Prologue – A Man With No Name This is the story of a story. Not the whole story of course just the highlights. The greatest stories are timeless. They crop up again and again. Christopher Booker, in his 2004 book, described seven basic plots. Leo Tolstoy thought that there were only two: a man goes … Continue reading Akira Kurosawa meets The Man With No Name
Foreword by Robin Stevens Akira Kurosawa (黒沢 明 1910 – 1998) was a master of film craft, and one of the greatest directors of all time. He grew up in Tokyo, watching silent films from around the world and going to see traditional and modern Japanese theatre. He became a painter, and in his 20s … Continue reading Akira Kurosawa – A Master of Film Part 3: Dersu Uzala and the Russian Wilderness
Did you know there is going to be a sequel to Braveheart (1995)? I know! If ever there was a movie which needed a sequel. So many questions were left unanswered. Did Scotland’s nobles universally accept Robert Bruce? How did the writing of the ‘Declaration of Arbroath’ effect the legal position of the Scottish royal … Continue reading Dramatis Scocie – The Effective Use of the Scottish Landscape in Film
Akira Kurosawa (黒沢 明 1910 – 1998) was a master of film craft, and one of the greatest directors of all time. He grew up in Tokyo watching silent films from around the world and going to see traditional and modern Japanese theatre. He became a painter, and in his 20s got into script writing, editing and … Continue reading Akira Kurosawa – A Master of Film Part 1: The Rashomon Effect
The Frenchman Henri Girard authored his debut novel Le salaire de la peur (literally translated as ‘The salary of fear’) under his pseudonym Georges Arnaud in 1950. The novel was a fiction inspired by his time spent in South America in the late 1940s and 1950s. Girard/Arnaud had an eventful life up until then having … Continue reading Adaptations Part 4: The Wages of Fear – Clouzot’s Explosive Drama and Friedkin’s Thrilling Sorcery
This film has only had a limited release but has been showing at special screenings across Australia. Language: Bengali (narrated in local Chittagonian dialect) – with English subtitles This film is a powerful tragi-romance about the struggle between power and love, a metaphor for life and death on the river Halda in southeast Bangladesh. The … Continue reading Review Special: Haldaa হালদা (2017 Tauquir Ahmed)
This is the third and last in a series of posts on the filmmaking of Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980): one of the greatest directors of all time. These posts are authored by Robin Stevens, JJ McDermott and Alan Matthews, and the idea is for each part to take a selection of Hitchcock’s films and analyze them … Continue reading Exploring Hitchcock Part 3: Don’t read this! – Vertigo and Psycho (By Alan Matthews)
This is the second in a series of posts on the filmmaking of Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980): one of the greatest directors of all time. These posts are authored by Robin Stevens, JJ McDermott and Alan Matthews, and the idea is for each part to take a selection of Hitchcock’s films and analyze them in detail. … Continue reading Exploring Hitchcock Part 2: The Early Masterpieces and his (not so) Grand Finale (by JJ McDermott)
This is the first in a series of posts on the filmmaking of Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), one of the greatest directors of all time. These posts will be authored by Robin Stevens, JJ McDermott and Alan Matthews, and the idea is for each part to take a selection of Hitchcock’s films and analyze them in … Continue reading Exploring Hitchcock Part 1: A Deeper Look at Rebecca, Rear Window and The Birds (by Robin Stevens)
Charlie Chaplin once stated that A Place in the Sun (1951) was ‘the greatest film ever made about America’. Nominated for nine Academy Awards, it won six of them along with numerous other awards and accolades. Produced and directed by George Stevens, and starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters, it is one of … Continue reading Shades of Light and Dark in A Place in the Sun
