GIF via IWDRM Hi everyone! We wanted to apologize for the radio silence in the past two weeks. We’ve been very busy preparing ourselves and our staff for the coming semester. Look forward to regular posts returning next week. Welcome to all the university’s incoming freshmen!
Continue readingA look back at Hugo Award-winning television and film
Yesterday marked the 73rd WorldCon, an annual assemblage of science fiction and fantasy fans and writers that hosts the prestigious Hugo Awards. Named after science fiction editor Hugo Gernsback, the Hugos are awarded every year to groundbreaking genre fiction and proudly include legends like Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick among their winners. This year’s […]
Continue readingEasily tally up how long you’ve watched TV and come face-to-face with your mortality
We understand that statistics about how much time we spend watching television tend to be exaggerated, often because we watch it while talking, eating, or working. But it’s still shocking to see that our favorite shows run for days if not weeks. How much time have we dedicated to this glowing rectangle? Rather than parse […]
Continue readingThe Flintstones was the ultimate warning about cohesive writing
The second season of HBO’s True Detective has not received kind reviews, but in defense of its creative ambition, it is the singular product of creator Nic Pizzolatto. He has almost exclusive writing credit for the series, and for better or worse, it undeniably carries his signature. That’s a rarity in commercial film and television […]
Continue readingWe might see The Day the Clown Cried in 2025
A year and a half ago, now-removed footage from Jerry Lewis’s The Day the Clown Cried surfaced online for the first time. For those unacquainted with the legend, The Day the Clown Cried was a Holocaust melodrama about a clown sent to a concentration camp. The film was never released and has acquired an apocalyptically […]
Continue readingFour years ago, Scottish environmentalists took on Trump
With all the hot air swirling about Donald Trump in the past week, now because of his debate performance, we often forget that he was a blowhard in business before he was a blowhard in politics. He’s received flak for some of his higher-profile real-estate projects, many of which involve taking over historic spaces like […]
Continue readingSee Vulture’s 2-minute primer on the bottle episode, then watch a few
Bottle episodes have long served as a staple of nearly every TV production – whether for creative or budgetary reasons – but many television fans might not be familiar with the concept. To avoid stealing their thunder, we’ll just recommend that you watch Vulture’s terrific, short primer on the history of bottle episodes and why […]
Continue readingA tribute to analog computers in film
Continuing this week’s accidental theme of production design, we came across a terrific article summarizing the history of analog technology in science fiction films. Minority Report‘s gesture-controlled holographic interfaces and touchscreens changed the popular idea of a futuristic interface, but before that, the future in film looked a lot like the 70s: toggle switches, dials, […]
Continue readingIn honor of Rowdy Roddy Piper, a look back on They Live from Slavoj Zizek
Rowdy Roddy Piper’s death last Friday leaves a very unusual hole in the film world. Though he made occasional guest appearances in TV shows and movies – usually either playing himself or a similarly hard-knuckled character – Piper is best known even beyond his wrestling career as the star of They Live (HU DVD 9020), […]
Continue readingProduction design in an HD world
For all the brouhaha about greenscreen effects changing filmmaking, props, costumes, and sets still matter. Production design continues to be vital to even the most effects-heavy movies: just ask the craftspeople who hand-made all the chainmail armor for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, embedded above. But as high-definition cameras, Blu-rays, and auto-smoothing televisions produce […]
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