Wider Screenings HomePage

New Wider Screenings Guides monthly e-book range
WORLDWIDE JULY
(on Amazon Kindle and wherever quality e-books are sold)

Featured DVD Archive release: "can you dig it?" (Walter Hill's The Warriors)

SOON: Denzel Washington and John Travolta replace Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw in the Tony (True Romance) Scott remake of the hottest urban thriller of the 1970s, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 (read more)

AN INTERACTIVE, VIDEO-EMBEDDED FILM LABYRINTH
IN WEB, PRINT, E-ZINE, NEWSLETTER, E-BOOK, YOUTUBE, MYSPACE, FACEBOOK AND - OF COURSE - TWITTER

SELF-HELPING CINEMA:

A practial guide to contemporary American film seen from the prism of the self-help movement, from the Church-banned Master Key System in 1933 to the popularization of what is known as the "Law of Attraction".

Month by month, an unfolding ebook guide ranger which relates the best that world cinema has to offer, examined for:

* contribution to film history and analysis

* bios of key personnel

*relevance to the "Law of Attraction" and more

Wider Screenings offers film criticism and analysis from a rationalist perspective. Accompanied by a monthly ebook range of releases, Wider Screenings chronicles contemporary cinema from a secular humanist/atheist vantage point.

All films and DVDs reviewed are done so from a morally relativist ethic founded in Darwinist science and the political atheism of the so-called "Four Horsemen" - Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett - combined with the psychoanalytic film discipline of Christian Metz and the psycho-analytic school of cinema theory, combining genre and auterist perspectives into the web's distinctive guide to world cinema for rationalists/atheists: from mainstream Hollywood to Adult!

Tracing a rationalist ethic through contemporary film is the purpose of selective individual reviews in the DVD Archive. The rationalist perspective on cinema allows for the re-intepretation of socio-cultural, political and moral-ethical considerations of human behaviour, society and aspirations in many genres:-

LATEST RATIONALIST FILM & DVD RECOMMENDATIONS

NOW OPEN: An ongoing fully interactive embedded video and film review archive of Australian cinema history, devoted to the forthcoming book from Inkstone Press and Wider Screenings Guide e-book from Inkstone Digital:

Australian Film Tales
coming soon in print and e-book

read more

UPDATED WEEKLY!

In celebration of a century of Aussie cinema is a book dedicated to the great Australian movie anecdote, from silent era classics to the the latest happenings in the Australian film industry. As a web supplement to the book will be an interactive section with DVD reviews, biographical information, rare photographs, book extracts and exclusive YouTube interviews (beginning in May with Eros Association chairman Robbie Swan on the history of adult film censorship in Australia). Because Australian Film is a diverse cultural undertaking which takes in everything from the Ocker to the Stolen Generation, up to and including the empowerment of Australia's disabled community in Disability in Australian Film.

From the author of Serial Killer Cinema: an Analytical Filmography with an Introduction: Terrorism in American Cinema (forthcoming through McFarland Press) is the first analytical reference study of representations of terrorism in American film. From the Palestinian Black September crisis in Black Sunday to the Italian Red Brigades in Year of the Gun and through to the deconstruction and renaissance of terrorist cinema as American film prime means of socio-policial discourse in recent hits Body of Lies and Traitor; and the satiric denunciation of the War on Terror as Born-Again Christian failure in W.

Forthcoming from McFarland Press, provisionally titled Terrorism in American Cinema, is an outline of the evolution of the terrorist film as a subgenre and a comprehensive filmography of all major terrorist-themed films pre- and post- 9-11. Terrorist films as a genre were off limits on American cinema screens in the immediate years of the War on Terror, with The Hamburg Cell denied distribution in the USA, but 2007 saw the release of a number of high-profile terrorist-themed films: A Mighty Heart, Rendition, Lions for Lambs, Vantage Point, Taxi to the Dark Side, Civic Duty, Death of a President, The Kingdom and Charlie Wilson's War. Together these films demonstrate American cinema's readiness to finally address the ethical dilemmas of foreign policy in the War on Terror and hold the outgoing "lame duck" George Bush Presidency to account for their actions and their compromises. The blend of political intrigue, even dissent, and thrilling action explored in this 2007 re-surgence of terrorist cinema continues in the all-new 2008 Body of Lies and Traitor. But these films reflected the American purpose, the Jihadist perspective being given an ironic twist in Infinite Justice, examining the Islamic view as much as the American AND: newly added to the DVD Review Archive in advance of the forthcoming Wider Screenings book are several pre 9-11 terrorist films of undoubted interest, including two films about Italy's Red Brigades - Year of the Gun and Devil in the Flesh (infamous as the first time a respected actress performed oral sex on camera) - and the film that effectively began the US cinema of terrorism, Black Sunday. Whilst the Irish "troubles" can be found in the tale of a reformed IRA hitman in A Prayer for the Dying.

COMING SOON TO THE WIDER SCREENINGS GUIDE E-BOOK RANGE: THE AMERICAN FILM COLLECTION

Profiling cultural values, progressive moral standards and rationalist interpretation in a film by film profile of the most acclaimed, popular, influential and controversial of American films.

Exclusive YouTube interactive interview: Robbie Swan, Eros Association Media Liaison, Australian Adult Industry Lobby Group spokesman on the truth behind the failed NVE Classification and the deliberate misleading of the Australian Parliament by Independent Senators and Christian Morals groups now intent on preventing the formation of the Australian Sex Party.

The inside story of the history of censorship and the adult industry - from suppression campaigns by Rev. Fred Nile and the Festival of Light to Catholic Senator Stephen Conroy's proposed internet filter and the moral panic gripping Christian prime minister Kevin Rudd's post-apology, pre-Republic "interim" Australia.

Did former senator Brian Harradine mislead the Australian Parliament over the question of the NVE rating for non-violent erotica? The answers to this and more questions coming to the Wider Screenings YouTube channel in July-August 2009!

IN ADVANCE OF THE FORTHCOMING WIDER SCREENINGS GUIDE E-BOOK SERIES

PORNOTEUR #1: EDUARDO CEMANO