Category: Articles
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The evolution of the western: Part 3 – The Last Man Standing
In the final entry in our three-part series on the western, we look take a look at the last twenty years of gunslingers in the US and abroad. From Kevin Costner to Takashi Miike, the western has been elevated to epic proportions – even when it isn’t being a western at all.
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Australian Film Festival 2011 – Highlights
The Australian Film Festival launches its second annual selection of unseen and retrospective Australian films at the Randwick Ritz in Sydney next week. Complete with Q & A sessions, workshops, guest appearances and short films, it is become a ritzier event every year.
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Oscar Picks 2011
We look into the crystal ball and predict who will be making a speech and who will have to put on a good face for Loser Cam. We also pick our personal favourites for the night. The beauty of the Internet is that if we’re wrong, we can always change it later!
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X-Men: First Class and the comic book heroes of 2011
2011 has already been hotting up as the year of the superhero film, with some of the biggest names in the business set for a remake, reboot or sequel. Indeed, it’s only February, and we’ve already had one blockbuster comic book adaptation in the form of Michel Gondry’s The Green Hornet. As we saw from…
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Vale John Barry (1933 – 2011)
A spy walks into view, framed by the barrel of a gun. He is underscored by a distinctively familiar tune, a few bars of strings at first, foreshadowing something big. The spy swings and fires, and the screen is filled with red as the brass band kicks in. This is, of course, the opening to the James…
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The evolution of the western: Part 2 – The Man with No Name
In The Evolution of the Western – Part 1: The Last Gunslingers, we discussed the changing nature of the cowboy over the first half of the 20th century. From the earliest days of cinema through to John Ford’s The Searchers (1954), the gunslinger turned from hero of legend to “a figure of pathos, not tragedy”…
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The evolution of the western: Part 1 – the last gunslingers
With the release of the Coen Brothers’ True Grit, a remake of Henry Hathaway’s 1969 John Wayne late-vehicle, the American western has been brought back into focus. Set to become the second highest grossing western of all time, behind Kevin Costner’s revisionist western Dances with Wolves, True Grit may be just the blockbuster the genre…
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Polishing the canon: the importance of lists
The history of film can be told in lists. At least, that is what you’d be forgiven for thinking if you were a regular buyer of popular film magazines or were to wander the aisles of any book store’s collection of tomes on film. The American Film Institute has an entire section dedicated to lists…
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Most Anticipated 2011
As 2010 comes to a close, and we have our Top 10 in 2010 done and dusted, we here at The Reel Bits are looking to the future. Every year, hundreds of films are released to the cinemas, and we probably see more of them than we are willing to admit. The good, the bad…
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Top 10 in 2010
Another year has come and gone, and now that the two of us have had a chance to see most of the releases in Australia, it is a good time to stop and reflect on our favourites from 2010. It is no exaggeration to say that we saw hundreds of films this year. We’ve enjoyed…
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