Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Socks off

    Socks off

    Clever, metatextual movies don’t have to be intellectual or gnomic: sometimes they can just be hella entertaining. The most obvious way in which this occurs is through generic playfulness, which is the beating heart of Knives Out: ‘this is a murder mystery’ is written through it like the name of a seaside resort through a Read more

  • Lining up their ducks

    Lining up their ducks

    The Clash were one of the first bands I got into as a teenager—late as usual, they broke up just before I started listening to them. I started with Combat Rock, then worked by way through the rest of their albums, learning the words and getting to know the recordings the way you do as Read more

  • Style over easy

    Style over easy

    Joel and Ethan Coen’s second feature-film, Raising Arizona stands in stark contrast to their first, Blood Simple. It’s an extremely silly movie, constructed from bright colours, slapstick, overacting, babies and optimism. It lacks the strong defining images that structure Blood Simple, but is nevertheless a very visual narrative, in which striking facial expressions and extravagant Read more

  • The magic of the real

    The magic of the real

    My introduction to fantasy fiction was The Lord of the Rings, which I encountered surprisingly early, while visiting a friend whose mother was reading it to him as a bedtime story. I suspect her assessment of its suitability as a bedtime story for a three-year-old may have had something to do with her own desire Read more

  • Past presence

    Past presence

    Mike Leigh, film maker. That feels a much more appropriate term than director or writer: although there are many other minds at work in his movies, in all those elements of production which are crucial to rendering his worlds so seamless and complete, it is clearly Leigh’s vision that animates all that effort. His films Read more

  • Lessons unlearned

    Lessons unlearned

    Infographics are big business. You can buy a big glossy book of infographics on more or less any topic, for any age of reader. They appear in magazines, newspapers, websites and on video, where they are sometimes expanded into extraordinary 3D animations. They’ve clearly been around for a while, and I can recall a few Read more