Fire — “If we go back far enough,” Freud wrote in Civilization and Its Discontents , “we find that the first acts of civilization were the u...

“In Fritz Lang’s M ,” writes Raymond Durgnat, “the child murderer (Peter Lorre) sees his next victim gazing into a shop window full of toys....

When I was growing up, Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997) was the most famous undersea explorer in the world. I knew about him primarily through h...

Trains have figured prominently in the cinema since its inception—think of the Lumière brothers’ early film, Arrivée d’un train à Perrache ...

Although the origin of the word is contested, some suggest the word carnival is derived from the Latin carnem levare or the Italian carnel...

Among the vast repertoire of symbols available to the lyricists of popular music, one of the most frequently used is blindness. A famous use...

The musical box — a novelty toy that produces music mechanically. The crucial parts of a musical box are the cylinder and the comb. The cyl...

I’ve blogged in the past about the figure of Orpheus in popular music, but I’ve yet to explore how the music has employed the mythic hero or...

Apparently, Marlon Brando once wanted to be a jazz drummer, and was a big fan of Gene Krupa. Widely considered to have been the first drum s...

Teen Idol – the term is ambiguous. Does the term mean the idol in question is a teenager, or someone widely admired by teenagers? According...

I’m pleased to announce that next month, on 26 October, Nucleus Films (UK) will issue Stephen Weeks’ 1974 chiller Ghost Story as a special ...

Among all forms of popular music, one generally thinks of country & western when one is asked to think of songs proclaiming conservative...