Index

This is a complete list of posts on Spectacular Attractions. I hope it helps you find what you’re looking for, but I’d welcome any suggestions on how best to organise this site and make it more accessible.

• Age has not withered them: Brief mention of Thomas Edison’s early films.
• “All a Man Can Do is Look Upon it”: What’s with the Werckmeister Whale?: Musing on the significance of the whale in Bela Tarr’s wondrous Werckmeister Harmonies.
• And the winner is…: It’s awards season, apparently.
• Air Doll.
• Anniversary: Spectacular Attractions is one year old, and it’s author is in hospital.
• Army of Darkness Randomised
• Avalon Updated: An essay on Mamoru Oshii’s live-action virtual reality drama.
• Back to Back to the Future
• Back to Bazin Part I: The Ontology of the Photographic Image: First in a series of posts about Andre Bazin’s most famous essays.
• Back to Bazin Part II: The Myth of Total Cinema
• Back to Bazin Part III: De la Politique des Auteurs
• Beginning: Introducing Spectacular Attractions with my first post ever.
• Begone Dull Care: Norman McLaren Randomised
• “Better than King Ralph”: Karl Pilkington Reviews The Invention of Lying
• Big Man Japan
• Bill Douglas: Comrades Doctoral Scholarship: Advertising a scholarship available at the University of Exeter to study the work of Bill Douglas on Comrades. Includes a gallery and slideshow of images from the film.
• Black Swan: Build Your Own Review: Positive review of Darren Aronofsky’s fraught ballet drama.
• Black Swan: Build Your Own Review: Negative review of Darren Aronofsky’s fraught ballet drama.
• Boop-oop-a-doop: A little essay on cartoon vamp Betty Boop, with asides on Winsor McCay.
• The Boy With the Cuckoo-Clock Heart.
• Brainstorm: The Medium is the Mess: Ridefilm spectacle in Douglas Trumbull’s science fiction film.
• The Bride of Frankenstein Randomised
• Build Your Own Review: Alice in Wonderland
• Bunch of Art
• Carry on Philatelising: On stamps commemorating Carry On… and Hammer films.
• Casting Confirmed for The Invention of Hugo Cabret
• Cat People’s Dark Patches: An essay on the use of darkness and shadows in Jacques Tourneur’s creepy classic.
• A Christmas Carol: Robert Zemeckis has made a creepy animated version of Charles Dickens’ Christmassy classic. Here’s what I thought of it.
• Cloverfield’s Obstructed Spectacle: Extended essay on the point-of-view camera in J.J. Abrams’ monster movie.
• The Curse of Chucky: Essay on dolls and puppets in the Child’s Play films.
• Day One & Other
• Day of Wrath: Review of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s religious drama.
• Destination Moon: It’s Rocket Science: Space adventure or pious propaganda? A little from column A…
• Digesting Avatar: An ever expanding assembly of writings, thoughts and articles and links about James Cameron’s blue-man epic.
• Doctor Livingstone, I Consume: Stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen has designed a statue where a guy gets attacked by a lion. Exciting stuff.
• Do the Right Thing: “There it is. Love and Hate.”
• Done Away: What’s Faye Dunaway doing in a Welsh zombie movie?
• Don’t Look Now: “Did You Really See Her?”
• Double Take Double Take: Discussion of Johan Grimonprez’s Hitchcock homage.
• Eight Things I Like About Ti West’s House of the Devil.
• Elephant (Alan Clarke, 1988)
• Enter the Void: Build Your Own Review: Chances are, you’ll agree with something here about Gaspar Noe’s contentious out-of-body movie.
• Essential Killing: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running for My Life: Review of Jerzy Skolimowski’s relentless chase film starring Vincent Gallo.
• The Evil Dead Randomised
• Evil Dead II: Randomised by Dawn
• An Excursion to the Moon (Segundo de Chomon, 1908)
• Fangoria Ads: A weird and wonderful gallery and slideshow of images from the advertisements in the gorehounds’ favourite horror magazine.
• Fantastic?: Did Wes Anderson have a good relationship with his animators?
• Fantastic: Following the previous foxy post, this is an actual review of Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox.
• A Few Reviews: Burke and Hare, Another Year, Skyline
• The Films of Georges Melies: I should probably let my undergraduates write guest posts more often if they’re all going to be as good as this…
• The First Spectacular Attractions Podcast: 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Flora (Jan Švankmajer, 1989)
• Four Lions: War Goes Bang
• Fly-by? Walk-through?: Thoughts on digital reconstructions of architectural space.
• Frankenstein Randomised: James Whale’s classic horror gets the randomisation treatment.
• From the Earth to the Movies: On the reconstruction of Georges Melies’ A Trip to the Moon in the HBO series From the Earth to the Moon.
• Funding mentalism: A brief note on Chris Morris’ jihadi comedy Four Lions.

• Funeral Parade of Roses: Review of Japanese avant garde transsexual Oedipal drama.
• Funny Games Funny Games: Comparison of Michael Haneke’s two versions of the same film.
• Gaia and Dolls: James Cameron’s Avatar: My first response to the movie, followed up in the post Digesting Avatar.
• The Georges Melies blog: Introducing an excellent website.
• Georges Melies in Springfield: Itchy and Scratchy parody A Trip to the Moon.
• Georges Melies: A Magician at Work: A guest post from one of my undergraduates, teaching this blog a thing or two.
• Happy Birthday, Ray Harryhausen!
• Hating the Alien: District 9: Review of sf apartheid allegory alien action drama thing.
• Helen: Review of Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s intriguing drama.
• Here Be Dragon Fire: More Moby Dick? A science fiction adaptation with Danny Glover as Ahab? Nice.
• Hitchcock: I Am a Cameo: On Alfred Hitchcock’s appearances in his own films.
• Hogarth’s Trip to the Moon
• How to Fly in 3D
• How Special Effects Work #1: The Sandman: An occasional series on special effects, this time looking at a scene from Spider-Man 3.
• How Special Effects Work #2: Virtual actors are on the way: Examining the claim that digital synthespians will one day replace human performers.
• How Special Effects Work #3: Now that’s magic…: Analysis of Georges Melies’ Vanishing Lady trick and the film he made of it.
• How Special Effects Work #4: The Reveal: A bit of dinosaur splendour from Spielberg’s Jurassic Park.
• How to Watch Werckmeister Harmonies: Hopefully an accessible guide to getting to grips with Bela Tarr.
• Hulk Smashed: Brief note on a bad review for The Incredible Hulk.
• The Hurt Locker
• I. Am. Beowulf… Or am I?: Essay on digital actors in Robert Zemeckis’ adaptation.
• The Illusionist: Review of Sylvain Chomet’s Jacques Tati-scripted animation.
• Inception.
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret
• Irony Man: A review of Iron Man.
• Jabberwocky (Jan Švankmajer, 1971)
• Jack Cardiff (18 September 1914 – 22 April 2009)
• Jackie and Woolly: Was it Worth it?: Jackie Chan’s Woolworth’s advert.
• Jacques Tati’s Playtime: Modern Life is Noisy: Essay on the use of sound effects in Tati’s masterpiece.
• Jan Svankmajer: Animated Self-Portrait.
• Jaws Randomised: Still the most popular post on Spectacular Attractions, the first in a series analysing various films using three randomly selected frames as a starting point.
• J.G. Ballard
• Jiří Barta’s In the Attic: The Other Toy Story
• Johnny Eck in Tarzan Escapes: Cameo appearance by the star of Tod Browning’s Freaks.
• Jolly Good New Noises: Orson Welles meets H.G. Wells.
• J.S. Bach – Fantasia in G Minor (Jan Švankmajer, 1965)
• Kani Kani Kani Kani …: The trailer for a Japanese film about a giant crab goalkeeper.
• Kick-Ass
• Kind Hearts and Coronets: The Gentle Art of Murder: An essay on Ealing’s nasty little comedy.
• The King’s Tweets: I reviewed The King’s Speech via Twitter, and here are the results. Includes contributions from other tweeters.
• King Kong Escapes
• King Kong Escapes Again…
• King Kong Randomised: Classic monster movie and Spectacular Attractions favourite gets the randomisation treatment.
• Kung Fu Hustle Randomised
• Lars von Trier’s Antichrist: Build Your Own Review: I couldn’t decide whether I liked it or not, so I wrote several different responses. Choose the ones you like.
• The Last Trick (Jan Švankmajer, 1964)
• Letters of Note: “Blade Runner will Prove Invincible”: Introducing an excellent website of correspondence.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Randomised (Extended edition)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Randomised (extended edition)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Randomised (Extended edition)
• Lotte Reiniger’s Cinderella: A classic fairy-tale from the finest exponent of silhouette animation.
• Love Suicides at Sonezaki: An Appeal: Please help me find this film!
• Magnificent Bodyguards: Jackie Chan in 3D, 1978
• Me Me Meme: My contribution to the alphabet meme.
• Memento: “The Camera Never Lies”
• Merry Christmas From Orson Welles and the Gremlins: Complete audio recording of an Orson Welles radio drama for your seasonal listening pleasure.
• Metaphors are Attacking Tokyo!!: A short essay about Godzilla.
• Mild Muppetry: Silly stuff about the Muppets.
• Miscellaneous Catch-up: Including Jacques Tati and Werner Herzog’s blog.
• Monsters Inc. Randomised.
• The Move: Announcing Spectacular Attractions‘ new address on WordPress.
• Naomi Watts: Best for the Buck?: Forbes publishes a list of the best-value actresses in Hollywood.
• Naomi Watts Watch: Eastern Promises.
• Naomi Watts Watch: Ellie Parker.
• Naomi Watts Watch: The International.
• Naomi Watts Watch: Tank Girl.
• Naomi Watts Watch: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.
• New Year, New Decade, New Look: Oh, the blog looks totally different.
• Nine minutes of cows: Analysis of the opening shot of Bela Tarr’s Satantango.
• Norman McLaren: Spectacular Abstractions: Guest post by one of my students, Harrison Laird.
• Not Shit, Sherlock?: The awesomest pun ever, for a review of Guy Ritchie’s surprisingly unrubbish Sherlock Holmes movie.
• Nowhere Boy: Review of Sam Taylor-Wood’s film of the early years of John Lennon. You know, that guy from the Beatles.
• O Brother What Art Thou About?: A viewer’s guide to the Coen Brothers’ (very) loose adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey.
• Ohayô / Good Morning: An Introduction to Yasujiro Ozu: Self-explanatory essay.
• One and Other
• One and Other II
• One & Other: But is I Art?
• The 180-degree rule: An essay on the analysis of continuity editing and one of its key components.
• Painting on Film: A (Mis)understanding of the Abstract
• Pantomiming Chaplin’s City Lights: An essay on performance and sound effects in the classic silent comedy.
• Paranoid Park: Review of Gus van Sant’s skater drama.
• Performing Illusions: Cinema, Special Effects and the Virtual Actor (Updated 20th March 2009)
• Picture of the Week: A regular feature, this displays an especially nice image or images every Friday. This link takes you to the section for viewing all posts in this category.
• Plinthed: My time as part of Antony Gormley’s public art in Trafalgar Square
• Podcasting Orson Welles
• Polish Film Posters: Pictures and words of some amazing bits of advertising.
• Portable Cinema: A miniature film festival in Cardiff.
• Precious
• Prince of Persia Tweeted
• Punch and Judy (Jan Švankmajer, 1966)
• The Rain Before it Goes to Earth: Discussion of Powell and Pressburger in the latest novel by Jonathan Coe.
• Random Round-up: First in an occasional series of compilations of unrelated phenomena.
• Random Round Up April 2009
• [REC]: Review of Spanish POV “zombie” horror film.
• [REC]2
• Remembering She
• Requiem 102 Project #5: My contribution to Nicholas Rombes’s tribute to the 10th anniversary of Requiem for a Dream.
• Return of the Player: Review of Michael Tolkin’s novel.
• Rise of the Random Round-Up: A collection of links and articles.
• Roland Emmerich’s 2012: Build Your Own Review: You decide whether it’s a work of inspired satirical genius, or skull-thuddingly dull idiocy.
• Salt.
• Satyajit Ray’s Alien: Indian film-maker’s unmade movie may have inspired Spielberg’s E.T.
• The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb: Review of the Bolex Brothers animated feature.
• Seventies British Cinema: Brief Christmas post, focusing a little on Robert Shail’s collection of essays on British film from the 1970s.
• Scorsese to Direct The Invention of Hugo Cabret?
• Scott Pilgrim vs the World Reviewed Really Quickly.
• Screed for Speed
• She Shoots Straight: Review of a Hong Kong action classic.
• The Short Films of Jan Svankmajer: A guest post by one of my students, David Guerrini-Nazoa.
• Show Me the Monkey: King Kong vs Godzilla
• The Sign of the Cross: The Devil has all the Best Tunics: A slideshow of images from Cecil B. DeMille’s debauched religious epic.
• The Significance of Sound in Norman McLaren’s Films: A guest post by one of my students, Jonny Williams. 
• Six Things I Like About Rango: Johnny Depp plays a lizard in the new Gore Verbinski animated comedy, and the results are not as nauseatingly self-regarding as you might expect.
• Sly Concept: The Invention of Lying: A truthfully negative review of Ricky Gervais’ new film.
• The Social Network.
• Source Code: Review of Duncan Jones’s time-travelling, multiverse science fiction thing.
• Spectacular Attractions Podcast: All of the listings for the podcast edition of this site.
• Splice: Modern Family.
• Start Wreck: Random thoughts on J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening.
• Star Wars Randomised
• Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back Randomised
• Star Wars: Return of the Jedi Randomised
• Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Randomised
• Star Wars: Attack of the Clones Randomised
• Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith Randomised
• Stopgapping
• Suicide is Spotless: A Single Man
• A Tale of Lotte Reiniger: The amazing silhouette animator describes how she got into the animation game.
• Tarzan and the Amazons
• Tarzan the Ape Man and his Mate
• “There used to be a me”: Peter Sellers on the Muppet Show
• There Will be Fireworks: Digital fireworks at the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.
• There Will be Parodies: On the curious fad for quotes of “I drink your milkshake” from Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will be Blood.
• Things Fall Apart: Deluge: Review of a long lost disaster movie, in which New York is flattened by a tidal wave.
• Thinking Batman: Discussion of Christopher Nolan’s two films.
• This is Spinal Tap Randomised With Two Brains
• Titanic (1943)
• Transformers 2: How Bad Can it Be?
• Travel and Transport in Early Film: A guest post by one of my undergraduates, well worth reading. They put me to shame sometimes…
• A Trip to the Moon / Le Voyage dans la Lune: Extended shot-by-shot analysis of Georges Melies’ seminal science fiction adventure.
• Toy Story 3D: Some thoughts on Pixar’s 3-dimensional update of their 1994 debut feature. It’s the same film, just with one extra D.
• Toy Story 3: All Things Must Pass.
• A Trip to the First Men in the Moon: Review and gallery of images from a new adaptation of H.G. Wells’s novel.
• Twentynine Palms: A review of Bruno Dumont’s erotic horror film.
• 2010: Moby Dick.
• 2012′s Disaster Porn: A nice mock trailer for the film.
• Twin Animators: The Quay Brothers, or the Lauensteins? Can you tell the difference?
• Two or Three Things I Reckon: Essay on Jean-Luc Godard’s Two or Three Things I Know About Her.
• 2001: This Way Up: Horizontality and other things in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece.
• Ukrainian Sandimation
• Unbreakable Patterns
• Unrelated unnoticed
• Up in the Air: Review of Jason Reitman’s new George Clooney vehicle.
• Vengeance is Mine: Discussion of Shohei Imamura’s serial killer drama.
• Ventweeterquism: A little experiment with Twitter
• Vertigo Randomised: Hitchcock’s masterpiece reduced to random frame grabs.
• Visual Effects Society Awards 2010
• Virtual Actors, Spectacle and Special Effects in the Matrix Trilogy: An essay written with the help of a group of my final-year students.
• Le Voyage dans le Stereoscope: Slides from a performance of Jacques Offenbach’s operetta based on Jules Verne’s moon-landing adventure, later an influence on Georges Melies’ film version.
• Walt Disney’s Pinocchio: Motion, Pictures
• Whale-watching: Forthcoming Moby Dicks: There are two adaptations of Melville’s novel in the works. I want to keep track of them, and start collecting the old ones.
• Where are the Wild Things?: Preview of Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are.
• Who Cheeta?
• Who Let the Dogs Outsell the Competition? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who?: Daft title, silly topic – the spate of recent films starring dogs.
• “Wholesome is Out”: Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
  
• “Why don’t you send us a photo?”: Chantal Akerman’s News from Home
• Winsor McCay’s The Sinking of the Lusitania: Discussion of the cartoonist’s animated documentary.