A look back at the moving image: From Silence to CGI
First ever photograph. View from the Window at Le Gras (1826) There is no doubt that this is the era of the moving image. Since the 1860s, with the invention of the zoetrope, an unstoppable wave of...
View ArticleCasino Royale(s): The Forgotten Bonds
Thought Sean Connery was the first James Bond? In honour of the recent release of Skyfall, here are a couple of Bond films that you may not know about. Casino Royal (1954) The first screen adaptation...
View ArticleEarly Superhero Movies: 1920 to 1948
I’m no expert on superhero films and even less on the comic books that spawned them, but the recent release of The Dark Knight Rises on Blu-ray started me thinking about the historical development of...
View ArticleCinema IS Christmas!
As a person unaffiliated with any kind of religion or spiritualism, at Christmas time I am left contemplating the question that millions of other human beings in today’s secular society must be...
View ArticleChristmas Films: The Sentimental and the Savage
Christmas is here and the mighty interweb has spewed forth the inevitable tidal wave of ‘Best Xmas Movies’ lists. While pondering how I might obnoxiously subvert this tendency on my own blog (I...
View ArticleOnline Content: You are not real
Please allow me a moment of cathartic indulgence. I’m not a technophobe. I am an early adopter. I use twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Foursquare and a range of other junky applications. I can...
View ArticleCinematic Verisimilitude: Twenty great movie moments
For the cinephile, there will inevitably be moments of cinematic verisimilitude with which one will become obsessed. There will be moments when a particular filmmaker touches the cinephile in such a...
View ArticleThinking Cinematically: The people’s prerogative
It is a difficult thing to love a popular art form, especially film. It means that one must accept that there is an assumption of equality of opinion amongst the public in relation to the form in which...
View ArticleThe First Australians: Ten great films about indigenous Australia
The twenty-sixth of January has passed for another year, although most of my readers will be unaware of the significance that the day holds for Australians. It is Australia Day, a celebration of our...
View ArticleThe Cinephile
The cinephile is a unique entity, an individual who has failed to experience the entirety of the malaise that is adulthood. Or perhaps it is too harsh to refer to adulthood in such sickly terms? In...
View ArticleNew Trailer: Lords of Salem
Horror is an incredibly difficult genre to do well. And while I’ve seen hundreds of horror films over the years in search of the ultimate terror experience, I would have to say that there have been...
View ArticleSunshine: A Valentine’s Day letter to a film that deserves more love
A brief Valentine’s Day letter to a film that has received far less love than it deserves, Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007) – published early to keep the day for my long-suffering better half Dearest...
View ArticleOn the Couch: Examining a cinephile
In an attempt to discover where and when I was first overtaken by that most all-encompassing and endlessly satisfying of disorders, cinephilia, I’ve recently been reflecting on my early years. I can...
View ArticleShattered Masculinities: Muscular pulp and feminine tears
There is something incredibly fascinating about images of shattered masculinity on the big screen. The notion of testosterone fuelled hyper-men imploding into impotent puddles of muscular pulp and...
View ArticleLeaving Home: Ten films about migration
I was recently asked to put together a post on films that deal with the experience of migration by a friend who is about to take the big plunge. Of course, this is a huge topic. People migrate for all...
View ArticleNew CURNBLOG Facebook page!
Hi All, This is just a quick note to let you know that CURNBLOG has just launched a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CURNblog If you’re on Facebook I’d love it if you could drop by and Like the...
View ArticleShorts reviews: ‘Bridges’, ‘Afterglow’ and ‘Step 9′
I get a lot of requests to review short films and in the past I’ve rarely been able to get to many of them. However, having spent the last five months as a short film selection panellist for the...
View ArticleGreat Horrors: Ten horror classics you might have missed
The horror genre promises more than any other in respect to emotive impact, and for this reason it is probably the genre in which failure is most common (along with comedy, perhaps). Horror films are...
View ArticleRemembering Robocop: The smouldering dystopian wreck of 80s avarice
There has never been, so far as I can recall, a period in my life during which I have not been obsessed by the cinematic form in some way or other. And while my tastes have continued to evolve or...
View ArticleWords from Oz: 65 classic Australian movie quotes
Why compile a list of quotes from classic Australian movies? I’m not entirely sure. Nor am I sure that my definition of “classic” will sit well with all aficionados of Australian film – my taste for...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....