Features
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Secret Cinema: Seeing Films Differently
According to many of the most successful film producers and studios worldwide, the future of cinema lies in the ‘game-changing’, ‘immersive’ quality of 3D film, satisfying a natural desire within cinema-going audiences to feel evermore part of the visual world portrayed on screen. However, for those yet to be convinced of both the validity and…
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Special Feature: The rise of Joseph Gordon-Levitt
From long-haired alien teenager Tommy in the sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun to this summer’s smash-hit blockbuster Inception (2010), Joseph Gordon-Levitt, at the age of 29, has become one of the darlings of Hollywood independent cinema. And for me, he is one of the best American actors of his generation.Although Gordon-Levitt appeared in a…
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Cigarette Burns: Super-Mega-Death-Match-Team-Up-Showdown-Throw-Down-athon
Bombastic titles aside, I think it’s time we addressed the issue of the cinematic ‘team up’. With The Expendables (2010) now on general release (it’s every beefcake action hero from the last 20 years…together…all sharing the same grunt space!) and The Avengers (2012) movie on the horizon (it’s every Marvel action hero that isn’t an…
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Special Feature: ‘Nanook of the North’ at the First People’s Festival
As darkness falls on a Montreal evening and stars begin to appear, two Inuit woman take their places on stage under a giant wigwam. They face each other, join arms and the haunting sound of traditional throat singing silences the crowd who have gathered in the square. Accompanied by a small orchestra performing an original…
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Special Feature: Future Cinema’s Dennis Hopper retrospective
Future Cinema, creators of the acclaimed Secret Cinema, presents a very special screening tribute to the late, great Dennis Hopper with a unique screening of David Lynch’s 1986 cult classic Blue Velvet on Saturday 31st July. A maverick, a renegade, a debauched hell-raiser – there are a long list of names that would aptly characterize…
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Special Feature: Wong Kar Wai – a reappraisal
Wong Kar Wai is no stranger to controversy – from the dark shades he always seems to have on to the lack of scripts in the production process of his films. But even in spite of that – or perhaps thanks to that – he has made a name for himself as an auteur in…
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Special Feature: The Japanese gender issue
The celebration of the female director has become paramount to film festivals globally. This years, The Japan Foundation dedicated their annual touring film program to the rise of involvement for women in the film industry, entitled ‘Girls on Film: Females in Japanese Film industry‘.Whilst there is no denying that the global film industry is still considerably male…
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Special Feature: Studio Ghibli – the Japanese Disney?
In 2002, the Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature with the seminal Spirited Away (2001). To this day, it has been the only Japanese anime to win this prestigious award. Whilst Spirited Away arguably garnered the most critical acclaim and international interest, there remains an established and devoted fan-base for the films…
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Special Feature: Australian cinema – a broken industry?
Australia always seems to be in some kind of crisis. If the country isn’t stressing over its cultural identity, its busy ripping into its own precarious government (although it must be said that the Antipodean populace has taken greater pleasure in observing Britain’s amusingly dishevelled political affairs).Hot topics of the season include the insufficient funding…
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Special Feature: How ‘lo’ can you go?
Is it possible to hypothesise that the introduction 3D film providing a new lease of life for the ‘dying’ industry of cinema? In some respects this certainly seems the case, especially in terms of how it’s not (yet) possible to download pirate versions of films in all their three-dimensional glory. Arguably, 3D technology encourages us…