Guillermo Del Toro

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Guillermo Del Toro COLT 212 – Comparative World Cinema CRN: 31655 Instructor: Steven Brown Term: Spring 2021 TEACHING METHOD: REMOTE Guillermo del Toro The success of The Shape of Water (2017), which received four Academy Awards (including Best Director and Best Picture), propelled horror maestro Guillermo del Toro into the spotlight with his unorthodox cinematic love letter to monsters of all stripes (transgressive monsters, sympathetic monsters, victimized monsters). The director of such films as Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, Devil’s Backbone, and Crimson Peak, del Toro has asserted that horror is inherently political: “Much like fairy tales, there are two facets of horror,” claims del Toro, “One is pro-institution, which is the most reprehensible type of fairy tale. Don’t wander into the woods, and always obey your parents. The other type of fairy tale is completely anarchic and antiestablishment.” Del Toro's horror-inflected fairy tales situate monsters as "living, breathing metaphors" for larger social issues. This seminar looks at del Toro's entire body of work and the unique contributions he has made to world horror cinema and “cínema fantastique.” Special attention will be given to the formal aspects of his filmmaking, its genre hybridity, and its intermedial connections with other works of art and literature. Works discussed include: Crimson Peak (2015), Cronos (1993), The Devil's Backbone (2001), Hellboy (2004), Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), Mimic (1997), Pacific Rim (2013), Pan's Labyrinth (2006), The Shape of Water (2017), and The Strain (2014-2017). Satisfies Core Education Requirements: • Group Satisfying: Arts & Letters (A&L) • Areas of Inquiry: Arts & Letters (A&L) • Multicultural: International Cultures (IC) • Cultural Literacy: Global Perspectives (GP) .
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    1 Crimson Peak Reviewed by Garry Victor Hill Directed by Guillermo Del Toro. Produced by Guillermo Del Toro, Thomas Tull, Callum Greene and Jon Tashi. Executive Producers: Jillian Share & Maguy R. Cohen. Production Design by Thomas E. Saunders. Screenplay by Guillermo Del Toro & Mathew Robbins. Photography by Dan Laustsen. Editing by Bernat Vilplana. Music by Fernando Velázquez. A Universal Pictures Production. Original Release: October 2015. MA rating. Length: 119 minutes. Rating 85% All pictures are taken from the public domain or Wikimedia 2 Cast Edith Cushing: Mia Wasikowska Lucille Sharpe: Jessica Chastain Thomas Sharpe: Tom Huddleston Doctor Alan McMichael: Charlie Hunnam Carter Cushing: Jim Beaver Ogilvie: Jonathan Hyde Mrs McMichael: Leslie Hope Ferguson: Bruce Clay Eunice: Emily Coutts Young Edith: Sofia Wells Finlay: Alec Stockwell Coroner: Bill Lake Reverend: Sean Hewitt Review Crimson Peak is a superior horror film; more of a chiller than a thriller - until the last thirty minutes, then it unleashes thrills and horrors galore. Those last thirty minutes are made all the more effective by the suspenseful build-up. Until then the narrative segments the chilling suspense with brief moments of horror. These not only warn; they tantalise about the mystery on the way to the revealing climax. 3 Almost any viewer will either work out what that mystery, or at the least, aspects of it, long before the naïve heroine Edith Cushing does. Originality is not the film’s strength. Naïve, isolated, inexperienced, young women have been going to dark sinister, isolated, aristocratic houses (and staying there!) since at least 1847, when Jane Eyre was published.
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