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(04/18/13 9:34am)
If nothing else, The Place Beyond the Pines surprised me. I wasn’t surprised that it was a compelling film: the cast features Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper and Eva Mendes, not to mention writer/director Derek Cianfrance, whose last effort was the critically acclaimed Blue Valentine. Thanks to the trailer I wasn’t surprised to see a few tastefully minimalist action sequences. But the screenplay and its three-act structure did surprise me, and I appreciated Cianfrance’s willingness to buck filmic tradition in his plot. Each act focuses on a new protagonist, with the previous act’s leading role receding, in one way or another, to the periphery.
(04/11/13 8:46am)
Arts Confessions: I am a Bio major. Science Confessions: I am an editor for this arts publication and I play in the orchestra. Phrasing these statements as confessions is a bit disconcerting, but they feel like confessions. Science and art, two of the most important things in my life, never seem to occupy the same space for me. There’s “science Ted:” that logical, rational thinker who reads journal papers and actually enjoys them. Then there’s “artistic Ted.” He plays the bassoon and is fond of mid-century architecture. SciTed makes bad puns and ArtsTed favors absurdist humor. If these two versions of myself could occupy different bodies, I’d imagine they would get in a lot of arguments.
(04/04/13 9:04am)
Durham’s own Full Frame Documentary Film Festival has grown with every passing year, inevitably drawing submissions from Duke itself. This year, that includes Erin Espelie, instructor, visiting artist and MFA candidate in the Experimental and Documentary Arts. Full Frame will mark the North American premiere of her documentary, True-Life Adventure.
(03/28/13 8:24am)
This Friday, Wim Wenders’s 2011 film Pina will screen for free at 7:30 p.m. at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science in Raleigh. The screening, a joint effort between the Franklin Humanities Institute and the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image, brings a rare opportunity to the Duke community to see an award-winning film in its original 3D format.
(03/21/13 9:01am)
Barbara Klinger is a Professor of Film and Media Studies at Indiana University at Bloomington as well as the President-Elect of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Her areas of expertise include new media, audience studies and gender in cinema. She will be giving a lecture entitled “Beyond Cheap Thrills: Space & Style in Contemporary 3D Cinema” tomorrow from 4:00-6:00 p.m. in White Lecture Hall. Her talk, along with a free 3D screening of Pina next Friday, is being put on by the the FHI/AMI Thinking Cinematics Working Group to explore 3D aesthetics.
(02/28/13 10:38am)
Before last Sunday, I can’t remember ever sitting through an entire awards show. As the film editor of this fine publication, I felt it was my duty to watch closely as the best of Hollywood and beyond was recognized and celebrated, so I strapped in for the nearly four-hour ceremony.
(01/17/13 11:01am)
To some, film soundtracks and scores are like seatbelts, always in use but rarely necessary, only noticeable when they aren’t working quite right. Others might give them a bit more credit, comparing them to the underlayer of pigment on a watercolor, always perceived but never consciously appreciated. I prefer to think about them like spices in a great dish. In your stereotypical film score, salt and pepper are the strings, required to pull the discrete elements of a film together (say, meaty cinematography, starchy dialogue and veggie acting) into a palatable whole. Dashes of garlic, cayenne pepper or oregano are the winds and brass, an essential aspect of all but the most basic of soundtracks. Too much of any of these elements will spoil the whole meal.
(01/10/13 10:14am)
MUSIC
(11/08/12 9:28am)
Every few decades, a musician gains such enormous skill and reputation as to become nearly synonymous with their instrument. It is hard to talk about the cello without mentioning Yo-Yo Ma. The same can be said of Chris Thile and the mandolin, Edgar Meyer and the upright bass and Zakir Hussain and the tabla. As with many of these figures, Béla Fleck is tied to his instrument—the banjo.
(11/01/12 6:58am)
The night before Halloween, I watched Stanley Kubrick’s iconic adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining. I had seen the film before and certainly enjoyed it the first time, but a few nights ago, when I watched it with some friends, I followed along on a website I had found the week before. The page showed screenshots of an edited version of the film in which the movie is shown simultaneously both backwards and forwards, with both directions superimposed on each other. Doing so revealed to me a fascinating symmetry in the film, with distant scenes paired to create enriched levels of creepiness. Jack is shown in the forwards version throwing a ball against the wall; in the backwards version, Wendy carries a baseball bat. Forwards Jack rubs his son’s back while backwards Grady wipes off Jack’s coat. Here was an entire plane of symbolism that I missed despite paying close attention during my first viewing. (Fans of the film should Google “the shining forwards and backwards.” I visited the ‘kdk12’ website.)
(10/25/12 8:18am)
This past summer, I saw a trailer for Cloud Atlas. Some of you might remember its five-minute runtime and absurdly over-the-top presentation of a complex premise (“Fear. Belief. Love. Death. Life. Birth. Future. Present. Past. Love. Hope. Courage. Everything is Connected.”). Few casts are more prestigious—Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Hugh Grant to name a few actors, with the Wachowskis (The Matrix trilogy) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) writing and directing—so I was appropriately excited for the film. So excited, in fact, that I ran down to the Kindle store and bought myself a copy of the book.
Unfortunately, Cloud Atlas suffers the fate of nearly every book-to-movie adaptation, especially those that attempt to condense a long and thematically dense novel into one feature film. Unlike a handful of stories that come to mind (the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Orchid Thief/Adaptation), the book is always better than the movie.
(09/27/12 8:32am)
Recess film editor Ted Phillips interviewed Nathan Johnson, composer of the soundtrack for Looper, the new time-traveling sci-fi film due out tomorrow. Johnson also wrote the soundtracks for Brick (2005) and The Brothers Bloom (2008).
(09/27/12 8:11am)
With The Master, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson has created a film that is both emotionally weighty and captivating. The density and relentlessness with which the film is delivered left me reeling, and even as an audience member I felt myself getting sucked into the psychotic whirlpool occupied by the entire ensemble.
(09/13/12 7:54am)
This past Friday, I had the opportunity to see one of my favorite artists perform at Hopscotch. His name is Dan Deacon, and seeing him play was the best thirty-five minutes of live music I have ever experienced.
(09/06/12 9:04am)
Julia Holter
(08/30/12 7:26am)
I’ll come right out and say it: Beasts of the Southern Wild is one of the best movies I have ever seen. It blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, man and woman, beauty and ugliness, adult and child and nature and society in a way that, by the end of the film, leaves the ingrained dichotomies of human life behind. This departure from typical film stock is very refreshing.
(07/02/12 4:38am)
Wes Anderson has achieved demigod status in the hearts of film fans and hipsters alike in the 14 years since Rushmore. I must admit I am as swept away by his quirkiness and unsmiling comedy as anyone, and a few of his movies I consider favorites. So to say I had high hopes for Moonrise Kingdom would be accurate.
(04/12/12 4:00am)
Duke has a long-standing relationship with Full Frame, and the festival officially merged with the Center for Documentary Studies in 2010. The relationship is not merely institutional: Josh Gibson, filmmaker and instructor at Duke’s Arts of the Moving Image program, will premiere his new documentary Light Plate at the festival this weekend. Recess’ Ted Phillips sat down with Gibson, who premiered his last film Kudzu Vine at Full Frame in 2011, to talk about the inspiration behind Light Plate, the tangibility of film as artistic medium, and the auspicious beginning of his career in film.
(03/29/12 4:00am)
Recess: IMDB describes you as a 6’2” Pisces from Lansing, Michigan. Tell us a little more about yourself.
(03/29/12 4:00am)
Recess: Where are you?
