Unreal

En este artículo, publicado en la revista The New Yorker, Pauline Kael, considerada hasta su muerte en el año 2001 como una de las críticas cinematográficas más prestigiosas del mundo, analiza la película The killing fields (Campos asesinos, más conocida como Los gritos del silencio), dirigida por Roland Joffé. La obra narra la relación de amistad entre el periodista norteamericano Sydney Schanberg y Dith Pran, un nativo vietnamita, quien colaboró como asistente y traductor de varios periodistas durante la guerra en Camboya y su posterior invasión por Vietnam del Norte. Kael dedicó casi 40 años a una labor que dejó huellas fuertes en el mundo cultural norteamericano pues su vasta influencia generó posiciones encontradas entre directores, colegas y espectadores. En su estilo original coexistieron sabiduría, acritud, autobiografía, metáforas inusuales, acercamiento emocional, ironía y un lenguaje fustigante, y también equivocaciones.Abstract: In this article, published in The New Yorker, Pauline Kael, regarded until his death in 2001 as one of the most prestigious film critics the world, reviews the film The Killing Fields (Campos murderers, be er known as The Killing Fields silence), directed by Roland Joffe. The play recounts the friendship between the American journalist Sydney Schanberg and Dith Pran, a Vietnamese native who worked as an assistant and translator of several journalists during the war in Cambodia and the subsequent invasion by North Vietnam. Kael spent nearly 40 years at a job that le strong traces in the American cultural world as its vast influence generated positions among directors, colleagues and spectators. In its original style coexisted wisdom, acrimony, autobiography, unusual metaphors, emotional closeness, fustigante irony and language, and mistakes

From Sacred to Scientific: Epic Religion, Spectacular Science, and Charlton Heston’s Science Fiction Cinema

This paper analyses how long-1960s cinema responded to and framed public discourses surrounding religion and science. This approach allows for a discussion that extends beyond a critical study of the scholarly debates that surround the place of religion in science during a transitional period. Charlton Heston was an epic actor who went from literally playing God in The Ten Commandments (1956) to playing “god” as a messianic scientist in The Omega Man (1971). Best known for playing Moses, Heston became an unlikely science-based cinema star during the early 1970s. He was re-imagined as a scientist, but the religiosity of his established persona was inescapable. Heston and the science-based films he starred in capitalized upon the utopian promises of real science, and also the fears of the vocal activist counterculture. Planet of the Apes (1968), Omega Man (1971), Soylent Green (1973), and other science-based films made between 1968-1977 were bleak countercultural warnings about excessive consumerism, uncontrolled science, nuclear armament, irreversible environmental damage, and eventual human extinction. In this paper I argue that Heston’s transition from biblical epic star to science-fiction anti-hero represents the way in which the role and interpretation of science changed in post-classical cinema. Despite the shift from religious epic to science-based spectacle, religion remained a faithful component of Hollywood output indicating the ongoing connection between science and religion in US culture. I will consider the transition from sacred to science-based narratives and how religion was utilised across the production process of films that commented upon scientific advances

Corridor Gothic

This article investigates the role of the corridor in Gothic fiction and horror film from the late eighteenth century to the present day. It seeks to establish this transitional space as a crucial locus, by tracing the rise of the corridor as a distinct mode of architectural distribution in domestic and public buildings since the eighteenth century. The article tracks pivotal appearances of the corridor in fiction and film, and in the final phase argues that it has become associated with a specific emotional tenor, less to do with amplified fear and horror and more with emotions of Angst or dread

The Press, Volume 8, Issue 25, March 23, 1972

The Press, Volume 8, Issue 25 includes: The Department of Sociology at Brock is attempting to change its name again, but Janet Savard is not convinced this will make students believe they are innovative; Grant Wedge examines the issues that the Wright Report and its critiques present to university students; The Child Care Centre at Brock celebrates its first year in operation but needs student volunteers in order to keep helping parents at Brock; The Department of Rugger at Brock changes its name to the Department of Rugby to avoid the prior name’s connotations of English upper-class superiority; Hundreds of U of T students end a day-long occupation of the university’s main administration building demanding that that university’s new library be open to all members of the university and members of the general public