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Continue reading →: Interfacing Intuition, or, the GUIness of the Detective’s GazeIan here— What follows is my talk from SCMS 2016 in Atlanta, GA. You can follow along with the visual presentation here. The moving image and the graphical user interface: they are often regarded as two separate forms, with their own unique histories, and with resulting divergent aesthetics. Recent years, however, have seen this division…
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Continue reading →: Lesson Plan: Film Scores and SynesthesiaIan here— Spending one week on sound in an Introduction to Film course can be a daunting task. So much vocabulary, and so many new issues to discuss, with only a class or two to dwell on them. What to do? I like to take this week to introduce the concept of synesthesia—the “bleeding” of one…
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Continue reading →: Lesson Plan: Bruce Conner’s A MovieIan here— Bruce Conner’s A Movie is one of my favorite films to teach. I’ve taught it while covering theories of editing in an Introduction to Film course, I’ve taught it for a course on cinematic rhetoric, and I’ve taught it in courses on the history of American avant-garde cinema. I’ve been lucky enough to teach at…
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Continue reading →: The Binaries in Waltz with Bashirby Heather C University of Chicago CMST 10100: Intro to Film Spring 2015 As the first ever feature-length animated documentary, Waltz with Bashir (2008) recounts director Ari Folman’s quest to uncover his memories of the role he played 20 years prior in the 1982 Lebanon War. Plagued by his inability to recall any of the…
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Continue reading →: Silhouettes, Shadows, & Smoke: Lighting in In the Mood for Loveby Sherlock ZUniversity of Chicago CMST 10100: Intro to FilmSpring 2015 Wong Kar-wei’s In the Mood For Love depicts the story of a man (Chow) and a woman (Su) who, both suspecting that their spouses are involved in extramarital affairs, become close companions to each other in their loneliness. As the story progresses, however, their…
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Continue reading →: Breaking the Glass: Engaging With Space in Playtimeby Julia HUniversity of Chicago CMST 10100: Intro to FilmSpring 2015 Jacques Tati often liked to say that the only real star of his film Playtime (1967) was the set itself. With his brilliant manipulation of its mise en scène, those words hold to be quite true. The minimally dialogued, loosely plot-based film is mainly…
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Continue reading →: Waltz with Bashir and the Sea as Protectorby Domitille CUniversity of Chicago CMST 10100: Intro to FilmSpring 2015 Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir first stands out to us because of its use of animation despite its identification as a documentary film– how can a non-fiction narrative be justly portrayed using highly stylised illustration? Yet it is evident by the end that the…
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Continue reading →: Waltz with Bashir: Soundtracks of Warby Irene ZUniversity of Chicago CMST 10100: Intro to FilmSpring 2015
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Continue reading →: Everything is Aesthetic: Realism and Abstraction in The Lego Movieby Juho LUniversity of Chicago CMST 10100: Intro to FilmSpring 2015 The Lego Movie (2014) is a parody on so many levels. The story follows Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces outline to a tee. Almost every character is unabashedly an archetype or parody of something, be it The Matrix, the Dark Knight trilogy,…
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Continue reading →: Dressing up for Noodles: Costume Design in In the Mood for Loveby Wei Yi OUniversity of Chicago CMST 10100: Intro to FilmSpring 2015 In the Mood for Love (2000) is a beautiful study in restraint. Set in 1960s Hong Kong, the film details the intimate relationship that develops between two lonely neighbours, Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung). Neglected and later betrayed by their…
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Continue reading →: Birds in The Birds: Hitchcock and Soundby Liam LUniversity of Chicago CMST 10100: Intro to FilmSpring 2015 Alfred Hitchcock is often deservedly lauded for his skills as an editor, as well as for the ingenuity of his films’ plots. What often gets lost in the shuffle though is how well Hitchcock uses mise-en-scene and sound. The Birds is an excellent example.…
