10 Most Insanely Perfectionist Film Directors

June 10, 2015, 2:03 am

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Film is unique among many art forms in that it is a very collaborative kind of art. A wonderful film requires an immense number of talents, temperaments and personalities to mesh and work together well; from make-up artists to cinematographers to producers.

Or, of course, if you buy auteur theory, it really just requires one person: the director. While there is certainly a lot of truth to Francois Truffaut’s idea that the director is ultimately the author of the film, some directors take this primacy a bit too far.

These directors see the film as their own singular and perfect vision and view other people as a mere tool for accomplishing this mission. Their methods are extensive, exhaustive and often eccentric. They burn down sets the size of small towns for the sake of seconds worth of screen time, they get involved in brawls with their actors and screaming matches with their cinematographers and they put themselves in their crew members in the jaws of death, hoping the grim reaper doesn’t bite down because the shot they can get staring out of his mouth is perfect.

Many of the directors listed here have made some of my very favourite films of all time and their meticulous, obsessive and combative way of working has been an important part of producing such perfection. It also happens to be terrifying and hilarious in equal measure.

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10 Drug Sentences That Shocked The World

June 15, 2015, 7:35 am

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It’s been almost half a century since Richard Nixon first declared drug abuse “America’s public enemy number one”. Regardless of the fact that that title passed to Nixon himself shortly after the speech, his words and the harsh enforcement policies that followed them still have an enormous effect on American society.

The War on Drugs is a hot topic today, and now cannabis, the drug whose use was most pursued and punished in the War on Drugs, has now been fully legalised in four states and Washington DC. More and more evidence is mounting in recent years that the War on Drugs is an unabashed failure.

The American political establishment is realising that raiding people with SWAT teams when they use a plant to treat their epilepsy isn’t the most effective way of dealing with intoxicating substances. It seems that the lessons learned during the failed prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s are becoming more concrete and obvious and steadily the American public has turned against the expensive failure that is the Drug War, with the politicians racing to catch up with public opinion.

But just because parts of America seems to be cooling off on crazy drug laws, doesn’t mean those laws still aren’t harming people in the USA and outside of it. These are 10 of the craziest drug sentences handed down in the United States and the rest of the world.

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10 Most Fascinating Films Produced By Brutal Governments

June 15, 2015, 9:52 am

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Triumph Of The Will Congress Hall — Riefenstahl, Leni

As Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek said “Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn’t give you what you desire – it tells you how to desire”. And so it should be no surprise that films have been utilised as tools of propaganda pretty much since their invention.

One of the earliest epics of cinema was DW Griffith’s Birth Of A Nation, still renowned as a revolutionary piece of filmmaking but despised for its overwhelmingly positive portrayal of a crusading Ku Klux Klan saving innocent white folks from ape-like African-Americans. Ever since, cinema has been a powerful weapon of propaganda for the most brutal political figures in human history. From the Nazis to the Soviets to the North Koreans and beyond, the same medium that gives us massive superhero blockbusters each summer has also been used to justify genocides and dramatise discrimination.

While many of the Hollywood films you watch use the guise of entertainment to slip ideology past your eyes and into our brain, the films on these list resorted to no such subterfuge and often simple bashed their viewers over the head with ideological propaganda.

As well as terrifyingly effective propaganda pieces, many of the world’s most repressive and savage governments have produced fine pieces of entertaining cinema in their own right, perhaps all the more fascinating for the ferocious forces that produced it.

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10 Most Amazing And Inspiring Refugees In History

September 16, 2015, 6:19 am

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Recently a single shocking image of a drowned Syrian refugee has brought the word refugee to everyone’s tongues and hearts. The outpouring of refugees from war ravaged Syria has become a topic of serious debate and action in the mainstream after months of stalling by the major powers.This single image of a dead child has solidified the problem in peoples’ minds; no more as the masses of refugees just a mere annoyance or a distant, troubling tragedy, now they are a real and concrete concern and topic of discussion for world leaders.

Although most European countries have opened their arms and welcomed varying amounts of refugees there still remains, after this tragedy, those who refer to these people as an inconvenience, as swarms of parasites merely looking for this next place to shack up and support ISIS. We forget that, with all the disasters and conflicts in human history, many millions of people have fled regions in chaos and among them have been some bright minds and shining stars of human achievement.

In this list I’ll discuss some of the most inspiring historical figures who also happened to be fleeing a place of terror and oppression, hoping for liberty, safety and a chance to give their gifts to the world.

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