Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim (2013) has gotten quite a drubbing from film critics. Jonathan Romney in The Independent described it as an example of where “even smart, idiosyncratic directors can make dumb, impersonal movies. And Pacific Rim is the flashiest, clumsiest, most heavily armed in the salvo of Stupid Bombs that Hollywood has been bombarding us with”. He is…
Month: July 2013
On death and its representation in Mexico
There is a frequent trope in reporting about Mexico that suggests that Mexicans have a special relationship with death. The Mexican poet and essayist, Octavio Paz wrote an influential essay in his Laberinto de la soledad/Labyrinth of Solitude (1950) exploring the particularities of the Mexican attitude to death through the lens of the annual day of the…