Music in the Making: Highlights from the 2008 Melbourne International Film Festival
“The surprise musical number can represent a facile avoidance of complexity, a moment of true strangeness, or a way of harmonizing existing, underlying themes.”
Author: Lesley Chow
Lesley Chow is author of the book You’re History: The 12 Strangest Women in Music, an exploration of the sublime in pop and a Time Magazine book of the year. Music, Morricone, and Jack Nicholson’s Voice: The Soundscape of Wolf
“Suddenly my senses are all incredibly acute … I’m different, more alive, stronger … “
One Culture, Two Systems: The Rules of Spanglish and Twice Upon a Time
“When talking to others, what needs to be articulated?”
The Double Standard: The Twins of Two-Faced Woman and Sylvia Scarlett
“She is both sentimental and shameless.”
How Did History Happen? The 2007 Melbourne International Film Festival
“Each stranger is a figure of seemingly infinite potential, pinned down to a changing series of points.” Given that the new director of the Melbourne International Film Festival, Richard Moore,[…]
The Poisoned Story: The Myth of Magic in Wait ‘Til You’re Older
“Even the least imaginative people are incredulous about aging: surely this isn’t the only story, the only body I get to inhabit.” To start off, Hong Kong films may not[…]
Secret Window: The Erotic Gaze of Tom Lazarus
“Lazarus doesn’t pathologize the locked-in gaze, he lets us feel it.” In a pornographic film, what’s gratuitous is not sex but complexity and involvement. An erotic film can confuse us[…]
Fashion and Dunst: The Substance of Marie Antoinette
“The Coppola ideal is a young girl trapped in fustiness: she can be an object of voyeurism without a trace of lewdness, and remain spiritually intact even when accessorized.” Sofia[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian
Beauties and Furies: Hong Kong’s New Wave of Women Stars
“The women of To’s world are not just endearingly kooky, but often unacceptably bizarre and amoral in their excited reactions to events.” Five years ago, I was starting to think[…]
The Peculiar Kind: The Humor of Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation
“People are constantly falling back on their beds — but always in languor, never in passion . . .” It’s difficult not to be grateful to a film that introduces you to six or[…]
African American · Essays · Genres · Lists · Movies
Routes to the City: The Ways of the New Black Films
“It’s independent thinking without the protection of an ‘indie’ label.” While hosting the Academy Awards in 2005, Chris Rock made the following claim: black films don’t have real names. “Barbershop?[…]
What Time Now? Catching Up Hours in Tsai Ming-liang
What is the best way of placing a body? The opening scenes of The River (1997) are spent trying to make a body move and work in a realistic way. A film[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Mish-Mash Planet: The Cult of Rita Hayworth in You Were Never Lovelier
“Speaking of impurity: what was Rita Hayworth’s image supposed to be in the ’40s?” What did we use to think of other countries? The question occurred to me while watching[…]
Taking a Break in Hollywood: The Dreamers of Holiday and The Razor’s Edge
“In films these days, people are hardly ever ‘taken’ by others — they don’t strike up sudden affinities, or become voluptuously intrigued by enemies.” In the 1940s, it was quite[…]
Mystique Without Camp: The Allure of the Leading Man
Turning “the male gaze” on men It’s true that seeing Rock Hudson surrounded by able-bodied women is fun. In Man’s Favorite Sport? (1964) he’s blocked — trapped in a “stoic”[…]
Game On: The Gold Diggers of Heartbreakers
The screwball comedy’s back, and Weaver’s got it Sex is not a tap, we’re told. Real sensuality is something that flows, right? It’s effortless, and you exude it — you[…]
What the Sound Is Saying: How Music Moves in Bertolucci
“Who doesn’t want to be rescued by their narrator?” Sometimes a film’s camera takes you on one track, while its music sends you on another, wider one: it offers you[…]
Babies Bubbling Up: David O Russell’s Fertile Perversity Filigrees Flirting with Disaster
“There’s always been an acute mystery attached to the body . . .” Since Flirting with Disaster starts with Patricia Arquette lying in bed for two minutes, we think we[…]
Witchcraft Through the Ages: The Best of the New Bewitched
“Where do alchemy and acting meet?” Perhaps the definition of a great screwball comedy is that it is an outstandingly funny film for which no real script is conceivable. For[…]
Pulp with a Soundtrack: Getting Elmore Leonard on Film
“My sound is the absence of me.” – Elmore Leonard The curious thing about Elmore Leonard is that while his books move fast, the films that capture his tone seem[…]
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