Film Matters Magazine

Brian Willems is assistant professor of literature and film theory at the University of Split, Croatia. He is the author of Hopkins and Heidegger (2009), Facticity, Poverty and Clones (2010), and Shooting the Moon, which hit shelves this past May. To get some insight into his newest book, Film Matters conducted a Q & A with Willems via email correspondence (2-4 June 2015).

Kailyn Warpole: Please tell us a little more about your book.

Brian Willems: Shooting the Moon is a book about the role of the moon in science fiction films. It has sections on early films, camp films, films made just before the 1969 moon landing, actual footage of the moon, and finally on what films do with the moon after the moon was explored. The book has a philosophical bent, which means that each section is seen as providing an equally valid strategy for putting the “truth” of the moon on screen. For example, the absurdity of camp films is seen as at least showing what the moon is not, while the graininess of the actual footage on the moon is read as a reflection of how a filmed moon is no guarantee of truth.
Continue reading →

Black Swan (Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2010)

Recently, Travis Merchant was able to catch up with Joanna Scholefield, who wrote her article, “Under the Skin: How Filmmakers Affectively Reduce the Space Between the Film and the Viewer,” for issue 5.1 of Film Matters. Her article explored Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010), and how the camera’s movement, focus, and shot length explored the emotions and mental state of the characters in the film. Merchant was able to ask Scholefield about her article, along with questions about where she is at and where she is heading in her life.

Travis Merchant: How did you first hear about Film Matters, and what was the publication process like?

Joanna Scholefield: I heard about Film Matters when I learned that David Sorfa [senior lecturer and program director for Film Studies at University of Edinburgh] was going to be second marking my dissertation for my degree. Though, I had probably read the magazine many times in our university library without recognizing that it was Film Matters!
Continue reading →

An issue of Famous Monsters magazine, which Mr. Johnson referred to as material he read as a child and what initially grabbed his interest in the subject matter

I recently spoke with A. Randal Johnson, who is a past author for Film Matters magazine, about one of his particular articles he wrote for the magazine. Mr. Johnson was a part of the guest editorial board for the magazine in the spring of 2012, while he was attending the University of Kansas. He went on to write the article “Monster Kids Spawned in the Atomic Age,” which made issue 3.3 of Film Matters. After reading this, I learned that this was an intimate piece of writing by Mr. Johnson, as it related to his personal interests as a child and how he grew up in the subject matter. I contacted A. Randal Johnson to get a better understanding of his writing style and form and how he incorporated his personal references to create a strong featurette.

Jackson Gentry: I noticed in your article how you used several personal experiences; do you believe that by doing this you are able to relate more with the reader?

A. Randal Johnson: Not particularly, this article just happened to be from my personal point of view. The point of the article was to show “How I became a Monster Kid” by the zeitgeist I was born into, by osmosis of the popular culture.
Continue reading →

Casino Royale (Columbia Pictures, 2006)

In the summer of 2013, Film Matters published, “License to Joke: Parody and Camp in and Around the James Bond Series,” an essay focused on the longevity of the Bond franchise. Editorial board member, Lydia Plantamura, interviews author Craig Manning about his writing career and fondness for agent 007.

Lydia Plantamura: Where did you first hear about Film Matters magazine?

Craig Manning: I found out about Film Matters through a simple Google search. I wasn’t a film studies major, but an English major, so I wasn’t familiar with the various undergraduate journals for film. I was actually taking a really cool English class about parody, and for the major assignment of the semester, our professor gave us a lot of freedom to decide what we wanted to write about. Basically, he wanted us to take the definitions and elements of parody that we’d learned about over the semester, find an example (or several examples) to analyze, and then write an essay. What made the assignment unique was that he wanted us to write as if we were planning on submitting to an undergraduate journal. Actually submitting to the journal wasn’t a requirement, since the peer review process is lengthy and would extend past the end of the semester, but I figured it would be a good experience to have. Knowing that I wanted to focus on Bond, I searched for undergraduate film journals, and Film Matters was the first that came up.
Continue reading →

Lance St. Laurent’s review of A Hijacking, which was directed by Tobias Lindholm in 2012, was published in Film Matters issue 4.3 in the fall of 2013.  He is a freelance critic from Alma, AR. He is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in critical studies at the University of Southern California. His areas of study include contemporary comedy auteurism and the history of the New Hollywood.

Brianna Okamoto: In your article you said that the “audience is left ignorant to the actions of the hijackers”; how do you think that affects the film style?

Lance St. Laurent: The film maintains a very handheld, vérité sort of style about it, which really heightens the tension and sense of immediacy throughout. It’s a style firmly rooted in the point of view of the protagonists both on the boat and in the board room. The advantage of this is a strong feeling of authenticity and emotional rawness to the film. The troubling downside, though, is that it renders the hijackers themselves as this hostile, faceless “other” in the film.
Continue reading →