Shifting the Perspective: Essays on Cinema
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The first chapter of Inglourious Basterds is titled “Once upon A Time in Nazi-occupied France” and this signals that we are in the realm of a fairy-tale, and “wish-fulfillment fantasy” as Quentin Tarantino said. Lt. Aldo Raine, an American with Native American roots, assembled a group of Jewish Nazi hunters, saying that each one of…
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At the start of his career as an animator, Hayao Miyazaki worked at studio Todei Doga in Tokyo. He quickly became disillusioned with it and almost quit the company. He later recalled: “Had I not seen The Snow Queen during a film screening hosted by the company labor union, I honestly doubt that I would…
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Dune: Messiah, the novel which is a source material for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Three, was written by Frank Herbert mainly to emphasize the notion he tried to introduce in the original Dune novel. Herbert’s work was heavily influenced by his conservative and libertarian ideas, which imply that concentrated political power is dangerous. Herbert once…
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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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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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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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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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“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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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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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…
