Cinema-V

Month: December 2012

What a Difference a Day Makes: New Year’s Resolutions in Eldar Ryazanov’s The Irony Of Fate, Or Enjoy Your Bath

There are an awful lot of New Year’s traditions, and all countries and cultures have their own special ways of seeing into the twelvemonth to come. Germans, for instance, have spent the afternoon of each New Year’s Eve watching a funny 18-minute sketch with British actors called Dinner For One, also known as The 90th […]

December 31, 2012
Brothers in Arms: A Different ‘Holiday Season’ in Nagisa Ôshima’s Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

Christmas – it’s the holiday season of giving that allows you to look back at the year behind you, reflect it, enjoy the little things in life, and all the people around you. Sometimes we take for granted just how lucky we are, despite the world of today being a scary place now and then. […]

December 25, 2012
Countdown to Extinction: What if Tomorrow Never Comes in Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World

So December 21st, 2012, has finally arrived, and we’re still alive and well – despite a myriad of (drug-inflicted) doomsday scenarios and predictions. Disaster movies have sprung up like mushrooms in recent years, tackling the question what you would do if you knew your time was short. Think Roland Emmerich’s blockbuster 2012 and countless others. […]

December 21, 2012
Eyes of a Stranger: Voyeurism and Horror in Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom

Norman Bates from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is universally regarded as the quintessential movie psychopath. Nowadays, he’s simply an indispensable member of the greatest onscreen characters of all time. Psycho’s importance becomes obvious when we consider that its filming is about to become the topic of a feature called Hitchcock by Sacha Gervasi with Anthony Hopkins, […]

December 18, 2012