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 Zemeckis
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 of
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 own
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. What
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-like
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 what’s been done
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 takes
Stephanie Hamill newsbusters.org Not a fan of the new Lord of the Rings TV series? Well then, you might just be a racist or a bigot according to some on the left. Apparently, you can’t give an honest review about Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The
Anyone who’s ever read the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen in the original will know just how dark these stories really are, compared to the sanitised, Disney versions we’re fed today. Heads are chopped off, Cinderella’s stepsisters mutilate their own feet and are blinded by the
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to watch the attack mockumentary ‘Fire and Fury’ released by Stuff. It was bad enough in the way they portrayed the individuals in it without then finding out that it had been funded by the taxpayers. Their deliberate omission of the
