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Continue reading →: Reading Susan Sontag’s “Against Interpretation” for Film Studies: Transcendence and the ‘Vocabulary for Forms’“In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comfortable”
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Continue reading →: An exploration of “Photograph and Screen” in Stanley Cavell’s The World Viewed, and “Nana, or the Two Kinds of Space” in Noël Burch’s Theory of Film Practiceby Nick NUniversity of Chicago CMST 14400: Film and the Moving ImageAutumn 2019 We will first focus on “Photograph and Screen” in which Stanley Cavell discusses the different “realities” and “worlds” that viewers are presented in paintings, photographs, and films. The painter chooses a world to show his audience: one that may not exist in…
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Continue reading →: Inspect-’em-Ups: Genre Core and PeripheryOne last post for September: I did indeed succeed in getting the second part of my new series on detective games out of the door by the end of the month. And it’s a long one, too! Long enough that I don’t feel bad about the dry spell that’s inevitably going to set in in…
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Continue reading →: The Detective’s GazeI’ve inaugurated a new video series, on detective games. The inaugural video is an extended version of this old conference presentation, buffed up with new examples and more extensive sources. The second video will be arriving shortly—I knew I’d be super busy as soon as all three of my current jobs kicked in, so I…
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Continue reading →: 3-Year Anniversary of the BlogWhen I’ve done these little “anniversary of the blog” posts in the past, I’ve focused on quantifying everything I’ve posted over the past year. This year, however, I’m going to use the space for a couple of announcements relating to my day job that I have been putting off until things finally solidified. My time…
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Continue reading →: Published: “Special Effectivities”
Over the past couple of years I have embedded literally dozens of general-audience video essays I have made and posted on my YouTube page. I am very pleased to announce the online publication of my first peer-reviewed academic video essay at the [in]Transition Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies. The appearance of this video…
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Continue reading →: Walkthrough: KonaThe analysis I’ve been working on has again resulted in me writing a full-on game walkthrough, this time to Parabole’s 2017 game Kona. Again, I have decided that I might as well just post the results here, as a gesture of goodwill to the world. There are some useful walkthroughs to Kona out there already, each with…
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Continue reading →: Walkthrough: The Painscreek KillingsI’m in the midst of analyzing the detective game The Painscreek Killings (EQ Studios, 2017) right now, and as part of my process I ended up creating a quite detailed walkthrough. Since the work was already done, I figured I’d paste it over here, throw on some spoiler tags, and share it with the world. Might as…
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Continue reading →: Interesting Games of 2019: The Year So FarThe scope of new releases I have been playing has narrowed, as of late. I’ve been focusing in on a few choice genres and subject matters, as I round up my final list of case studies for my book project (as well as any upcoming video essay series connected with it). Practically, this means I’m…
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Continue reading →: Let’s Study Horror Games: Belated Memorial Day Weekend Catch-upSo, this is embarrassing. I actually did conclude the initial 10-episode run of Let’s Study Horror Games by the end of April. But I forgot to cross-post the video here once I uploaded it to YouTube. And then I made an 11th episode, and realized I still hadn’t announced the 10th one. And then weeks went…
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Continue reading →: Let’s Study Horror Games, ep 9Moving right along! This episode adapts some material from this post, but also includes plenty of new material, as well. Script below the jump.
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Continue reading →: Let’s Study Horror Games, ep 8I have returned, bearing new content. This episode isn’t based on any prior material—I had been meaning to write on Until Dawn here for ages, and just ended up making a video for this series instead of writing a blog post on it. Work and other publications slowed down my progress on this series (remember back…
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Continue reading →: Interesting Games of 2018: A Belated Wrap-UpI fell behind on 2018 games thanks to my “Let’s Study Horror Games” series. Things kind of worked out in the end, though, because 2018 ended up being not quite as supersaturated with games as 2017. To be sure, it was a year of big releases, both on the mainstream AAA front and on the…
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Continue reading →: Let’s Study Horror Games, ep 7The saga continues. This one’s dedicated to the Siren franchise, which means it’s a more in-depth version of some ideas I first poked around in in the tail end of this lesson plan. I wanted to finish up this ep because it caps off a four-episode sequence that begain with ep 4. But my hiatus from…
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Continue reading →: Published: “Teaching (Like) Hannah Frank (1984–2017): A Tribute”The Moving Image vol. 18 no. 1 is designated the “Spring 2018” issue, but I didn’t receive my hard copy until this week. And, looking online, lo and behold, it’s up on JSTOR and Project Muse. So I guess it officially exists now, and it’s high time to announce it. There was a flurry of…
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Continue reading →: Let’s Study Horror Games, pt 6I did it! I fulfilled my self-imposed goal of uploading four of these in December. (I also accidentally fulfilled my prediction that I’d post one of these on Christmas, which is when I actually uploaded the video.) One consequence of sticking to this video-making schedule is that I’m now behind on playing games, and won’t…
