Contemporary Cinema ← Walter's World

Genesis (1999)

Aug

6

2017

“Adapting Genesis” Introduction The phenomenal success of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) spurred a much-needed revitalization of interest in the relationship between the cinema and religion. However, from the point-of-view of those of us desiring a re-invention of adaptation studies, the impact of this film is quite regrettable. The Passion of the ...

Treme (2010-2013)

Aug

3

2017

Katrina on My Mind: Pedagogy, Kate Chopin’s New Orleans, and HBO’s Treme John Goodman plays Creighton Bernette, a Tulane University English professor (based on real-life political blogger Ashley Morris) on Treme (HBO, 2010-2013), Eric Overmyer’s and David Simon’s beautifully novelistic television show. Bernette, who has become a national figure for railing against the Bush Administration’s ...

“Unfriending” Hawthorne

Jul

31

2017

“Unfriending Hawthorne” Near the top of the list of film adaptations that drive literature professors to angry distraction is surely The Scarlet Letter (Ronald Joffé, 1995), a big budget Hollywood version of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel. Beautifully shot and interestingly performed by a diverse range of actors—as Hester Prynne, Demi Moore, a young movie starlet; ...

Twin Peaks: The Return [episode 7: There’s a Body Alright] (2017)

Jul

3

2017

“Warhol/Snow/Lynch” The end of episode seven of Twin Peaks: The Return, cheekily entitled (by my Dish Network DVR), “There’s a Body All Right,” is caught between two experimental film traditions of the 1960s: that of Pop artist, Andy Warhol, and the structural cinema of Michael Snow. In my favorite shot of the entire series thus ...

Twin Peaks: The Return [episode 5: Case Files] (2017)

Jun

9

2017

“Over the Waterfall: The Centrifugal Nature of Twin Peaks: The Return” The credit sequence of Twin Peaks: The Return begins with the familiar school portrait of Laura Palmer superimposed on the waterfall near the Great Northern Hotel. However, unlike the earlier seasons, when we see the flowing cascade from a distance, we now watch from ...

The Lost City of Z (2016)

May

12

2017

“An Image of Amazonia” In “An Image of Africa,” his scolding 1975 lecture to the Anglo-American literary establishment delivered at the University of Massachusetts, Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe laments the modernist celebration of Joseph Conrad’s purportedly anti-imperialist novel, Heart of Darkness (1899). Achebe argues that, despite the indictment of the lunacy of White imperialism in ...

Elle (2016)

Apr

26

2017

“Autobiographies of Violence” For years, the films of Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven have been dogged in academic circles by their hyper-violence. In Hollywood films like Robocop (1987) and Starship Troopers (1997), the Fascist nature of the violence within the plot is so graphically drawn that it begins to seem as if the special effects and ...

Paterson (2016)

Apr

14

2017

“A Step Up and Away for Jim Jarmusch” In my 2013 essay, “A Step Away from the Cinema: Hollywood and the Poetry of Frank O’Hara,” I attempt to theorize the relationship between the acute attention to everyday materiality in the poetry of the 1950s New York School and the normal visual operations of the cinema. ...

Twentieth Century Women (2016)

Mar

31

2017

“Jimmy Carter’s Warning” Twentieth Century Women is an ambitious character study that uses American history to explore the relationship between a Depression-era mother, Dorothea (Annette Bening) and her son, Jamie. Director Mike Mills’ film is set in 1979, but it uses the traditions of film, music, literature, and sociology to explore the nature of American ...

Manchester by the Sea (2016)

Mar

10

2017

“An Adagio for Cinema” One of the most moving pieces in the classical repertoire, Tomaso Albinoni’s “Adagio in G minor” lies at the center of an historical mystery. Albinoni biographer Remo Giazotto claimed to have found a fragment of a manuscript by the famous 18th century composer in Dresden soon after the end of World ...