Category: Films
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Transforming Cities
Cities, on the surface at least, seem stable. The imposing physical materiality of concrete, steel and glass projects an endurance that is ‘built to last‘. Yet decades of urban critique have elucidated the fluidity of cities. From Walter Benjamin’s Arcades, through Cedric Price’s Fun Palace to Nigel Coates’ Ecstacity, people…
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Jurassic World and Personal Technology
Jurassic World is a film about dinosaurs isn’t it? Well yes and no. Like all good films, the subtexts run rather differently to what we actually see on screen. So while we see giant dinosaurs taking chunks out of each other, we’re also witnessing a rather subtle commentary on social relations,…
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Who Framed Roger Rabbit as urbanist critique
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) is no doubt a classic film. It was technologically innovate, and spliced the detective film-noir genre with the comic, slapstick animation of classic ‘toons of the 1960s and 70s. Truly, a masterpiece of Hollywood cinema, and if you are not familiar with the film, you can…
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Zombie Films and the Urban Condition
Recently, I was involved in a Twitter conversation with Allan Watson (and others) on a recent debate he had in his class about a zombie invasion, and whether it would be better for survival to live in a sprawling city or a dense urban centre (and what a great way…
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Blade Runner Review
Just a quick post to point you toward my review of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece Blade Runner over on That Film Guy. I’ve been using that site to vent my film fanboy amateurish tirades and this certainly falls into that category. Hopefully, now that the marking has died down, I’ll be able…
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Terminator Tour, Los Angeles
Los Angeles is one of the most written about cities in the world, particularly from an urban geography perspective. Perhaps because of its magnificent sprawl, its constant mediation through film, television, music and other cultural artefacts, or its postmodern-inflected anti-liveable layout, no other city in the popular consciousness has such an imaginary…
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Some other stuff…
A quick post to let you know about some other bits and pieces that I’ve been penning around the Interweb and beyond. First, having spent all too-brief a time in Shanghai last year I felt the best way to experience it was to take my camera and just start walking…
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Tower Block Cinema
Verticality, claustrophobia, lawlessness, poverty. Just some of the themes that are stereotypically associated with tower block living, particular the old post-war brutalist, Le Corbusier-inspired monoliths that litter many cities not just here in the UK, but all over the world. Their architectural designs were meant to be liveable ‘streets in…
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Visualising Cities Part 7: Gotham, A City Devoid of Life
I finally got round to seeing The Dark Knight Rises at the weekend. Don’t worry, this is not a review; but what struck me throughout the film (and in a sense, throughout the trilogy), is the narrative surrounding the city of Gotham itself, and how the director Christopher Nolan used…
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Infiltrating the Shard – a philosophical reaction
There’s been somewhat of a feeding frenzy in the media today regarding the infiltration of the Shard by Bradley Garrett and others. Bradley posted the images of his climb to the top of Europe’s new tallest building on his blog and soon after, the media caught wind of them and…
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