In reading the
interview Bernard Hermann did in the readings, the first thing I found
interesting is that Stanley Kubrick had approached Hermann to do the score for
2001: A Space Odyssey. And that got me thinking what that collaboration could
have been but I can’t imagine Kubrick being totally pleased unless he had
Beethoven or Strauss on the soundtrack (or his daughter who composed some music
for Full Metal Jacket). While Herman believed audiences only listen with half
an ear, Kubrick said I want all ears active and engaged for The Blue Danube
waltz or Also Sprach Zarathustra or whatever he wanted. If it’s not clear, I
have a particular preference for Kubrick, in fact, it’s sort of a family
tradition to watch The Shining every year around Christmas time…
Monday, December 14, 2015
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Gravity
I have to admit that this is about the tenth time
I’ve seen Gravity. In theaters, I saw it four times in two weeks. I thought it
was amazing! I couldn’t believe it when the rest of my family saw it and said
it was boring. Boring? Are you kidding me? My sister in high school said “yeah
it’s just a lady floating around in space and nothing happens”. Well she’s not
the favorite sister…
I’ve always had a liking for space movies that give
at least some effort to being scientifically accurate. One time someone asked
me what my favorite movies were and all I could think of were 2001: A Space
Odyssey, Gravity, and Interstellar (which all won the Oscar for visual effects,
fun fact). Obviously I have more diverse taste but these all came to mind
together for whatever reason.
The sound in any space movie is key because
realistically there is no ambient sound in space. The focus is then placed on
the music and dialogue. I also bought the soundtrack album on iTunes after the
first time I saw the film. I swear, I could just listen to it all the way
through and picture whatever was happening. Doing this really illustrated the
emotional and narrative heartbeat of the film, especially since this film had
almost constant music, either from George Clooney’s honky tonk country music to
Steven Price’s outstanding score. I had always wondered how he produced some of
the sounds.
I wish we had watched 2001 in class instead actually
(which I’ve probably seen more times than Gravity) because I have only watched
2001 on my laptop or TV and I think it would have been a real trip to see it a
theater setting properly. After all, it isn’t a film that can be done justice
on a laptop and Kubrick probably would scold me for even considering watching
on such an inferior setting.
While I know you disliked the big Hollywood musical climax scene it was by far my favorite scene. I agree with Stanley Kubrick when he says “As far as I’m concerned, the most memorable scenes in the best films are those which are built predominantly of images and music” and I found the music to imply that she was like an angel descending from the clouds.
Jacques Tati
Playtime makes me wonder “What if Buster Keaton had
been able to transition into sound?”. Well Tati did make it in the sound era
and excels at using sound effects brilliantly for gags which is basically all
the Playtime is anyway, a long string of gag jokes. In fact, the title gives it
away, this is just a fun film full of fantastic jokes (couldn’t finish the
alliteration).
In this example, Tati shows how he uses sound simply
and effectively for a giggle. His laughs don’t come from dialogue like in most
films and that’s unique in our current landscape. All of Tati’s jokes in
Playtime are nonverbal hence the comparison to Buster Keaton, mainly in the
body language of M. Hulot. Some of his gags like only work through the medium
of cinema like when we don’t see that there is glass separating two characters.
He can draw attention to someone in a shot of 20 people by just letting the
audience hear one set of footsteps and suddenly we focus on that person out of
the whole scene. And who knew just the sound of footsteps could be so funny.
Like the reading says: “Playtime is full of shots that invite us to scan the
frame searching out interesting and significant details-it doesn’t tell us
where to look.” By doing this, Tati keeps the whole modern circus in play while
we can still see M. Hulot slamming a soundproof door or whatever is going on.
Honestly, I started losing interest during the
drunken restaurant scene, either because it went too long or I was getting
hungry. The gags eventually started to go nowhere or became too silly for me. The
restaurant seemed to be too long and by the next morning hangover scene I was
ready to finish. Maybe that was Tati’s intention, because after a raucous,
drunken party everyone is ready for some peace and quiet.
Andy Warhol
I’m not a fan of Warhol’s films. I don’t understand
the point of the Screen Tests or making so many long static films like Empire
which goes for eight hours. Who actually has watched the whole thing? It sounds
like the sort of thing to make just to say you made it for an artistic
statement work or something.
Other than that, I don’t really understand the
point in showing eight hours of a building or eight hours of anything really.
OK maybe I can understand doing it once, making a multiple hour film composed
of a static shot. But when I read that Warhol once made a 25 hour film, I mean
c’mon man. And even the few films of his I’ve seen with sound, like My Hustler
or vinyl, they seem amateurish or maybe they are actually so avant-garde that
they seem amateurish? Did I see the wrong films or do I just miss the point? I
don’t know…
Robert Altman
I’ll be honest, I grew up in Houston, Texas but I
can’t stand country music. And my high school was surrounded by cattle fields
so if there were ever a place to like country music and get away with it it was
where I lived. So watching Nashville was a bit of a challenge in attention
during the songs but I did find the political allegory interesting. I’ve always
been somewhat fascinated by the cultural turbulence of the 60s and 70s from
Kennedy to Watergate. Altman already dealt with the Vietnam War indirectly in
M*A*S*H.
I found the final concert/shooting scene to be very
allegorical to the political turmoil of the time. The assassination of Barbara
Jean symbolizes all the political assassinations of the 1960s (both Kennedys
and Martin Luther King in particular). The one guy even says, amid the
confusion “This isn’t Dallas” where Kennedy was shot. In the aftermath of the
shooting no one knows what’s going on and Chaplin even asks “What’s happened?
Can you please tell me what happened?” which is probably what the whole country
thought in the wake of the assassination. The woman who starts singing
represents the resilience of the American spirit. In a broader sense, this film
and the style of country music can been seen as our nation’s attempt to
reconnect with a simpler time in our history like the stories in country songs.
Apart from all that, I did start to appreciate
Altman’s style of multiple voices at once. It gives the film a kind of
freshness and makes me very interested to see M*A*S*H to see more of his style
in action. And also I’ve heard it’s not too bad of a film.
Orson Welles
My dad has asked me a couple times what’s so great
about Citizen Kane because he had heard so much about it but never actually
seen it. He asked me to describe it to him and all I could say was “it’s about
a guy that owns a newspaper and gets rich and powerful but eventually dies
alone”. Yeah, not very convincing for selling one of the most celebrated films
ever. Obviously I just have to get him to watch it because the work speaks for
itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNaDrnxp3L0
One thing that reading talked about that I noticed
watching the film were the sound transitions as exampled in the clip above. In
films that need to cover a lot of history or narrative information quickly
sound is essential. In the example, sound transitions from Kane clapping to the
small crowd clapping then the characters’ speeches running together are used to
quickly convey Kane’s increasing popularity. Just like the breakfast table
scene where Kane and his first wife get progressively further apart in a scene
that tells the story of their relationship in less than a minute. This
transition technique may be present in other Welles films but it is most useful
in this case since there is only 90 minutes available to tell the story of a
lifetime.
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