One HEAT Minute: Episode #88 - Dr. Christopher Sharrett (Seton Hall University)

ONE HEAT MINUTE is the podcast examining Michael Mann's 1995 "magnum opus" HEAT minute by minute. It's the 88th minute (1:27:00-1:28:00) - host Blake Howard joins Professor of Visual and Sound Media at Seton Hall University, writer for CINEASTE and editor for Film International, and the man who wrote that "Michael Mann has emerged as the quintessential cinematic poet of the postmodern urban world," - Dr. Christopher Sharrett. Blake and Christopher discuss the ugly, deadly and alluring cityscape; the fluid nightmare of L.A traffic; Mann echoing Howard Hawks' affinity for men who are good at what they do; and the overwhelming loss and tragedy of this 170-minute masterpiece. Have a listen.

GUEST BIO

Christopher Sharrett, Ph.D.

Professor of Visual and Sound Media

College of Communication and the Arts

I have taught film history, theory and criticism at Seton Hall University since 1989, along with courses in visual theory and media studies, including mass communication and gender in film. I am most concerned with teaching students visual literacy and assisting them in close readings of films. My chief concern is to teach the importance of cinema as an art form, and to encourage the evaluation of specific works of the cinema. The cinema contains numerous social, economic and political trends of society, but it is first and foremost the most important and influential art form of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. It is important for students to establish criteria as they study film, to separate the important from the insignificant and to see why cinema, at its best, addresses basic questions of daily life.