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The World of Japanese Cyberpunk Cinema

Midnight Eye’s Mark Player has written a fascinating and very in-depth essay on the sub-genre of Japanese cyberpunk cinema and its major figures (e.g., Shinya Tsukamoto, Shozin Fukui), notable films (e.g., Tetsuo: The Iron ManElectric Dragon 80,000VAkira, Rubber’s Lover), and themes.

The world of live-action Japanese cyberpunk is a twisted and strange one indeed; a far cry from the established notions of computer hackers, ubiquitous technologies and domineering conglomerates as found in the pages of William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) – a pivotal cyberpunk text during the sub-genre’s formation and recognition in the early eighties. From a cinematic standpoint, it perhaps owes more to the industrial gothic of David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1976) and the psycho-sexual body horror of early David Cronenberg than the rain-soaked metropolis of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), although Scott’s neon infused tech-noir has been a major aesthetic touchstone for cyberpunk manga and anime institutions such as Katsuhiro Otomo‘s Akira (1982-90) and Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell... Read More

A Separation (Farhadi, 2011)

By the third time out or so, you realize that a filmmaker you’ve only been vaguely or even just accidentally keeping up with clearly deserves more particular notice –  and so you sit up and pay attention, remember the name, start looking for it on festival schedules, indeed, choose that name over others, becoming attuned to obviously ongoing stylistic and thematic concerns that portend a significant body of work in the making. Asghar Farhadi... Read More

A Rankin-Bass Christmas

This less-than-seasonal post is brought to you by NVidia and their faulty logic boards. ————- For most Americans, stop-motion is something of a Yuletide affair. Don’t get me wrong; the surge of stop-motion in theaters lately has been extremely gratifying. Aardman Studios is stretching beyond their Wallace and Gromit brand, Laika is capitalizing on the success of Coraline to produce ParaNorman, and even Wes Anderson having... Read More

One look at this, and Marathon Man will never be scary again.

Thanks to A Conversation On Cool for sharing this revelatory moment from the set of Marathon Man.    Read More

The Spiritual Discipline of Cinema

There is often talk of framing our cultural experiences in terms found commonly in Christian spirituality. On account of this, we find film and theology groups that are structurally identical to group bible studies. We reserve watching certain films for certain spots on the Christian calendar, like annual Easter screenings of Gibson’s Jesus film. In a more specific example, a few years back it was popular to talk about cinema and the practice of... Read More

The Detective’s Dark Shadow: Murder by Decree (Bob Clark, 1979)

Crime fiction has both the opportunity and the obligation to be the most political of any writing or any media, crime itself being the most manifest example of the politics of the time. We are defined and damned by the crimes of the times that we live in. The Moors Murders, the Yorkshire Ripper, and the Wests, Rachel Nickell, Jamie Bulger, and Stephen Lawrence: I strongly believe that these crimes and their victims, these investigations and trials... Read More

Punch-Drunk Love (Anderson, 2002)

(Ed.: Today we have a welcome guest post from Nicholas Olson, who pens The Moviegoer.) Audiences were largely unsure about what to make of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love when it was released almost a decade ago. Part of the quizzical reaction was that it was not a standard Adam Sandler film. Even critics found Anderson’s romantic dramedy peculiar: “none of it makes a lick of sense,” “wacky . . . unpredictable,” “not everyone’s... Read More

The Artist (2011, Hazanavicius)

[An abridged version of this review was published previously at Image.] It happens every January — movie ads fill up with boasts about awards they’ve won. In a few days, those boasts will start to include Oscar nominations. And The Artist is currently the most boastful of all. Filmmaker Michael Hazanavicius’s tribute to Hollywood’s silent film era is stirring up enthusiasm among audiences and critics alike. And The Artist looks to me like... Read More

Some Favorite Films of 2011

One problem I have always had with year-end list making is that it forces me to break up the little thematic and emotional connections that develop between films, directors, and genres over the course of a year of new cinema and rank films according to a different metric. Rather than a list, I would like to somehow begin producing a map of my year in cinema. Maybe next year. But if I had to pick one word to sum up my experience of this excellent... Read More

Best Film Writing of 2011? Let’s make a list…

I have always wanted to put an annual list of my favorite filmwriting together, but never actually get around to it. If I did make such a list for this year, Darren Hughes’ commentary on the Toronto International Film Festival at Senses of Cinema would be somewhere on it. His description of Low Life is thrilling for us Klotz admirers. So would an item or two that has popped up here at Filmwell this year. So let’s crowdsource this one.... Read More