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“Game of Thrones” – Dany’s Agony: Purification Through Fire
Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing. Aemon Targaryen Daenerys Targaryen is at Dragonstone, isolated and refusing to eat, looking worn out, pale, exhausted beyond recognition. She is well aware of Jon’s betrayal and the choice to confide with her sister, which resulted in Varys plotting to destroy her, possibly poisoning her in…
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Combustible Decadence of Neo-Tokyo in the Flawed Masterpiece of Anime “Akira”
I found Akira, a landmark animated film which introduced the Japanese animated films to the Western audience, to be an eclectic mess. During the first and even the second watching of the film it seemed that way. Later, as I managed to put the pieces together (and some parts of the film are fragments of…
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In Yasujirô Ozu’s Words: The Change of Seasons
I tried to show the collapse of the Japanese family system through showing children growing up. Yasujirô Ozu Ozu’s post-war work, during the time when he made his most memorable films, is characterized by the same theme which is presented over and over. In his own words, he presents the “collapse of the Japanese family…
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5 Melancholic Films Which Can Inspire You Into Creativity (Melancolia I)
While interpreting Albert Dürer’s engraving Melancolia I, professor of art history Bonnie Noble writes: “Dürer’s intellect, introspection, and unrelenting perfectionism may have driven him to a state of melancholia—what is now known as depression. Dürer’s famed Melencolia I engraving of 1514 has been called the artist’s psychological self-portrait, and indeed the image does convey the terrible struggle…
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Confessions of Britain’s Most Violent Criminal – Refn’s “Bronson”
In the final lines of the chapter “The spectacle of the scaffold”, in his book Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault writes about a great shift in the portrayal of criminals in fiction, which took place in the 19th century: “We are far removed indeed from those accounts of the life and misdeeds of the criminal…
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What Makes us Human? – the Enigma of “Dark City”
The film is set in a city where there is no sun, it is shrouded in eternal darkness. John Murdoch awakes in a bathtub, disoriented, not knowing his own name, or anything about himself. In other words, he is in the same position as the viewer, darkness (lack of cognition) pervades not only the external,…