Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

A dose of Venom for the worldwide box office and an end to blaming critics for failure?

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Tom Jolliffe takes a look at the surprising worldwide commercial success of Venom… Earlier in the year the first trailer for Venom dropped. It looked pretty awful, not least about 15 years out of date (particularly the initial trailer’s CGI polish). A few more trailers followed and fanfare seemed fairly low. Then came the reviews. […]

A Beginner’s Guide To Paul Verhoeven

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Tom Jolliffe continues our series of beginner’s guides to iconic directors with controversial Dutch director, Paul Verhoeven… A man who never does anything by halves, Paul Verhoeven is a director who has courted controversy throughout his career. With a long and varied resume, spanning beginnings in Dutch TV and film, then in and out of […]

Movie Review – Josie (2017)

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Josie, 2017. Directed by Eric England. Starring Sophie Turner, Dylan McDermott, Kurt Fuller, Jack Kilmer and Robin Bartlett. SYNOPSIS: Hank, a solitary man living a dull existence in the sleepy, Southern town raises eyebrows when he develops a questionable relationship with Josie, a recently transplanted high school student. Occasionally a film opens in a way that […]

A Beginner’s Guide To John Carpenter

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Tom Jolliffe continues his series of beginner’s guides to legendary directors with a look at the work of John Carpenter… What with the recent Halloween reboot in the cinemas, a 40 year anniversary for his original classic, and a series of gorgeous new 4K transfer releases for some of his other cult classics, now would […]

Filmmaking With No Money and Big Ideas

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Tom Jolliffe offers an insight into no budget film-making, and why you should aim as high as those means can reach… I won’t claim to be Steven Spielberg (or even Steven Spielbergo) but aspiring film-makers can learn a lot from not just the industry masters of past and present, but from each other. I’ve spoken […]

A Beginner’s Guide to Ingmar Bergman

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Tom Jolliffe offers a beginner’s guide to the work of Ingmar Bergman… To know Ingmar Bergman’s work is to understand a director who has impacted cinema as greatly as anyone. A true master by any measure of directorial influence, he’s a man whose work is iconic, even to the unbeknown who’ve never seen his films. […]

Sugar Coating Hollywood-Style

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Tom Jolliffe on when real life stories are sugar coated in film… A good biopic can be fascinating. There are characters, through TV and print media, biographies, documentaries and more, that we learn the most fascinating things about. Documentaries of course have the goal of showing us (when done right) both sides of a personality, […]

Are the days of the big name headliners disappearing?

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Tom Jolliffe looks at whether the days of the superstar headliner are disappearing with audiences more drawn to franchises or film concepts than the stars attached… You could say it started in Hollywood’s classic era. The movie star. The big name. They were in some ways manufactured, or at least their image was. Rock Hudson […]

A Beginner’s Guide to Brian De Palma

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Tom Jolliffe begins a series of features focused on iconic directors. Those whose work has influenced many younger directors who have followed them. First up is Brian De Palma… The 70’s saw a group of exceptional directors coming to the forefront of cinema. It’s an era where I could all too easily cover Martin Scorsese, […]