Tag Archives: politics

Our delving into awards-bait continues. There are particular features in a film that uniformly appeal to academy voters. Does the film tackle a timely issue? Is there a lot of shameless ethical grandstanding? Was it directed by Steven Spielberg? Does ...

Censorship! State execution! Gulags! This is the stuff great comedy is made of. The Death of Stalin is an adaptation of a French graphic novel being brought to the screen by satirical maestro Armando Iannucci. The helmsman behind The Thick ...

I’m not sure how I managed to avoid watching this film for so long. It isn’t as though it is an under the radar classic. For years, friends have been lecturing me about watching it, which prompts me (contrary bastard ...

Publishing industry insiders are predicting that 2017 will find readers turning to happier tales of escapism and hope. As a result, genre publishers are talking about the This is a big shift from the pessimistic dystopias that have dominated bestseller lists ...

Adam Roberts is hardly a new voice in SFF writing, and yet he was new to me. Or, should I say, his fiction work was new to me. Long ago I had come across one of his academic works on ...

It’s Hollywood, folks! The 50s are underway and the studios are churning out westerns, musicals, period dramas, aquatic ballets, and historical epics – all under the shadow of America’s new reality: the Cold War. With abducted film stars, starlets’ pregnancies ...

I find myself more and more disappointed with the standards of film advertising. If I have to be exposed to minute upon minute of trailers prior to ever feature, they could at least give me a fair idea of what ...

I feel in many ways 2015 is a fortuitous year for feminist cinema. We have finally got a major release with mass appeal that has no qualms about showing its support for female liberation and equality which also stands as ...

It isn’t just the Joker who’s asking ‘Why so serious?’ lately. We seem to love our dark, troubled TV and films more than ever. We watch shows like Game of Thrones, The Wire, The Sopranos, and Daredevil… it’s a wonder ...

Shattered reputations, political wrangling, incestuous urges, religious corruption, madness, cannibalism and murder – oh, that all theatre was like this. If you are fan of the bloody tradition of the Renaissance revenge tragedy, taking inspiration from the gore-drenched works of ...