Month: October 2008

The world of Potter’s Singing Detective may not be three dimensional visually speaking, but in terms of storylines, the world opens out in three distinct directions – often using the same actor to represent multiple characters in various settings of time and place. The three worlds that are woven together are the present hospital world, Marlowe’s…Continue Reading When (story) worlds collide – The Singing Detective’s grand finale…

In my endless pursuit for productive procrastinatory activities, tonight was a good night all in all. I finally watched a documentary I’ve been wanting to see for a long time, called The Devil and Daniel Johnston.videosearch?client=safari&rls=en&q=the+devil+and+daniel+johnston&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title# For those of you who don’t know, Daniel Johnston is a mentally challenged Jesus enthusiast, musician and cartoonist. He’s more or…Continue Reading Narration across Daniel Johnston

Leslie’s post about echoes of Weimar cinema in Barton Fink got me thinking about influences and associations. I found an interview with the Coen brothers which sheds some light on this matter…its sort of long so I’ve included some highlights… “Well, whatever. Let it suffice to say that Barton Fink does a tantalizing job of confounding an…Continue Reading Finkin’ about influences…

Voice over narration is sort of an established “no-no” in screenwriting workshops and dogma. But often, I find myself drawn to it none the less. Director Danny Boyle’s film Trainspotting is an adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel of the same name, which is more or less a collection of loosely related events which only really converge…Continue Reading Voice Over Narration in Trainspotting

In an interview with director Christopher Nolan, Anthony Kaufman dubs Memento a cool “meta-noir”. This  got me thinking about the evolution of terminology, and instead of creating new genres, like I dunno “kaleidescope cinema”, we interpret and re-interpret familiar genres and texts. The film noir aesthetic of low-lights and urban streets is replaced with slick editing…Continue Reading Memento – A meta-noir

In reflecting on my experience of The Sixth Sense, I read Scott’s blog for some coloring, if you will. It got me thinking about the ways in which the subtext of a film in certain formal elements such as sensory motifs (ie the visual repetition of the color red)  are meant to be interpreted and…Continue Reading Narrative Layers: Symbolism and Subtext

My second idea for my final research paper is to study a cross section of cinema that tell a narrative story set in the future. The central argument I am proposing is that the “future” represented in narrative cinema is an emulation of utopian or dystopian ideology contemporaneous with the production of the film. Some formative works…Continue Reading Paper Topic of the Future (idea #2)

Movies are the product of so many hands, so many voices and ideas and lights and chords and mistakes. Filmmaking is a collaborative art-form, requiring logistical feats and a group effort to accomplish and sustain the process and the glorious outcome. The various roles designated in traditional filmmaking procedures are incredibly varied – with infinitesimal skillsets to master in…Continue Reading The Allen and the auteur tradition

Horror movies have always entertained and fascinated me. The fantasy worlds created in each horror movie, weather it be zombie, vampire, serial killer, alien, or what have you, the narrative conventions vary immensely. I would like to focus on one type of horror film, perhaps a series by one director, and explore its partucular influences…Continue Reading Reasearch Paper Idea #1

  After doing some preliminary detective work of my own on The Singing Detective, (thank you Wikipedia) I’ve found that some interesting factoids about the series. According to creator Dennis Potter, the hospital segments were originally designated to be shot on video, whereas the Detective scenes were to be shot on film, and the flashbacks…Continue Reading Episodic narrative