★★★★☆ When it comes to fantasy, I’ve always been most drawn to stories that emphasize the element of escape; stories in which the setting is not just a magical world, but a world that is within reach of our own reality. There’s something almost seductive about stories like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Peter Pan, or A Wrinkle in Time in which the characters just happen to stumble upon a wondrous world that’s only a flight away or behind the thin wooden back of a wardrobe. The idea that Narnia and Neverland could exist alongside reality endows my own world with a rich and thrilling potential energy. This is the sort of thrill I experienced while watching Martin Krejcí’s feature directorial debut, The True Adventures of Wolfboy, a delightful coming-of-age drama that combines the fantastical visual style of Tim Burton’s Big Fish (2003) with the adventurousness of timeless teen classics like Stand by Me (1986). Although the hero of the story, Paul, (Jaeden Martell) never actually crosses over into another world, and all of his adventures could, in theory, take place in our present reality, his journey exudes such heroic grandeur and wide-eyed fantastical wonder that it captures the thrill of a fantasyland just waiting to be discovered behind a door or down a rabbit hole.
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Originally published on Elements of Madness ★★★★★ On October 9th, The Broadway League announced, to the severe disappointment of theatre professionals and fans, that Broadway will remain closed until June 2021. It’s difficult to imagine that the musicals, concerts, and plays that have been a New York City staple and a popular tourist attraction for years just aren’t taking place right now. However, even before the pandemic, filmed versions of Broadway shows brought these performances to audiences across the country who couldn’t otherwise afford to experience Broadway theatre. The success of the Hamilton pro-shot, released earlier this summer on Disney+, revealed how these filmed performances can keep the love of theatre alive, even while Broadway remains closed. While film and live theatre are entirely different mediums, and a film certainly cannot replace the experience of a live performance, a pro-shot can create an entirely new perspective on an already amazing show. Oscar and Emmy-winning director Spike Lee has done just that with David Byrne’s American Utopia, which captures a breathtaking, sold-out performance in a way that only film can.
Originally published on Elements of Madness Last year, Ari Aster set the bar high for “daylight” horror films with Midsommar, a terrifying fantasy that casts its disturbing events against a beautiful, blossoming, sunlit backdrop. The genre-play proved to be quite successful for Aster, although the effect is not so much scary as it is genuinely disturbing. Fans of Midsommar will find a somewhat similar effect in Luz: The Flower of Evil, a folk-horror fantasy from writer/director Juan Diego Escobar Alzate. Combining the narrative elements of religious-cult horror films such as The Other Lamb (2019) with the vibrancy of Midsommar, Luz: The Flower of Evil is a stunning and layered exploration of faith, evil, and the search for meaning. During the past two years, between graduating from college, helping my family relocate for my mom’s new job, heading out to graduate school, and moving back in with my parents because of the pandemic, I’ve had to make several big moves. One of the most difficult challenges of moving around so much, aside from packing and unpacking and repacking my DVD collection, is making all of those new places feel like home. Out of all the places that I’ve lived, however, the place that continually feels the most like home to me is the one-stoplight town of Boiling Springs, North Carolina, where I lived for four years while attending Gardner-Webb University. Any GWU graduate will tell you that the university’s sense of family and community is one of the best parts about the GWU experience, and it certainly makes the campus feel like home to many. As a liberal arts university with a student population of roughly 4,300 students, GWU tends to fly under the radar. However, the community’s dedication to one another and their school spirit can make extraordinary things happen, like when the 2018-19 men’s basketball team made it all the way to the NCAA tournament for the first time in GWU history. Now, a group of three GWU graduates, Christian Jessup, Eli Hardin, and Brendan Boylan, and current GWU student Thomas Manning, have captured that extraordinary season in a feature-length documentary, The Dancin’ Bulldogs. Filled with heart and honesty, the documentary is a creative and memorable demonstration of the faith, perseverance, and team-spirit that makes Gardner-Webb such an extraordinary school. |
"Our embodied spectator, possibly perverse in her fantasies and diverse in her experience, possesses agency...finally, she must now be held accountable for it." Categories
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