Revelation Perth International Film Festival’s Post

It is April 1st, also known as April Fools' Day, and this makes me think of how much cinema and films sometimes trick us into believing certain events actually happened, especially when some films are "based on true events." This expression is indeed catchy and allows spectators to trust the film on screen. However, this might not be the case in certain movies. One example that comes to mind is the film "The Revenant" by Alejandro Iñárritu, as it was part of my doctoral research. For those who may not be familiar with the film, it follows the story of Hugh Glass, who is attacked by a bear and left for dead by his group. He survives and embarks on a journey through the wilderness to find the men who betrayed him. In the storyline of the film, a character named Fitzgerald kills Glass's son to silence him and persuade others to leave Glass behind. However, based on research, this idea isn't true because there's no proof that Glass had a son, let alone one killed by his companions. The film is a masterpiece, in my opinion, but not all the events depicted in it are true. The dramatization of the story of the real person did indeed captivate the audience. This reflection highlights how cinema, like real life, can deceive us with tales of truth. Despite its cinematic brilliance, "The Revenant" reminds us of the fine line between fact and fiction in storytelling. (In the picture, to the left is Leonardo DiCaprio playing Hugh Glass, and to the right is the real Hugh Glass himself.)

Napoleon: A Lumpy, Grumpy Little Man Manohla Dargis New York Times November 22, 2023 “Napoleon” is a very big movie, as you would expect given that it follows its title subject from the bloody delirium of the French Revolution to battlefields across Europe, Africa and, catastrophically, into Russia. More startling, though, is that the movie is also often eccentric and at times eccentrically funny. You expect refined craft and technique from Scott and the pleasures of spectacle filmmaking at its most expansive. You expect heft, seriousness, not snort-out-loud humor, which I guess explains why, while watching the movie, I flashed on Karl Marx’s axiom about history being first tragedy and then farce. […] The war scenes are extraordinary, vigorous, harrowing and rightly grotesque. The tremendous scale of some of these battles helps give them their visceral power, as does Scott’s complex staging and use of masses of human actors and horses. With cannon blasts, bursts of smoke and the sights and sounds of armies of men thundering over fields toward their deaths, he conveys the frenzy of war, its heat and terror. As the fighting grimly continues, and the body count mounts, the absolute waste of it all becomes overwhelming, which is, I imagine, why Scott seems so uninterested in Napoleon’s vaunted military genius. “Napoleon” is consistently surprising partly because it doesn’t conform to the conventions of mainstream historical epics, which is especially true of its startling, adamantly unromanticized title character. (The movie also doesn’t always conform to the historical record, and some may take issue with the portrayal of the Battle of Austerlitz.) In the early scenes, Napoleon seems to be another of [Joaquin] Phoenix’s taciturn, unnervingly volatile, enigmatically damaged, violent men. The difference is that this Napoleon, with his bloat, scowls and consuming needs, often resembles nothing as much as an angrily petulant baby, one whose cruelty and pathological vanity make the horror he unleashes unnervingly familiar.”

Execution is everything! David Fincher's film "The Killer" is a dark and humorous genre movie. The protagonist, an assassin played by Michael Fassbender, gives advice on how to be successful in life, which is a commentary on the self-serving nature of modern society. The opening credits act as a prelude to the action-packed fights that ensue. However, unlike other violent films, "The Killer" doesn't glorify violence, but rather emphasizes the horror of its consequences. The movie also shows how modern society has integrated impersonal commerce and capital, making it clear that the film does not want to revel in graphic violence. Rather, it suggests that pulling a trigger and clicking the "Buy" button are similar actions, which is a disturbing and thought-provoking commentary on modern life.

I’m excited to share that I worked with Amira Wachelka on a research project with under the guidance and facilitation of Zoë Dennis. The topic of our research was “Hacking into Hollywood: Decoding Which Stories Make it Big, Which Genres Sell? In our research we analysed the box office top 10 of the past 30 years and also looked at films with high ROI. We then moved onto genre trends to look at how comedy, romantic-comedies, and horror did in the last 30 years. According to our findings, Top 10 box office films usually rely on existing IP, appeal to a broad audience, and are found in action, fantasy, or adventure genres. In 2023, romantic comedies and horror films showed the best return on investment, while pure comedies, which thrived in the 2010s, have lost their popularity since the pandemic, possibly due to higher ticket prices. However, mixing comedy with other popular genres like drama, horror, or action could lead to success in theatres.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: A Sci-Fi Warning About Modern Love and Relationships In the spring of 2004, a film emerged that posed a profound question to its audience: If you could erase memories of a past lover after a painful breakup, would you do it? And more importantly, should you? This cinematic exploration of love, heartbreak, and memory manipulation was none other than “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” The word “classic” is not a word to be used lightly when describing a film, but every once in a while a film leaves so potent an impression that you immediately know it is something special in your heart. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, directed by Michel Gondry and written by Charlie Kaufman, is a 2004 Sci-Fi/romance film that is unique as it is deeply touching. All recognize the shine of its brilliance, which is why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of the leading films in every relevant “Best of” ranking for 15 straight years. Read Complete: https://lnkd.in/dVdVn6VF

#politics As the world teeters on the edge of escalation of two wars for civilization in Eurasia into an abyss, which could potentially engulf the world for a third time in a hundred years and for a second time by use of nuclear weapons in demonstration of mass hate by genocidal crime beyond any measure of insanity, proving that humanity has never been civilized in all of its history, the classic Hollywood film The Silence of the Lambs with British theater actor Anthony Hopkins starring as the brilliant psychiatrist Hannibal the Cannibal Lecter profiling a serial killer Buffalo Bill to Clarice Starling, a young Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent played by Jodie Foster, in a Maryland penitentiary for the criminally insane comes to mind. The film is made based on the novel by the same name by journalist Thomas Harris who covered crime for sometime in his reporting. The attached clip from YouTube is the scene from the film where Lecter profiles Bill to Agent Starling. The novel and the movie are thought provoking in the category of literature and not mere popular fiction because they invoke affinity among the audience for Lecter, albeit a criminally insane cannibal, whom one would normally consider an embodiment of absolute evil. Buffalo Bill, the serial killer, whom we can understand as humanity serially killing fertile young women to transform itself from the ugly caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly, is in reality humanity born in innocence at Genesis as the beautiful monarch butterfly in flight flippantly feeding on the flowers in happiness but which hates its own beauty in shame and transforms itself into the ugly caterpillar, perpetually creeping and crawling, feeding on the green leaf. Lecter, the cannibal, being locked up in the high security basement prison in Maryland for the criminally insane represents humanity locking itself up in its historical condition, which it sees, in delusion, as being inescapable. The human condition is neither a strait jacket for the criminally insane nor is it inescapable in perpetuity. In the end, as usually all’s well that ends well, Lecter escapes and Bill is killed by Starling, a woman, illustrating that the restoration of humanity to its nativity is feasible, the lambs in Clarice’s head silenced https://lnkd.in/eW8c4Yyw.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON by F. Scott Fitzgerald Meet Benjamin Button, a man born as an old man who grows younger with each passing day. As he navigates the ups and downs of life in reverse, you'll be captivated by the unique challenges he faces, the love he finds, and the profound questions it raises about the nature of existence. Fitzgerald's brilliant prose weaves a narrative that is both thought-provoking and heartwarming, making you question the conventional boundaries of time, destiny, and the human experience. This masterpiece has not only captivated readers for generations but also inspired a mesmerizing film adaptation. While you may have seen the brilliant Fincher adaptation, you may not have seen the text that inspired the film. We love the exercise of going back to see where it began, and you might as well. GENRE: Drama / Fantasy THEMES / ELEMENTS: Life / Legacy / Destiny / Time TIME PERIOD: 1860 CREATIVE NOTES:  This week we wanted to showcase another short story that has already seen a dynamic film adaptation. In reading this, would you have made the same decisions? So many elements are open to interpretation. Regardless of you how feel about the film, this should be an interesting learning experience to go back to the original source material. While the story was originally optioned in the 1980's, it wouldn't convert to production until 2005 when Brad Pitt and David Fincher signed on. For the producers in our audience, don't ignore the obscure literature from history - you just might find a gem to bring to the screen nearly a century after it was published. Andrew Van Wyk | Van Ditthavong

Now watching X-Men (2000) --- STORY LINE: The film depicts a world where an unknown proportion of people are mutants, possessing superhuman powers that make them distrusted by normal humans. It focuses on mutants Wolverine and Rogue as they are brought into a conflict between two groups with radically different approaches to bringing about the acceptance of mutant-kind: Charles Xavier's X-Men, and the Brotherhood of Mutants, led by Magneto. LEARN MORE:

🎥 “The cinema today: end or impossibility of ending? Most current films, through the bloody drift of their content, the weakness of their plots and their technological trumpery – useless high-tech – reveal an extraordinary contempt on the part of film-makers for the tools of their own trade, for their own profession: a supreme contempt for the image itself, which is prostituted to any special effect whatsoever; and, consequently, contempt for the viewer, who is called upon to figure as impotent voyeur of this prostitution of images, of this promiscuity of all forms beneath the alibi of violence. ▪️ There is in fact no real violence in this, nothing of a theatre of cruelty, but merely a second-level irony, the knowing wink of quotation, which no longer has anything to do with cinematic culture, but derives from the resentment that culture feels towards itself, that culture which precisely cannot manage to come to an end and is becoming infinitely debased - a debasement being raised to the power of an aesthetic and spiritual commodity, bitter and obsolescent, which we consume as a 'work of art' with the same complicity with which we savour the debasement of the political class. The sabotaging of the image by the image professionals is akin to the sabotaging of the political by the politicians themselves.” ― Jean Baudrillard, Fragments #baudrillardnow #jeanbaudrillard #fragments #cinema

10 Best Minor Characters In Harry Potter Movies Certainly! Here’s a short overview of the ten pleasant minor characters in the Harry Potter films. https://lnkd.in/dM-DwcxP