Aarons captures periods of Boston history on film

Article by: Matt McQuaid

If you take a stroll through many of Boston’s neighborhoods today, you’ll probably be greeted by the sight of tourist attractions, crappy chain stores you can find anywhere else, and yuppies with small, obnoxious dogs. It’s hard to imagine how these places once were 60 years ago, before gentrification and the flight of families to the suburbs, but photographer Jules Aarons captures the essence of a time past quite perfectly.

Jules Aarons was an engineer by trade who helped to develop GPS technology, but his passion was photography. From 1947 to 1976, Aarons photographed residents of the North End, West End, South Boston, South End, Scollay Square (now Government Center), and the Market District (now Faneuil Hall).  Inspired by “street photographers” such as Helen Levitt and Henri Cartier-Bresson, Aarons used a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera to shoot his subjects because it allowed him to take pictures without the subject’s knowledge. The Boston Public Library began collecting his works in 1997, and now has the largest collection of his pictures in the world.

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Emerson screens filmmakers’ efforts

Article by: Julia Dawidowicz

You don’t need to fly all the way to Cannes or Sundance to watch screenings of today’s most innovative films. On Monday, Feb. 22, The Experimental Cinema Exposition, TIE, held a special screening of short avant-garde films at Emerson College that featured the works of various contemporary filmmakers, many of whom have Boston roots.

TIE is a non-profit, multi-day traveling film festival that highlights the works of modern experimental film makers and provides artists with an opportunity to share their films with one another. On Saturday, TIE held a first screening at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art followed by Monday’s screening, which was attended by a small audience in Emerson’s Walker building on Boylston Street. The eight films, which were compiled by the curator and co-founder of TIE, Christopher May, were shot almost exclusively shot in 16 mm film; a media which is very rarely seen projected on a big screen these days. They were followed by a dynamic Q & A session with two of the directors.

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‘Island’ just another thriller

Article by: Cait O’Callaghan

Martin Scorsese teams up with Leonardo DiCaprio a fourth time in his new film Shutter Island (Paramount Pictures, 2010), the story of a Bostonian U.S Marshal’s investigation into the disappearance of a patient on an island that holds a mental hospital.

Taking place in 1954, DiCaprio plays U.S Marshal Teddy Daniels, who arrives at Shutter Island’s Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane with his new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo). While investigating the disappearance of a woman who drowned her three children, a hurricane suddenly hits, forcing the two to stay longer than expected. Strange events start to plague the island, causing Teddy to believe that he should no longer trust anyone. Teddy sees strange visions of his dead wife, Dolores, (Michelle Williams) and past visions of himself arriving at a concentration camp as a soldier during World War II throughout the film, only contributing to his increasing paranoia. It’s up to Teddy to investigate this disappearance, find his wife’s murderer (who happens to be a patient in the hospital as well), and figure out what secrets Ashecliffe is keeping.

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Wolfman returns to the big screen

Michael J. Fox nowhere to be seen
Article by: Derek Anderson

An old school horror flick remade, The Wolfman (Universal Pictures, 2010) tore onto the big screen last weekend, but fell short on its attempt to show an evolution of an old monster tale.

The movie starts off with Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) returning back to his childhood home in England upon receiving a letter of concern from  his brother’s fiancé (Emily Blunt) informing him that he has gone missing. When he arrives home, his father (Anthony Hopkins) greets him and tells him that his brother was found savagely ripped apart in a ditch alongside the road. Curious about the death of his brother, Lawrence stays at his hometown and searches for him. In his searching, Lawrence is bitten by a werewolf and survives, soon becoming the thing that tore his family apart. The conflict between inner beast and man is dragged into reality at every full moon and chaos ensues.

And chaos did ensue, but not in the best way. When going to a horror film, an audience usually expects gratuitous gore and puts the aspects of plot and character development on the sidelines. These aspects, however, cannot be completely disregarded, and The Wolfman was lacking heavily in these areas. Although the acting was superb, there was little to no time spent on developing their characters and giving them background. Many questions were left unanswered throughout the movie, leaving the audience confused, forcing them to just accept what is happening. If the plot had been worked into the movie in a better fashion, it really would have bumped the flick up from just another monster movie.

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