Back in 1968 the world was amazed to see a simian-looking creature displaying rudimentary (and yet clearly) human qualities. But enough about my birth, I’m here to talk about Planet of the Apes, the nightmarish vision of a world turned upside down: apes that speak, humans that are mute and enslaved, orangutans doing “science”. And […]
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It’s the weirdest coincidence. In two out of the three films I saw this week someone was shot in the ear. Seriously, go figure. Since I started this gig I’ve seen more than 400 films and no one has ever been shot in the ear and then, just like that, two come along at once. […]
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2008 is shaping up to be a year of great films about people being beastly to each other and the first cab off the rank is Tim Burton’s majestic adaptation of Sondheim’s broadway opera Sweeney Todd. Based on the true-ish story of the Victorian barber who murders his customers to provide fresh meat for his …
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Dan Slevin is a New Zealand-based writer, broadcaster and consultant. He has reviewed cinema for the Capital Times weekly newspaper since September 2006, seeing and reviewing every film commercially released in Wellington in that time (except, for some reason, Flicka or Beverly Hills Chihuahua).
Dan is a regular contributor to Radio New Zealand National’s Nine to Noon programme and produces and co-hosts the weekly movie podcast, Cinematica.
In addition to being the finest swordsman in all France, he is also the meanest hombre west of the Pecos. He tweets here.
Why Funerals & Snakes? In Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (Le Mépris; 1963), Fritz Lang said of CinemaScope: “It’s only good for funerals and snakes.”