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Cinema Studies Links:
Unique Takes on the Cinema
The sites listed below present unusual but interesting perspectives on the cinema and include web pages set up by scholars, both academic and amateur, whose approach to or specific interest in films may come from directions not typically explored in mainstream critical literature.
- Bagpipes. The Bagpipes go to the Movies page provides an extensive list of films and television programs in which bagpipes and pipers have appeared and discusses how the instrument and its players are represented.
- Blindspots: Movie Reviews for Visually Impaired People. The movie reviews on this home page do not make judgments about profanity, violence, or sexuality. Its sole concern is to inform viewers about the ease or difficulty that visually impaired people will experience while following the story.
- William S. Burroughs.
The William S. Burroughs in Film and Video site provides a filmography of all Burroughs' appearances in films and videos and all films based on his writings (including the early short films of director Gus Van Sant).
- Clichés.
The Movie Clichés List covers hundreds of standard movie errors in representing the real world and/or stereotypical presentations in scores of different headings, compiled by Giancarlo Cairella.
- Dermatology and Cinema.
The Skinema site has been set up by dermatologist and film buff Vail Reese, M.D., to discuss skin conditions in the cinema and features special sections dealing with skin conditions used to convey evil, actors with skin conditions, and realistic depictions of skin conditions. Also included is a dermatological review of the 1998 Oscars.
- Dinosaurs. Celluloid Dinosaurs: A History of Dinosaur Movies, part of the Dinosaur Interplanetary Gazette site, provides an essay on dinosaurs in films and a chronological list of all dinosaur movies. It also links to another DIG page discussing the recent reconstruction of the 1925 film adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World with model animation done by Willis O'Brien.
- Gaffes. These sites chronicle lapses in continuity and/or logic in specific films.
- German Influences on Hollywood. The German-Hollywood Connection, a sister site of Hyde Flippo's All Things German site, focuses on the many influences of German film and filmmakers on Hollywood.
- Insect Fear Films. Check out the history of the UIUC Entomology Department's annual Insect Fear Film Festival
- Juggling. Juggling in Movies lists hundreds of films containing scenes (no matter how brief) of people juggling various objects, along with descriptions of the relevant scenes.
- Law and Film.
The on-line journal of law and
popular culture, Picturing Justice, focuses on images of law in movies and on television, which its creators hope will foster a lively discussion of the interaction between law and justice. Included are recent news items on legal issues about films and essays on portrayals of the law, lawyers and courtrooms in film and on television.
- Librarians in the Movies.
Librarian Martin Raish catalogues the stereotypical presentation of librarians in the the movies. The annotated filmography lists more than five hundred features. The site also provides a list of actors who have played librarians and a bibliography on the image of the librarian.
- H. P. Lovecraft.
This site provides a filmography of films based on Lovecraft's fiction and several essays on his works.
- Motorcycles.
Motorbiker.org provides information and photos on hundreds of films featuring motorcycles and on celebrity owners of motorbikes.
- Plumbing in the Movies.
The shower scene in Psycho is only the best known of the signifcant appearances of plumbing in film listed on the Plumbing the Depths site. Also included are essays on the subject.
- Sailing Movies.
This page rates commercial features and TV movies on their presentation of sailing and sailing ships. Movies about ships which are not wind-powered are not included.
- Self-referential Cinema.
Movies-seivom, the self-referential movies web site, is dedicated to movies that call attention to their own artificiality through various means (such as a character speaking directly to the camera).
- Taylorology. Taylorology, a website and a publication, centers on the unsolved 1922 murder of silent film director William Desmond Taylor, but there is reprinted material on, and interviews with, other silent stars including Charlie Chaplin, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, Olive Thomas, Blanche Sweet, William S. Hart, Lillian Gish, Harold Lloyd, Rudolph Valentino, Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, Clara Bow, and many others.
- Urban Legends.
This snopes.com site catalogues, discusses, and rates (for validity) urban legends about the movies and Hollywood, as well as listing film adaptations or mentions of urban legends.
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