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Private Investigations: The Birth of the Hard-boiled Detective in John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon
Nowadays, devious investigators must be considered an integral part of the Hollywood repertoire. That wasn’t always the case. Their archetype is a guy named Sam Spade, who first appeared on the big screen in 1941. At the time, the character created by writer Dashiell Hammett had already been immensely popular as the hero of the […]
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School’s Out: John Hughes’s Cool Way to Skip Classes in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
When John Hughes died of a heart attack at age 59 in 2009, the filmmaking world lost one of its true greats in the comedy realm. His biggest box-office smashes as a writer have been family movies in the 1990s, such as Home Alone and 101 Dalmatians. Earlier, however, John Hughes had already pulled off […]
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Man on a Mission: The Post-Apocalyptic Tom Cruise of Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion
There once was a time when science-fiction films were innovative and ahead of their time. Back then, even B-movies could attract audiences because they had something to say, despite their overall trashy appearance. Nowadays, it sometimes feels as if major studios seem to be more interested in shelling out large sums for rather pedestrian works […]
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Father to Son: Passing the Action Torch in John Moore’s A Good Day To Die Hard?
‘I fought with you, fought on your side,’ Freddie Mercury once sang in an early Queen song called “Father To Son.” In 2007, a then 52-year old Bruce Willis already played action hero John McClane as a daddy on a mission to save his child in Live Free Or Die Hard. Rescuing his daughter Lucy […]
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Danger Zone: Science-Fiction and Metaphysics in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker
Apart from legendary Battleship Potemkin genius Sergei Eisenstein, Andrei Tarkovsky is arguably Russia’s most renowned movie director from the Soviet era. The son of famous poet Arseni Tarkovsky polarizes, however. Opinions on him are divided. Some can’t really get into his films and only consider them to be dead boring. Others regard these works as […]
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Unleashed in the East: Kung-Fu Meets Grindhouse in RZA’s The Man With The Iron Fists
It’s no secret that Django Unchained mastermind Quentin Tarantino is an avid fan of all things kung-fu, martial arts, and grindhouse. Therefore it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise that he would give his name to a movie called The Man With The Iron Fists co-written by his protégé Eli Roth, who once […]
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Children of the Revolution: Slapstick, Soviet-style in Leonid Gaidai’s Operation ‘Y’ & Shurik’s Other Adventures
Operation ‘Y’ And Shurik’s Other Adventures (1965) is one of the cult comedies from that time virtually every Russian knows. Other than having a fun time, what can we can learn about life in the Soviet Union of the 1960s from watching the film? Meet Shurik (Alexander Demyanenko), the nerdy, clumsy, good-natured, and oh so […]
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My Way
“My Way” is a poignant, dramatic account of two men, one Korean (Jun Shik) and the other Japanese (Tatsuo), who forge a bond in their favorite activity, running. Early on in life, it’s clear that the Koreans living in Japan, during the days of the Japanese Empire were looked down upon. Even Tatsuo projects this […]
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Through the Looking-Glass: Why Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver Remains an Important Movie
Movies in which persons stare at themselves in the mirror or talk to themselves are a dime a dozen in the world of today. Yet there aren’t too many iconic characters in modern Hollywood, or in contemporary cinema in general, especially not too many polarizing figures inspired by real life. Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle, […]
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‘Argo F*ck Yourself’: The 85th Annual Academy Awards Coverage
Hollywood is clearly an appreciation society, and with the 2013 Oscars, the industry’s season of appreciating itself has just come to a close – for now. Unlike a year ago, when The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius and Hugoby Martin Scorsese scooped up five of the prestigious awards each, there were no clear-cut winners this time […]
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The (Not So) Simple Art of Murder: Seamless Editing and Friedrich Nietzsche Revisited in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope
Everybody knows – or has at least heard of – Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpieces. Rear Window, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds, these names ring a bell with anybody who’s at least somewhat interested in cinema. Yet the English ‘Master of Suspense’ has created so many more wonderful movies, and film buffs still love […]
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The Loop Closes: Time Travelling in Style in Rian Johnson’s Looper
Time travels are nothing too unusual in cinema. We’ve seen it in several Star Trek movies and in the Back To The Future trilogy, amongst many others. Meeting one’s own younger or older self always poses a lot of difficulties for the heroes of these movies, as even the slightest change in the past may […]
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Holy Water: The Sinister Los Angeles of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown
If you thought film noir was long dead and gone, think twice. The genre – if you can even call it that – has never vanished from the landscape. The rumors about its demise have been largely exaggerated – for the simple reason that there have been many noteworthy classics since the heyday of film […]
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Misty Mountain Hop: Middle-earth Revisited in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Fans have been clamoring for it for almost a decade, through numerous delays, changes in the director’s chair, and alterations in the general concept. Pan’s Labyrinth mastermind Guillermo del Toro wanted to shoot it, but eventually The Lord Of The Rings veteran Peter Jackson gave in and decided to travel to J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantastic Middle-earth […]