Tag: Film analysis blog

Film

Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn) – Violent Sonatas and Dreaming in Colour.

This article contains spoilers. Cinema was built for dreams.  It’s almost cliché now, adding dreams, dream sequences, dream-scapes; endless tumbling ambiguity to add depth and distance to a film.  Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives (2013) is not a dream in the sense of Inception (2010) or Spellbound (1945) but more in the sense of a light day-dream inciting calm before a violent storm.  On … Continue reading Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn) – Violent Sonatas and Dreaming in Colour.

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Distant Voices, Still Lives – Nostalgia and Hardship Through Sound & Music (Part 1).

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Working Class Pasts – Nostalgia and Past Hardship Through Sound and Music. “Since the 1970s especially, the tendency has grown for directors to indulge their own musical tastes in scoring a film” (Gorbman, 2006, p.17). Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) – Differences in Time. Terence Davies’ autobiographical second feature is the last film to be examined.  Unlike … Continue reading Distant Voices, Still Lives – Nostalgia and Hardship Through Sound & Music (Part 1).

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Film, Film Music and Sound

The Problematic Reception of Derek Jarman’s Blue – Part 4 (New Technological Contexts).

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The Reception of Blue in New Technological Forms and Contexts. “The degree to which the spectator identifies with the diegesis as his/her own hallucination fluctuates from spectator to spectator, from narrative moment to moment, from genre to genre.” (Gorbman, 1987, p.45). It is very hard to experience Blue today in the intended format that Jarman produced it in.  This … Continue reading The Problematic Reception of Derek Jarman’s Blue – Part 4 (New Technological Contexts).

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Film

Alphaville (1965) and the Absurdities of Cinema – Jean-Luc Godard.

Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965) was one of the first pieces of non-Anglo American cinema that I watched.  It may have been diving in toward the deep end in some regards but something became very striking about the film as its running time trickled by. It said more than other dystopias, noirs or sci-fi but this “more” wasn’t to do with anything that could be described … Continue reading Alphaville (1965) and the Absurdities of Cinema – Jean-Luc Godard.

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Film, Film Music and Sound

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – Use of Music and Sound In British Working Class Film (Part 4).

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. The Metaphorical Use of Diegetic Sound and Music. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner has several different uses of sound; two of which aren’t musical.  The title perhaps gives a hint that the sound of running feet on a hard ground will play a vital role in the film.  This rhythmic, … Continue reading The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – Use of Music and Sound In British Working Class Film (Part 4).

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Film, Film Music and Sound

The Problematic Reception of Derek Jarman’s Blue – Part 3 (Cinematic Screenings).

Part 1 Part 2 Blue’s cinematic screening – Readings, Reception and Contradictions. “Whilst homosexuals die, many heterosexuals reach for the remote control and simply turn up the volume.  Does it come in stereo?” (Jarman, 1993, p.138) The screening of Blue in cinemas during its 1993 release date is its most typical form though screenings were rare and often film festival based rather than through a … Continue reading The Problematic Reception of Derek Jarman’s Blue – Part 3 (Cinematic Screenings).

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Film, Folk Horror, Landscape

The Early Short Films of David Gladwell.

David Gladwell may be more well known as Lindsay Anderson’s editor on such cinematic masterpieces as If…. (1968) and O Lucky Man! (1973) but his own directorial endeavours are equally worthy of discussion and analysis, especially in their relation to both his editorial work and his own creative trajectories. Whether it is the, very English, visual language of his first four short films or the … Continue reading The Early Short Films of David Gladwell.

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Film, Film Music and Sound

South Korean Film Scores and Ease of Distribution – Part 5 (Blades of Blood and Conclusions)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Blades of Blood (2010) – Joon-Ik Lee Joon-ik Lee’s 2010 film Blades of Blood shares a number of similarities with both the previously mentioned examples. The film is a modern, violent period picture based on a graphic novel. It is stylistically similar to Oldboy, especially within its colour palate though rarely recreates the standard set by Park. … Continue reading South Korean Film Scores and Ease of Distribution – Part 5 (Blades of Blood and Conclusions)

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Film, Film Music and Sound

The Use of Sound & Music in British Working Class Film – Part 3 (British New Wave Cinema).

Part 1. Part 2. Metaphorical Music and British New Wave Film. “But who could describe the delicious sensation produced in me by the delicate harmony and angelic singing of that song which finally did! What an awakening, what bliss, what ecstasy when I opened my ears and my eyes together!” (Rousseau, 1781, p.294). British New Wave Film. The British New Wave movement, like so many … Continue reading The Use of Sound & Music in British Working Class Film – Part 3 (British New Wave Cinema).

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Film

Salò (1975) and the Potential for an Adornian Film (Pier Paolo Pasolini).

Reading through some of the writing of Frankfurt school philosopher, Theodor Adorno, it becomes extremely clear that mass culture is what he believes to be the fault of many of the world’s problems as well as symptom of them too; a false enlightenment perhaps, which is the product of simply being unable to accept a world after the end of the Second World War and, … Continue reading Salò (1975) and the Potential for an Adornian Film (Pier Paolo Pasolini).

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