Film

Although B-movies have been around since the early years of cinema, they've taken on different connotations with audiences over the decades, even becoming their own respected genre. One might argue that Val Lewton, a writer-producer who worked in the 1940s-50s, is the tipping point in low budget horror. Films like Cat People (1942) and its sequel The Curse of the Cat People (1944) took financial restrictions and turned them into an advantage. Their use of sound is particularly effective in creating a psychologically disturbing atmosphere. Instead of the make-up and costume blockbusters that profited Universal (Dracula, Frankenstein, and their respective franchises), Lewton and director Jacques Tourner reinvented the genre. Use Lewton's work as the fulcrum to describe how B-horror came to be a modern-day cult favourite.

After watching Sam Mendes’ movie 1917, I heard someone saying that the movie reminded him of a video game. I don't know if he was referring to the story itself, to the way the movie was shot, or to both, but it had me thinking. To what extent video games may have influenced the way movies are shot and stories built? (In the case of 1917, or in general.) And, vice-versa, some video games like The Last Of Us or Red Dead Redemption 2 can almost be watched like movies. So, to what extent movies have influenced the way video games are designed and built?

This February a slew of both bad and good movies came out. However, two of them have been talked the most and those films being Sonic the Hedgehog and Bird of Prey.

What should have been a feminist success turned out to a downright misogynistic disaster at the box office. While the other that gain a truckload of backlash for the C.G.I abomination that supposed to represent the beloved Sega video game character Sonic, turned out to be a box office success, beating Detective Pikachu as the newest adorable, expressive C.G.I character to date.

These two films are where they are now because one decided to listen to the fans, while the other kicked them to the curb, thinking their message was far more important than actually adapting the source material.

At the end of the day, one wonders should fans have a say in terms of the creative process in films when it comes to adapting a popular product or should fans leave it to the paid artists to take liberties with it?

When adapting old stories that included prejudice or other unfair products of its time, to what extent should the adaptation be altered? Should the adaptation include the biases of the original (even if they are critiqued or showed to be flawed), or is it better to remove the biases altogether? On one hand, including the biases may be seen as a confirmation of them. However, it may also be seen as a way to renounce the flaws of the past while still valuing important stories. Avoiding the biases altogether may imply that the biases were not important, but it may also be viewed as a way of 'updating' an outdated story. Does the decision to include (or exclude) biases change depending on the original story's context (e.g. how well known it is today, how old it is, etc.)?

Discussions around the male gaze (in art and elsewhere) are present within the Western socio-political, cultural and artistic milieu since a very long time. What about the female gaze – something which is becoming more and more powerful and evident in the 21st century? I would like to leave this topic relatively open so that writers can choose their own angle from which to hadnle it. I would be interested to see whether people examine this issue from a certain political stance, from a gender studies' perspective or from a more traditional pathway of looking into painting and photography, for example. I believe there is a lot to be said regarding the representation of women nowadays – in art, in films, on TV, in literature…the female figure is becoming more independent, having agency over her own body and her own gaze. What changes (if any) does this bring into the mechanisms of production, and consequently consumption, in pop culture?

We've just seen history in the making last weekend when, for the first time ever a foreign language film won the Best Picture Oscar. Has Hollywood finally learned that there are other countries outside of the US where brilliant and talented people tell fascinating stories? Does this mark a new era for Hollywood in which we'll see more international talent celebrated or a last attempt of a dying branch of the film industry to stay relevant and "woke" in an increasingly globalised and diverse world?

The best way for a film company to make money while at the same time show that they are aware of female social issues is to create an all female cast spin off of an existing franchise.

Examples like Ghostbusters 2016, Bird of Prey, and Oceans 8 come to mind.
However, there has been a bit of backlash towards feminist films in recent years. Films like Bird of Prey and Ghostbusters are disliked by the public for being a feminist version of beloved men centric films. As a result, the film makers and actresses blaming the audience for being mysoginistic.

While that may be true in some degree, it is the writing and creative process behind making the film that determines its success.

In comparing Oceans 8 with Bird of Prey.

We are able to determine how to correctly produce an all female cast film.
While Bird of Prey had the female cast part down, they failed because the film makers did not adapt the comic correctly. They decided to make Harley Quin the main protagonist, in a film that is based on a comic where Harley does not appear in. In addition to that, they wrote the film in a way that made Harley quin a giant goof ball, where luck was constantly on her side.

Meanwhile, Oceans 8 does a better job, by justifying the need for all woman's cast. It mirrors the other Ocean movies visualy and incorporates original characters from Oceans 11, while keeping it unique with its own new set of characters and film score.

The depiction of violence in film has evolved dramatically over the years and it is not uncommon to see a number of films that depict war violence, gang violence, or glorified murder (think "The Purge"). How come this type of violence seems to permeate more throughout American culture in the 21st century than other, more psychological violence like that depicted in the French film "Cache" – which involves an almost ritualistic suicide? We seem to be, as a culture, more willing to accept and assimilate to the grand-sized violence where hundreds if not thousands of people die than we are to a film where only one or two deaths are seen in detail. Consider also slasher films like "Saw" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" as opposed to "The Silence of the Lambs" and how this type of violence relates and speaks to our culture's appetite for specific forms of violence.