film
The Sound of Music
27/05/08 09:53 Filed in: Musings
Watching the Sound of Music on a bank holiday Monday
- well listening to it really, as I was ostensibly at
work on assignment 5. But in light of the conscious
film watching that I have been doing over the past
few months I found myself looking at the film in a
new way. It is showing signs of age in this age of
CGI - the jump from set to backdrop shows in places,
but as it is a film of stage show I liked this - and
thus watched much of the film as if it was on stage
rather than film - watching for the set changes,
costume changes, lighting effects. But mostly I was
struck by the eroticism of the film - not explicit,
but implicit in the naive young beauty and sexuality
of Julie Andrews - throwing herself about in gay
abandon - breasts very prominent beneath the
(attractive to me) 'demob' costume at the start of
the film, as she first meets the captain, the eldest
of the girl von traps soaking as she climbs through
the window, Maria again as she confronts the captain,
having fallen into the lake from a boat. The contrast
between the un made up nun and the sophisticated
belipsticked heiress from Salzburg. And the bump in
the tight jodhpurs of Christopher Plummer, as he
sings Edelweiss in the finally. I have not seen the
film in this way before. Or is it just me?
EMDWT 29/4/08 3
30/04/08 05:56 Filed in: Projects
EMDWT294083
and I am thinking about the Pes animation particularly the hot dog one how that is a little story with a point to it very quick very very short sharp shock combination of collage and Ken Burns zooming in and live action a shot to set the scene you begin to think one thing but it builds the story up then at the end you get the crisis point where the whole film changes absolutely perfect and it is a bit like telling a joke so if you think about this in terms of narrative think of it as telling stories where you set the scene give a bit of information so that you viewer gradually begins to get story then it tells you something at the end that makes sense of the rest of it almost the more you can build it up the more that moment of catharsis happens but then it does not have to be like that it could be just like abstract art I could be pure pattern you could be working with daisies making patterns in the garden it could be painterly it could be pure abstract or it could have some sort of function like a tour through the school where you are trying to tell something specific to someone or it could be collections like looking for all the signposts in school or all the doorways you could do a collection of images like that and put then together so it doesn't have to be a story or a narrative it could be to do with pattern or it could be sort of arty or abstract like the famous Warhol where he just had a fixed camera on the empire state building for 24 hours and people actually sat and watched this as art only heaven knows why. Now there's some ideas
and I am thinking about the Pes animation particularly the hot dog one how that is a little story with a point to it very quick very very short sharp shock combination of collage and Ken Burns zooming in and live action a shot to set the scene you begin to think one thing but it builds the story up then at the end you get the crisis point where the whole film changes absolutely perfect and it is a bit like telling a joke so if you think about this in terms of narrative think of it as telling stories where you set the scene give a bit of information so that you viewer gradually begins to get story then it tells you something at the end that makes sense of the rest of it almost the more you can build it up the more that moment of catharsis happens but then it does not have to be like that it could be just like abstract art I could be pure pattern you could be working with daisies making patterns in the garden it could be painterly it could be pure abstract or it could have some sort of function like a tour through the school where you are trying to tell something specific to someone or it could be collections like looking for all the signposts in school or all the doorways you could do a collection of images like that and put then together so it doesn't have to be a story or a narrative it could be to do with pattern or it could be sort of arty or abstract like the famous Warhol where he just had a fixed camera on the empire state building for 24 hours and people actually sat and watched this as art only heaven knows why. Now there's some ideas
Early Morning Dog Walk 9th April 2008
10/04/08 12:56 Filed in: Assignment 2
recording9408
Transcription:
9th April just past the gate thinking about the criteria watched a film last night called Fur which was a fictional portrayal of the life of Diane Arbus and thinking that maybe I should add her to my list of people partly because of the photography that I do and my attempts to capture the moment with photography where people are a bit off the wall a little bit wacky which sort of does fit in with the humour bit but also leaning lots towards eroticism as a criteria, the male in art in particular the male artist I should say and the male artist in relation to the female artist the female model I suppose not the female artist and Diane Arbus very definitely in the film as portrayed by Nicole Kidman had that eroticism that also according to readings about Diane Arbus she was highly erotically charged anyway the way she was with her green eyes and that reminds me of some of the little drawings that I was doing 20 years ago the anima and the animus and the green eyes and how that relates to legends so heading back to thinking about legends, myths and legends I guess and archetypal stories.
Early Morning Dog Walk 9th April 2008
09/04/08 12:54 Filed in: diary
recording10408
Transcription:
10th April walking the dog.
Thinking - in the journal website thing - that I need to be getting some more stuff about actual research methods. And that could be part of the main website as apposed to the blog, which would be very much this. I could put the reviews somewhere else as well and not have them as part of the blog. It would be just the thoughts, the day to day stuff. I have been looking at animation, pixilation in particular, Angry Kid and the Naked Aussie, and more or less finished the Aardman animation book. Run out of time for one or two of the other books that I got out as they have to go back to the library today, and the Basquat movie which I could watch this morning or take out for another week. Not really got much thinking going on this morning so I won't carry on.... that will be it for today.
Review - some films that I have watched
01/04/08 10:53 Filed in: Reviews
I spent a day looking at some classic films, inspired
partly by reading Brenda Laurel's 'Computers as
Theatre' and partly thinking about animation with
students, going back to the classic look and feel of
film. Inspired also about reading a book by Aardman,
with their classic Chicken Run, based on classic POW
movies.
The films that I chose - Tiger Bay, Brief Encounter, Goodbye Mr Tom,
With the former two I was really struck by the quality of the cinematography, shot in black and white, with Brief Encounter in particular, shots of the stations, steam from the engines, railings and passages. A particular shot at the end when the woman contemplates suicide, sitting in the cafe not listening to an inane drone of a crone, the camera sit rotated. When she stops herself from leaping in front of the engine the camera rotates back to level.
A beautiful film because it is beautifully simple, and beautifully shot.
The bit from Goodbye Mr Tom that stuck me was the long bicycle ride down the hill. I was only watching this because it was on!
Other films that I could look at perhaps -
A NIght To Remember, The 39 Steps, The Third Man,
The films that I chose - Tiger Bay, Brief Encounter, Goodbye Mr Tom,
With the former two I was really struck by the quality of the cinematography, shot in black and white, with Brief Encounter in particular, shots of the stations, steam from the engines, railings and passages. A particular shot at the end when the woman contemplates suicide, sitting in the cafe not listening to an inane drone of a crone, the camera sit rotated. When she stops herself from leaping in front of the engine the camera rotates back to level.
A beautiful film because it is beautifully simple, and beautifully shot.
The bit from Goodbye Mr Tom that stuck me was the long bicycle ride down the hill. I was only watching this because it was on!
Other films that I could look at perhaps -
A NIght To Remember, The 39 Steps, The Third Man,