There are many writers in many films. In Body Double, a book of eight chapters, with acknowledgements, afterword, notes, filmography, bibliography, and index, University of Pittsburgh English and Film Studies professor Lucy Fischer gathers together for examination a great bunch of films in which writers appear—Naked Lunch, Smoke, Deconstructing Harry, Paris When It Sizzles, Barton Fink, Adaptation, How Is Your Fish Today?, Swimming Pool, The Singing Detective, and Providence, among others.
Tag: cinema
Notes on an African-American Canon in Cinema: On Sidewalk Stories, Daughters of the Dust, Eve’s Bayou and other films
African-Americans have wanted to claim and define their own public images in every art—literature, paintings, sculpture, dance, music, film, videos, television. The presentation of African-Americans in the legendary moving picture Birth of a Nation—which presented blacks as both culturally ambitious and personally barbarous—was a continuation of old stereotypes that led to actual violence against blacks. People—blacks and whites—protested the film, inspiring its director D. W. Griffith to make Intolerance, an anti-prejudice reaction to his own film. The African-American image has yet to cease to be controversial.
A Review of the film The Talented Mr Riply
The Talented Mr. Ripley is an Hitchcockian and blood-curdling study of the psychopath and his victims. At the centre of this masterpiece, set in the exquisitely decadent scapes of Italy, is a titanic encounter between Ripley, the aforementioned psychopath protagonist and…
A Review of the film “We Were Soldiers” (From the book We Were Soldiers Once….and Young by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore and Joe Galloway)
We Were Soldiers, the latest in the growing war film trend, is based on the true story of the Americans first encounter with the North Vietnamese in the la Drang Valley. On November 14, 1965, Lt. Col. Harold Moore lead…
Review of the Film Don’t Say a Word (from the book by Andrew Klavan)
Scriptwriters need to seriously ponder a common mistake made by those taking favored books to screen; the fatal error of assuming that everyone in thetheater has already read the book. In the case of Don’t Say a Word those that have read…
A Philosophical Examination of the film Shattered
Such is the stuff of our nightmares – body snatching, demonic possession, waking up in a strange place, not knowing who we are. Without a continuous personal history – we are not. It is what binds our various bodies, states…
A Review of the film Black Beauty (from the novel by Anna Sewell)
“Black Beauty” is quite a good family film. As a mother, I enjoy watching films with my daughter where I’m not compelled to flee the room after 10 minutes. The scenery is breathtaking, the horses gorgeous, the majority of the…
A Review of the film The Mothman Prophecies
“The Mothman Prophecies” has nothing but a mish-mash of imageries, a story that never can quite decide where it’s going, underused actresses, and the irritant Gere himself to it’s credit. All you want after seeing this film, is to write…
A Review of Blackhawk Down (based on the book by Mark Bowden)
Blackhawk Down focuses on the story of a group of young American soldiers in Somalia in 1992. They are sent on an “easy mission, to capture dignitaries of the Somalia militia”, assured the entire job won’t take more than an hour,…
A Review of the film, A Beautiful Mind (Based on the book by Sylvia Nash)
A Beautiful Mind is the biopic of the brilliant mathematician John Nash, and his equally amazing love Alicia. It chronicles his strive to find his “one original idea”, how that fight brings him to madness, and how the strength of his…