Break Down Cinema

Content Warning: abandonment, ableism, abuse, antisemitism, cruelty, death threats, doxing, fascism, harassment, homelessness, homophobia, misogyny, murder, psychological abuse, stochastic terrorism, transphobia, violence, and war. Fig. 1  The title of the new UNIT spin-off (Image credit: BBC Television, via Google Images.) Introduction: The Pitch The Unified (née United Nations) Intelligence Taskforce, or UNIT, is a government military organisation in the Doctor Who (BBC Television, 1963-present) universe. They became a popular fixture of the franchise due to their frequent appearances throughout the "Classic Series" (1963-1989), particularly as the series' de facto precinct during the Third Doctor's (Jon Pertwee) era. UNIT have also been a recurring presence in the "Revived Series" (2005-2022) with an even more major role in the series' current Bad Wolf/Disney+ era (2023-present). In conjunction with this greater emphasis on UNIT in the programme, a n...

The following is a slightly edited and reformatted backup of my article for the Centre for Social Development blog in 2021. I cannot find an archive of the original. I wanted to preserve it but with better wording. The original essay also used a different referencing style; I have converted it to the Harvard style to be more consistent with my other essays for this blog. Additionally, I used Fight Club (Fincher, 1999) as one of my key examples. However, I overlooked that Renegade Cut - whose video I cited in my section on The Incredibles (Bird, 2004) - also briefly discussed the potential interpretations of Fight Club that I mentioned. In the interest of transparency and sufficient attribution, the feminist and Marxist readings of Fight Club I mentioned come from Renegade Cut. While I otherwise present my article as published in 2021, I would not attempt to fit the different types of thematic criticism into a finite number of categories if I discussed the topic today, as such a methodo...

Samira Makhmalbaf's drama film Panj é asr ( At Five in the Afternoon , Makhmalbaf, 2003) about a woman dreaming of becoming President in post-Taliban Afghanistan gets its title from Federico Garcia Lorca's poem 'A las cinco de la tarde' ('At Five in the Afternoon', Lorca, 1935), which the poet (Razi Mohebi) gives protagonist Nogreh (Agheleh Rezaie) to help her practice feeling confident with public speaking. Lorca's poem describes with haunting detail the scene of a bullfighter's gruesome death by a bull attack, painting a vivid picture of this death from the sound of flutes to the wounds' sun-like burning appearance. Each stanza constantly repeats the time the tragedy occurred as though it has traumatised the narrator. In an interview about Panj é asr , Makhmalbaf describes how she included the poem because she read it as a child thinking it was about the bull's death and thought it beautiful because it conveyed this death as so significant tha...