There is no excerpt because this is a protected post. Continue reading Protected: Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Kubrick’s 2001- Part 2 (The Musical Past)
This article contains minor spoilers. Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin (2013) is a film that is structured around the different landscapes and their collected norms to such an extent that it comes to resemble a strange, erotic and surreal travelogue. While the film’s ambiguous nature is one of its defining features, its portrayal of specific locations and, vitally, their effect on the people within them, … Continue reading Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer) – The Human Landscape.
For a film that, on the surface, appears to be held in such high regard, Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960) seems to have distanced itself from a number of its audience. While I often wish to adhere to the third person in criticism, this article cannot help but revert to a personal reception of the film and also refer to recent personal reflections shared online. After … Continue reading L’Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960) – A Curious Distance.
In spite of working wearily outside of the French New Wave movement, Claude Sautet’s debut feature, Classe Tous Risques (1960), cannot help but evoke the cinematic environment bursting forth around it. While it may seem crass to spend time discussing more well known work in an article about a director whose work has been largely ignored outside of his national audience, it should also aim … Continue reading Classe Tous Risques (1960) – Claude Sautet (BFI)
For some time now I have been involved in a collaborative arts project with local illustrator and artist Katie Craven. Before the first stage of the project could be unleashed onto the unsuspecting public, the project collapsed in on itself thanks to a Belgian art gallery among other things. To show just how close it got to being finished, there’s even a stop press advert … Continue reading Forest (Short Film) and A Screaming Breeze (Book).
In spite of its very energetic reappraisal and various analyses, Michael Powell’s career destroying masterpiece, Peeing Tom (1960), is a film whose musical eccentricities and sound design contain hidden depths. For a film that appears on the surface to be almost excessively Freudian, this was normal yet, when looking at some of the detailed reappraisals and even some of the high-end re-evaluations of its narrative … Continue reading Peeping Tom (Michael Powell,1960) – Aural Perspectives of Murder.
Strange undercurrents of sexuality pervade the films of Stanley Kubrick. Though not always present explicitly, the raw presence of dark desire and physical wanting seems scattered throughout his work. From Dr Strangelove‘s ideas of selective breeding based on the “sexual characteristics that will have to be of a highly stimulating nature” to The Shining‘s most surreal haunting of a man receiving oral sex from another … Continue reading Eyes Wide Shut (1999) – Occult Sexuality
This article contains spoilers. There are many aspects of distraction within Jerzy Skolimowski’s 1970 film, Deep End. Its highly sexualised, sometimes seedy narrative, its vast array of colours and its crisp, sharp direction are only a handful of its hyper-active eccentricities. Even David Lynch, a long-time pessimist about colour cinema, is on record as a fan of Deep End‘s array of powerful colours, and styles. … Continue reading Deep End (1970) and the Musical Emphasising of Narrative (Jerzy Skolimowski).
This article contains minor spoilers. It has taken a while for the traditional BBC ghost story to make a fully formed return in the 21st century. This is surprising considering the popularity of the return of other genre television traditions from Doctor Who to Battlestar Galactica, but the singular ghost story at Christmas has taken some time to get right. Before this recent M.R. James … Continue reading The Tractate Middoth – Mark Gatiss (BBC Ghost Story at Christmas).
Making a video for a song without vocals has been an interesting and ultimately rewarding experience. Without the ties to vocals that often mean music videos scream of publicity, making a video for guitarist John McGrath has given a freedom I’ll probably never enjoy again for other music videos. McGrath’s music is at once refreshing; a mixture of percussive guitar and electronic delays; consider a … Continue reading Music Video – Four Hills (John McGrath)
Celluloid Wicker Man 