This installment of Moving Patterns is a first: an interview with a scholar about their work. Depending on how this little venture is received, I may turn interviews into a semi-regular feature. How do serial narratives in film and TV work? What makes a serial narrative hang together? Franchises and shows as distinct as the…
“The Invention of Robert Bresson” and Its Sequels: Free E-book and Links
A quick update: To celebrate the fifth anniversary of its publication, I have elected to make The Invention of Robert Bresson: The Auteur and His Market (2017) available as a free e-book here (click on “Download PDF” to open). Since its release, the book, I am happy to say, has been well received, with reviews…
In Lieu of a “Best of”–A Year Encapsulated
Whenever I can, I like to revisit the writings of our best film critics. I’ve always felt that there’s much to learn from their work–from their tastes, their writing styles, their viewing habits, their disputes with other critics, even their blind spots. Though I’m more partial to Otis Ferguson, Manny Farber, André Bazin, Roger Leenhardt,…
007 Legacies: On NO TIME TO DIE (Fukunaga, 2021)
No Time To Die (2021) is a rare instance in Bond fiction–not just the movies, but the novels, the comics, the TV shows, and the rest–of a narrative that comes to complete closure. That says to viewers or readers: this is The End. James Bond will always “return,” we’ve all come to expect. Not this…
What’s a “Fictional Universe”? Some Thoughts on Markstein’s Theory
It’s something that no contemporary film critic or commentator can do without: the concept of fictional universes. “Worlds” are no longer sufficient to contain the stories of a film or media property. The scope of a franchise must be cosmic. Now fictional universes are multiplying faster than the umpteen ones predicted by string theory. Marvel’s…
Video Lecture: “Transmedia Excursions in 007 Children’s, YA and Graphic Media, 1962–1993”
This year the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference was held as a virtual event from March 17 through March 21, 2021. What follows is a recording of my paper presentation. I received generally positive feedback to my research, but one colleague, Mark Minett, assistant professor of Film and Media Studies and English at…
The Parametric Promise of Promising Young Woman (Fennell, 2020)
Promising Young Woman (2020) by first-time director Emerald Fennell is a film that is likely to be discussed and debated for some time to come, and rightly so. Fennell has made a movie with a point. Though not without its nuances, it favors dramatized polemic. It forcefully jogs us from our complacency. It is, in…
“Bresson is still very young…”: Introducing the First Piece Ever Written on Robert Bresson’s Style—and It Features 7 “Lost” Works
Recent discoveries are changing how we view the career of French auteur Robert Bresson (1901–1999). It no longer seems adequate to describe his artistic output as modest, for example. And nor can his reputation for precise, conceptual, even “spiritual” art be ascribed solely to his feature film career (1943–1983). Before we get to some recent…
Bresson in Granada: A Tale of (Partially) Dashed Cinephilia
In May 2002, a few months shy of starting my master’s degree at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema (Concordia University, Montreal), I traveled with two friends to Spain. For a month we drove around the country, avoiding the predetermined paths laid down by railway travel and improvising our way through better and lesser known…
Composition of the Day: “Time’s Arrow, Part II” (Star Trek: TNG, S6E1)
As many of my friends and colleagues know, I tend to keep the Star Trek franchise on a slow spin cycle. I watch all of the shows and movies in order of release, finish every last second of them, and begin anew. I started this back in 2014, and I’ve never quite been able to…
Moving Patterns 