idreamedmovies

Course Description:
The spine of the course will focus on key aspects of mainstream American cinema - the most influential and pervasive form of global mass media in the 20th Century. The course will balance introductory sessions on traditional industry, studio working practices and storytelling paradigms with core features of post-1958 film theory.

Applied practical criticism will focus on two renowned films on Hollywood itself - Vincent Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful (1954) and Robert Altman’s The Player (1992) -, which we will share as seminar texts. Documentary excerpts on film history, technology, genre and certain directors (Fuller, Hopper) will support the programme.

Close reference to contemporary global developments in digital filmmaking as emerging from the United States will inform our enquiries. Amongst other things, therefore, we will consider the viability &relevance of traditional film practice, industry and criticism in the 21st century.

More info and the schedule can be found here.

Research Paper:

My research paper will be written in the context of the 2008 conference “Genre, Ideology and Culture in the Cinema” in Spain.
The abstract can be found here: abstract-genre-in-cinema.doc .

Within the conference’s theme of genre, I will trace one of the archetypes of the American cinema - the loner (anti-) hero, who is balancing the underworld and society, yet not belonging to either one, through various genres, beginning with the western over the film noir and then culminating in a closer look at my three core texts:
- William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
- Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986) and
- Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982).

The paper will trace the portrayal and development of this specific character type in Hollywood history and then focus on three more recent ways of dealing with that archetype - a more literal portrayal in Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A., a psychological portrayal in Mann’s Manhunter and the seemingly inevitable conclusion in Scott’s Blade Runner, where the hero, quite literally, ends up being just that which he hunts.
(Incidentally, all three of these movies were complete box office disasters when they came out, but have managed to turn into “cult classics” by now.)

Till then:

Trailer (and teaser trailer) for To Live and Die in LA:

(Bad 80s VO) trailer for Manhunter:

And finally, 2007’s trailer for Scott’s “Final Cut” of Blade Runner (official third version of the movie):

Trailer for the 1992 “Director’s Cut”:

And trailer for the 1982 theatrical version:

Interesting to see the difference between trailers from the 80s and 90s to now, no? Equally interesting is the fact that all of the trailers option to focus on a more actio-oriented aspect of the movies as opposed to the real underlying themes.