About Me
- Tom Connelly
- Thank you for visiting my blog. I’m a scholar of television, film, and digital media, and the author of CINEMA OF CONFINEMENT (Northwestern University Press) and CAPTURING DIGITAL MEDIA (Bloomsbury Academic). I’ve published a variety of articles on film and television in journals published by Taylor & Francis. I am also a writer of fiction. All of my books can be viewed on www.tomconnellyfiction.com
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Random Review - December 12, 2012 - Unfaithfully Yours
Monday, December 10, 2012
Top Non-Fiction Books 2012
Wood's sociological and cultural studies account of the straightedge music scene greatly contributes to the field of subculture. Wood's central argument is that when members become disenchanted with the values of their subculture, sub-groups form out what he refers to as "schisms." Straightedge was a result of a schism in the punk rock and hardcore scenes of the early 1980s. This is a great companion piece to Dick Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style.
I became interested in Hayles' work in a course I took at Claremont Graduate University on Visual Research Methodologies. Hayles' book explores the question of embodiment, materiality and virtuality in the age of high technologies. A complex read, yet totally rewarding. I learned a lot about cybernetics.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Top Fiction Books 2012
The story of Michael Henchard begins with him getting drunk at a fair and then selling his wife. Remorseful of his actions, he gives up the drink and eventually becomes the mayor of Casterbridge. When I read the back cover of this book, my first though was that this book has to be read. A great melodrama. One scene worthy noting is when the townspeople skimmity ride through the town to publicly shame Henchard and Lucetta. This part of the story demonstrates that big new scandals and carnivalish ways of gossiping have been around for quite a while. Hardy leaves us wondering whether or not this is a novel of fate. Probably one of the best books I have ever read.
One of the great all-time science-fiction novels about Griffin (the invisible man) who takes residence in a small village to conduct his research. Griffin eventually turns to robbing the villagers in order to generate money for his rent. Once the villagers discover that Griffin is invisible, a mob is formed and they attempt to capture him. I kept thinking about Michel Foucault's work on the panopticon as I read this. In many ways, Griffin intensifies the villagers' sense of looking and self-scrutiny in a sort of surveillance fashion. When it comes to surveillance, Foucault argues that it is not that someone is actually watching you that makes the panopticon effective. It is the fact that you don't know if someone is watching you and what internalizes the gaze. I believe Griffin has this effect on the villagers.
Franzen covers a lot of ground in this long tale of the Berglunds family. Franzen takes his time, providing the reader a detailed account of each character. The description and dialogue are excellent here. The storytelling is non-linear, suggesting the disconnection of the Berglunds. I particularly love the character Richard, a disenchanted punk rocker who has a sort of strange relationship with Walter Berglund. Though not as great as The Corrections, this was a long, yet rewarding read. Franzen is one of our best contemporary writers.
Yates' gritty and melodramatic novel about of the Davenport couple. For more, see my random review.
Joyce's beautifully written novella at the turn of the twentieth century. See my random review on John Huston's film adaptation.
Vonnegut's novel tells the story of Howard W. Campbell Jr, an American Nazi playwright living in New York city. See my random review about the film adaption.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Random Reviews - November 3, 2012 - Young Hearts Crying and Watchmen
This was a book recommended to me by my wife who has read all of Yates' work. Yates is known widely for his book Revolution Road, made recently into a film directed by Sam Mendes. This is a powerful and gritty book about the marriage and divorce of Michael and Lucy Davenport. It spans almost forty years, beginning with Lucy and Michael's meeting at Harvard and their marriage in the 1940s, ending somewhere in the late 1970s. The novel's twist is that Lucy comes from money and has inherited 3 million dollars. But Michael refuses to live the life of a wealthy couple, and decides they should live by everyday means. This is because Michael is an aspiring poet and believes that wealth will distract his passion and imagination as a writer. This is a brilliant move on the part of Yates, because it directly taps into the novel's emotional realism about creativity and the struggle of the everyday, something one would likely find in the works of Charles Bukowski.
Young Hearts Crying has similarities to the emotional experience of watching a John Cassavetes film. Yates' minimalist and Hemingway-ish dialogue is pungent and hits you right in the gut, so to speak. The dialogue also indicates the novel's passage of time. For example, you can hear Michael's dialogue changing as he becomes older. I also could not help noticing how many moments in the novel are reminiscent of the character Pete Campbell from the show Mad Men. One wonders how much inspiration Matthew Weiner may have gotten from Yates's work?
Michael and Lucy have their own separate stories after their divorce, as they each try to pick up the pieces and carry on with their lives. Part of their struggles stem from the desire to create, whether its Michael hyper-focusing over one line of dialogue in his poem, or Lucy seeking approval for her paintings from her neighbor and artist Nelson. Like the book itself, its about tapping into those deep emotions and trying to find the right word or image to convey expressions of loneliness, melancholy or frustration.
Watchmen has had a long history in Hollywood. It was acquired by Hollywood in the late 1980s, and a number of directors have been attached to the project, including Terry Gilliam. I even purchased a copy of the screenplay in the late 1990s from a nascent eBay. When I finally heard the film was actually in production, and then saw a trailer in 2008, I was quite eager to see how director Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead, 300, Sucker Punch) would adapt what many have called the "Citizen Kane" of comic books to the screen.
Snyder compacts twelve chapters of Watchmen into roughly a three hour film. The set design and art direction of the film are magnificent. The film's use of colors and light, in many ways, reminded me of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. I would even go as far as to add that the film has a sort of surrealistic quality. I also love how Snyder incorporates popular music as part of the score. Rorschach, played by Jackie Earle Haley, is fantastic and has a Taxi Driver/Travis Bickle-like quality. As a side note, I highly recommend reading Rorschach's back story in Before The Watchmen, written by Brian Azzarello, writer of 100 Bullets.
Many reviews for Watchmen have not been enthusiastic. Yet, I believe that as time passes, Watchmen will be considered a significant film in the cannon of the comic book film genre. Putting that aside, Watchmen, as a graphic novel, is arguably an important work of literature of the twentieth century. Overall, I think the film is quite entertaining and something of a tour de force for its tone, art, and set design.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Random Reviews - September 18, 2012 - Lost, Fringe and Person of Interest
I recently finished watching all six seasons of the television show Lost (2004-2010) - thanks to the wonderful technology of video streaming. For the sake of those who have not seen show, I have tried to avoid listing specificities that would ruin the plot. In a nut shell, Lost tells the story of a group of survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 marooned on an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
Lost is clearly one of the top television shows of recent years. The show covers many themes, such as science, religion, and family. But probably the topic given the most attention is the question of fate. Here, the writers do a great job keeping us wondering if there is a greater purpose for the survivors of flight 815. Lost's puzzle narrative structure helps to underscore this notion. Some random notes (after all, this is a random review): Michael Giacchino's beautiful score; the diversity of characters; and cinematography, editing, and acting-all work very well. Lost deservedly won a bunch of Emmys. But I was surprised that none of the women were nominated for their work. Lastly, there are some fantastic stand-alone episodes. I particularly loved "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead," which some critics, apparently, did not like.
I find myself drawn more and more to J.J. Abrams' fictional Universe. I recently started watching Fringe - another great show of Abrams'. Fringe is like the scientific version of the Twilight Zone. If Rod Serling gave us existential reasoning for the show's strange happenings, Fringe attempts to scientifically solve them! Topics covered are telekinesis, shape-shifting, spontaneous combustion, and suspended animation, to name but a few. Walter (John Noble), the eccentric scientist, does a convincing job to prove the scientific validity of these strange happenings. Noble's humorous antics also help to balance out Fringe's graphic imagery.
All of these shows strikingly share a commonality: a depiction of a post 9/11 society of paranoia. These shows, in many ways, are a microscope into our culture of rapid technological innovation, speed, and surveillance. Abrams and Matt Reeves really tune into these features in their frantic, science-fiction, disaster, monster, digital cinema film Cloverfield (2008). I guess in certain ways these shows can be compared to the paranoia films of 1970s, such as Airport (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Towering Inferno (1974), and The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). This is not meant to be a generalization. But I like that the writers of the show address these issues. Finally, I recently read that Star Trek 2 is heading into production which begs the question: does J.J. Abrams sleep?
Friday, September 7, 2012
Random Reviews - September 7, 2012 - The Dead and 49th Parallel
John Huston's last three films before his death in 1987 is a tour de force. Under The Volcano (1984), Prizzi's Honor (1985) and The Dead - three outstanding films made respectively within a period of three years. I highlight his final film - The Dead which is based on James Joyce's short story from The Dubliners. The film closely follows Joyce's story, providing viewers with vignettes of the yearly gathering of the Morkan sisters in January of 1904, which include singing and dancing, a piano performance, and recitation of poetry. There are many wonderful moments in The Dead, particularly the serving of the goose and all the different courses of foods during dinner.
The Dead is a beautifully slow and meditative non-narrative film. It takes place when the western world was beginning to witness social and economic changes due to modernity. Of course, Joyce's style of writing would later become associated with the broad movement of modernism. The film hits upon a number of issues, such as the political tension between Ireland and England, conversation about opera, discussion of about literature and clothing fashion of the time. There is also a sense of loneliness that pervades the story. We eventually find out that what lies beneath this gathering is an unspoken tension between Gabriel and his wife Gretta, performed wonderfully by Huston's daughter Anjelica Huston, who had recently won a supporting Oscar for her supporting role in Prizzi's Honor.
This is extraordinary filmmaking from man who began his career in the golden age of Hollywood - a time when a film like The Dead and its non-narrative style of would have been hard to find. The ending of The Dead has to be one of the most beautiful and power passage of prose I have ever read. And Huston wonderfully captures this ending sequence of Gabriel self-reflecting on the fleeting nature of memories, the cosmos, "and the living and the dead."
This is a compelling propaganda war film made by one of Britain's finest filmmaker, Michael Powell, who also directed films with Emeric Pressburger, such as A Canterbury Tale (1945), Black Narcissus, (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and Pepping Tom (1960).
After the sinking of their U-boat in the Hudson Bay, six Nazi sailors must evade capture as they travel across Canada. They meet different groups of people that challenge their Nazi rhetoric. One scene in particular is the Nazi speech by Peter (Anton Walbrook), the leader of the group, who tries to spread Nazism upon the peaceful Hutterite community--a group of people who happened to be of German descent. Peter's speech literally scared me to the bones.
This is a powerful film made during the time before U.S. entered the war. The final sequence of the film clearly alludes to this - a strong message to America to break with its isolationist stance. The poignancy of film's title addresses this as well: the geographical divide between the U.S. and Canada (the 49th parallel) - a divide that may have had no meaning or purpose for both countries if America did not join the Allies.
Most of the film was shot on location, which gives the film a realist quality. Laurence Olivier plays a great role as Johnnie the trapper. 49th Parallel also deservedly won the best screenplay Oscar in 1941. This is clearly one of top films of the war genre. It is great that Criterion released this one.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Random Reviews - August 29, 2012 - Collateral, Drunken Angel, and Mother Night
Collateral is shot in high definition, which was kind of big deal when it came out in 2004. Although there were slew of films that had been shot on digital video, this made a splash for its big budget and big stars. Collateral demonstrates that digital video can depict vast landscapes through deep focus photography. This is, in particular, what stands out in Collateral: namely, the film's emphasis on empty spaces of Los Angeles in order to create atmospheric tension. I was reminded or Alex Cox's cult masterpiece Repo Man, where cars traverse lonely highways, bathed in a panoply of washed out neon colors of Los Angeles (see image below). Of course, one of the great filmmakers to depict empty space and loneliness is Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni.
Drunken Angel is widely known as Kurosawa's first collaboration with Toshiro Mifune, an actor he made many movies with. The film tells the story of gangster, Matsunaga (part of the yakuza), played by Mifune. Matsunaga is diagnosed with tuberculosis by an alcoholic doctor and will die if not treated. The doctor cares about Matsunaga and believes he can both cure his disease and free him from his gangster life. Matsunaga, however, is stuck between these two worlds, uncertain if he can truly escape the yakuza. But does he really have a choice or is it his fate to die? Of course, fate is a central tenet of film noir.
The setting of the town is located near a contaminated lake, possibly the cause of illness among its inhabitants. One of the most striking scenes in the film is Matsunag's ocean dream, where he encounters his own death, filmed hauntingly in slow motion. Kurosawa seems to be channeling German Expressionism in this sequence--especially Mifune's excessive gestures and over the top expressions. One wonders if Ingmar Bergman was influenced by this scene when he shot the fantastic dream/death sequence in Wild Strawberries? This is an extremely fine film made by Kurosawa during the time when U.S. had occupied Japan post WWII. Mifune's performance is outstanding and does a terrific job embodying the character of Matsunaga.
Mother Night was released during the surge of Independent cinema in the 1990s. This is a gem of a film and surprisingly not mentioned among the great films of the 1990s. Mother Night is a story about Howard W. Campbell Jr. (Nick Nolte), an American Nazi playwright living in New York city. We find out that Campbell was a spy and sent undercover to transmit special codes during his Nazi propaganda speech during his radio program. Only a few people know about Howard. One person in particular was an agent of the U.S. War department, which Howard refers to as his "blue fairy godmother" played by John Goodman. Howard chooses to live in New York City after the war. After meeting his neighbor, George Craft (Alan Alda) things become complicated for Howard, eventually leading to his imprisonment in Israel. The film moves back and forth through time, during Howard being locked up in a jail in Israel (filmed in black and white) and the recounting of his life until his imprisonment.
This is an intentionally slow moving film with fine performance from Nick Nolte, John Goodman and Alan Alda. Like the novel, the film brings forth complex questions of morality, with a bit a black humor.
As a random note, although the film closely follows the book's narrative, it does not
attempt to match the film's aesthetics to Vonnegut's
fragmented writing style. I always felt there is a bit of the absurd
in Vonnegut's brilliant prose. And I believe there has only been one
filmmaker who captured the absurdity that Vonnegut depicts
in his works - and that is George Roy Hill and he is dead. For this
reason, I also highly recommend Slaughter House Five - one of Hill's best films alongside The World According to Garp.
Favorite Books of 2024
There were a lot of great reads this year, so many that I thought I list the books I really enjoyed. No particular ranking. A lot of them we...
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When I first taught world cinema, I knew I wanted to assign Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957). But when the time came to put my ...
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The Lacanian gaze is one of the hardest concepts I teach for my Film Theory course. The way we commonly think of the gaze (to look) is not w...
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I often teach Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) for my Introduction to Film and Film Theory courses. The Conver...