Seeing Triple: Identification and Gamic Vision in Film and FPS Games

The subjective shot as used in film and FPS video games is analyzed. In film, the subjective shot involves an alignment of two conflicting POVs (protagonist and spectator) and so is generally problematic. By providing game-enabled agency, the subjective shot is employed successfully in FPS games. Being John Malkovich and Peeping Tom both use a special case of the subjective shot, with the merging of three looks. This provides the spectator with a vicarious sense of agency comparable to that of an FPS game, rendering the subjective shot non-problematic in these films.

The “Eagle Scout Film”: David Lynch as Auteur and Genre Filmmaker

Knowing David Lynch’s background as an Eagle Scout, this article explores that many of Lynch’s films and their protagonists, particularly Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) in Blue Velvet (1986), embody Eagle Scout-like heroes and serve as genre-like “Eagle Scout films.” These films and their protagonists have similarities with the film noir and western genres and their detective/cowboy heroes through their dealings with ethics, morality, and justice in sadistic worlds. In his genre-hybrid films, Lynch acts as an auteur in using recurring thematic preoccupations/stylistic tendencies, while exemplifying hostile environments offset by a central protagonist with an Eagle Scout-like set of morals.

New Blood: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Horror, Eddie Falvey, Joe Hickinbottom, and Jonathan Wroot (2021)

Review of: New Blood: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Horror, Eddie Falvey, Joe Hickinbottom, and Jonathan Wroot (2021) Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 288pp., ISBN: 9781786836342 (pbk), $60

Bond Girls: Body, Fashion and Gender, Monica Germanà (2020)

Review of: Bond Girls: Body, Fashion and Gender, Monica Germanà (2020) London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 264pp., ISBN-10: 0857855328 (pbk), $34.95, ISBN-10: 085785643X (hbk), $76.22

Over and Over, and Over Again: Tension, Repetition, and Catharsis in the Films of Wes Anderson

This article argues that Wes Anderson’s films repeat formal and thematic strategies in such a way that resists traditional auteurist analysis. By looking at Anderson’s recognizable style of image composition, his expansive paratext, and recurring thematic motifs, we can see a productive system of repetition operative both within and across his films. The value Anderson places on repetition opposes Peter Wollen’s structural auteurist framework, which values variation over repetition. Such opposition allows Anderson’s films to be taken up as a critique of this valuation, demonstrated through an analysis of the productive role of repetition in his work.

Exploring Internal and External Monstrosity: An Interview with Damon Lindelof on Confronting Visible and Invisible Monsters through Television

Damon Lindelof gives an interview on how his writing tackles the human experience by shining a light on internal monsters we face as well as the broader concept of the unknown as monstrous. Including discussions on Lost (2004–2010), The Leftovers (2014–2017), and Watchmen (2019), Lindelof compares film to television in terms of effectiveness in storytelling as well as expanding on his focus on “sit forward” television and how he has seen his own characters reflecting some of his own struggles.

Transnationalism and Genre Hybridity in New British Horror, Lindsey Decker (2021)

Review of: Transnationalism and Genre Hybridity in New British Horror, Lindsey Decker (2021) Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 270pp., ISBN: 9781786836984 (pbk), $57

The Complexities of Exile, the Other, and the Postcolonial Predicament in Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999)

Cáit Murphy argues that Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999) expresses an “accented style,” citing Hamid Naficy’s theorization of accented cinema in his 2001 study, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Drawing on Denis’s own exilic background, Murphy analyzes the depiction of contradictory exile in Denis’s film. Working from Naficy’s criteria for accented cinema, such as epistolarity, cultural hybridity, and Bakhtinian chronotopes, Murphy argues that the film’s protagonist Galoup (Denis Lavant) and the French Foreign Legion in Djibouti are paradoxical representations of belonging and Otherness.

This Texas Thing Here

USA Director Tobe Hooper Runtime 83 minutes