Textual Analysis: Film Review 2

http://www.empireonline.com/movies/inconvenient-truth/review/

'Empire' is a British film magazine which has expanded into the website format of 'Empire Online'; this means that the information is more readily available and regularly updated (in comparison to the monthly wait for the hardcopy edition).

Within this review, the main image is featured at the top of the page and somewhat acts as a header as it boards the top section of the page. The image is very ambiguous to those who have not watched the documentary as the title 'An Inconvenient Truth' does not interlink with the image of penguins. Due to the lack of association, the image causes the reader to question its relevance, therefore provoking them to read onwards.  The title is seen to overlap the image and appears in a standard font; it also states the nature/intention of the text (in this case, a review) in a basic and simplistic manner. The white colour of the font appears more natural and less embellished; however, this colour choice does not increase legibility as it can be argued that it is hard to differentiate with the white areas of the background, somewhat making the text unclear. There is no photo credit/acknowledgement

Once again, a small summary is placed before the introductory paragraph of the review; this provides the reader with enough contextual background knowledge to have an understanding of the documentary without actually having watched it.

Beneath this, a star rating of 5 is featured (once again, before the review begins) in order to give the audience an insight into the direction of the authors bias. For example, due to the 5/5 rating it becomes clear to the audience that the writer of the review enjoyed the documentary and will not be highly critical of it.

To the left of the page there is a box of information that remains separate to the main piece of text positioned in the middle of the page; this box consists of the information considered essential to the product, e.g. the age rating, release date and the running time. Slightly above this, the reader is given the name of the author and the date/time of publication; they are also given the opportunity to share the review via their own social media pages (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest) through a html link.

Once again, this review is structured via paragraphs rather than columns due to it being a virtual copy rather than a print- when I create my own review I plan to follow the more traditional layout of a newspaper/magazine however I also plan to challenge some conventions through the use of intertextuality.