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Everyone knows what noise is. Or do they? Can we in fact say that one man's noise is another teenager's music? Is noise in fact only an auditory phenomenon or does it extend far beyond this realm? If our common definitions of noise are necessarily subjective and noise is not just unpleasant sound, then it merits a closer look (or listen). Greg Hainge sets out to define noise in this way, to find within it a series of operations common across its multiple manifestations that allow us to apprehend it as something other than a highly subjective term that tells us very little. Examining a wide range of texts, including Sartre's novel Nausea and David Lynch's iconic films Eraserhead and Inland Empire, Hainge investigates some of the Twentieth Century's most infamous noisemongers to suggest that they're not that noisy after all; and it finds true noise in some surprising places. The result is a thrilling and illuminating study of sound and culture.
Philippe Grandrieux is one of cinema's only living true radicals and feted as one of the most innovative and important film makers of his generation. His consistently controversial work remains, however, relatively unknown outside of the international art film festival circuit. In this volume, the first book-length study of the work of Grandrieux in any language, Greg Hainge provides an overview and critical analysis of Grandrieux's entire career during which he has produced works for television, video installations, photography, performance pieces, documentary films, short films and prize-winning feature films. As well as providing an overview, the book argues that a critical appraisal of his work necessarily leads us to problematize many of the critical orthodoxies that have been formed in recent times, to reject the concept of a haptic cinema and to supplant this instead with the idea of a sonic cinema.
Philippe Grandrieux is one of cinema's only living true radicals and feted as one of the most innovative and important film makers of his generation. His consistently controversial work remains, however, relatively unknown outside of the international art film festival circuit. In this volume, the first book-length study of the work of Grandrieux in any language, Greg Hainge provides an overview and critical analysis of Grandrieux's entire career during which he has produced works for television, video installations, photography, performance pieces, documentary films, short films and prize-winning feature films. As well as providing an overview, the book argues that a critical appraisal of his work necessarily leads us to problematize many of the critical orthodoxies that have been formed in recent times, to reject the concept of a haptic cinema and to supplant this instead with the idea of a sonic cinema.
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Mobility has long been a defining feature of modern societies, yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the various 'stopping places'_hotels, motels, and the like_that this mobility presupposes. If the paradoxical qualities of fixed places dedicated to facilitating movement have been overlooked by a variety of commentators, film-makers have shown remarkable prescience and consistency in engaging with these 'still points' around which the world is made to turn. Hotels and motels play a central role in a multitude of films, ranging across an immensely wide variety of genres, eras, and national cinemas. Whereas previous film theorists have focused on the movement implied by road movies ...
Listening across millennia, a cultural historian explores the process by which noise today has become as powerfully metaphorical--and intriguing--as the original Babel. When did the "silent deeps" become cacophonous and galaxies begin to swim in a sea of cosmic noise? Why do we think that noises have colors and that colors can be loud? How loud is too loud, and says who? Attending, as ears do, to a surround of sounds at once physical and political, Hillel Schwartz listens across millennia for changes in the Western experience and understanding of noise. From the uproarious junior gods of Babylonian epics to crying infants heard over baby monitors, from doubly mythic Echo to amplifier feedbac...
This is a study of one of Hollywood's most popular and critically acclaimed directors. Films discussed include 'Blue Velvet', 'Wild at Heart', 'The Straight Story' and 'Mulholland Drive'.
Scott Walker and the Song of the One-All-Alone offers, in detailed interpretative commentaries of his best songs, a sustained assessment of the work and career of Scott Walker, one of the most significant and perplexing artists of the late 20th and 21st century. For Brian Eno, Walker was not only a great composer and a superlative lyricist but also a significant contemporary poet. Marc Almond goes further, 'an absolute musical genius, existential and intellectual and a star right from the days of The Walker Brothers'. As Almond suggests, Walker's work is marked by a continual engagement with existentialist philosophy informing his approach to art, politics and life. In particular, the device of the solitary figure or 'one-all-alone' evoked in his songs provides the basis for his lyrical exploration of the singularity of existence – in all its darkness as well as light. Through following his own path, Walker arrived at a unique sound according to his own method that produced a genuinely new form of song. Looking closely at these songs, this book also considers the wider political implications of his approach in its rejection of external authorities and common or consensual ideals.
Blackstar Theory takes a close look at David Bowie's ambitious last works: his surprise 'comeback' project The Next Day (2013), the off-Broadway musical Lazarus (2015) and the album that preceded the artist's death in 2016 by two days, Blackstar. The book explores the swirl of themes that orbit and entangle these projects from a starting point in musical analysis and features new interviews with key collaborators from the period: producer Tony Visconti, graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook, musical director Henry Hey, saxophonist Donny McCaslin and assistant sound engineer Erin Tonkon. These works tackle the biggest of ideas: identity, creativity, chaos, transience and immortality. They enact...
The first book in any language to study the films of this enfant terrible of contemporary French cinema, best known for his film Les Amants du Pont Neuf. Examines key ingredients in the worlds of Carax's films - Paris, pop music, 'flânerie' and 'amour fou', 'mannerist' and 'neo-baroque' aesthetics, the Nouvelle Vague and contemporary 'naturalist' cinema - making the book a good primer of contemporary French film and culture. Draws on a variety of intellectual sources, such as the philosophy of Deleuze, film criticism, theory of art, and literary monographs. Argues that the recent history of maverick mannerist and baroque auteurs, from Ruiz & Rivette to Garrel and Techine, and their explorations of the 'powers of the false' are key to Carax's cinema. Examines Carax's contribution to the strand of cinema which is focused on chance and destiny, from Wong Kar-Wai and David Lynch to films such as Serendipity and Sliding doors.