Indiana University Cinema

Invisible and Insidious: A Conversation on Dark Waters and Environmental Law

Posted on October 18, 2021 by A Place For Film

Guest post by Joelle Jackson.

Themester intern Joelle Jackson sat down with Austen Parrish, Dean and James H. Rudy Professor of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, to discuss the upcoming Themester film Dark Waters and the roles that law plays in the environmentalism movement.

The film, based on a true story, follows Cincinnati corporate lawyer Robert Bilott as he takes on an unusual uphill battle: fighting chemical corporation DuPont in court over its decades-long poisoning of a rural West Virginia town. A gripping legal drama, the film stars Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, and Tim Robbins, and tells the harrowing story of a town plagued by an invisible and insidious environmental disaster. (more…)

Stirrings of Eternity: Heaven Can Wait (1943)

Posted on October 14, 2021 by Jack Miller

A man walks down a large staircase in a colorful still from Heaven Can Wait — Set design and color in the first shot of *Heaven Can Wait* (1943)

The American studio films of the 1940s represent a great period for truly evocative and audacious uses of color: the lost art of three-strip Technicolor (which can’t be recreated today in exactly the same way — it’s now gone with the original film stock) tinted the world in bold and vivid hues. And yet, even by the high standards of cinema coloring in this period, a select group of films stand out in my mind as being especially adventurous, going so far as to leave the physical world we know far behind and move into some dreamland of personal eccentricity. Among the most gloriously colored ‘40s films are Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944), Frenchman’s Creek (Mitchell Leisen, 1944), Leave Her to Heaven (John M. Stahl, 1945), The Pirate (Vincente Minnelli, 1948), and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford, 1949). But perhaps more brilliant and vibrant than all these is Ernst Lubitsch’s penultimate feature Heaven Can Wait (1943), the master’s only foray into color. (more…)

Islands of Resilience

Posted on October 11, 2021 by A Place For Film

Vai baiting a fishing hook in the Solomon Islands, aged sixteen.

Guest post by David Stringer, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Department of Second Language Studies.

“I am water, only because you are the ocean.” — from “Kissing the Opelua” by Donovan Kūhiō Colleps

Over the last decade or so, there has been an ocean swell of indigenous filmmaking highlighting the resilience of traditional societies and environments. The film and conversation series Islands of Resilience presents us with beautiful visions of struggle, transformation, and revitalization. The island peoples at the heart of these films have their own unique languages and cultures but the same intimate connection to ancestral environments. In the context of current global threats to cultural and ecological diversity, there are many documentaries made by Western filmmakers about indigenous communities, which, while often valuable, nevertheless treat such people as “other,” as objects of study. However, this new wave of storytelling gives center stage to indigenous voices themselves. They tell their own truths and allow images to confront the imagination directly, without ushers to guide outsiders to assigned viewpoints. In many cultures, storytellers hold a story stick as a sign of their right to speak; it matters who is holding the stick. (more…)

What We Do in the Shadows and the Art of Cinematic Comedy

Posted on October 7, 2021 by Jesse Pasternack

Poster for What We Do in the Shadows (2014) — Poster for *What We Do in the Shadows* (2014)

There are a lot of things I love about What We Do in the Shadows. I adore the great comedic performances, its hilarious subversion of the vampire subgenre, and its subtle worldbuilding. But more than anything, what I really admire about What We Do in the Shadows is how co-directors Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi use filmmaking in clever ways to create comedy that is truly cinematic.

What We Do in the Shadows is about four centuries-old vampires — Vladislav (Clement), Viago (Waititi), Deacon (Jonny Brugh), and Petyr (Ben Fransham) — who live together in a house in Wellington, New Zealand. A documentary crew follows them as they try to show a new vampire named Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer) the ropes of being a member of the undead. (more…)

Three Reasons to See The Mummy (1999)

Posted on October 4, 2021 by Michaela Owens

Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz in The Mummy — Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz in *The Mummy*

For many years, I was terrified of The Mummy. After seeing bits and pieces of it at my aunt and uncle’s house as a little girl, I was… well, traumatized. So much so that I couldn’t even bear to watch the film in its entirety until last year at the age of 26. Not only did this viewing rekindle my childhood crush on Brendan Fraser (thank you, George of the Jungle!), but to my complete surprise I also fell in love with The Mummy. The same movie that made me avert my eyes from the little TV in my aunt and uncle’s kitchen is now one of my favorite things to watch around Halloween, and while there are many reasons why, it really all boils down to three… (more…)

Physical Media Isn’t Dead, It Just Smells Funny: Blu-ray Reviews for September 2021

Posted on September 30, 2021 by David Carter

Full transparency: All Blu-rays reviewed were provided by Kino Lorber, Criterion, Code Red, and Arrow Video.

This month’s round-up is an eclectic bunch, which, if you know me at this point, is a good thing. Things are beginning to lean towards the change of seasons thematically. There is a Carl Reiner/Steve Martin comedy-noir collab called Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid featuring some help from a bevy of screen legends, plus an unexpected discovery from Code Red in the form of Story of a Woman, a romantic drama starring Ingmar Bergman regular Bibi Andersson, Dead and Buried star James Farentino, and Unsolved Mysteries host Robert Stack. In collaboration with Greenwich Entertainment, Kino Lorber brings us All the Streets Are Silent: The Convergence of Hip Hop and Skateboarding (1987-1997), a loving look back at two subcultures intersecting right before they became mainstream. Kino Lorber also has a delectable double feature starring IU Cinema favorite Vincent Price with The Tomb of Ligia, debatably the best of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, and Theater of Blood, the second best Price movie where he theatrically and thematically gets revenge on those who wronged him. My dual picks of the month come in the form of Criterion’s release of Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa, starring the late great Bob Hoskins in a surprisingly tender role, and Arrow’s luxuriant release of Ridley Scott’s aesthetically ambitious Legend. (more…)