Tag: Film Review

Film, Landscape, Literature

Patience (Grant Gee) and The Rings of Saturn (W.G. Sebald) – Capturing Perception

There are a number of reception possibilities attainable when watching Grant Gee’s 2011 essay film, Patience (After Sebald).  Any film based on a book or around an author is always going to separate its viewers into two groups; those who have read the original source material and those who have not.  While the latter will be seeking to latch onto the their initial experience of … Continue reading Patience (Grant Gee) and The Rings of Saturn (W.G. Sebald) – Capturing Perception

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Elemental Chaos and Eternal Return in Scriabin and Andrei Tarkovsky – Part 3 (Natural and Cyclic Rejuvenation)

Part 1. Part 2. Natural Forces and Cyclic Rejuvenation. “Critical neglect of this reference to Nietzsche is even more puzzling, however, when one considers that Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Eternal Return is a philosophical re-interpretation of the theme of Time for Time was, after all, a major obsession with Tarkovsky. As is well known, Tarkovsky’s preferred way of characterizing the art of filmmaking was as … Continue reading Elemental Chaos and Eternal Return in Scriabin and Andrei Tarkovsky – Part 3 (Natural and Cyclic Rejuvenation)

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Film

The Missing Picture (2013) – Rithy Panh.

Despite living in an age of increased documentation, archive and detail, history can still be a tricky picture to paint.  For so long, the old adage of it being written by “the winning side” has been a tried and tested bias exposed in whole chapters of recounted history.  This has been a development based around prejudice whether through class, racism, sexism or other forms of … Continue reading The Missing Picture (2013) – Rithy Panh.

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Kubrick’s 2001- Part 2 (The Musical Past)

Part 1. Musical Techniques of Atmosphères and Disassociations with the Past. “Seen from this angle, with Atmosphères I was consciously reacting against the refinement of serialism.  Musical texture in Atmosphères is also refined but in quite a different dimension.” -Ligeti (1983, p.38). Before even looking in any depth at the notational content of Ligeti’s Atmosphères, it becomes clear to the reader when looking over the … Continue reading Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Kubrick’s 2001- Part 2 (The Musical Past)

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Film, Landscape

Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer) – The Human Landscape.

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.

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Kubrick’s 2001- Part 1 (Introduction)

Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Introduction. “First in Cologne in 1957 and later during my long stay in Vienna in the ’60s, I gradually evolved a musical style in which I abandoned structures conceived in terms of bars, melodies, lines and conventional forms.  In this respect my first two orchestral works, Apparitions and Atmosphères, are the most … Continue reading Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Kubrick’s 2001- Part 1 (Introduction)

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Film

Classe Tous Risques (1960) – Claude Sautet (BFI)

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)

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Elemental Chaos and Eternal Return in Scriabin and Andrei Tarkovsky – Part 1 (Introduction)

Elemental Chaos and Nietzsche’s Eternal Return in the Music of Alexander Scriabin and the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky. Introduction “It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.” (1625/2002, p.344) – Francis Bacon. The cyclic nature of life and the process of destruction and rejuvenation has been a subject of … Continue reading Elemental Chaos and Eternal Return in Scriabin and Andrei Tarkovsky – Part 1 (Introduction)

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Peeping Tom (Michael Powell,1960) – Aural Perspectives of Murder.

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.

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Analysis of Sound and Music in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) – Part 4 (Conclusions)

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.  Combining the Readings: Similarities, Contradictions and Cross-Over. “It’s as if the film were pinpointing the very essence of the unfilmable: the entwined couple, monstrous, the two-backed beast of the primal scene, the impossible couple of body and voice.” – Michel Chion (1999, p.149). While Murphy and Fenimore examine and address different points and issues, their resulting essays not only … Continue reading Analysis of Sound and Music in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) – Part 4 (Conclusions)

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