I am thrilled to have graduated form the University of Portsmouth with a First Class BA (Hons) Film Studies degree, along with receiving the No. 6 Prize Award for academic excellence, and the School of Film and Media Best Film Studies Student award.
In 1948 Robert Warshow wrote that the gangster in Hollywood film was a tragic hero. By this he meant the gangster we see on screen would achieve their success, because they are under obligation to succeed, but would inevitably meet their death because the means of achieving their goals were all unlawful and aggressive – the audience would share their journey to success only to see it tragically unfold.
There are several key components of the film industry which make it what it is today in the twenty first century. Some are relatively new concepts, which gathered pace towards the early 2010’s, and others are as old as the film industry itself. All together, they help to define the industry as we know it. Most of all, we see movies breaking records at the box office, streaming giants such as Netflix and Amazon throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at exclusive projects, and technological breakthroughs enabling movies to come to fruition.
Auteur theory typically refers to a director who is known as the “primary source of the film’s formal, stylistic, and thematic qualities” (Thompson & Bordwell, 1994, p. 720), and whilst the original meaning was focused on directors, it can be applied to other roles within the creation of a film. This essay explores the auteur relationship between George Lucas and his 1973 film American Graffiti.
The Jungle Book (Favreau, 2016) is a live-action remake of Disney’s animation The Jungle Book (Reitherman, 1967) – both adaptations of Rudyard Kipling’s 1895 collection of fables. It tells a somewhat different story but has the same underlying plot: Mowgli must leave the Jungle and join his people because Shere Khan the Tiger is back and is hunting him. In the 1967 animation there were several stereotypes of race and culture which have been altered, or even dropped completely, in the live-action remake.
The Roosevelt Theatre was one of many theatres in Chicago, Illinois, owned and operated by Barney Balaban and Sam Katz during the Dream Palace Theatre chain revolution. Others included the Central Park, the Riviera and the Chicago Theatre. These theatres were dressed up spectacularly to provide a greater experience on top of just going to the theatre and whilst they only accounted for a quarter of total theatre seats, they generated sixty five percent of Chicago’s film rentals (Allen, & Gomery, 1985, p. 198).
Exploring how class is represented in Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007), with a focus on some of the hidden or deeper meanings within scenes from these films.
A collection of short research tasks formulated into a report, with a focus on Mark Jancovich’s approach to genre, Gothic/American Gothic conventions and Henry Jenkins’ writings on Convergence Culture.
Freud wrote that the uncanny “belongs to the realm of the frightening, of what evokes fear and dread.” (2003, p. 123) and continues to define Unheimlich as “uncanny” or “eerie”, but “etymologically corresponds to ‘unhomely’” and that “the uncanny is that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar.” This short essay explores this definition and compares it to Alien (Scott, 1979).
The British New Wave had several key characteristics closely linked with social realism and the British documentary movement. These films follow ordinary lives, without unrealistic characters, but most importantly were “free from the pressures of the box-office or the demands of propaganda” (Dupin, n.d.). This short essay explores if A Taste of Honey (Richardson, 1961) was a typical film of the British New Wave.