtual reality for sexual pleasure – and the tech gurus have not even scratched the surface when it comes to mining the possibilities of alternative realities. In The New Sexual Landscape and Contemporary Psychoanalysis (Confer Books, 2020), Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco survey modern sex culture and suggests ways psychoanalysis can update its theories and practice to meet the novel needs of today’s generations; at the same time, paying special attention to technology, which is augmenting and expanding sexual and gender possibilities. The authors consider how sexuality and bonding in this brave new world are best suited to meet our psychoanalytic needs."]

Sanyal, Mithu. "Rape: From Lucretia to #MeToo (Verso, 2019)." New Books in Psychology (December 11, 2020) ["My guest today, author Mithu Sanyal, describes the topic of rape as a ‘cultural sore spot,’ one that requires yet eludes wide conversation. Her latest book, Rape: From Lucretia to #MeToo (Verso, 2019), bravely starts this conversation. It covers the history of rape as well as of our divergent and misguided conceptions for it, and it addresses the topic’s intersection with matters of gender stereotypes and racism. We unpack these topics in our interview, along with the psychological phenomena undergirding conflicts over consent and body sovereignty. This episode will be of interest for anyone interested in the problems of sexual violence and gender bias. Mithu Sanyal is an award-winning broadcaster, academic, and author based in Dusseldorf. Her prior book, Vulva, has been translated into five languages."]

Snyder, Timothy. "'American Abyss': Fascism Historian Tim Snyder on Trump’s Coup Attempt, Impeachment & What’s Next." Democracy Now (January 13, 2021) ["As the House votes to impeach President Trump, the FBI warns there could be a repeat of the violent insurrection he encouraged on January 6, with Trump loyalists planning to hold armed protests nationwide ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration. We speak with Timothy Snyder, a historian of fascism, who says the riot at the U.S. Capitol was “completely and utterly predictable” given President Trump’s record of stoking extremism and undermining democratic institutions. “The American republic is hanging by a thread because the president of the United States has sought to use violence to stay in power and essentially to overthrow our constitutional system,” says Snyder."]

Dialogic Cinephilia - January 10, 2021

Lagalisse, Erica. "Occult Features of Anarchism: With attention to the conspiracy of kings and the conspiracy of the peoples." The London School of Economics and Political Science (March 20, 2019) ["Erica Lagalisse explores the relationship of 19th century anarchism with the clandestine fraternity, challenges leftist attachments to atheism, and intervenes in current debates concerning 'conspiracy theory.'"]

West, Stephen. "On Media: Manufacturing Consent, Pt. 1." Philosophize This (December 17, 2020) [On Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman's landmark book Media Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.]

---. "On Media Pt. 2: Marshall McLuhan." Philosophize This! #149 (January 5, 2021)

Dialogic Cinephilia - January 4, 2020

"The Best Documentaries of 2020." The Film Stage (December 17, 2020)

Dialogic Cinephilia - January 3, 2021

Carpenter, Max. "Whatever Gets You Through the Night: Night of the Kings." Reverse Shot (December 29, 2020)

Ivins, Laura. "Structures of Looking in Portrait of a Lady on Fire." A Place for Film (December 16, 2020) 

Oladipo, Gloria. "The Missed 'Magical Negro' Trope in The Queen’s Gambit." Bitch Media (November 25, 2020)

Solórzano, Fernanda. "Amores perros: Force of Impact." The Current (December 25, 2020) 

Dialogic Cinephilia - December 30, 2020

Englert, Angela. "Taking the Shine Off with Doctor Sleep." Cultural Gutter (December 10, 2020)

Gulick, Robert van. "Consciousness." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (January 14, 2014) ["Perhaps no aspect of mind is more familiar or more puzzling than consciousness and our conscious experience of self and world. The problem of consciousness is arguably the central issue in current theorizing about the mind. Despite the lack of any agreed upon theory of consciousness, there is a widespread, if less than universal, consensus that an adequate account of mind requires a clear understanding of it and its place in nature. We need to understand both what consciousness is and how it relates to other, nonconscious, aspects of reality."]

Heath, Roderick. "On the Rocks (2020)." Film Freedonia (December 1, 2020)

Dialogic Cinephilia - December 25, 2020

Durkin, Sean. "Train Ride to Hell: A Shocking Encounter in Code Unknown." The Current (November 19, 2020)

Goncharov, Stefan. "The Idea of History in Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow." Photogénie (December 9, 2020)

Heath, Roderick. "Dressed to Kill (1980)." Film Freedonia (October 28, 2020)

One Hundred Years of Cinema. "1935: Triumph of the Will - The Power of Propaganda." (Posted on Youtube: January 21, 2018) ["Triumph of the Will is regarded as one of the most powerful propaganda pieces ever made, but how did the film advance the racist and anti-Semitic ideology of the Nazi party? What is the history of cinema as a tool of propaganda? Triumph of the Will is one of the most famous propaganda movies ever made. The films is a semi-documentary take on sixth annual National Socialist conference in Nuremberg in 1934, by director Leni Riefenstahl. It covers 4 days worth of speeches, parades and city wide celebration. It’s edited together out of hundreds of hours of footage, and it unveils the core message of the conference without commentary or inter title. Although it’s often praised as revolutionising the art of film propaganda, it actually adds very few techniques of its own, instead drawing on the decades of development in propaganda that came before. So lets take a look at the history of the propaganda film and how theses techniques were used by Riefenstahl to advance the Nazi Ideology."]

West, Stephen. "Robert Nozick: The Minimal State." Philosophize This! #138 (January 21, 2020) ["So obviously there are a lot of different problems political philosophers were faced with throughout the twentieth century...and we've talked about several of them so far, but one of the BIGGEST ones that we HAVEN'T talked about yet...specifically for political philosophers in the mid to late 20th century... one of the biggest questions facing these thinkers was this: when we are hit with problems, big problems, that we need to solve collectively as a society...should the state or the government be the primary tool that we use to solve those problems? How much responsibility is wise to give to the government? Does the government solve the problems of a society in the best manner possible...or does giving the government more responsibilities to deal with CREATE more problems than it's worth? Another important question to consider about all this when it comes to THIS episode in particular: when you progressively give the government more jobs to do and more outcomes to guarantee for people, when you have a big, powerful government with a democracy behind it feeding it tasks to complete...does a big government plus a democracy always equal a tyranny of the majority? And do citizens that don't necessarily agree with the majority or the people currently holding political office, do those citizens just need to resign themselves to paying into a tax pool that FUNDS all the things they don't agree with? Maybe an over-sized government makes slaves of people whose views don't HAPPEN to align with the current majority. To me these are some of the most important and FUN questions to think about in all of political philosophy."]

Weston, Kelli. "The Witch: Suffer the Little Children." Reverse Shot (October 30, 2020)

"Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn't so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other..." - Master reflecting on his great love Margarita

Dressed to Kill (USA: Brian de Palma, 1980)

Dressed to Kill (USA: Brian de Palma, 1980: 105 mins)

"Dressed to Kill : Brian De Palma’s Razor-Sharp, Dreamlike Erotic Thriller." Cinephilia and Beyond (ND)

Ebert, Roger. "Dressed to Kill." Chicago Sun-Times (January 1, 1980)

Eisenberg, Joel. "Reassessing Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill and Body Double." Medium (May 14, 2020)

Erickson, Steve. "Dangerous Liaisons: The Legacy Of Dressed To Kill At 40." The Quietus (July 25, 2020)

Guriel, Jason. "Has Dressed to Kill Outlived Its 80s Shock Value?" The New Republic (September 11, 2015)

Heath, Roderick. "Dressed to Kill (1980)." Film Freedonia (October 28, 2020)

Hilton, Boyd and Mike Muncer. "Slashers Part 6: Dressed to Kill (1980)." The Evolution of Horror (October 19, 2017) ["This week Mike is joined by Boyd Hilton, and the pair get down and dirty to discuss Brian De Palma's controversial erotic slasher, Dressed To Kill. We take a look at the influences De Palma's movie had on 80s/90s erotic thrillers such as Cruising, Blue Velvet and Basic Instinct. "]

Isaacs, Bruce. "The Art of Pure Cinema: Hitchcock and His Imitators." New Books in Film (September 28, 2020) ["The Art of Pure Cinema: Hitchcock and His Imitators (Oxford University Press) is the first book-length study to examine the historical foundations and stylistic mechanics of pure cinema. Author Bruce Isaacs, Associate Professor of Film Studies and Director of the Film Studies Program at the University of Sydney, explores the potential of a philosophical and artistic approach most explicitly demonstrated by Hitchcock in his later films, beginning with Hitchcock’s contact with the European avant-garde film movement in the mid-1920s. Tracing the evolution of a philosophy of pure cinema across Hitchcock’s most experimental works – Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, Marnie, and Frenzy – Isaacs rereads these works in a new and vital context. In addition to this historical account, the book presents the first examination of pure cinema as an integrated stylistics of mise en scène, montage, and sound design. The films of so-called Hitchcockian imitators like Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and Brian De Palma are also examined in light of a provocative claim: that the art of pure cinema is only fully realized after Hitchcock."]

Koresky, Michael. "Dressed to Kill: The Power of Two." Current (September 8, 2015)

Sobczynski, Peter. "Back in Fashion After 35 Years: The Return of Dressed to Kill." Roger Ebert (September 11, 2015)