Category: Shifting the Perspective: Essays on Cinema
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How Movies and TV Shows Mirror Changes in Global Politics of the 21st century
Popular movies and TV shows are not merely forms of entertainment, they come into being at a particular time in the history of a civilization, and often mirror its preoccupations. Be it technological advances, visions of the future, or power politics, they need to trigger some familiar sentiment in the popular awareness, to become hallmarks…
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Feminist Appeal in Quentin Tarantino’s „Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair”
Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill is made to be seen in one sitting since only thus can the whole bloody affair be fully grasped, as what it truly is. Vol. 1 is highly aestheticized, we see the Bride on a killing spree seeking vengeance, eliminating the Deadly Vipers under Bill’s command. Vol. 2 ties the whole…
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Rewriting Faramir and Chani: Major Character Changes in”The Lord of the Rings” and “Dune” Adaptations
The purpose of this reflection on Faramir and Chani, as they are portrayed in J.R.R. Tolkien’s and Frank Herbert’s novels, and how their role is changed in the films made by Peter Jackson and Denis Villeneuve, is not to lament over those changes. It is to show how they reflect different languages of a novel…
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From “The Dawn of Man” to the 10,191 AG on Dune – “Everything Must Change So That Everything Can Stay the Same”
In the opening sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: The Space Odyssey “The Dawn of Man”apes are seen fighting over resources, more concretely, a hole filled with water. We see the violent beginnings of human race in the pre-historic times, and in the famous scene the very piece of bone which is used to beat down…
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Religious Manipulation and Political Power: the Case of The Oracle of Delphi and Bene Gesserit from Dune Films
“The Delphic oracle, which for modern poets – Yeats, for example – can conjure up mystic romantic visions, was for Sophocles and his audience, a fact of life, an institution as present and solid, as uncompromising… as the Vatican is for us. States and individuals alike consulted it as a matter of course about important…
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On the Role and Power of Film Criticism
For Martin Heidegger, the role of linguistic poetry is in preserving the primordial poetry of language. “Other modes of poetry, such as visual arts and architecture, only occur within the clearing of beings, which is opened by language.”[1] In Heidegger’s words: “Building and plastic creation, on the other hand, happen, always and only, in the…
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Creation of the First Galactic Empire in “Star Wars”: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
Before reading this essay, you can read the previous one: Creation of the First Galactic Empire in Star Wars: Episodes I & II. Auctoritas, non veritas facit legem [Authority, not truth creates the law] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 24 Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker heroically rescue Chancellor Palpatine from Count Dooku’s pre-ordained “grip”; Dooku is…
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Creation of the First Galactic Empire in “Star Wars”: Episodes I & II
I will start to chronicle the events which resulted in the overthrow of the Galactic Republic by writing about Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. I will use Carl Schmitt’s writings on dictatorship, sovereignty and the state of exception, which are extremely fruitful for understanding such a multilayered fictional political persona as Chancellor…
Vigour of Film Lines 