At some point in our childhood, we are all asked a straightforward question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, an innocent and pleasant question that usually results in answers that are charming often quite funny, and mostly unrealistic. The reality is that, except for a few people who are traditionally outliers…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945)
It was Leo Tolstoy who famously wrote “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its way”, and if you looked at the Quincy family, an affluent clan that has lived in the idyllic New England hamlet of Corinth for centuries, you’ll find very few families quite as miserable. Having lost all…
Love Lies Bleeding (2024)
Cinema is more than just a medium of entertainment, but rather a living, dynamic form of artistic expression that changes as time progresses. Certain genres and styles of filmmaking remain evergreen, with only marginal changes in terms of the stories and presentation. In contrast, others have seemingly either gone extinct or evolved into something quite…
Mr Bean’s Holiday (2007)
Many hilarious individuals have made their mark on the entertainment industry, but the list of true comedic geniuses is much shorter and far more exclusive. Yet, someone who seems to always be proving himself as deserving a place on this list is Rowan Atkinson, who has become one of the most cherished comedians of his…
Viridiana (1961)
Anyone can make a satire – the difference is that not everyone can do so effectively, to the point where their entire career is formed from being able to represent a very particular side of the human condition in a way that is hilarious and insightful, and perhaps a bit disturbing. For several decades, Luis…
The Northerners (1992)
There have been countless artists whose work is designed to reflect their belief that we live in a ludicrous and confusing world, one where logic is rare and existence is just a series of disjointed, arbitrary moments in which nothing can ever be truly comprehended. Yet, very few are quite as committed to the art…
Ezra (2024)
There are some topics that are considered too risky to write about when it comes to film or television, since they very rarely tend to manifest as well as they should, which is precisely the reason why they’re actively avoided unless they are made by someone with the firsthand experience to be able to infuse…
Carrington (1995)
“There are a great deal of a great many kinds of love.” The above is one of the many poetic musings we find in the writings of Lytton Strachey, a writer who is not as well-regarded today as he was a few decades previously, but where his work is still adored by many who find…
The Great Lillian Hall (2024)
“All of life is a stage”, a sentiment that has become the unofficial motto of an entire industry, with theatre performers being drawn to the idea that life, in general, is a performance, a chance to play a character on an enormous stage, populated by myriad characters and a neverending stream of unexpected scenarios. Michael…
Mur Murs (1981)
One of the most fascinating and vibrant fields of contemporary language studies falls under the branch of sociolinguistics and is usually referred to by the term “linguistic landscapes”, a simple but effective way of describing one of the most exciting areas of research of the past few decades. This field is built on the principle…
The Postmodern Pelican 