Rogues and Villains
May 4, 2016
In honour of May the Fourth, Dr Nathan Waddell from our School of English shares some thoughts on the upcoming film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Do rogues win? They usually do in the Star Wars universe. They certainly will in Rogue One, the first of the Star Wars anthology movies. Due for release in …
Marvel’s civil war – unlimited power and no supervision
April 20, 2016
Should superheroes be subject to government oversight? Robyn Muir and Ibtisam Ahmed from the School of Politics and International Relations choose their team and explain why. Robyn Muir is #TeamIronMan and in favour of regulation The issue of regulation is something that surrounds us all, but what is it? Is it monitoring individual conduct or is …
The Book Was Better?
March 3, 2016
Leaving campus yesterday, I passed a student whose T-shirt stated uncompromisingly THE BOOK WAS BETTER. Sound stuff, and words to live one’s professional, personal and emotional lives by. And it started me wondering about films and adaptations which cunningly got around this problem by going a bit sideways. Refusing to just reproduce the original, these …
The walking dead of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
February 17, 2016
Last week I watched Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and came away with a rather warm feeling in my offal. Released in time for Valentine’s day, this movie has a great deal of cerebral appeal, a lot of heart, and some period ladies venting spleen to serious (tongue through cheek) comedic effect. The film is based …
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
February 1, 2016
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sounds like an incongruous title. Up there with Apocalypse Snuggle, perhaps. Or Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Doilies. But on second thoughts, the combination of Austen and zombies might make more sense. Austen is, in some senses, a zombie author. She’s been reprinted, adapted, filmed, franchised, merchandised and monetised in …
We meet again, at last
December 15, 2015
How do you make a familiar thing new? One way to do it, as Ezra Pound knew, is to invoke a long-forgotten tradition and adapt it to the pressures of the moment. For George Lucas – the George Lucas of the Star Wars prequels, at any rate – making new means making shiny. J. J. …
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2: Katniss and the Ideal Rebel
November 18, 2015
Ibitsam Ahmed from our School of Politics and International Relations reflects on Katniss Everdeen and her role as the ideal rebel. In The Hunger Games quadrilogy, Katniss Everdeen embodies the persona of the Mockingjay, the symbolic Girl on Fire at the heart of the revolution against the oppressive Capitol. Starting off as the unlikely and …
Science fiction vs. science fact
November 11, 2015
Dr Catrin Rutland from our School of Veterinary Medicine and Science introduces the lecture she’ll be giving this week as part of the Popular Culture series. In the 1950’s a new science was born, yet scientists and the literature had long been fascinated with what we now call ‘Genetics’. Long before the term genetics existed, writers …
Zombie Genomics – Sean on the Dead
October 30, 2015
Sean May from our School of Biosciences discussed the science of zombies as part of the Popular Culture Lecture Series earlier this year. I’m an unashamed slow-zombie fanboy (fast-zombies are just a trivial problem in viral epidemiology IMHO); and have pondered zombie biology for decades. This was an opportunity to really get my teeth into …
Do you like scary movies?
October 26, 2015
Keith Bound from the School of Cultures, languages and Area Studies discussed cinematic suspense and his Terror and Tension film experiment earlier this year. Susan Smith’s suspense narrative model defines four forms of suspense: Direct: we see the film in the first person – as if we are the character in the film. Shared: when …
