British cinemas are warning sensitive spectators about the first ‘conte cruel’ in Damián Szifrón’s highly acclaimed film Relatos Salvajes (2014). The story certainly has eerie coincidences with Andreas Lubitz’s tragic murder-suicide of last week. Yet, Szifrón’s very Argentinean take on the matter of a pilot’s terminal depression is humorous rather than tragic. The tale is […]
On 5 January this year I published here a post on a new Swedish system to rate films according to their feminist interest. In this post I mentioned in passing Frozen, noting that, although this Disney film exalts sisterly love, after seeing it my two Madrid nieces didn’t hug each other but remained “mesmerised,” poor […]
When I saw Zack Snyder’s 300 (2006), based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller, I knew at once that was a film I would write about –infuriating but original, ridiculous but deliciously camp, dangerous in its exaltation of laddism but key to understand today’s patriarchal backlash. I did write about it, criticising its failure […]
When I included the film adaptation of Harry Potter as a topic for my course I intended to consider how the movies betray or enhance the text –yes, the old-fashioned fidelity criterion. Also, I wanted to examine the very British cast. However, I ended transforming the two planned lectures into far more active sessions on, […]
Time does fly… I first read about the new Swedish film rating system against sexism back in November, made a note to discuss it here but then other topics caught my attention. I don’t understand Swedish and I’ll have to rely, therefore, on English-language media for an explanation of how the rating system works. Have […]
Last Christmas holiday I published a post on the Harry Potter series which has led to my teaching next academic year an elective subject on Rowling’s dark yarn. Having enjoyed season one of TV series A Game of Thrones, I told myself that perhaps soon it should be the turn for George R. R. Martin’s […]
The Christmas break seems a particularly good time to enjoy those very long texts one has never time for. In this occasion we have chosen to see the complete Harry Potter film series, the whole eight movies in a row and in just five days. My partner had previously stopped at number four (Harry Potter […]
I don’t feel much compunction when abandoning a book that fails to interest me. So many fish in the sea… why bother to stick to one chosen freely and that can be equally freely abandoned? (quite another matter are the books I must read, for teaching or research… and the many I read as a […]
This might be an example of intertextuality in the making. Or in hindsight. Also an example of how academics cannot really relax. For, I don’t know what nuclear physicists do for relaxation, but I tend to watch films, and, well, they make me think, an activity that often leads to writing papers. Or blog entries. […]
You might be familiar with the French film Sarah’s Key (Gilles Paquet-Brenner, 2010), originally titled Elle s’appelait Sarah, like the best-selling novel (2007) by Tatiana de Rosnay which it adapts. I saw the film, loving, as usual, Kristin Scott-Thomas’s fine performance. She plays Julia, a journalist who doggedly follows the clues leading her to discover […]