Tyneside Cinema Faces a New Competitor
Everyman Cinemas is set to open a new arthouse cinema on Grey Street to rival Tyneside Cinema. But with declining interest in specialised films is this decision viable?
Tag: cinema
British Cinema’s North-South Divide: In Conversation with Tom Jackson
Northern Realism versus ‘Southern Splendour’ – two common ways of imagining the geography and the stories of the United Kingdom.
Summer Film Viewing
Followers of this site will already know of my love for Jafar Panahi and the Iranian cinema in general, so it is fairly straightforward that I would find Closed Curtain (Panahi, 2013) appealing in all of its postmodern, metatextual exuberance. It is a film which may seem unintelligible to audiences unaware of the director’s plight… Continue reading Summer Film Viewing
The Tribe (Miroslav Slaboshpitsky, 2015)
It could be said that like the elongated motorway sequence in Solaris (1972), supposedly included to alienate audiences unworthy of an Andrei Tarkovsky film, Miroslav Slaboshpitsky offers a similar manoeuvre by warning us both in the trailer and at the film’s inception that The Tribe will include no subtitles, voice-over or any other explanation of… Continue reading The Tribe (Miroslav Slaboshpitsky, 2015)
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2015)
In the first years of the 21st century, Hollywood discovered a thirst for male and female characters with superhuman powers. These extraordinary individuals were able to confront the type of modern crime that has progressively rendered the classical systems of state power – the police and governmental intelligence services – helpless. Exploiting the widespread paranoia… Continue reading Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2015)
Only Lovers Left Alive: Jim Jarmusch and the Vampire Genre
Although the vampire genre has always proved popular within both cinema and literature, the 21st century has witnessed a staggering rise in the amount of films centred on vampires. From the profoundly beloved Twilight Saga (2008-2012) to the obscure Thirst (Park Chan-wook, 2009) and the upcoming Dracula Untold (Gary Shore, 2014), it would be difficult… Continue reading Only Lovers Left Alive: Jim Jarmusch and the Vampire Genre
Slow Cinema and Norte, the End of History
To most audiences, to describe a film as ‘slow’ is to give it a negative value judgement. In answer to the question ‘why didn’t you like the film?’ one often hears the response ‘oh because it was so slow’, especially in relation to non-mainstream and art cinema. The word ‘slow’ regularly works as a… Continue reading Slow Cinema and Norte, the End of History
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