https://mulderitsme.net/Essays on The X-Files as film and television craft.en https://mulderitsme.net/blog/hulu-coogler-series-order.htmlhttps://mulderitsme.net/blog/hulu-coogler-series-order.htmlFri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000NewsEight months after ordering a pilot, Hulu has picked up Ryan Coogler's X-Files to series. Sorting the confirmed from the reported from the rumored, and what the shape of the deal says about the show. https://mulderitsme.net/blog/after-the-basement.htmlhttps://mulderitsme.net/blog/after-the-basement.htmlFri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000LegacyA procedural with a serialized conspiracy underneath, a writers' room that became a showrunner academy, and a look that prestige TV absorbed. Tracing what the show left behind. https://mulderitsme.net/blog/i-want-to-believe.htmlhttps://mulderitsme.net/blog/i-want-to-believe.htmlFri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000The FilmsReleased in July 2008 a week after The Dark Knight, the second X-Files film was dismissed as small and strange. Seen now, its smallness looks like the point. https://mulderitsme.net/blog/actors-behind-camera.htmlhttps://mulderitsme.net/blog/actors-behind-camera.htmlFri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000DirectorsDavid Duchovny wrote and directed The Unnatural and Hollywood A.D. Gillian Anderson wrote and directed all things. What the show's two leads chose to make when they took control. https://mulderitsme.net/blog/mark-snow.htmlhttps://mulderitsme.net/blog/mark-snow.htmlFri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000SoundMark Snow scored 217 episodes and both films, mostly alone and almost entirely with synthesizers. How his music did the work the camera refused to do. https://mulderitsme.net/blog/paranoid-style.htmlhttps://mulderitsme.net/blog/paranoid-style.htmlFri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000InfluenceThe X-Files inherited its sensibility from the conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s. A look at the films that taught it how to frame institutions, informants and the dark. https://mulderitsme.net/blog/breaking-the-format.htmlhttps://mulderitsme.net/blog/breaking-the-format.htmlFri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000FormUnreliable narrators, time loops, videotape and near silence. The X-Files spent much of its run testing how far an episode could bend before it stopped being an episode. https://mulderitsme.net/blog/post-modern-prometheus.htmlhttps://mulderitsme.net/blog/post-modern-prometheus.htmlFri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000FormChris Carter's fifth-season episode drains the color from the show and rebuilds it as a monster movie in the tradition of James Whale. Why the homage works, and what it says about the creature at its center. https://mulderitsme.net/blog/triangle-long-take.htmlhttps://mulderitsme.net/blog/triangle-long-take.htmlFri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000FormChris Carter built a sixth-season episode to play as four unbroken takes, borrowing a trick from Hitchcock's Rope. A close look at what the long take does, and how it was faked. https://mulderitsme.net/blog/fight-the-future.htmlhttps://mulderitsme.net/blog/fight-the-future.htmlFri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000The FilmsIn 1998 Rob Bowman took a show built on withheld images and made it carry a $60 million summer release. What survived the move to the big screen, and what the bigger frame changed. https://mulderitsme.net/blog/kim-manners.htmlhttps://mulderitsme.net/blog/kim-manners.htmlFri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000DirectorsMore than fifty episodes, from Humbug to Home to Field Trip. A portrait of the director who did more than anyone to make the show look like cinema on a television schedule. https://mulderitsme.net/blog/vancouver-los-angeles.htmlhttps://mulderitsme.net/blog/vancouver-los-angeles.htmlFri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000CinematographyAfter five seasons in British Columbia, the production moved to Los Angeles. The change altered everything from the weather to the color of the night, and the show adapted its storytelling to match. https://mulderitsme.net/blog/flashlight-aesthetic.htmlhttps://mulderitsme.net/blog/flashlight-aesthetic.htmlFri, 16 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000CinematographyNetwork television in 1993 was built to be seen. The X-Files was built to withhold. How a weekly drama learned to treat darkness as its primary material.