The Big Picture Magazine
In Akira Kurosawa’s Scandal (Sukyandaru, aka Shubun, 1950), the aspiring painter Ichiro Aoye (Toshiro Mifune) and the famous opera singer Miyako Saijo (Yoshiko Yamaguchi) become victims of the gutter press, with a magazine claiming that the two young people are lovers. A surreptitiously taken photo showing them together at an inn in the countryside is […]
Several decades into its inception, the internet is the most prominent form of mass media. While today social media brain rot is the social concern du jour, twenty years ago the sheer expanse of accessible information online was an idea met with skepticism and fear. This paranoia was examined most patently in two films from […]
The Union Broadcasting System took a risk when they let a visibly unwell Howard Beale on air. With his frantic demeanour and dishevelled appearance, the anchorman was in no state to present the news. What Beale does instead is denounce the social ills of 1970s America in a monologue that keeps escalating in its hysteria. […]
Anyone who thought Billy Wilder’s savagely cynical noir about a disgraced journalist’s search for a career-rejuvenating scoop was too sensational need only recall 2010’s media circus surrounding the plight of the 33 trapped Chilean miners. The sight of hundreds of rubberneckers flanked by publicity-hungry officials and hordes of reporters dowsing the crisis at ‘Camp Hope’ […]
Catching up via the iPlayer whilst taking the train to work or tearing the plastic from the latest box set at home, it’s easy to forget a time just thirty years ago when the television landscape was radically different. There was no internet and the hard drive recorder and DVD had yet to be invented. […]