Weekly Sightings #3

Adrian Martin on "Lovers On The Run"

I am lucky to have the chance to listen to Prof. Adrian Martin the third semester in row. His recent course focuses on "New Approaches to Film Genre" and thereby dismantles clichés and "rules of genre" that seem to be cast in stone.

Notes on Godzilla: Gojira tai Hedora (1971)

Yoshimitsu Banno, JP 1971, colour, 96 min, DF, 35mm

In the year of its 60^th anniversary, I watched a Godzilla movie entirely for the first time.

One coworker at our local uni cinema actually printed a list of the Godzilla filmography which made me feel rather ignorant – regarding it's length - of what was going on in Japanese popular cinema since as early as 1954. What I knew before already was that Gojira traditionally could be interpreted as the cultural response to Japanese anxiety of nuclear weapons after WWII, Nagasaki and Hiroshima. This version from 1971 nonetheless proves that Gojira finally turned from an incorporation of terror to a clumsy, friendly hero saving Japanese population.

Weekly Sightings #1

How Deep is Your Love? - Semantic Oppositions in "Adam's Apples"

The first appearance of the "Book of Job" in "Adam's Apples" by Anders Thomas Jensen and its several, obtruding repetitions force a more detailed analysis of opposing themes. 

"every girl does not have nipples" - set-ups and pay-offs in "bad words"(2013) by jason bateman

It has always been a major question for me regarding the perception of a movie or any kind of visual narrative form, how the viewer tolerates various discontinuities in time and place if they are acknowledged anyway.