Author Archive: Josef Steiff
Joe Steiff would gladly spend his days and nights watching movies and TV with a little writing on the side. Oh, and teach a class or two at Columbia College in Chicago. And maybe play Uncharted. But sleep gets in the way. He's edited Popular Culture and Philosophy volumes on Battlestar Galactica, Anime, Manga and Sherlock Holmes for Open Court Books, wrote The Complete Idiot's Guide to Independent Filmmaking and is a co-author of Transmedia: One Story, Many Media (forthcoming).
The Way
The Way is a film directed/written by Emilio Estevez about a father who decides to walk a lengthy pilgrimage route in Spain after learning of his son’s accidental death while attempting to walk the very same route. Tom Avery (Martin Sheen) is an American optometrist having a typical day when he receives a cell phone [...]
Avatar
The man sitting at the end of my row audibly sobbed several times during the film. One of my friends speculated that the film would make Conservatives explode. The barista at my local coffee shop said that a day after seeing the film, he actually missed Pandora, missed the connection to life it presented. Another [...]
Stargate Universe
Though I wouldn’t call it fully re-imagined, the Stargate franchise gets a reboot that owes in no small measure to Battlestar Galactica and Lost in Space, with a little Star Trek Voyager and Stargate Atlantis thrown in for good measure. From the first of these influences, it borrows more complex and darker characterizations – these [...]
Sanctuary
Wondering what Amanda Tapping was doing all those days she wasn’t on Stargate Atlantis last year? Well, evidently, she was part of a spring web series that has now made the leap to full-length episodes on the SciFi channel: Sanctuary. Gone is her blonde hair and American accent–Dr. Helen Magnus is no Samantha Carter, and [...]
Stargate: Atlantis – Season 5
The first five minutes of the Stargate: Atlantis season five premiere are like watching a movie, as the camera captures sweeping cinematic movements and compositions. Though it’s impossible to maintain this visual style on a television series (camera movements and special effects take time and are therefore expensive), these first five minutes announce a whole [...]
Familia
Familia is one of the numerous international films offered by Filmmovement.com, a company that is tailor made for those of us who love film festivals but can never seem to get to one. Though you can buy titles individually, the service is really set up as a subscription, where each month they send you a [...]
Motion by Design
So you’ve seen 300 and are in awe. Or you love the Six Feet Under opening credits sequence. Maybe you can’t resist the TV Land commercials. Or you’ve been wowed by the music video for “Good is Good.” What do these all have in common? Motion Graphics. And the new book Motion by Design is [...]
Freedomland
FREEDOMLAND. The title sounds heroic. And important. The word, “freedomland,” rings out like a declaration. And a promise. With maybe a hint of irony. Unfortunately, the title is the best thing about this movie. If you’ve seen the previews — hell, if you’ve read imdb or any review of the film — you pretty much [...]
2005: Another Year In Review
Well, here we are, another year of life and films. Before I turn my attention to the best films of the year, perhaps we should take a moment to reflect on the culture that produced these films. In other words, my yearly … RANT FROM THE CULTURAL FRONTLINE Here’s what I learned in 2005 (based [...]
Apartment 12
For all of you who love romantic comedies, here’s a good one you may not have seen. Now on DVD, APARTMENT 12 first garnered attention at the Birmingham Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival in 2001 under the title LIFE/DRAWING, winning the Best Feature Award, and director Dan Bootzin (who co-wrote the script with producer Elizabeth Rivera [...]
Connect