23rd October 2012
File this post (and the next couple) under what-I-did-on-a-more-or-less-holiday. Until Sunday I am in Pasadena, north-east of downtown Los Angeles, having been invited to talk about filming Shakespeare by Professor John Brewer. A decade back we made Sense and Sensation from John’s wonderful book The Pleasures of the Imagination (about eighteenth century culture in Britain and its publics; out-of-print but likely to be available again soon), and now John is Eli and Edye Broad Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology. Caltech is a private research university focussed on science and engineering but the institution also has a commitment to the humanities, and all the students have to incorporate some element of non-science study in their courses. So while I’m here I am speaking both at Caltech and at USC, but I am also taking the opportunity to view some early television from the UCLA archive (that’s Postcard 2.) and to visit some of the best museums in the States. read more »
14th October 2012
I hardly deserve the honorific ‘fan’, but I enjoy traditional American science fiction, especially from the immediate post-war years. So I am excited to see that the exemplary Library of America series (their beautiful volumes of Henry James grace my shelves) has published American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s, edited by the academic Gary K. Wolfe. There are treasures here by, among others, Theodore Sturgeon, Richard Matheson and James Blish. What’s more, the LoA blog has a thoughtful interview with editor Wolfe plus there’s a terrific complementary website (a detail from which is above), with essays, audio of related tales, and appreciations by contemporary writers such as Neil Gaiman, William Gibson and Connie Willis. Back here, as is traditional, a selection of disparate links is across the jump (with thanks for Twitter tips from, among others, @annehelen, @Chi-Humanities, @mia_out and @TheBrowser). read more »
12th October 2012
There is a significant sense in which early and silent cinema is less finished than features and television today. The film world on show in Pordenone at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto is, for much of the time, one of fragments, of moments, of individual elements that are not controlled and constrained by the conventions of mainstream narrative. That is (part of) the reason why this cinema is so compelling, so surprising and so strange – even as it can also offer the familiar pleasures of what now rather unthinkingly call the cinema. As a recognition – and an elaboration – of this, here are notes about ten moments from the films I’ve seen this week, moments that are bold or brilliant or just plain bonkers (and sometimes more than one). Below, you’ll find links to the exemplary daily blog by Silent London that will give you a better (and more informed) sense than I can of Pordenone’s offerings this week. Remember too that you can find the full text here as a .pdf of Pordenone’s excellent 192-page catalogue, with full details of the films below. read more »
11th October 2012
Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows. If you only knew how strange it is to be there.
So begins Maxim Gorky’s famous description of watching a film in July 1896. The whole experience of being at the Silent Film Festival in Pordenone is a bit like this, but it applies perhaps most precisely to this evening’s showing of a recreation of Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre from 1900. Watching the flickering ghosts of French actresses, singers and dancers from over a century ago – and what’s more watching some of them in colour and with original synchronised sound – was truly strange. Strange and rich and wonderful and moving and, well, magnifique. The 80-minute programme, which was receiving its world premiere, was alone worth the trip to this festival (although I have other posts in process) – and in a way I still cannot quite believe what we saw – and heard. read more »
8th October 2012
While I enjoy – and try to make some sense of – Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone (posts coming soon), let me recommend as warmly as possible two books and two terrific critical articles. The first recommendation is The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, which “the Master” published (in instalments initially) in 1880-81. It hardly needs me to affirm that this is a great, great novel. The second book is the recently published Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece by Michael Gorra. Gorra is an American academic but he writes for the rest of us in an elegant style that effortlessly combines erudition with engagement. I would say this is the best and most rewarding extended work of criticism that I have encountered in a long, long time. read more »
7th October 2012
Being in Pordenone (see my initial post here) inevitably means that I am thinking a lot about moving image archives – but there is more to my current focus of interest than that. This feels like a moment when the tectonic plates of the archive world are starting to shift, and while I do not have the time to explore that idea here I will most definitely be returning to it in the coming weeks. To get you thinking, can I recommend Changing channels, a blog post by Luke McKernan, and a related post, also by Luke, about new access services available at The British Library. Take a look too at Mark Brown’s recent Guardian piece about the BFI’s plans, BFI to launch online player with 10,000 films from its archives. Interesting times, my friends. Meanwhile, across the jump is the start of a list of links to other pieces that have caught my eye in recent days. read more »
2nd October 2012
So I’m excited. Over the weekend I booked my flight, and today I have confirmed my hotel reservation. This time next week I’ll be in Pordenone for the best part of a week of early and silent cinema. Which to many of you may not sound like the ideal holiday (for that’s what it is) – but I’ve been looking forward to doing this for years. Each year – and 2012 sees the 31st edition – this small Italian town hosts Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, which is the world’s key festival of silent film. I have been for a couple of days many moons ago, and I have long promised myself that I would find time to immerse myself properly in the festival’s wonders. And, finally, that time is now. read more »
1st October 2012
This really does feel like the end of an era. On Saturday, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger died at the age of 86. That’s him above, with another American media giant, Katharine Graham, proprietor of the The Washington Post, in 1995 (credit: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times). Sulzberger was publisher of The New York Times from 1963 to 1992 (and chairman of the company for another five years), and not too many newspaper men get the kind of tribute that President Obama paid yesterday, calling him ‘a firm believer in the importance of a free and independent press, one that isn’t afraid to seek the truth, hold those in power accountable and tell the stories that need to be told.’ Sulzberger’s 1971 fight to publish the Pentagon Papers is the defining moment of his – and his paper’s – story, but as is clear from the paper’s compelling obituary, Clyde Haberman’s Publisher who transformed the Times for new era, there is so much more. The NYT also has an evocative online slide-show, from which the image above comes. Across the jump… more links to more stuff (and now with further links added since Sunday). read more »
27th September 2012
I know I am coming late to this, but tonight I am off to the Clapham Picturehouse to see Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina with Keira Knightley (above). Despite the so-so reviews, I am intrigued to see how the film-set-in-a-theatre idea comes off. Tolstoy’s great novel is also probably the novel that would run Middlemarch the closest if I was allowed only a single book on a desert island (assuming I had a complete Shakespeare, of course). Which led me to muse on earlier screen manifestations of this tale of love, loss and redemption – and across the jump I have assembled seven YouTube clips of trailers and extracts, as well as the links that will take you to the two parts of a complete (legal) adaptation from Mosfilm with spectacular visuals made in the Soviet Union in 1967. For more about these and other adaptations, see this Wikipedia list. Enjoy. read more »
25th September 2012
To Shakespeare’s Globe – or at least to the Sackler Studios just round the corner – for a wonderfully jolly staged reading on Sunday of Philip Massinger‘s comedy A New Way to Pay Old Debts. Probably written in 1625, this is one of the more popular dramas from the theatre just after Shakespeare’s death. Even so our theatre companies invariably seem to prefer yet another Romeo and Juliet to presenting this comedy – or indeed to exploring the contemporary repertory of nearly 500 surviving plays from the period 1576 to 1642 that are not by Shakespeare. Which is exactly why Globe Education’s excellent Sunday afternoon series called Read not Dead came into being seventeen years and two hundred performances ago. read more »
