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Is ’2001: A Space Odyssey’ Latour’s favourite film?
In reading Bruno Latour’s work over the years, one of the overt messages that comes through, and one of his lasting legacies, is the importance he gives to non-humans in society. The actant-networks...
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Battlestar Gallactica: A review
Having just finished watching the entire four series of Battlestar Gallactica, rather modestly, the conclusion of the show evoked a wide range of thoughts, emotions, arguments and queries about the...
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Conceptualising Fictional Cities
Technology is reproducing cities very rapidly. Or shall I say producing cities? Not artificial cities, but experiential cities that are pure hyper-reality, a simulacrum space par excellence (to mesh...
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Avatar: Latour’s NEW favourite film
I recently watched Avatar again for the first time since the cinema. Perhaps it was the 3D extravaganza or maybe the nose-pinchingly obvious imperialist overtones, but I seemed to miss the first time...
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Top 5 city destroyers of all time
I have made no secret of my distain for the recent Transformers films by Michael Bay. In my youth, I absolutely adored the original Transformers cartoons and toys, and the original animated...
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Life in Pruitt-Igoe
16th of March, 1972 at 3.00pm precisely. That is when Charles Jencks proclaimed ‘the death of modenism’, as the Pruitt-Igoe housing estate in St. Louis was razed to the ground. Many commentators of...
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Infiltrating the Shard – a philosophical reaction
There’s been somewhat of a feeding frenzy in the media today regarding the infiltration of the Shard by Bradley Garrett and others. Bradley posted the images of his climb to the top of Europe’s new...
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Visualising Cities Part 7: Gotham, A City Devoid of Life
I finally got round to seeing The Dark Knight Rises at the weekend. Don’t worry, this is not a review; but what struck me throughout the film (and in a sense, throughout the trilogy), is the narrative...
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Tower Block Cinema
Verticality, claustrophobia, lawlessness, poverty. Just some of the themes that are stereotypically associated with tower block living, particular the old post-war brutalist, Le Corbusier-inspired...
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Some other stuff…
A quick post to let you know about some other bits and pieces that I’ve been penning around the Interweb and beyond. First, having spent all too-brief a time in Shanghai last year I felt the best way...
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Terminator Tour, Los Angeles
Los Angeles is one of the most written about cities in the world, particularly from an urban geography perspective. Perhaps because of its magnificent sprawl, its constant mediation through film,...
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Blade Runner Review
Just a quick post to point you toward my review of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece Blade Runner over on That Film Guy. I’ve been using that site to vent my film fanboy amateurish tirades and this certainly...
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Zombie Films and the Urban Condition
Recently, I was involved in a Twitter conversation with Allan Watson (and others) on a recent debate he had in his class about a zombie invasion, and whether it would be better for survival to live in...
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Who Framed Roger Rabbit as urbanist critique
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) is no doubt a classic film. It was technologically innovate, and spliced the detective film-noir genre with the comic, slapstick animation of classic ‘toons of the 1960s...
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Jurassic World and Personal Technology
Jurassic World is a film about dinosaurs isn’t it? Well yes and no. Like all good films, the subtexts run rather differently to what we actually see on screen. So while we see giant dinosaurs taking...
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Transforming Cities
Cities, on the surface at least, seem stable. The imposing physical materiality of concrete, steel and glass projects an endurance that is ‘built to last‘. Yet decades of urban critique have elucidated...
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The Materiality of Die Hard
Last night I had the privilege of watching Die Hard on the big screen at the Filmopolis Christmas Party. A great night, with an even greater film. Die Hard is one of those films that you can watch...
View ArticleBlade Runner 2049: A loving review
As the new Blade Runner film dissipates from the cinemas, I feel it acceptable to write about it in-depth, given that (hopefully) those of you interested in it, would have seen it by now. *****warning...
View ArticleFight Club 20 years on: suicide and empathy
David Fincher’s Fight Club is now 20 years old. And that the film still manages to talk directly to the issues of today is a testament to the foresight of Chuck Palahniuk’s original novel, but also to...
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