Last night I watched Jennifer's Body (2009) for the first time. I tried to keep in mind that the film is from 2009, but the fact that I've heard the film toted as a "feminist cult classic" just makes me sad for what my generation (millennial) considers a "feminist cult classic"

This article focuses on the feminist messaging being undercut by the male gaze, the use of Megan Fox's body as bait in the film, and makes an important point about the final girl and its often direct link to societal notions of female "purity" (eyeroll) that still exist.

In my opinion, the film's major failure at feminist messaging lies in the relationship between Jennifer and Needy, not male/female relations. Jennifer has been possessed by a demon as a result of a group of men attempting to sacrifice her to the devil and now feeds on the other boys at high school who've (mostly) been wanting to have sex with her. Then, at the school dance, Jennifer sets her sights on her best friend Needy's boyfriend to kill next, despite the fact that the very men who stabbed her to death are performing at the dance that night. Regardless of this oversight on possessed Jennifer's part, Needy realizes Jennifer is going to kill her boyfriend. She attempts to stop it. When Needy can't and realizes her boyfriend is dead, she kills her lifelong best friend out of revenge, not defense, reducing Jennifer to simply a possessed body, just like all the men reduced her to a body, except of course the angelic boyfriend (who initially did kiss Jennifer, betraying Needy, and go to the pool room or wherever with her, intending to be alone with her until his precious change of heart). So we see, the man has more value and is more central to Needy's life than Jennifer ever was. Instead of trying to figure out how to exorcize or cure Jennifer, or in a more sinister and feminist horror movie direction, find a way to feed her only deserving men, Needy chooses to put her lifelong best friend down like an aggressive dog, killing Jennifer and not the demon.

The film attempts to compensate for this by having Needy possessed by a demon as a result of Jennifer's bite during the struggle, who eventually carries out the revenge Jennifer should have carried out all along. Okay...feminist-ish ending, maybe? But all didn't end well. The story is about Jennifer's body, after all, which suffered objectification and two very vicious instances of multiple physical traumas (stabbings, which are forced penetrations): one at the hands of a group of strange men, and another at the hands of Needy, a beloved friend she used to "play boyfriend and girlfriend" with.

It is obsolete to ask the question about the relation between prefilmic reality and different layers of sound in documentaries (in academics) today?

The Red Rum Theory

I’ve been developing this theory alongside my advisors over the past several years. This is the first public statement of it. I truly believe that this theory completely alters our understanding of The Shining and Kubrick as a whole.

The theory centers around the misunderstanding of “red rum” being used as one word, “redrum”. This is a red herring placed by Kubrick in the subtitles.

The core idea is that in the Bar scene, Danny is offscreen, drinking Red Rum that Lloyd gave him. If we analyze the audio through a stereograph, we can locate Danny’s big wheel in the background. The final nail in the coffin is when Jack appears to look at the camera. He actually glances at Danny, who jumped over the counter to achieve more Red Rum before going back to the room.

He got more Red Rum because Lloyd got him extremely addicted and drunk. When he got back, all he could talk about was Red Rum. He even wrote it on the wall. Wendy mistook Red Rum as murder. After being chased, the hotel wants to be sure she knows it was Red Rum and not murder, so it fills an elevator full of Red Rum, which then opens and the Red Rum spills out. This is proven by the deleted scene of Lloyd pouring Red Rum down the elevator.

The final nail in the coffin is Dick. Being addicted to Red Rum causes the shining, which is why Dick tried to smuggle some in under his shirt. When Jack axed him, his Red Rum bottle shattered. Desperately, Dick tried to lick it off the floor, but hit his head on the floor and fell unconscious.

The reason Danny had the shining is because Dick put Red Rum in his chocolate ice cream at the beginning. And this causes a infinite loop, just like we see with Jack and Grady so Danny will ALWAYS have the Red Rum, just like how Jack always was the caretaker

The Red Rum theory is a lot to digest and completely changes our understanding of the shining, but I truly believe it is vital to understand this epic movie.

Are these two approaches any good when analysing film adaptations. I am writing an assignment for uni, and I know of these two approaches in general. I feel brain fried right now, and nothing goes in my head, but what kind of analysis can I expect if using these two approaches together.

Ok, so it's been a while since I've watched it, but I remember at the end of the 1997 Funny Games film there's like a pseudoscientific, semi-philosophical dialogue between the two invaders about how the creation of some self-contained artform in a very tangible way is as real as reality. I remember interpreting this as Haneke implicating the spectator in a form of complicity with the murder of the family through voyeuristic-narcissistic identification with the murderers through phenomenological effects such as laughter at the absurdity of the situation at the expense of the family (much like the function of laughter at Stanley in Harold Pinter's play The Birthday Party), which is done throughout the movie but reaches an apotheosis at the end. But it isn't only about a kind of psycho-analytic identification between characters in the diegetic world vs spectator(s), IMO. Now what I believe this ending dialogue does is a kind/flavor of hyperstition, that through the creation of this film it also creates a cultural anxiety about welcoming strangers into your home, that now you've seen the movie, you'll be more wary about letting foreign actors into your home for fear of a Funny Games-esque situation happening to you. The ending dialogue, IIRC, seems to hint at this possibility through its tangential discussion on the many-worlds hypothesis and how fiction is very much "real." I remember reading on Nick Land's blog a short story he wrote in which he implied if the Bible didn't exist, there wouldn't be any conflict in the Middle East (the short story was about a woman writing a horror story that becomes "real" once she writes it— much as the Bible, through its existence, engenders in reality conflict that would be absent). Whether or not this analysis is correct is immaterial, and it's probably wrong given how material/economic forces shape our social and political realities; but that is beside the point. What he was getting at was the influence fictional worlds, particularly when invented in systems that proliferate with positive feedback-loops (i.e., capitalism), have on "reality" through an injection of the fictional world into the real.

I don't know if I'm even remembering this ending dialogue correctly, so can someone who has more expertise expand on this idea/give me feedback? Thanks.

Hitchcockian family dynamics (castration anxiety in males, Electra complex), two abnormal deaths within two days in a typical high school, tire slashing as a sexual metaphor… Coupled with the unnatural color film of the late classic Hollywood era, often the characters’ performances seem to be conspiring something behind James Dean’s back, along with many strange and odd movements. The soundtrack is also in the desolate style of old Hollywood horror films. Does anyone share my sentiment?

Hey everyone!
Admins, I wasn't sure if this was sufficiently relevant for your rules. Please delete with my apologies if it's not.

I'm an English as a foreign language teacher currently teaching a university-level business English / professional English class for film & TV students on a BA Film & TV Studies program.

One of their assessments will be writing a film review. We try to focus on language tasks that will be potentially relevant to their future careers. I'm going to give them a list of three films. They will pick one, watch it and write me a review.

I'm a casual film fan, but a long way from being an auteur!
I thought I'd reach out to the smart folks of the internet and see if there are any good suggestions for films to set.

Ideally, I'm looking for films with the following qualities:
(1) English Language (Necessary - This is an English class)
(2) A distinctive or interesting artistic or visual style.
(3) Something interesting from a theoretical perspective, again so they can write about it with some level of depth.
(4) Ideally not something CRAZY old. Maybe last 20 years or so.
(5) Not horribly difficult to find a copy of to watch.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions and help!

I’ve seen this claim floating around from tons of different sources that Truffaut defended American censorship but I can’t seem to find the original source so I’m not really familiar with his argument for why. Does anyone by chance know the article?

If I do then a list would be very helpful should one exist.

Hi! For some time I have been trying to wrap my head around this form of documentary filmmaking that seems to be quite popular, if not majoritarian, nowadays.

I am looking for any serious scholarly/critical work that investigates the topic of 'character-driven documentaries'. Specifically: what is their genealogy? where do they come from? which understanding of reality and of cinema do they presuppose? what is their intended impact, how do these films influence the public?

Here are some notes I have gathered about this type of films, to better highlight what am I talking about:

1. character-driven documentaries (called "cinema of the real" in some contexts/countries) often involve following one or more characters through a prolonged amount of time. On the side of production, this means filming a great amount of hours of footage;
2. during production, and parallel to the filming process, the filmmaker(s) crafts character's dramaturgy, storylines, goals and conflicts. It is, therefore, a type of documentary cinema highly hybridized with fiction;
3. these films differ from documentaries that wish to communicate one certain thesis. The goal of character-driven documentaries is much less so to directly influence reality (a la old school political documentaries of the 70s), and much more so to evoke feelings in the audience, which then, in turn, can open up spaces for new discourses.
4. For this reason, I feel like the rise of character-driven documentaries, as we see them today, owes a lot to "postmodern" theories that see societal change as coming from a shift in narrative or perspective, rather than a struggle of different forces or classes (wherein documentary cinema would essentially serve the purpose of propaganda).

Thanks for any consideration you might have!

I am aiming to enter one of the top film schools in my country, specifically for the directing major. I am looking for books that can profoundly alter my cinematic perception and consciousness from a philosophical or intellectual depth perspective, rather than focusing on technical methodologies. These books should help me prepare for the targeted examination of a director’s cinematic consciousness. Could you recommend any such books that could significantly influence my understanding of film directing?

Seems to be all over the free TV stuff here in the UK, nothing online; any ideas what it’s about?

What the title says. I'm having trouble finding any book or journal article that could help satiate this curiosity. I figure it's a phenomenon birthed by postmodernism but I'm not really sure? Any help would be deeply appreciated.

Formalism is essentially when a director uses shot choice/camera movement in specific ways to convey emotion/information to the audience. A "realist" director would set up the camera wide and let the actors tell the story, whereas a formalist director has a specific shot in mind for every moment, changing with the social dynamic, or as characters gain more power, or as information is revealed. Hitchcock is an often cited Formalist.

My favorite formalists who use it "In your face" for deconstruction

• Brian De Palma's probably the best OAT, specifically Blow Out. The way the car crash is shot when he sees it vs when he listens back to it is a masterclass on formalism. It shows how - even if the audience doesn't notice - the angle of the shot, the lense, the framing, all of that can shape and enhance your story.
• Fincher (Brian De Palma's child in many ways). Very specific about INFORMATION, always using the camera to convey EXACTLY what's important. A quote I love of his "There's not a million ways to shoot a scene. There's about 2. And the other way is wrong". And you can see this in his films. He is trying to find THE right way to shoot the scene. Whether it should be a one take, all close up, off set angles, he is interesting in discovering which is the right way to shoot the scene.
• Scorsese is a great formalist, better than Tarantino for my money. He cares more about framing, camera moves etc. And has only gotten better at it in his age.
• Spielberg on the other hand is a sneaky formalist, but maybe the best of his peers. His movies feel realist sometimes because of the long-takes, but those are all specifically laid out and crafted to convey the story, capturing foreground and background to connect ideas and people.
• Bong Joon Ho, makes the right shot choice, every single time.

FORMALISM DEFINITION for clarity - Formalists believe that style and the means by which it is used to communicate ideas, emotions and themes in film is largely the result of the use of various synthesized elements.

Honorable mention, Coens, specifically their weirder movies like Hudsucker Proxy, A Simple Man, or Lebowski (Huducker is probably the most formalist IMO). Kubrick can be very formalist but also uses a lot of realist qualities.

I don’t watch a whole lot of movies but am still interested. I am hoping that learning about film theory may help me to see things in film I hadn’t noticed before - or at least see them from a different perspective.

He's had a bigger influence on the film industry than almost any director of his generation, he's known for getting career-best performances from his actors, and he has a completely unique voice and directing style, and his last few movies have been a return to form, but people still tear the guy apart like it's 2008. Despite the fact that he's been making genuinely good films again, and has been since 2015, people only want to talk about The Happening and The Last Airbender. My newest youtube video is about why we all need to admit that Shyamalan is a good filmmaker.

https://youtu.be/_EpJUBgUeAQ

I'm interested in the intersection of the far-right, digital leisure and deviant subcultures. Basically, I'm interested in nofap, incels and those people who post about "degeneracy" in furry and trans* porn threads on 4chan.

But beforehand, I need to understand the cultural milieu of digital deviance. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for work studying the porn fandom and the whole cultural milieu of porn, erotic comics and writing.

Some of the previous literature I have found somewhat relevant.

• Gilbert, Aster. "Sissy Remixed: Trans* Porno Remix and Constructing the Trans* Subject." Transgender Studies Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 222–236. doi:10.1215/23289252-8143379
• Cruz, Ariane. The Color of Kink: Black Women, BDSM, and Pornography, New York University Press, 2016.
• Miltner, K. M., & Highfield, T. (2017). "Never Gonna GIF You Up: Analyzing the Cultural Significance of the Animated GIF". Social Media + Society, 3(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305117725223
• Lewicki, Riley Hannah. "Prefiguring the Otokonoko genre: A comparative trans analysis of Stop!! Hibari-Kun! and No Bra." Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, vol. 3, 2022. doi:10.21900/j.jams.v3.868
• Kaoru Nagayama. Erotic Comics in Japan: An Introduction to Eromanga, Amsterdam University Press, 2020.
• Kimi Rito. The History of Hentai Manga: An Expressionist Examination of EroManga, FAKKU, 2021.
• Kinsella, Sharon. "Cuteness, josō, and the need to appeal: otoko no ko in male subculture in 2010s Japan." Japan Forum, vol. 32, no. 3, 2019, pp. 432-458. doi:10.1080/09555803.2019.1676289
• Corbett, John and Kapsalis, Terri. "Aural Sex: The Female Orgasm in Popular Sound." Experimental Sound & Radio, vol. 40, no. 3, 1996. doi:10.2307/1146553
• Williams, Linda. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the "Frenzy of the Visible", University of California Press, 1999.
• Fennel, Julie L. Please Scream Quietly: A Story of Kink, Rowman & Littlefield, 2022.

Pretty much what it says on the tin. I'm thinking about an essay about nostalgia, and remember encountering this theory which posits that the proliferation of home media—specifically the VHS—changed how films were made, because where before directors were drawing from their memories of films but primarily relying on their own creativity, suddenly we were able to watch and rewatch our favourite films, study them obsessively, and filmmakers became great recreators. (Tarantino was, from memory, cited as the ultimate example)

I'm pretty sure the theory was called "The Great Rewind" or something to that effect, but all my attempts to research have led me to novels with similar titles. If anyone knows a book/article/theorist associated with this, your input would be greatly appreciated.