Ziad Shihab

Showing all posts tagged "Cinesemiotics"

Contagious visual blandness of Netflix

January 24th, 2023

Last week I saw M3GAN, the new horror-comedy starring Allison Williams and a robot-doll in a blond wig. I liked it enough. The doll character is genuinely well-done—a seemingly hard-to-nail mix of creepy and campy—but I walked out of the theater with a vaguely empty feeling. I couldn’t quite place it until I started talking with my friends about where the movie was set, and I realized I had no idea. One answer is somewhere in Silicon Valley, given its bald critique of big tech. It didn’t actu...

Jordan Peele finally explains Nope moment that left viewers scratching their heads

January 18th, 2023

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeJordan Peele has finally given fans an explanation for one of the most widely debated moments in his 2022 horror film Nope.The film focuses on two siblings, played by Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer, who encounter a strange UFO near their ranch in Agua Dulce, California.One of the other plot threads follows Ricky "Jupe" Park, a former child actor who once s...

The depthless hyperreality of Noah Baumbach’s White Noise

January 17th, 2023

EARLY IN NOAH BAUMBACH'S ADAPTATION of Don DeLillo’s White Noise, Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle), a college professor with ambitions to build a career in the academic study of Elvis Presley, asks his colleague Jack Gladney (Adam Driver) to attend his next lecture on the King. In the sixteen years since Jack founded the college’s Hitler Studies department, he has become one of the world’s preeminent scholars of the Führer, and Murray hopes his presence might lend some much-needed prestige to the...

SF - Not SF

January 15th, 2023

This is science fiction. This is science fiction. This is not science fiction. Andrei Tarkovsky, of course. I’ve been putting the finishing touches to my list of offbeat science-fiction films, and in doing so remembered that I’d posted these shots on Twitter some time ago. The annotated list is one of the longest things I’ve written for this site which I’ll be posting next week. Tarkovsky isn’t on it even though Stalker has long been a favourite film of mine. With a couple of...

Skinamarink

January 14th, 2023

SkinamarinkSourceURL: https://reverseshot.org/archive/entry/3029/Skinamarink Inner Sanctum By Natalie Marlin Skinamarink Dir. Kyle Edward Ball, Canada, IFC Midnight The first sound to pierce the night is a father slamming a door. He’s just found his son Kevin (Lucas Paul) injured, crying, having fallen down a flight of stairs in the night. A daughter, Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault), covertly watching cartoons in her bedroom, reflexively turns the television off when she hears h...

Shut In (2022) Movie Ending Explained – What do the Apples Symbolize?

January 6th, 2023

Share this Article D.J. Caruso’s latest film, "Shut In (2022)" is a survival thriller that stars Rainey Qualley, Jake Horowitz, and Vincent Gallo. While it does not do anything different compared to other films of this genre, its inventive handling of dread and anxiety makes it perfectly watchable.The film is about a single mother locked inside her house’s pantry by her meth head ex-boyfriend and his friend. Now what she does here on, while being locked inside the room with her young kid...

Identification of a Woman

January 6th, 2023

The Criterion Collection Home Search Cart Account Menu Michelangelo Antonioni Identification of a Woman Michelangelo Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman is a body- and soul-baring voyage into one man’s artistic and erotic consciousness. After his wife leaves him, a film director finds himself drawn into affairs with two enigmatic women: at the same time, he searches for the right subject and actress for his next film. This spellbinding antirom...

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Biggest Turkey in Game Show History

January 1st, 2023

By Adam Nedeff, Researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History You bring the stuffing, the cranberry sauce, and the pumpkin pie. For Thanksgiving, we’ll bring you the biggest turkey in the history of game shows: You’re in the Picture By 1961, Jackie Gleason was already a bona fide show business legend. His Cavalcade of Stars had made him one of the first superstars in the young medium of television. The classic 39-episode season of The Honeymooners had been icing on the cake....

Violent murder scene Brian De Palma calls his favourite

December 28th, 2022

When Quentin Tarantino met his hero Brian De Palma, he was quick to ask him why they have both seen themselves tarred as violent perverts. In the reams that have been written about their work, the pull quotes nearly always pertain to courting controversy in one bloody way or another. While that isn’t all that surprising given the blood-soaked celluloid they have both offered up, we’re dealing with the realm of visual fantasy so some of the condemnation seems fancifully misguided.  De Palma be...

Film at Lincoln Center Announces Jordan Peele Curation - Broadway World

December 23rd, 2022

Film at Lincoln Center announces The Lost Rider: A Chronicle of Hollywood Sacrifice, from January 5-14. Widely hailed as one of this century's great directorial debuts, Jordan Peele's era-defining Get Out injected new life into horror with its witty subversion of racial politics and elitist social mores. Two years later, his wildly entertaining Us plumbed everything from isolationist fears and late-capitalist power structures to the rich lineage of the doppelgänger motif and home-invasio...

Fabelmans - The

December 20th, 2022

https://www.filmfreakcentral.net/.a/6a0168ea36d6b2970c02af1c912468200d-pi*½/****starring Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogan, Gabriel LaBellewritten by Steven Spielberg & Tony Kushnerdirected by Steven Spielbergby Walter Chaw Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle) loves making movies. He loves it so much there's a chance he'll destroy his family because of it--showing things that aren't for public consumption, mishandling the power of the medium, underestimating the magnitude of his gift. We know t...

How Amazon's 'Nanny' fixes the problem of "exotic" horror tropes

December 17th, 2022

For almost as long as the genre has existed on-screen, horror movies have used real cultural mythologies to frighten us. Exorcisms, spirits, and vampires are all familiar tropes that have international origins — even more niche subgenres like folk horror owe themselves entirely to pagan and foreign religions. While plenty of these films find nuance by balancing terror with genuine reverence, many American-made horror movies can’t help but feel exploitative — presenting certain spiritual bel...

Alam - on the Fleeting Nature of Symbols and Memory set in Israel-occupied Palestine

December 13th, 2022

Share this Article What does a flag symbolize? Who decides the meaning conferred upon a flag as a nation’s symbol? Is its meaning confined to the meaning given to the colors or symbols that characterize it? Does its meaning alter based on where a flag is flown? Alam (2022), which translates to flag, does not raise these questions directly but stimulates its viewers to formulate questions of similar nature on what and what not constitutes the underlying meaning and value of similar nation...

Burning Patience (2022) Netflix Movie Review

December 8th, 2022

Share this Article Burning Patience (2022): Romance is a genre that I have often observed people either loving or hating. Some find the fantasy elusive, while the same elusiveness makes some others cherish it. Often poets, artists, and other mental gymnasts spend their days and nights professing their love of love. ‘Burning Patience’ is a story borne out of similar minds. The movie is adapted from Antonio Skármeta’s book of the same name. We witness a story of two lovers who fall ...

How House of the Dragon Mirrors The Anarchy in England

December 8th, 2022

Now that the hugely successful first season of HBO’s House of the Dragon has aired, it is safe for us to do an analysis of how much and how closely the events and characters mirrored those of actual history. It is no secret that George R.R. Martin drew inspiration for some of his storylines for the smash hit Game of Thrones from historic events, but what about the spin off, House of the Dragon ? Well, at a Comic-Con panel in 2022, Martin explained how G.O.T. had been loosely based around t...

Guillermo del Toro - Pinocchio - Imbues story with historical darkness

December 5th, 2022

Of the numerous films Federico Fellini was unable to make in his lifetime, his version of Carlo Collodi’s 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio is perhaps the one he most lamented. Characteristically nonconformist as a kid, Fellini disliked books, which he associated with adults and school, and "school did not seem to be something that opened up the world," he said in I, Fellini, "but something that closed it, something that interfered with my freedom and imprisoned me for the longest and be...

Fake It So Real - Self-Reflexivity, Theatricality, and Authenticity in Leos Carax - Annette

November 20th, 2022

Shop ProjectorScreen.com for the best projectors and projector screens. 0 Directors · Drama Fake It So Real: Self-Reflexivity, Theatricality, and Authenticity in Leos Carax’s Annette James Slaymaker November 16, 2022 5 Just as Holy Motors simultaneously mourned the loss of physicality from filmmaking while embracing the creative possibilities offered by digital technology, Annette is built on a seeming paradox: it plunges into layer on laye...

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Netflix’s 1899 fails where Dark succeeded - Polygon

November 18th, 2022

1899 fails where Dark succeeded We wanted to love it, we really did [Ed. note: The following contains spoilers for the entirety of 1899 season 1 and Dark.] I love Dark, the German sci-fi show that nearly broke my brain as I worked overtime (literally) keeping track of its multiple timelines and complicated family tree. While many puzzle-box series lose their luster once everything’s been uncovered, after repeated viewings of the ...

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Animated DreamWorks movie Antz is an anti-communist allegory

November 17th, 2022

Antz has historical stakes as a film by being both DreamWorks Animation’s first project and the second feature-length computer-animated film produced after Toy Story. The 1998 movie features a star-studded voice cast: Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Jennifer Lopez, Christopher Walken, Dan Akroyd, Danny Glover and others. In a seemingly straightforward story, ant worker Z is cited as insignificant as an individual. Instead, he is directed to validate himself only as one of many miners, ranked...

Star Trek Lesson Plan

November 14th, 2022

Required Materials:Star Trek: TNG, "Cause and Effect"$14.95 at amazon.com Optional Materials:Roland Barthes, S/Z$11.20 at amazon.com Some text-based or web-based introduction to narratology and film THIS CLASS, ENGL 373 (Science Fiction and Fantasy) doubles for me as introduction to a number of theories. The allegorical and speculative nature of science fiction makes the genre a helpful tool in teaching students what are often quite difficult concepts. The students tend also to get a ki...

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The Eerie Rise of Witches at the Movies

October 27th, 2022

Although most synonymous with the Halloween season, witches have woven their way onto the silver screen at every time of the year since the earliest days of the motion picture. From the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz to the Sanderson Sisters in the Hocus Pocus films, witches have long been popular characters, as well as common archetypes in general, akin to the likes of superheroes, vampires, or even Santa Claus. The witch has kept her place as a very common figure in the storie...