Hollywood has spent billions of dollars to visualize global destruction through natural and man-made disasters.  Religious filmmakers have spent millions trying to visualize the rapture and the apocalypse.  Conrad Ostwalt distinguishes between the two as secular and sacred apocalypses in an interesting chapter of his book, Secular Steeples.  In preparing for a lecture on blockbuster [...]

Throughout this semester, I have frequently referenced an NPR interview with film scholar David Thomson in which he discussed how desperate times often birth great works of art.  Think of the films that released during the Great Depression (or about it) for example.  Hopefully, these tough economic times in which we find ourselves will be [...]

Check out the latest from Jason Derr on Being Erica after the jump.

Check out Richard Lindsay’s review of Hedwig and the Angry Inch after the jump.

Roland Emmerich’s disaster films are escapist fantasies that imagine how we humans will respond in the face of certain (almost) global destruction.  As I mentioned in a review of 2012 yesterday, they often present an emotional utopia of family togetherness against this dystopic background.  Another recent film, the post-apocalyptic story, The Road, unfortunately presents a [...]

There’s an interesting thread to Roland Emmerich’s disaster films.  Against the backdrop of alien invasions or global warming is the story of geographically or emotionally separated families reuniting with one another.  The same plot can be seen in his third attempt to destroy the planet in 2012.