Tabla de contenidos para No. 83 en Screen Education

The 2016 film version of The Jungle Book, directed by Jon Favreau, brings the story of Mowgli – the man-cub raised by a pack of Indian wolves – to a new generation. Mowgli’s coming-of-age tale (and the anthropomorphised, speaking jungle animals that he interacts with) first appeared in the 1890s in a collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling, which was published as The Jungle Book. In 1967, Disney released an animated musical comedy version of the story, directed by Wolfgang Reitherman and featuring a singing sloth bear and a jazz-performing primate. In Favreau’s version, which is also a Disney production, the narrative has been adapted from both the Kipling stories and the previous film version. The musical numbers and the comedy have been stripped back, while the dramatic elements…

As a term, a practice and a label commonly denouncing spiritual activities that defy dominant beliefs, witchcraft comes to the screen loaded with meaning. Over the course of centuries of human existence, it has become shorthand for preternatural opposition to or deviance from normality – and during just over a century of cinema, filmic depictions have reinforced and dissected this interpretation. The best movie contemplations understand the extremes of individuality and conformity inherent in the word, as filtered through and heightened by the presence or suspicion of the occult. More than that, they acknowledge the power that even daring to mention witchcraft can have, and the complicated societal splinters and fright-driven reactions it can cause. So it is that a girl’s claims of otherworldly influences sets Arthur Miller’s 1953 play…

By ignoring, dismissing or patronising new blockbuster releases, traditional film reviewers risk alienating their largest readership segment just when it is most motivated to read a particular review. WHY DO WE DO ANY OF THIS? If you’re doing it right – teaching Media, and, dare I say, perhaps teaching generally – you may never have to clear the decks intellectually, and make explicit the purpose of thinking more deeply, more skilfully. In short, you don’t have to employ critical thinking about critical thinking. You already make sure that larger contexts are never too distant, and so students experience the benefits of media literacy with immediacy: what they learn naturally connects to their own lives and the wider world. Yet beyond the classroom it’s evident that that’s not always how global…

The United States women’s national soccer team (USWNT) has won a world championship and Olympic gold medals in recent years and, through their efforts, captivated much of the country’s viewing public. Meanwhile, the United States men’s national soccer team has been considerably less successful, with no world championships or Olympic medals to show for their efforts. Still, despite those facts, members of the USWNT claim to have been paid nearly four times less than their male counterparts in 2015, a year in which they won the FIFA Women’s World Cup.1 Those points, in addition to rising revenue figures, ground the wage discrimination complaint five members of the USWNT filed against U.S. Soccer in 2016.2 Unfortunately, inequitable compensation – like that which members of the USWNT are fighting against – is…

In the exhibition chronicling Martin Scorsese’s illustrious career currently showing at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, one can gain insights into the kernel of inspiration lying dormant inside the filmmaker’s young mind. In one section, a storyboard – constructed by Scorsese when he was eleven years old – reveals his ideas for an intricate Roman epic starring Marlon Brando. The film never came to fruition, but it does reveal the grand and ambitious visions of a child who would grow up to become one of Hollywood’s most celebrated filmmakers. More than half a century later, in Melbourne, an eleven-year-old named James Baras-Miller directed his first short film. Within twelve months, he directed two more and secured screenings at international film festivals in New York and Brooklyn, and at…

Last year saw the return of a dormant monster long thought extinct. Well over a decade since its last confirmed sighting, the Jurassic franchise roared into cinemas in the form of Jurassic World. Proving itself far more than a dusty fossil, the film – directed by Colin Trevorrow and starring the likes of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard – left a sizeable imprint on the box office, crashing into third place on the worldwide rankings1 (at least, until it was toppled by another resurrected franchise, Star Wars, some months later). As someone who spent his formative years – in both cinema and schooling – watching Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993), I suspect that Trevorrow’s film will have a similar impact on youngsters as the earlier film did on me,…

Though it is just director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s second feature, and scriptwriter Jesse Andrews’ first, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015) is no amateur affair. It won both the US Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic and the Audience Award: US Dramatic at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, and continues to be praised as a modern classic coming-of-age film. If you look at the thematic ingredients of the film – friendship, teenagers dealing with death, high school crushes, the looming battle to get into a university – it sounds almost clichéd, but it is far from it. Teenagers may find it more relatable than earlier coming-of-age films because it presents a generation of teens who are tech-savvy, exist within complex social environments, and have growing social responsibilities and struggles. More importantly,…

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SPECIAL EFFECTS In the earliest days of filmmaking, ‘special effects’ was a catch-all term carried over from the world of theatrical production, used to describe any unusual requirements a production might demand. For example, if a costume was required to do something out of the ordinary, such as explode with a spatter of blood, or allow mechanical wings to unfurl, it was necessary to rig something ‘special’. The same approach applied for all areas of a production: anything outside the scope of normal day-to-day requirements became the purview of special-effects technicians, whether lighting, costume, sound or any other discipline. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the nascent film industry closely followed the established processes of theatrical production. However, a small group of pioneers began…

With different game genres to choose from, students should be able to find an option that appeals to them, and they’ll get much enjoyment from developing a narrative to attach to their game, sharing their unique creation with others and playing original games developed by other young people. Sploder http://www.sploder.com Cost: free Sploder is an entry-level game-creation website that provides users with the building blocks for making a variety of simple games. It’s a useful introductory game-making resource as it doesn’t require any knowledge of programming or coding. Integrating gameplay and game design into the classroom is supported by a great deal of contemporary educational research and teaches students transferable skills relevant to a number of today’s careers. With different game genres to choose from, students should be able to…

As the film discloses the motivations for Blanche’s behaviour, piece by piece, the viewer begins to question their harsh judgements. For sixty-nine years, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire has caused critics to argue. While some see the play as a psychological battle between characters, others see it as class warfare. Where one essay exalts Blanche DuBois as romantic heroine, another heaps praise on Stanley Kowalski as working-class hero. There’s no agreement over genre – is the work a tragedy or a melodrama or an example of conventional realism? Is it ultimately ambiguous and, if so, is its lack of clarity a mark of success or failure? As John S Bak wrote in 2004, ‘For all of its attention, Streetcar remains a riddle no closer to being solved today than…

Though it is about jazz, that famously interactive musical form that relies so much on sensitivity and flow among players, there is barely any interaction between Neiman and other members of the band that isn’t laced with a snarling individualism. The pursuit of excellence in jazz drumming seems like highly unlikely fodder for a heart-stopping psychological thriller. Indeed, at first, writer/ director Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash (2014), about a young jazz drummer studying at an elite New York conservatory, seems like it is going to chart fairly well-trodden territory – following a solitary hero as he (invariably it is ‘he’) strives for excellence or the public good, locks horns with a gnarled but ultimately supportive mentor and kicks aside numerous roadblocks to achieve his goal, usually with the collateral prize of…

More than half of all law graduates now are women so it was really critical to us that we try to reflect that in who we were interviewing. – LIZZIE O’SHEA The law can be dry. Very dry. When I was studying at university and I experienced a bout of insomnia, I would read my law textbooks to help me fall asleep. But it can also be really interesting and it can evoke any number of emotions – passion, frustration, anger, sadness, joy, excitement, incredulity. Sometimes all at once. And generally, these emotional responses come about when you look behind the words on a page and at the people who are involved in or affected by the law. That’s why I was excited when I heard about Legal Briefs, a…

Many a film fan has felt the twinge of dread when it is reported that a new version of a beloved story, film or character is in production. However, when followed by the words ‘by Tim Burton’, expectations invariably rise. Burton’s material has included sources as diverse as films, TV shows, trading cards, novels, children’s books, comic books, biographies and American folktales. Each project, whether based on an existing work or not, is refreshingly original, often surprising and always beautifully crafted. Having roots as a Disney animator almost four decades ago, the filmmaker has always approached his works from a visual, artistic standpoint first, often doing his own concept art and preliminary designs. After cutting his teeth on a number of animated and live-action shorts, including 1982’s Vincent, which earned…

Animation is an amazing way to bring content alive. For many students an animation can be that doorway into understanding wider theoretical concepts. It moves on from the nineteenth-century teaching techniques of pantomime gestures, students as props, or ‘movement lines’ in diagrams, and into explanations with actual moving parts. That’s what translates it from a concept to an idea. That’s what moves it from a premise to a fact. The other truths of animation are that it’s really difficult, it’s really time-consuming, and it’s much more suited to those fanciful timewasters in the Visual Farts department. It comes so easily to them and what do they use it for? Dancing meat and Thug Life sunglasses! Animation proper is beyond the grasp of a lot of teachers for a lot of…

‘The Book of Crossroads’ is the title of the magical book that protagonist Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is given at the beginning of her heroic quest in Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006). The blank pages of the book will reveal the three tasks that she must perform in order to assume the identity of Princess Moanna of the underworld. Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro has a subversive interest in collapsing generic influences, and the film is a rich example of this tendency. Dividing his work between blockbuster Hollywood offerings such as Hellboy (2004) and Pacific Rim (2013), and more personal Spanish-language films such as The Devil’s Backbone (2001), del Toro presides over a stylistic crossroads, and Pan’s Labyrinth incorporates this unconventional fluidity. Ofelia’s fairytale-inflected book is a broader metaphor for…

In Tom Brosseau’s 2013 song ‘Cradle Your Device’, the American singer-songwriter laments a curious case of quasi-infidelity, where a third party has driven a wedge between two lovers. Only, ‘it ain’t what you think’. As its title suggests, Brosseau isn’t losing attention to another man, but to a device; he may be naked in bed, but next to a phone, he pales in comparison. It’s a contemporary blues lament at once amusing, cute, relatable and deeply sad; a relationship play for an era in which people’s most intimate relationships aren’t with other folk, but with their telephones. For many, it’s the last thing they look at before they close their eyes, the first thing they look at when they wake up. It’s companion, reassurance, constant distraction. It’s taken the place…