Search results for ""author jez conolly""

Consigned to the deep freeze of critical and commercial reception upon its release in 1982, The Thing has bounced back spectacularly to become one of the most highly regarded productions from the 1980s 'Body Horror' cycle of films, experiencing a wholesale and detailed reappraisal that has secured its place in the pantheon of modern cinematic horror. Thirty years on, and with a recent prequel reigniting interest, Jez Conolly looks back to the film's antecedents and to the changing nature of its reception and the work that it has influenced. The themes discussed include the significance of The Thing's subversive antipodal environment, the role that the film has played in the corruption of the onscreen monstrous form, the qualities that make it an exemplar of the director's work and the relevance of its legendary visual effects despite the advent of CGI. Topped and tailed by a full plot breakdown and an appreciation of its notoriously downbeat ending, this exploration of the events at US Outpost 31 in the winter of 1982 captures The Thing's sub-zero terror in all its gory glory.

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Released a matter of days after the end of the Second World War and a dozen years ahead of the first full-blooded Hammer Horror, the Ealing Studios horror anthology film Dead of Night featured contributions from some of the finest directors, writers and technicians ever to work in British film. Since its release it has become evermore widely regarded as a keystone in the architecture of horror cinema, both nationally and internationally, yet for a film that packs such a reputation this is the first time a single book has been dedicated to its analysis. Beginning with a brief plot précis 'road map' in order to aid navigation through the film's stories, there follows a discussion of Dead of Night's individual stories, including its frame tale ('Linking Narrative'), a consideration of the potency of stillness and the suspension of time as devices for eliciting goose bumps, an appraisal of the film in relation to the very English tradition of the festive ghost story, and an analysis of the British post-war male gender crisis embodied by a number of the film's protagonists. The book includes a selection of rarely seen pre-production designs produced by the film's acclaimed production designer, Michael Relph.

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With its rich political and literary history, Dublin is a sought after destination for cinematographers who have made use of the city's urban streetscapes and lush pastoral settings in many memorable films – among them Braveheart, The Italian Job and the 2006 musical drama Once. Throughout the book, a series of essays by leading film scholars spotlight familiar actors, producers, and directors as well as some of the themes common to films shot in Dublin, including literature, politics, the city's thriving music scene and its long history of organized crime. World Film Locations: Dublin aims to present a selective snapshot of the city through the medium of the movies made or set in it and allow the reader to inhabit these spaces, passing through a stimulating choice of words and pictures that inform and precipitate an imagined exploration. It is a collection of over 40 reviews of scenes from films either shot or set in Dublin, illustrated by images from the scenes in question and photographs of locations, often as they are today. Together, the words and images expose the relationship between a scene’s setting and its impact on the viewer. The short scene reviews are interspersed with more detailed, meditative essays that are designed to examine in greater depth some of the key aspects of Dublin as seen onscreen; the city’s political and literary histories are appraised, as are its music scene, its familiar faces, its element of organised crime and its fluctuating attributes before, during and after the Celtic Tiger era. Taken as a whole, this book constitutes a rare written instance of Dublin encapsulated in moments of film, brought together and supplemented by a pictorial toolkit designed to enable a conceptual tour of the city in its various incarnations.

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Seconds (1966) is John Frankenheimer's criminally overlooked monolith of paranoia, part science fiction, part body horror, part noir thriller cum black comedy, a film found at the intersection of the post-McCarthy mindset, European art cinema, the suburban identity nightmares of The Twilight Zone and the mid-life crises of masculinity aroused by 1960s counterculture. Arguably the bleakest mainstream Hollywood film ever made, it was famously booed at its Cannes unveiling and was a box office failure upon release. And while the film’s critical reception has gradually turned to acknowledge its significance in the scheme of American cinema, throughout the wider science fiction film community, it remains surprisingly under appreciated. This Constellation sets out to shed light on the film’s many attributes, from its stylistic significance to its political commentary, countering the critical dismissal of a film suffering from ‘personality disorder’ to suggest that, instead, Seconds turned its inner identity crisis from a vice into a virtue. In the spirit of the finest science fiction, Seconds is both emblematic of the time in which it was made and perpetually relevant to new audiences as a portent of things to come – or, for that matter, a startling reveal of the hidden here and now.

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