quote

"I wouldn't talk to my friends about the art of the cinema -- I'd rather be caught without my pants in the middle of Times Square."

- Orson Welles, 1967 Playboy interview

more breaking music news

I also just found out that She & Him's Volume Two is coming out on March 23rd! This is the best week for music news ever. March is going to be full of good music.

The first single, "In The Sun" can be listened to HERE. It features back-up vocals by Tilly & the Wall and some great M. Ward guitar. Plus a great photo:


I wish they were a couple.

music news

I have lately been listening a lot more to podcasts than to new music. I downloaded a couple of new releases -- Shakira's new album and Norah Jones' new album, for instance -- but they were just plain bad or didn't hold my interest very long, respectively. But here is a new album I found that I can't stop listening to.

"Bible Belt" by Diane Birch


The music is keyboard and piano-driven soul, with a little bit of blues and pop and country and folk and R&B and everything, and even some greats horns and string sections. At first listen the album is very retro and reminds me a lot of Carole King's album "Tapestry". However there is, in listening to it more, a lot of Cat Power. But it is all the good parts of Cat Power (the great rhythm section, the brass, alternating piano and Wurlitzer keyboard, and the soulful singing) without any of the bad (the meandering and repetitive solo guitar parts and the alcoholic angst). The cheerful songs are super cheerful, and the sad and lonely songs even end up sounding hopeful.

Here is the great music video for the album's single: "Nothing But a Miracle"

And here is a behind-the-scenes, "get to know this up and coming artist" type of
promo video.

Three more pieces of exciting music news (for me, at least):

1) Gorillaz finally have a new full-length album coming out! I hadn't heard about it today but it is coming out on March 9th and has an even larger all-star cast of special guests. There is plenty of hype elsewhere on the internet if you need more information, but the album has a great cover, and here is the great first single: "Stylo"

2) Christina Aguilera finally has a new album coming out, which the good news. The bad news is that the only information we have about it is its title, which is "Bionic". In a post-Kanye West, "808s & Heartbreaks" pop music landscape, it terrifies me that the most naturally talented singer of the last decade is naming her album after a word that means "half-human, half-machine". Is there anyone who needs AutoTune less than Christina? Hopefully it is a false alarm and it is some stupid concept for the lead single and video rather than a new, electronic aesthetic...

3) Joanna Newsom's LONG-awaited new album ("Ys", which I have listened to 4,500 times, came out in fall of 2006) is going to be released on February 23rd. It is called "Have One On Me" and the news just came out that it is going to be a TRIPLE ALBUM. THREE DISCS. That is more Joanna than I have ever had at one time and could double her career's entire musical output so far. I can't WAIT. In annoying news, however, Joanna is still going out with Andy Samberg. Has there ever been a more unbalanced couple, creatively and artistically? Joanna creates 16-minute epic poem-songs with a harp and a full orchestra; Andy's greatest achievement so far is "Dick in a Box". How long must this go on??

excerpt from Greg Mank

Greg Mank was kind enough to email me back. Here is an excerpt of what he wrote to me:

"It's very good to learn you are a Cinema Studies major and I wish you all success with your pursuits. It's obvious in your email that you have eloquence and the passion for your area of expertise. Go for it and enjoy it. There are always new discoveries to be made.

Please stay in touch and keep me informed re: your graduate school application and projects. Meanwhile, many thanks again for your email and all very best wishes,

Sincerely,
Greg"

I am glad that so many cinema studies authors are so kind, friendly, and easy to get in touch with. I have also gotten responses from Robert Spadoni and David J. Skal after writing to them with praise and/or questions. It makes me feel gopd that these scholars are so willing to respond to and engage with some lowly undergrads that are into monster movies.

An Open Letter to Gregory Mank

Dear Mr. Mank,

I am a senior majoring in Cinema Studies at New York University. My favorite films and my area of (certainly not expertise, but of) interest is Hollywood horror films of the 1930s and 1940s. I seem to write about classic horror for the final paper of at least one class every semester, and so I have run across your work before. I referred to "Hollywood Cauldron" when writing a paper on Val Lewton and the philosophical cross-over between horror and film noir last spring. I realized I have seen your name on more than one of my beloved classic horror DVDs, and last time I put in my "Cat People" disc two weeks ago I realized it was you that had done the commentary for that as well.
Anyway, this semester I took a class on Celebrity Culture and wanted to write a fairly short paper on the process of star-making for Lugosi and Karloff. My research turned up your new book pretty quickly, and I was preparing for this paper and reading the brand new edition of "A Haunting Collaboration", I realized that all of that work and research had already been done. I wrote the paper anyway, with your book heavily referenced and cited, but in going through this book I felt compelled to get in touch with you.
I was so thoroughly impressed with this book... with the amount of research, with the interviews, the stills, the posters, the presskits, the studio details, etc. How you got such access to the stars, crews, and minor actors on such ancient movies was constantly on my mind. Even the quotes and epigraphs were impressive! The notes, the filmographies, the index... all were utterly exhaustive. Most of all I was pleased and impressed with the personal touch of the book. So many film histories are detached and academic. While this book more than meets academic standards, it was so refreshing and great to read the subjective impressions and interpretations of a true fan. There is only so much that can be gleaned from publicity shots; a snapshot of you with an 80-year-old, beaming Frances Drake is something truly special. The fact that you are truly a fan and a lover of these films and these stars -- something that I completely share with you, and have for as long as I can remember -- makes this book a joy to read. You as the author, interviewer, and researcher are basically taking the hardcore classic horror film fan on the personal journey that I have always wanted to go on... driving past these stars' old houses, finding the infamous lake where Little Maria fails to float, talking to long-retired starlets, and digging through studio archives and production sheets. It was a true joy to share in the process, from one monster movie fan to another.
Anyway, thank you again for this phenomenal book. As soon as I can I am going to start reading through as many of your books as I can. Nearly every title seems to be on a topic that I am highly interested in. It is encouraging that with hard work and talent a niche interest like yours (and mine) can be parlayed into a successful career. I am applying to graduate school in the cinema studies department as well, and I would love to write film history, and it would be a wonderful career if someday one of my books sits near yours on a university library shelf somewhere.

best wishes,

Dain Goding
Dept. of Cinema Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU

Blast of Silence

"Blast of Silence", written and directed by and starring Allen Baron and released in 1961 is a low-budget, independent crime thriller made in New York. The story is about Frankie Bono, a heartless and perfectionist professional killer who begins to develop a conscience and decides that maybe he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life alone after all while trailing his next target.
Allen Baron, who also wrote and directed this debut film, stars as the hit man. The cast is minimal, the only other really significant characters being the sleazy mobster he is supposed to assassinate and Laurie, a girl he grew up with in an orphanage who he runs into by chance and starts to spend time with. Laurie is a mousy, apologetic woman who reminds me of Talia Shire's character in "Rocky". She is the only glimmer of hope for Frankie, whose existence and continued success in his chosen profession depends on his secrecy and willingness to be alone.
The film is very independent, and its tiny budget is evident without being distracting. The entire film is shot on location in New York, which is one of the main attractions of the film. The cinematography is beautiful and striking, reminiscent of Raoul Coutard's photography of Paris in the early, black-and-white Godard features but with a more restrained and deliberate sense of composition. (Baron was a visual artist and illustrator before becoming interested in film-making, and it is evident in many of the shots, especially in a quiet sequence in which Frankie reverently cleans and loads his pistol.) Some of the locations look very different -- like 125th street -- and some are virtually unchanged, like the small alley called Commerce Street in the West Village. Some of the other striking locations are Rockefeller Center, where Frankie walks without interest past the giant Christmas tree, and the swamps and marshes of Jamaica Bay, where the film's climax takes place. The film also boasts a dynamic and exciting original jazz score that goes back and forth between suspenseful brassy big band music and sexy small-group jazz with a great vibraphone part.
The most memorable aspect of the film is the narration, read by the unmistakable voice of character actor Lionel Stander. The voice appears to be an omniscient third person, but he frequently refers to the main character as "you" and addresses him specifically, adding subjective interpretations (like "You begin to hate him. You could kill him right now with pleasure."). It becomes evident through the narrator's stream-of-consciousness nature that the voice functions as more of an inner dialogue for Frankie, who would never discuss any of these feelings with anyone else for fear of coming across as weak. The nearly constant inner dialogue with the narrator adds a great deal to the somewhat traditional noir plot and is unlike any other voice-over narration I have ever heard. The film, with the aid of the narration, becomes very philosophical, especially in its final lines, which are textbook existentialism.
Overall, the film reminds me of a more polished and well-written version of Stanley Kubrick's early film "Killer's Kiss". The opening is exactly the same, and both films share a similar look (the secret, candid street photography and raw location shooting, also similar to such classic noir films as "The Naked City"). The plot is different but the feeling is the same; both films are about isolated male anti-heroes having crises of morality. However, the protagonist in Baron's film is infinitely more complex, and the film commits much more to probing his conscience than it does to creating a suspenseful story the way that Kubrick does. "Blast of Silence" is a very compelling post-noir independent masterpiece.

student conference

I just submitted my first paper/presentation to the Cinema Studies student conference. The theme this year is "Questioning Categories in Cinema Studies". I submitted the final paper I wrote for the Advanced Seminar: Film Noir that I took last spring with Chris Straayer which is in my opinion the best piece of academic research and writing I have done so far and, fortunately, fits in almost perfectly with the theme, as it deals with the complications involved in distinguishing between genres.

Here is the title and abstract that I submitted:

The Elusive Noir-ror Film

"In the 1940s, horror films and films noirs shared many visual conventions. Plots also frequently involved murder and suspense. While the stories and imagery are often something that these two iconic genres of the 1940s have in common, they are rarely confused with each other or categorized together. The thing missing from Forties horror is the distinctive existentialist themes associated with film noir. Several films, however, blur the distinctions between the two genres. While many films noirs have plot devices that are supernatural or borrowed from classic horror plots, a more productive approach is to examine the handful of classic, generic horror films that incorporate elements of the philosophy of film noir. An close look at several of the films by the philosophically-minded B-movie master Val Lewton, as well as noir auteur Robert Siodmak's Son of Dracula, reveals a great deal about the themes that distinguish the often difficult-to-define group of films traditionally known as noir."

The conference is on February 19th and 20th. Come out and listen to me read a paper!