Andrea Wright Senior Lecturer in Teaching and Learning Development Edge Hill University “Cult” is often indiscriminately applied to film and television. In Cult Movies (1981), film critic Danny Peary argued that it should be reserved for “special films which for one reason or another have been taken to heart by
Michael Cook Michael Cook is the editor of MercatorNet. He lives in Sydney, Australia. We’ve selected a dozen of the year’s releases for our readers. Not all of them are Oscar material, but they combine artistry, engagement and reasonably humane values which put them a cut above the
Alistair Harding Filmmaker wecamehereforfreedom.com My name is Alistair Harding and I am a New Zealand filmmaker who was at the parliament protests earlier this year. While I was there, I spent my time filming what was going on with the goal to make a documentary film about the extraordinary
If you were making a movie or TV series based on a venerable, beloved franchise with a fiercely dedicated, generational fan base, would you prefer: A. Someone who was intimately familiar with the source material and loved it; or, B. Someone who was ignorant of the source material and didn’
Vanessa Marr University of Brighton Vanessa Marr is Principal Lecturer at University of Brighton where she is a researcher and course leader. She is also practicing artist and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She explores fairy tales from a feminist perspective, with a particular interest in their
There are some movies that everyone agrees should just remain unsullied by sequels, let alone remakes. Especially in what Quentin Tarantino has rightly dubbed the worst era of film-making ever. News that, for instance, The Princess Bride was mooted for a remake was met with instant, uniform backlash. Robert
On a Saturday afternoon when there is nothing on the television, what does one do? One goes to the movies. Among the dross that Hollywood pumps out, we found a feel-good genre movie about an English war widow who dreams of buying and owning a dress designed by Dior
Robert Eggers is known for the rigorous historical verisimilitude of his films, so it’s no stretch to say that his The Northman is Hamlet as it might really have been. The Northman is, in fact, based loosely on Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus’s telling of the legend of a
If we needed any better example of the dumbing-down of modern culture, we can’t go past The Lord of the Rings and its adaptations. Tolkien’s book is a literary masterpiece that virtually created an entire genre. The Peter Jackson movies are exciting action films which, by their
New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out With Science nzdsos.com Information Opinion World-leading Infectious Disease Epidemiologist, Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford University, features in Out to See, a documentary released last week. An NZDSOS volunteer wrote this brief review on the film and her own experiences relating to Professor Ioannidis.
Gabriel Andrade mercatornet.com Gabriel Andrade is a university professor originally from Venezuela. He writes about politics, philosophy, history, religion and psychology. As evidenced by the wild success of Netflix’s Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, American culture is obsessed with criminals, and all too frequently such individuals enjoy cult-
Now I know how the Whovians and Trekkers feel. Despite being an SF fan for as long as I can remember, I never had more than a passing interest in Star Trek (too preachy). Doctor Who was a constant of the cultural landscape, but too often clashed with Dad’s
As I wrote recently, “fan-baiting” has become the go-to marketing tactic for the talentless dullards ruling the roost in modern Hollywood. Take a venerable, well-loved franchise, churn out a clumsy “reboot”, with race, gender and/or sexuality-swapped main characters. Then, when fans are inevitably aghast at
Nina Willment University of York Nina Willment is a cultural economic geographer with broad interests in digital work, the creative economy, affective and aesthetic labour, gig work and the platform economy. In particular, she has a passion for exploring the lived experiences of workers within emerging sectors of the digital,
“Gaslighting” is a popular propagandist technique with the modern media-political class. It involves presenting a false narrative to others, in order to mislead and manipulate opinion. Consider, for instance, the Ardern government and its pet media, relentlessly presenting a narrative of the Parliament Village protesters as violent extremists. Gaslighting
