“Sudden Changes in the Weather”: Symptoms (José Ramón Larraz, 1974) Alexandra Heller-Nicholas March 2018 Cinémathèque Annotations on Film Issue 86 Catalan filmmaker José Ramón Larraz’s psychological horror film Symptoms – a UK production – was the British entry at the Cannes Film Festival in 1974. Despite this, the film was considered all but...
Abandoned Alice: Marilyn Manson’s Unmade Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll Alexandra Heller-Nicholas March 2018 Alice in Wonderland Issue 86 This is how the story goes: iconic shock-goth-glam-rock darling Marilyn Manson once tried to make a film about Lewis Carroll and Alice’s Wonderland tales, but so outraged were the public by the trailer alone...
Girls on Film: Growing Up with Cinema Papers Alexandra Heller-Nicholas July 2017 Pioneering Australian Women Issue 83 The first dedicated film magazine I ever bought was in March 1988, Issue #68 of the Australian publication Cinema Papers. Nick Cave was on the cover to promote the release of John Hillcoat’s Ghosts… of the...
Claudia Karvan: The Girl Most Likely Alexandra Heller-Nicholas July 2017 Pioneering Australian Women Issue 83 Across her 34-year career, actor Claudia Karvan has become one of the most familiar faces on Australian screens, winning numerous awards and becoming nothing less than a national film and television icon. With...
Adventure Time: On Guard (Susan Lambert, 1984) Alexandra Heller-Nicholas July 2017 Pioneering Australian Women Issue 83 The slightest spirit of ye olde timey explorer boils within when one ‘discovers’ a movie with little online imprint. Susan Lambert’s 1984 feminist terrorist heist film On Guard is such a curio, and...
Cinema as Sex on Cocaine: Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992) Alexandra Heller-Nicholas June 2017 Cinémathèque Annotations on Film Issue 83 “No film has ever succeeded in making sex look at once so alluring and so glum. From its opening sequence, the film is a castration fantasy that conducts a running critique of the titillation it is...
Introduction: The Omnipresent Alice Alexandra Heller-Nicholas March 2017 Alice in Wonderland Issue 86 From the very outset, the Alice tales seemed destined for a life beyond the page. Indeed, the stories themselves speak with passion and eloquence about expanding our familiar imaginative frames of reference....
A Degree of Murder (Mord und Totschlag, Volker Schlöndorff, 1967) Alexandra Heller-Nicholas March 2017 Love Letters: 1967 Issue 82 Volker Schlöndorff’s 1979 adaptation of Günter Grass’s 1959 novel The Tin Drum remains even by contemporary standards one of the most harrowing German films about World War II ever made. Unquestioningly,...
Valley of the Dolls (Mark Robson, 1967) Alexandra Heller-Nicholas March 2017 Love Letters: 1967 Issue 82 That Candy Box of Vulgarity: Valley of the Dolls (Mark Robson, 1967) Upon the fifty-year anniversary of the release of Jacqueline Susann’s bestselling novel Valley of the Dolls in February 2016, many noted...
Introduction: American Extreme Alexandra Heller-Nicholas September 2016 American Extreme Issue 80 This dossier brings together a collection of articles on a number of filmmakers and filmmaking practices a little beyond Senses of Cinema’s typical focus. This serves as an introduction to and consideration...
What’s Inside a Girl?: Porn, Horror and the Films of Roberta Findlay Alexandra Heller-Nicholas September 2016 American Extreme Issue 80 “What's inside a girl? Ain't no hotter question in a so-called civilized world.” – The Cramps, “What’s Inside a Girl?” (1986) “You know the money shots in porn films? Well, this was just a...
The Invisible Exploding Woman Alexandra Heller-Nicholas September 2016 American Extreme Issue 80 In July 1974 in the seaside city of Sarasota, Florida, television journalist Christine Chubbuck pulled out a gun while broadcasting the news and shot herself in the head on live television. The whereabouts of...
