The Big Picture Magazine
I can’t help thinking that, for anyone born in the 1980s and subsequently raised exclusively on a diet of post-Jurassic Park creature realisation, the cinematic work of stop-motion maestro Ray Harryhausen must seem as archaic as Victorian magic lantern shows. What then would they make of Go-Motion, the near-forgotten transitional fossil of animation techniques that […]
Thirty years have passed since Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel first hit the box office, to a rather lukewarm reception from both critics and the horror author himself. King made no secret of his displeasure at several aspects of the film, famously stating: “The real problem is that Kubrick […]
Of all the bizarre and unsettling sights that Edward Woodward’s Sergeant Howie encounters during his time on Summerisle – open air orgies, a mother breastfeeding in a cemetery, the Hand of Glory, phallic topiary and outlandish animal costumes – nothing prepares him for the monstrous beauty of The Wicker Man. The deeply conservative and devoutly […]
In the concluding part of a two-part piece on cinema’s wicked, wanton women, Emma Simmonds shifts the focus to four significant French contributions to the character type. Despite Hollywood’s popularisation of the enchantress paradigm as a staple of its fabulous noirs, these slinky villainesses are still most commonly described by the French expression femme fatale. […]
If ever a film made guys want to run around topless with a gun and a bandanna, Rambo:First Blood Part II was it – and Jerry Goldsmith’s ridiculously macho CD cover (not to mention the music!) confirms the suspicion. Sly Stallone’s second outing as John ‘get an extra supply of body bags’ Rambo was a […]
It’s not coincidental that the brilliant golden ticket needed to board the Polar Express is almost identical to the brilliant golden ticket needed to get inside Willy Wonka’s ‘non-pollutionary, anti-institutionary, pro-confectionery factory of fun’. In the 23 years between Mel Stuart’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Robert Zemeckis’s The Polar Express, the […]
Indiana Jones is essentially a superhero: usually the bowtied and bespectacled Prof. Henry Jones Jr., he has only to climb into his chosen costume to become Indiana Jones, whip-wielding discoverer of the Holy Grail and insouciant scourge of the Nazis. And, while his revolver is ever-ready, his whip indispensible and his jacket unmistakable, only his […]
What more needs to be said about Psycho, other than it has exercised influence over every horror-thriller post 1960. Forgoing the larger budgets of Vertigo and North by Northwest, director Alfred Hitchcock wanted to dabble in the burgeoning independent market, so he stripped back the crew, retained the members from his tv show ‘Alfred Hitchcock […]
Dotted throughout cinematic history are films which boldly combine black and white with colour, occasionally within the same frame. An aesthetically arresting technique – although it draws attention to the artifice and manipulations of cinema – done effectively it can be a symbolic shift which enhances our understanding of character psychology and theme. This is colour […]