-
Gravity (2013) Film Study
Gravity is a science fiction film from 2013, with a strong mythological, Christian influence.
-
Rare Interview With Author Janet Frame
This is a radio interview, transcribed and published in Landfall 178 (Volume forty-five, June 1991) between Janet Frame and Elizabeth Alley.
-
Film Study: Contact (1997)
I recently found a copy of Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel Contact at the second-hand store. I already knew that Carl Sagan was a brilliant thinker and that he wrote this book of fiction as a way of playing with some ideas he had about what might happen if humans were to make contact with an extra-terrestrial intelligent life…
-
Planes Trains and Automobiles
Planes, Trains & Automobiles is a thanksgiving comedy from 1987. The film has been given an R rating — not, as I expected, because of the pillow scene, but because of the cussy airport scene. [Hughes] is not often cited for greatness, although some of his titles, like “The Breakfast Club,” “Weird Science,” “Ferris Bueller’s…
-
Waitress Film Study (2007)
Waitress is a 2007 film with a tragic real life story behind the movie. It is also a good storytelling case study, as it changes mood part way through. Though I don’t like Waitress nearly as much as I like Juno, it’s worth a brief compare and contrast as a way of understanding the way…
-
The Others Film Study
Written by Alejandro Amenábar, The Others is an old-fashioned melodramatic ghost story but done very well. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s one of those films that can be ruined in one fell swoop (like Sixth Sense), so leave the building now!
-
Black Books Pilot (2000) TV Study
The pilot episode of Black Books is called “Cooking The Books”. One thing Cooking The Books does really well is introducing the audience very quickly to the three main characters (all of them transcending stock characters, though based on stock), and weaving them together for gags at the climax. When broken down, we can see that each…
-
Everyday Words With Different Academic Meanings
ASEXUAL The queer community uses ‘asexual’ in a very specific way to refer to orientation (low-to-no- sexual attraction). Some people are homosexual, some people are bisexual, heterosexual, pansexual and… asexual. In non-queer spaces, the word ‘asexual’ is used in various different ways independent from the central contemporary meaning of orientation. Even within academic literature, there…
-
Dreaming In Storytelling
You may not remember dreaming after you sleep, but you’ll encounter many dream sequences in books. Isn’t it cheesy to rely on dreams? Don’t rational readers know that dreams cannot predict the future — that dreams are the scrabbled outworkings of a brain tidying itself up? Dreams, daydreams, visions, prophecies, processes of memory… all of…
-
Storytelling Tips From Juno (2007)
I’m no great fan of many traditional rom-coms, but I do love this off-beat romantic comedy drama blend precisely because it takes the regular, conservative storyline of: mother almost loses her baby and then reunites (to live happily ever after), and the usual movie tropes (geek = Bleeker, but he’s also an athlete, stepmother is not…
-
Side-shadowing In The Wrysons by John Cheever
“The Wrysons” is interesting as a study of writing technique because it is a story with the theme of ‘lack’ running throughout, and Cheever masterfully chose to employ some narrative techniques which are themselves about describing not what did happen but what didn’t, and what might have. Apart from The Bella Lingua, which is set…
-
Two Summers by John Heffernan and Freya Blackwood Analysis
Two Summers by John Heffernan and Freya Blackwood is a sobering Australian picture book about farming during drought. I have a special interest in stories about drought (due to the fact I’ve written one myself). Perhaps because of this, I’ve given thought to ‘subject matter for young readers’ and ‘picturebook endings‘ and ‘juvenile capacity for…
-
Thirteen O’Clock by Enid Blyton Analysis
I have conflicted views about Enid Blyton, but Thirteen O’Clock story is relatively free of the problems I (and many others) have taken issue with in these slightly more enlightened times. We still have a story in which a young patriarch-in-training helps an older female character out by tending to her minor injury and finding a lost cat,…
-
The Influence of Edith Nesbit
A handful of children’s authors of the late nineteeth to early twentieth centuries were experiementing with innovative forms of story with radical content: Oscar Wilde, P.L. Travers, J.M. Barrie, Astrid Lindgren, John Masefield and E. Nesbit. These storytellers were pushing the boundaries of what people considered acceptable for children, and we have them partly to…
-
Aaron’s Hair by Robert Munsch Analysis
Aaron’s Hair is not Munsch’s most popular book. That would be Love You Forever, which Munsch wrote just as a family story for a long time, after two of their babies were born dead. That book has sold 20 million copies, even though the publisher only hoped for 30,000 to break even. This book hits the…