KNOWLEDGE, MADE USEFUL
Explore practical, editorially structured guides across 11 industries.
21 results
Gordon Willis's cinematography in The Godfather Part II makes authority visible partly by hiding it. Faces emerge from darkness, large interiors dwarf their occupants, and restrained camera positions give small gestures disproportionate weight. The film's two periods invite viewers to compare enviro
5 min read · 3 Nov 2026The Godfather Part II is not simply a second chapter added to an already finished story. Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo build a screenplay in which the origins of Vito Corleone interrupt the increasingly cold decisions of his son Michael. One strand looks backwards to the foundations of family
6 min read · 2 Nov 2026
What exactly was Mad Men adapted from? The short answer is that it was not adapted from a novel at all. Matthew Weiner conceived an original television drama about an advertising agency in New York at the beginning of the 1960s. Its brilliance comes from doing something more demanding than recreatin
8 min read · 2 Nov 2026
Was David Fincher's Se7en adapted from a novel? No. That tempting description gets the film's most important writing fact wrong. The 1995 thriller is based on an original screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker, not a published novel about detectives Somerset and Mills. The film draws on older ideas about
8 min read · 1 Nov 2026
Three men in X2 (2003) have remarkably different relationships to control. Scott Summers, played by James Marsden, possesses an ability that must be carefully directed if other people are to remain safe. The President of the United States, played by Cotter Smith, is asked to exercise political autho
8 min read · 1 Nov 2026
In X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), male supporting performers provide some of the clearest answers to the film's central question: when an individual's body is considered abnormal, who gets to decide whether it should be changed? Kelsey Grammer portrays Dr Hank McCoy, or Beast, as a public official an
9 min read · 1 Nov 2026
The first X-Men film has a difficult photographic task: it must make extraordinary abilities visible without letting spectacle overwhelm the emotional lives of their owners. Directed by Bryan Singer and photographed by Newton Thomas Sigel, the 2000 feature shifts between a frightening historical ope
7 min read · 1 Nov 2026
A film about a self-declared ancient god cannot rely on scale alone. X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) asks viewers to accept a fictional Egyptian ritual, a young mutant school in 1983, an isolated Polish family, a Weapon X facility and a destroyed modern Cairo within the same narrative. The enormous changes
10 min read · 1 Nov 2026
The emotional centre of X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) is less a conventional fight against an enemy than the attempt to make people believe that their choices still matter. Hugh Jackman's Wolverine arrives in 1973 with memories of the ruined future. James McAvoy's Charles Xavier has withdrawn af
9 min read · 1 Nov 2026
What does an X-Men origin need to explain first: how the team acquires its powers, or why its two future leaders stop trusting one another? Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class (2011) chooses the second problem. The screenplay, credited to Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Jane Goldman and Vaughn, r
7 min read · 1 Nov 2026
A Spider-Man film can change the meaning of its hero without inventing a more elaborate costume or a louder musical theme. Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) finds Peter Parker working in New York after the memory spell that erased him from the lives of people who knew him. The film's audiovisual chal
9 min read · 1 Nov 2026
The most striking thing about Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) is how many different kinds of visual worlds must coexist. A cramped New York apartment becomes a place of terrifying violence. Doctor Strange's magical spaces abandon familiar physical rules. Three Spider-Men arrive in recognisably differ
8 min read · 1 Nov 2026