Modern fantasy began with the release of George Lucas’s “Star Wars,” in 1977, which paid homage to the “Flash Gordon” and “Buck Rogers” serials of the thirties. The project drew Wagner comparisons almost from the[…]
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Category: Movies
“It is an astonishing cultural transformation: the “Ride” remade into an anthem of American supremacy. This displacement is of a piece with other troubling historical continuities of the postwar era: Nazi scientists migrating to America, Gestapo-style torture techniques resurfacing in Iraq, the cult of the sculpted body perpetuating Riefenstahl’s Aryan ideal”
It is an astonishing cultural transformation: the “Ride” remade into an anthem of American supremacy. This displacement is of a piece with other troubling historical continuities of the postwar era: Nazi scientists migrating to America,[…]
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“‘Apocalypse’ soon became a military fetish object, its Wagner scene influencing real-life behavior”
The entrance of the main Valkyrie motif coincides with a wide shot of fourteen helicopters in flight. The soldiers ready their guns; Kilgore nods to the music. Another wide shot coincides with a gleaming B-major[…]
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“The ‘Ride’ seems a foreordained choice for the helicopter operation in ‘Apocalypse Now'”
For decades before Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” aerial warfare had been stirring thoughts of the Valkyries and their “air-horses,” as Wagner called them. In Proust’s “Time Regained,” the Germanophile dandy Robert de Saint-Loup watches a zeppelin[…]
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“The only observation that feels true is that ‘Tiger King’ is what we watched two weeks into our isolation”
“Tiger King” is prestige trash: narratively ambitious but self-aware. True crime is far from journalism. (Exotic’s history was more thoroughly investigated in a New York magazine story by Robert Moor.) In the series’ final episode,[…]
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Chailkin and Goode are less interested in getting to the truth of the matter than in revelling in their subjects’ chintzy vanity projects: Baskin’s YouTube channel (“Hey, all you cool cats and kittens”), Doc Antle’s[…]
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Tiger King’s “choice of inspirational comparison – a mockumentary – is telling”
As Goode recently told Rolling Stone, “What fascinated Rebecca and I was the ‘Best in Show’ aspect, where the people are almost more interesting than the exotic animals they’re keeping.” Goode’s choice of inspirational comparison—a[…]
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“Like the ancients, we experience far more than we understand”
…we denizens of the third millennium ce make constant recourse to specialists whose art has no basis in empirical discovery or other Enlightenment values. We shape our moral and aesthetic imaginations through reading Lord of the Rings or watching The[…]
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“Back before Buffy and Katniss, Besson was one of the only directors championing stories with women as action leads”
Back before Buffy and Katniss, Besson was one of the only directors championing stories with women as action leads. He’s a little cagey about this. “I pay the same attention to the girl and the[…]
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“I can’t believe ‘Across the Stars’ is in Star Wars – it’s so rich”
I still listen to this piece and I get chills. I can’t believe it’s in Star Wars – it’s so rich. I mean there’s this sort of like very gentle love story emerging and then[…]
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