Will Thornton contemplates the ethics of misrepresenting real people through film.
hollywood
A Fistful of Genres: The Buddy Comedy
Partnerships and pairings are essential to cinema – they enable actors to play off one another, allowing for more naturalistic and endearing performances; as the old adage goes, “acting is reacting”. One of the finest and most enjoyable genres to embrace this is the “Buddy” film. Popularised by its off-shoot, the more infamous “Buddy Cop” subgenre, […]
Hollywood Monopolies
After a brush with scandal over some unearthed homophobic tweets, Kevin Hart’s life insurance was looking like it would mature sooner rather than later. Thankfully, it looks like he might have picked up a ‘get out of jail free’ card in the form of his favourite pastime: A crappy movie with a stupid premise. A […]
Don’t you know that you’re toxic?
The casting couch. We’ve all heard the stories confessing the dark truths of Hollywood’s underbelly. From Marilyn Monroe to the child star, Shirley Temple, Hollywood has a long, ugly history with sexual harassment, stemming from an endemic lust for power by those placed in positions of authority. A throwback to the ‘golden-era’ of old Hollywood, […]
The Old Man & the Gun – Review
Few of us get to decide how we will go when our time comes, and even fewer will make such a choice willingly. A lifetime spent on screen sounds like a boastful statement and perhaps not a bad way to have lived, but the movies tend not to let go of the greats without a […]
The Commercialisation of Cinema- is Originality Dead?
If we consider all the films that have come out this year, it seems like whatever wins at the Oscars, studios know they can make a lot of money from something which is ultimately unoriginal. I know this accusation is thrown around really frequently- usually by bitter middle-aged people on the Internet complaining that their […]
Whitewashing: a problem from big screen to adverts
Whitewashing has been an issue across all periods of Hollywood, from Mickey Rooney’s often excused caricature portrayal of a Japanese man in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), to Scarlett Johansson in the recent Ghost in the Shell, a live-action adaptation of the 1995 Japanese anime. The difference is that now, in 2017, the problem is being […]
What ‘Probably’ Happens in Fast and Furious 8
I’ve never seen a Fast and Furious movie in my life. I don’t have anything against them, I just don’t think we’d get on. From what I can gather, the main bulk of the films consists of cars, explosions, and family. For one, I don’t know anything about cars. You could quite easily convince me […]
It’s such a Pitt-y
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a celebrity man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of an equally lucrative, Instagram queen, botox-fuelled wife. So well-ingrained is this mentality, that the latest phenomenon to explode upon social media has been instigated not by the Syrian Civil War, nor the New York […]
One Man in Amman – The Cinema
Cinema is one of those things you can always enjoy. There’s the stale-in-the-mouth popcorn that you wish you’d never bought, the seat with three or four pieces of chewing gum glued to the underside – reluctantly discovered by an overcurious hand, the floors imbibed with sodas spilled through the decades that you can peel your […]