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The Politics of the Soundtrack http://www.metamute.org/en/content/the_politics_of_the_soundtrack "When film soundtracks take the form of an iPod on shuffle or a non-stop brass crescendo, do they make alienating cinema more human or alienated lives more cinematic? This month's Mute Music Columnist Nina Power risks removing her earmuffs." I found it an interesting read...it might annoy many people here. Check it out! Lukas
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Interesting indeed, and worth contemplating for a while.
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Posted: |
Apr 5, 2010 - 3:45 PM
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By: |
Gunnar
(Member)
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It was a somewhat interesting read, but in the end I found it not terribly revelatory. And what's the deal with the title, The Politics of the Soundtrack? Isn't that a bit pretentious? So, first of all, if you want to cast an artistically critical eye on film music, why then make the target of your argument a film like AVATAR, which, by simple economic necessity, is a streamlined product for the masses? Reminds me of a restaurant critic wasting time on bashing McDonald's. To me, that looked a little bit like a straw man that was quite easy to bash. "Adorno once perceptively claimed that most films ‘are advertisements for themselves’. Trailers are thus the truth of the film for which the film is the advert. Length becomes a secondary question. It comes as no surprise then to learn that trailers often use music from previous hit films as their soundtrack to create a pre-existing sense of familiarly." Nice idea from Teddy Adorno. But the argument that the re-use of existing music in trailers is done to "create a pre-existing sense of familiarly [sic]" is perhaps a bit of a bloated conjecture. I'd argue that with teasers and trailers being released sometimes months before the film's completion, a more simple explanation might be that pre-existing music is used because it is available already (whereas the score may not be recorded yet). Also, aren't there composers nowadays who specialise in (more or less generic) trailer music? And where is the sense of familiarity in this case - apart from the general conventions of film music? Then, there's this recurring idea of what film music originally was supposed to do: "In early silent cinema, pianists were hired to drown out the mechanical whirring of the projectors and ramp up emotion." ... "Commercial cinema’s desire to block out the machine, to smother the jolts and gaps between movement means that music is often seen as a kind of empathetic patch, a device to pretend that the frames and hyper-technicality are always put in the service of larger, smoother, humanitarian wholes." No complaints about film music being used to "ramp up emotion". But is this use of music in storytelling not as old as theatre in ancient Greece, and most probably much older? Isn't the use of music to help us imagining the emotional inner worlds of characters or the atmosphere of a situation an ancient tool of storytelling? I don't mean to criticise the great Adorno here, because I haven't read the whole of what he had to say about film music. But this sounds a lot like making up a "fitting" idea about the essentially technical and utilitarian reason for film music's existence (and therefore devaluing it as an art form), while ignoring that before film, there were other performing arts that used music very much in the same way. And finally, what about that insert that Williams composed Air and Simple Gifts? Was there any meaning behind this that eluded me? Thanks for reading (if you made it through all this), I'll get off my soap box now.
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I would think some Golden Age fans (like me) will probably say, 'This is like a chap who turns up at 5 minutes to midnight, and laments the decay since 11.30pm, when the thing has been in decline since about midday!' His own 'Golden' era obviously relates to his age. At a certain age people go to cinema and CARE about it. That's when the adrenalin and hormones kick in. That's another chain on the ankle of film-music. It's not just that the scores sink or swim with the films, but they sink or swim with the listener's hormonal development and time-clock as a general rule. So people feel related to an era in particular. I do think it odd though that he has omitted the earlier decades after the silent era to a large extent. But his thesis is really that the visual is eclipsing the aural as a result of technology etc,. That's what many here would agree with. He sees doldrums. Fair enough. I'm not sure his concern for the artform itself is well expressed in the article. He seems more obsessed with the academic pigeonholing of where music is going, a crisis of how to define its position now, etc.. There's a diagnosis, but no particular desire to phone an ambulance. Thor will have comments on this one.
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While there are some interesting points in there, they're presented in a way that unrestrictedly obfuscates those points, where the author had his thesaurus handy and every time he had a two-syllable word in his treatise, he looked up a synonym that had at least four syllables. This proclivity to try to make even the most facile thoughts seem more complex by making people stumble on every other word militates against the very purpose of writing, which is to elucidate specific points rather than to call attention to the author's vocabulary. It's the same reason I put down my copy of Royal S. Brown's "Overtones and Undertones" after the third page. Or should I say the "tertiary" page? Very true. I often start reading journalistic articles in newspapers and magazines, and after three paragraphs haven't got the foggiest notion of what the writer is trying to get across or is aiming towards. By that time, I don't care either. The teaser headline ("When film soundtracks take the form of an iPod on shuffle or a non-stop brass crescendo, do they make alienating cinema more human or alienated lives more cinematic?") was interesting, and probably said it all. A similar statement could probably be said about the state of journalism today.
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His own 'Golden' era...But his thesis...He sees doldrums....his concern...He seems more obsessed I don't think "Nina" is a dude.
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"When film soundtracks take the form of an iPod on shuffle or a non-stop brass crescendo, do they make alienating cinema more human or alienated lives more cinematic?" You are obviously a more brilliant man than I, because I read that sentence ten times and I still don't understand what it means! My reading of this is that modern film soundtracks (music and sound effects) are completely interchangeable from one movie to another, and even from one part of a movie to another. They are meant to overwhelm us rather than to give insight into the psychology of the actors or to enlighten ours. That could because their characters are so in another world from ours that we need the numbing soundtrack to neutralize them and bring them into ours, or our media-saturated world is so numbing that we need to escape into their surreal theater.
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My reading of this is that she should get out more. I have not the faintest idea what this woman is blithering on about.
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Posted: |
Apr 7, 2010 - 1:08 AM
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By: |
MMM
(Member)
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Here are her credentials. She is obviously far more brilliant than I. I don't even understand half of the names of the projects she's been involved in. In fact, I think the only thing we have in common is that she's written "The Terror of Collectivity: Sartre's Theory of Political Groups," while I am writing the liner notes for "It! The Terror From Beyond Space." But I'm not going into the politics of the film, and the only word close to "Sartre" I've used is "stardust." I noted that one of her "other projects" is providing "Text for "Rembrandt's Jan Six", video-art project with Chris Evans, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, June-July 2006." One of my "other projects" is trying to remove the burrs that our Scottie picked up while running through the foothills today. Oh, yeah, and I also promised my wife I'd clean the walk-in closet, but as I promised her that back in mid-2006, I'm hoping she's forgotten all about that proposed project... HER BOOKS: - Alain Badiou, Political Writings, ed. and trans. Nina Power and Alberto Toscano (New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming). - Shelia Rowbotham presents Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Revolutions Series (London: Verso, forthcoming March 2010) (chronology, references, further reading). - One-Dimensional Woman, (Zero Books, 2009). - Editor (with Alberto Toscano), Alain Badiou, On Beckett (Manchester: Clinamen Press, 2003). Academic Articles, Chapters & Translations - "Documenting the Real: Rancière, Godard, Marker", Jacques Rancière: Film, Philosophy and Politics (London: Continuum, forthcoming, 2010). - "Europe's Death Drive", Countering Europe: Europeanizing Queer (forthcoming, 2010). - "On Feuerbach, Speculation and Atheism", After the Postsecular and the Postmodern: New Essays in Continental Philosophy of Religion, Cambridge Scholars Press (forthcoming, 2010). - "Ludwig Feuerbach: Atheism as Historical Destiny", Journal of Religious History (forthcoming, 2010). - "Towards a Cybernetic Communism: The Technology of the Anti-Family", Collection on the work of Shulamith Firestone (forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). - "Potentiality or Capacity? Agamben’s Missing Subjects", Theory and Event, (13.1, Spring 2010) (available on MediaFire). A version of this essay was published in Slovenian in Filozofski vestnik, Vol. XXX, No. 1, Ljubljana, 2009. - "Non-Reproductive Futurism: Rancière's Rational Equality against Edelman's Body Apolitic", Borderlands, vol. 8, no. 2, 2009. - "Which Anarchism? On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Infinity for (Political) Life: A Response to Simon Critchley’s Infinitely Demanding", Critical Horizons, Vol. 10 (2009), Issue 2 (available on MediaFire). - "Which Equality? Badiou and Rancière in Light of Ludwig Feuerbach", Parallax (Volume 15, Issue 3 August 2009) (available on MediaFire). - "The Philosophy of Restoration: Alain Badiou and the Enemies of May" (with Alberto Toscano), (abstract), boundary 2, 2009 36(1) (available on scribd). - "The Collective Political Subject in Sartre and Badiou", Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, vol. 9, 2009. - "Axiomatic Equality: Jacques Rancière and the Politics of Contemporary Education", Polygraph, 21 (2009). - "Philosophy's Subjects", Parrhesia, Issue 3, 2007. - "The Terror of Collectivity: Sartre's Theory of Political Groups", Prelom 8 (Belgrade), Fall 2006. - "Towards an Anthropology of Infinitude: Badiou and the Political Subject", Cosmos and History, 'The Praxis of Alain Badiou', Issue 2, 2006. - "Bachelard contra Bergson and Ancient Atomism", Angelaki, Volume 11, Issue 3 2006. - "Badiou and Feuerbach: What is Generic Humanity?", Subject Matters: A Journal of Communication and the Self, Vol. 2, no. 1, 2005. - Translation (with Alberto Toscano) of Alain Badiou's "Existence and Death", Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, 24.1 (2002). - "On the Nature of Things: Nietzsche and Democritus", Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 12 (2001). HER ACADEMIC REVIEWS: - Review of Christopher Norris's Badiou's Being and Event, Philosophy In Review (forthcoming). - Review of Ernst Bloch's Atheism in Christianity, Radical Philosophy, Issue 158, Nov/Dec 2009. - Review of Alain Badiou's Conditions, Notre Dame Philosophical Review, July 2009. - Review of Axel Honneth's Reification and Disrespect, Radical Philosophy, 154, March/April 2009. - "He's Not Beyond Good and Evil", review of Paolo Virno's Multitude: Between Innovation and Negation, Mute Magazine (9 October, 2008). - Review of Autonomia: Post-Political Politics, Radical Philosophy, 151, Sept/Oct 2008. - Review of Alain Badiou's Being and Event, Philosophy in Review, Volume XXVII, No. 4, August 2007. - "Persian Empire", conference report on Antonio Negri's visit to Iran, Radical Philosophy, 130, March/April 2005. - "First Base", review of Judith Butler's Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, Radical Philosophy, 128, November/December 2004. - "Human", review of Louis Althusser's The Humanist Controversy and Other Writings and Martin Halliwell and Andy Mousley's Critical Humanisms: Humanist/Anti-Humanist Dialogues, Radical Philosophy, 124, March/April 2004. - "Error Against Obstacles", review of Gaston Bachelard's The Formation of the Scientific Mind, Radical Philosophy, 119, May/June 2003. HER ENCYCLOPAEDIA ENTRIES: - "Cultural Capital" entry, Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming, 2010). - "Humanism" and "Subject" Entries, Encyclopedia of Political Theory (SAGE, forthcoming, 2010). - "Sartre" and "Existentialism" entries, Continuum Companion to Continental Philosophy (London; New York: Continuum, 2009). HER INTERVIEWS: - Interview with Chantal Mouffe, New Statesman, 19 November 2009. - Interview with Sylvère Lotringer, frieze, Issue 125, Sept 2009. - Interview with Judith Butler, New Statesman, 27 August 2009 (uncut version here). - Interview with Alain Badiou, The Philosophers' Magazine, 46, May/June 2009 (uncut version here). - Interview with Charlotte Roche, Salon, 4 April 2009. Reprinted in the US paperback edition of Roche's Wetlands (HarperCollins). - Interview with Jacques Rancière, ephemera (forthcoming). HER MAGAZINE ARTICLES & BOOK CHAPTERS (including online publications): - "The Politics of the Soundtrack", Mute, 31 March 2010. - "Strategising the Free University", Indieoma, 19 March 2010. - "Blood and Sugar: The Films of Dusan Makavejev", Film Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 3, Spring 2010. - "Recommit to Women's Liberation" (with Lindsey German), Guardian Comment is Free, 8 March 2010. - "Capitalism, Consumerism and Feminism", New Left Project, March 2010. - "Waiting for the Future", on The Otolith Group, frieze, 129, March/April 2010. - "Why Do Some Images Begin To Tremble? Cinema Revisits Militant Politics", Review of Chris Marker's Grin Without a Cat, The Baader-Menhof Complex and Terror's Advocate, Film Quarterly, Winter 2009-10, Vol. 63, No. 2. - "Woman Machines: The Future of Female Noise", Noise & Capitalism, Kritika, 2009. - (with Rob White, Editor of Film Quarterly), "Antichrist: A Discussion", Film Quarterly, October 2009. - (with Michael Sayeau) "Show Me the Money: How do we Visualize the Economic Crisis?", frieze, Issue 126, October 2009. - "Bamboozle, baffle and blindside", on Newspeak for the 60th anniversary of George Orwell's 1984, New Statesman, 28 May 2009. - "Sarah Palin: Castration as Plenitude", Sarah Palin and the Media, FlowTV, 15 October 2008. - "The Artworld is not the World", Chapter in Gest/ Laboratory of Synthesis, (Bookworks, 2008) (available here). - "Mannequins, Manners, and Mutilation", Cabinet, 30, 2008. - "Malls and Mausoleum", New Humanist, Volume 123, Issue 2 (March/April 2008). - "Thinker: Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach", New Humanist, Vol.122, Issue 5 (September/October 2007). - "Naughty but Nice", New Humanist, Volume 122, Issue 2 (March/April 2007). Reprinted in Australian Rationalist, 78, Jan 2008. - "Mountain and Fog, Kant and the Nazi sublime", Cabinet, 27, 2007. - "Fail Better", article on the centenary of Samuel Beckett, New Humanist, Vol. 121, No 2, March/April 2006. HER OTHER REVIEWS: - Review of Tzvetan Todorov's Defence of the Enlightenment, The Philosophers' Magazine, Issue 49, 2nd Quarter 2010. - Review of Leif Elggren's Death Travels Backwards, Wire 313, March 2010. - Review of Martin Creed's Ballet (Work No. 1020), Wire 310, December 2009. - "Worlds Collide in Venice", Review of the 53rd Venice Biennale, Dossier, 1st October, 2009. - Review of Stephen Bayley's Woman as Design, Icon 078, December 2009. - "The Lives of Others", Review of Judith Butler's Frames of War and Jeff McMahan's Killing in War, The Philosophers' Magazine, Issue 47, 4th Quarter 2009. - "Think Again", Review of Verso's 'Radical Thinkers' Series 4 (Mouffe, Rose, Jameson, Baudrillard), New Humanist, Vol. 124, No. 5, Sept/Oct 2009. Reprinted in Eurozine, 22nd Sept 2009. - Review of The Invisible Committee's The Coming Insurrection, frieze, Issue 125, Sept 2009. - Review of James Hannam's God's Philosophers, New Humanist, Vol. 124, No 4, July/Aug 2009. - Review of Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank's The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?, New Humanist, Vol. 124, Issue 3, May/June 2009. - Review of Wendell Steavenson's The Weight of a Mustard Seed, New Humanist, Vol. 124, Issue 1, (Jan/Feb 2009). - Review of Mark Rowlands' The Philosopher and the Wolf, New Humanist, Vol. 123, Issue 6 (Nov/Dec 2008). - Review of Detlev Claussen's Theodor W. Adorno: The Last Genius, The Philosophers' Magazine, Issue 43, 4th Quarter, 2008. - "Property Values", review of Clive Aslet's The English House, New Statesman, 15th September 2008. - Review of Alain Badiou's Number and Numbers, The Philosophers' Magazine, Issue 42, 3rd Quarter, 2008. - Review of Oliver James's Selfish Capitalist, Socialist Worker, 19 Feb 2008. - Review of 'The Blacks' and article on Jean Genet, Socialist Worker, 23 October 2007. - Review of John Marks' Fangland, New Humanist, Volume 122, Issue 3 (May/June 2007). - Review of Paul Auster's Travels in the Scriptorium, New Humanist, Volume 121, Issue 5 (September/October 2006). - "Hare Brained", review of Nicholas Fearn's Zeno and the Tortoise, New Humanist, Vol. 121, No. 1, January/February 2006. - Review of Badiou's Metapolitics for The Philosophers' Magazine, Issue 33, 1st Quarter, 2006. - "No Doubt", review of Timothy Chappell's The Inescapable Self: An Introduction to Western Philosophy, New Humanist, Vol. 120, No 6, November/December 2005. - Review of Michael Ignatieff's Isaiah Berlin: A Life and The Future Now: Predicting the 21st Century, The Guardian, 18 December 1999. HER OTHER PROJECTS: - "What Should Everyone Know?", video project, RSA, March 2010. - Text for "Rembrandt's Jan Six", video-art project with Chris Evans, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, June-July 2006. Papers Given - "One-Dimensional Woman", day workshop on women and literature, University of Chichester, 1 April 2010. - Discussion of Jackie Raynal's Deux Fois, Raven Row Gallery, 17 March 2010. - "The Free University", Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, 13 March 2010. - "One-Dimensional Woman", Oxford Radical Forum, 7 March 2010. - "Feminism Today", Housmans Bookshop, 6 March 2010. - "One-Dimensional Woman", Cardiff University, 25 Feb 2010. - "Badiou and the Concept of Power", day workshop, Nottingham Trent University, 18 Feb 2010. - Roundtable at "Love On Trial", Mutiny Event, Bethnal Green, 10 Feb 2010. - "One-Dimensional Woman: Women, Work and the Illusion of Emancipation", "Capital Culture" Series, Department of Art, Goldsmiths, 8 Feb 2010. - "One-Dimensional Woman: Women, Work and the Illusion of Emancipation", Social and Political Thought Seminar, University of Sussex, 3 Feb 2010. - "One-Dimensional Woman", Wimbledon College of Art, 20 Jan 2010. - "Feuerbach for the 21st Century" and "One-Dimensional Woman", Historical Materialism, New York, Jan 15 2010. - "One-Dimensional Woman: A Critique of Contemporary Consumer Feminism", Marxism In Culture Lecture, Institute for Historical Research, London, 18 December 2009. - "Stony Ground but not entirely: Beckett and the Humanities", The Humanities and Arts Research Centre at Royal Holloway University of London, 2 December 2009 (mp3). - "Badiou and the Political Subject", roundtable at 'Subject and Appearance: On Alain Badiou's Theory of the Subject & Logics of Worlds, Bolivar Hall, Venezuelan Embassy, 20th Nov 2009. - "Theory Now", roundtable at London Theatre Seminar, Senate House, 19th Nov 2009. - "One-Dimensional Woman" at Rethinking Marxism, UMass Amherst, 7th Nov 2009. - Response to Dominic Fox at the launch of his Cold World, Goldsmiths, 1st October 2009. - Workshop on Alain Badiou and contingency, Goldsmiths College, July 2009. - "Rancière meets the Real World", Philosophy Faculty (occupied), Zagreb, May 2009. - Presentation on Badiou's Being and Event, Photographers' Gallery, London, 9 April 2009. - Presentation on Humanism and Cognitive Capitalism, Mute launch, London, 25 March 2009. - Response to J. Allan Hobson, the William James Lectures on "Dream Consciousness", Roehampton University, 20 March 2009. - "The Artworld is not the World", Existential Territories panel discussion organised by Bookworks, 10th December 2008. - "One-Dimensional Woman: A Critique of Contemporary Consumer Feminism", Historical Materialism Annual Conference, 9th November 2008. - "Sartre in '68: on the Critique of Dialectical Reason as a precursor of '68 themes, and on Sartre's place in the '68 movement", May 68: Toward the Naming of the Event, One-Day Conference at University of Salford, 31st October 2008. - "Who (or What) is the Political Subject?", Politics & Thought Conference (mp3), Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (September, 2008) - "The Subterranean Current of Contemporary Feuerbachianism", The Substance of Thought: Critical and Pre-Critical, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (April 2008). - "The Philosophy of the Restoration: Badiou on Revisionists, Reactionaries and Renegades", University of California, Santa Cruz (April 2008). - "The Confidence to be No One: Class, Culture and Education (with some help from Rancière and Badiou)", Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, USA (March 2008). - "Nu-Language: Language as Ideology without Opposition", Workers and Punks University, Slovenia (January 2008). - "Polymorphous Perversity: The Origins of Cinematic Pornography and the Absence of Contemporary Pleasure", King's College, London (November 2007). - "Feuerbach and Political Subjectivity", 4th Annual Historical Materialism Conference (November 2007). - "A Dead God and an Unfinished Atheism: A comparison of 'generic atheism' with 'elitist atheism'", 'Imagining Europe – cultural, political and social' event at University of Salford (October 2007). - "'The Confidence to be No One: Class, Culture and Education", London Metropolitan University (October 2007). - "French Marxism and the Problem of Agency", Radical Philosophy Annual Conference, Clore Centre, Birkbeck College, London (May 2007). - "Marx, Feuerbach & Non-Philosophy", Marx and Philosophy Society, Royal Holloway, London (February 2007). - "Rethinking Philosophical Anthropology: Some Kantian Themes", Manchester Metropolitan University Human Sciences Seminar Series (October, 2006). - "Science Fiction and Philosophy in Kant, Sartre and Philip K. Dick: What Does the Extra-terrestrial Think We Are?", Cultural Fictions II, Goldsmiths College (June 2006). - Official respondent to John Mullarkey at workshop on Badiou’s Being and Event, Middlesex University (June 2006). - Panel Discussion for "Beckett Post War", Beckett Centenary Festival, Barbican, London (March 2006). - Seminar on Badiou's Le siècle, Etablissement d'en Face projects, Brussels, Belgium (June 2005). - "Kicking Against the Pricks: Badiou and Beckett", Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (March 2005). - "The Terror of Collectivity: Sartre's Theory of Political Groups", Centre for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade, Serbia (December 2004). - "Kant and Political Philosophy", Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture Series, Roehampton University (October 2004). - "Why everyone should read Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason", Research Seminar, Middlesex University (May 2004). - Response to Professor Alex Düttman’s "A New Way of Living, not a New Belief" at Ending up with Religion Again? Christianity in Contemporary Political and Psychoanalytical Theory, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (May 2004). - "Badiou and Feuerbach: What is Generic Humanity?", Badiou’s Ethics and Subjectivity conference, London Metropolitan University (December 2003). - "The Concept of Reading in Sartre and Althusser", SEP conference, University of Essex (September 2003). - "Bachelard contra Bergson and Ancient Atomism", Ancient & Continental One-day Workshop, University of Warwick (February 2003). - "Methodical Ascesis and Larval Humanity: Badiou and Beckett", SEP conference, University of Cork (September 2002). - "On the Nature of Things: Nietzsche and the Atomists", Annual Conference of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society: Nietzsche and Science, Emmanuel College, Cambridge University (September 2001). - "Nietzsche, Marx, Bergson and the Atomists", Nietzsche para o Século XXI, University of Lisbon (May 2001). HER RADIO APPEARANCES: - Discussion with Susan Finlay on the topic: "As Long as Women will Exist", Resonance FM, 3 March 2010. - Interview about "One-Dimensional Woman" with Elanor McInerney for Women On the Line (Australia), 5 Feb 2010. - Panel discussion on George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language", Word of Mouth, BBC Radio 4, 15th December 2009. - Interview on BBC Ulster's Sunday Sequence on Lars von Trier's Antichrist, 9th August 2009. - Interview on BBC World Service to mark the 60th anniversary of the publication of Orwell's 1984, 8th June 2009.
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Not especially in reference to the article but to my own thoughts ... There is a difference between spreading music on film like spreading butter on toast ... (which I think is a lot of what goes on these days. And maybe even in old days, sometimes) ... and doing specific narrative things that music can do, like: Building, maintaining and releasing emotional states. (The most obvious use of film music.) Setting up a musical 'symbol system' with the audience, to connect states with phrases, motifs or even just chimes, and use those 'symbols' to re-invoke what's been set up. (In NLP, you would call this 'setting up and firing off anchors'.) (Think 'Oddjob' and 'finger cymbals' in Goldfinger.) Using themes to open and close narrative strands. Introduce an unresolved theme, keep bringing it back and then only resolving the theme with some climax. (Think Midnight Cowboy.) Using clever devices like beating out time. One great way to build tension is to insistently just tick-tock like a clock. Think Bond and the Atom Bomb in Goldfinger. Morricone, of course, even uses ticking clocks and watch chimes to tick-tock time for building tension. In Hanover Street, in the unused cue where Ford and Plummer enter the SS building, Barry beats out time on the snare drum and then (seemingly) stops time, but suddenly switching to the sustained strings. This is not just composing music. This is composing music purposefully for film. This is much more clever than just putting music 'on' film. See, whether or not someone like John Barry is your favourite composer, or whether or not you find what he writes exciting as music, he is one of the upper classmen in doing these kinds of things. That's why I personally find him more interesting as a film composer than most. As I say, the alternative is to just use music on film like butter on toast. Cheers
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A very interesting list of publications by this author. One of our favorite labels should sign her up to write the liner notes for their next soundtrack release.
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Nina, I hope that you always remember that while a man may be physically moral, he cannot be morally physical. In otherwords, 9-out-of-10 Doctors recommend aspirin...... Get a life. James
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