Flickering Myth

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

Dumbing Down Cinema: Meme Moviemaking

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Tom Jolliffe on the dumbing down of cinema… The accusation of dumbing down seems to come up a lot in recent years. It runs through everything. Society in general, culture, media, music and film. So lets focus on film. It would be wrong to suggest that rudimentary plotting (for easy spoon feeding) hasn’t been around […]

Movie Review – Circus Kane (2017)

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Circus Kane, 2017. Directed by Christopher Ray. Starring Jonathan Lipnicki, Tim Abell, Mark Christopher Lawrence, Ted Monte, Victoria Konefal, and Nicole Arianna Fox. SYNOPSIS A reclusive circus master invites a group of social media stars to his house of haunts. Anyone who can make it out before being scared into submission will earn $250,000 – […]

The directors who can take cinema forward over the next decade

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Tom Jolliffe on the directors who can take cinema forward over the next decade… There’s a cinematic crossroads on the horizon. As the market gets swallowed up by a core consumer taste leaning toward spandex and radioactive arachnid bites, there’s a need for modern thinking, engaging directors to offer something different. After all, there’s only […]

The Cinematic Universe Fascination: A Bigger Picture Obsession

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Tom Jolliffe on Hollywood’s fascination with the shared cinematic universe… Marketing, labelling, packaging. It’s everywhere. In cinematic terms it’s more important than ever. Everything is governed by men with clipboards. Or the modern equivalent. I suppose it’s all tablets now. I’m a cave dwelling Cro-Magnon man, so I wouldn’t know but there’s an inherent need […]

The Genesis of the Excessively Long Action Scene

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Tom Jolliffe on the genesis of the excessively long action scene… It has become almost the norm now. The majority of large-scale action blockbusters will have a hugely elaborate, and extremely long set piece in them. In fact some may have several. It used to be that maybe 5-10 minutes at the end of a […]

The Return Of The Western

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Tom Jolliffe on the return of the Western… Cinema runs in cycles. A genre may have its run and then have a lull of 10-20 years where audiences aren’t really interested. In the 30’s and 40’s you couldn’t move for gangster films. In the 50’s it was epics and the 60’s there was a huge […]

Movie Review – Bonejangles (2017)

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Bonejangles, 2017. Directed by Brett DeJager. Starring Reggie Bannister, Elissa Dowling, Kelly Misek Jr., Julia Cavanaugh, Devin Toft, Jamie Scott Gordon, Lawrence Wayne Curry, and Hannah Richter. SYNOPSIS: While transporting the unstoppable killer Bonejangles to an asylum, a group of police officers encounter a hellish pit stop: a cursed town where the dead rise from […]

Directorial Vision vs Crowd Pleasing

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Tom Jolliffe on directorial vision vs crowd pleasing… We’ve all done it in our lives. The crowd leans a certain way and we adhere to that. Maybe it was in school. Oasis vs Blur (yes, I’m old). The consensus is Oasis, so you put Oasis in your tape deck to please everyone. Secretly though you’re […]

Tomorrow’s World: Part 2 – Modern Sci-Fi, the technology around the corner and how it may destroy us

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Tom Jolliffe on modern sci-fi, the technology around the corner and how it may destroy us… As far as Science Fiction goes, the film and TV shows that audiences have watched over the years have often featured some sense of foreboding. What happens if… This could be James Cameron’s Terminator which shows a world in […]