Shaun Huston is an associate professor in Geography and Film Studies at Western Oregon University, where he primarily teaches courses in political and cultural geography. He is currently working on a documentary film about the community of comics creators in Portland, Oregon. You can learn more by visiting his faculty webpage.
Features
Thursday, March 19 2009
An Auteur's Touch of Evil
The auteur is dead, long live the auteur: Orson Welles and Touch of Evil, 50 years on.
Thursday, August 14 2008
Life Into Art: Strange Culture and the Measure of Documentary Film
Strange Culture is a critical entry point into the current discussion of what makes a documentary a documentary, most notably because it announces its own subjectivity in a clear and provocative way.
Wednesday, August 6 2008
Mad Men, Sad Men
The increasing prevalence and sophistication of advertising, the popularization of psychotherapy, and an emerging political consciousness in the American middle class all come to the fore in this excellent television series.
Tuesday, February 27 2007
Barbarians at the Gate
In addition to enabling collaboration and sharing, recently developed social open sourcing technologies -- sometimes called Web 2.0 or the read-write web -- make it possible to cultivate communities of interest around a particular film and even short-circuit normal promotional efforts and theatrical distribution.
Friday, December 8 2006
Bringing Short Films to a Mailbox Near You: An Interview with Karl Mechem
Does the short film have a reputable future beyond stupid human tricks on YouTube?
Columns
Thursday, January 12 2012
Killing the Page: Comics' Digital Conundrum
There are thorny creative and artistic questions to be addressed in the development of comics for e-reading; we'll have to get beyond models that see the digital as little more than an adaptation of the analog.
Wednesday, November 30 2011
Hard to Make a Living: Kickstarter and Comics Creators
Comics writers and artists are turning to Kickstarter both to fund specific projects and to buy themselves time to create.
Wednesday, October 19 2011
Comics Needs Women: Why Marvel and DC Should Have Been at Geek Girl Con
There is goodwill to be spent and good faith conversations to be had about the place of women and female characters in the DC and Marvel universes, and an event like Geek Girl Con is an ideal place for that kind of dialogue.
Tuesday, September 6 2011
Show and Tell: On Words and Images in Comics
While there are prose books that use pictures for illustrative purposes, only in comics are stories actively told through both written words and drawn pictures.
Wednesday, July 6 2011
How Intricate Can Marvel's Storyworld Become on Film?
Marvel producers are attempting to create a film analog to the Marvel Universe that knits together the publisher's mainline titles. Will moviegoing audiences keep coming back for the next story, and the next?
Reviews
Monday, December 19 2011
'Dazed and Confused' Is Perfectly Sincere
The success in representing the fluidity of identity, social boundaries, and power in youth culture makes this film an open-ended text, able to sustain a multiplicity of viewings, viewing modes (casual, formal), and interpretations.
Wednesday, November 23 2011
'Super 8': Bringing Adolescent Dreams to Life
Paradoxically, given all of the borrowing and recycling that went into its making, in the present moment, the most novel aspect of Super 8 may be its originality.
Monday, June 27 2011
Harmony and Discord in '3 Backyards'
3 Backyards hints at the kinds of darkness that typically marks the field of suburban representation, but in favoring the quotidian and the individual, never becomes melodramatic or a deep excavation of its characters' secrets.
Thursday, June 23 2011
Moral Ambiguity, Greyness and Imperfection in the Classic, 'Once Upon a Time in the West'
This is, literally and figuratively, a movie about the dirt under the fingernails of its characters, and how everyone has some of that dirt, no matter how they might appear on the outside or to those in society at large.
Thursday, June 2 2011
The Difference Between Remembering and Watching an American Classic: 'The Hustler'
Often associated with Minnesota Fats and the glamour of pool, The Hustler is more about the dark underside of the game and the lives of its lead characters, with Jackie Gleason's well-recalled turn as Fats playing only a minor role in the drama.
Blogs
Tuesday, December 8 2009
AK 100: 25 Films by Akira Kurosawa
AK 100: 25 Films by Akira Kurosawa, The Criterion Collection [$399.00]
