"Mix-Tape Cinema": studies of Wes Anderson's films

Links added May 27, 2010

Fantastic Mr. Fox: Wes Anderson at the New York Public Library (Fora.tv)

On the occasion of today's publication by Fora.tv of the above entertaining and informative video, Film Studies For Free presents a (rather) small but (almost) perfectly formed compendium of links to freely accessible studies of the joyous/poignant/whimsical/arch/'scavenger' films of US writer/director Wes Anderson. As usual, if readers know of any other good online material to add to the below list, do please get in touch.

The Substance of Style, Pt 1Wes Anderson and his pantheon of heroes (Schulz, Welles, Truffaut) by Matt Zoller Seitz  posted March 30, 2009 

The above video is the first in a five-part series of video essays analyzing the key influences on Wes Anderson’s style. Part 2 covers Martin Scorsese, Richard Lester, and Mike Nichols. Part 3 covers Hal Ashby. Part 4 covers J.D. Salinger. Part 5 is an annotated version of the prologue to The Royal Tenenbaums.

'The Films of Wes Anderson' (great clip 'mix-tape'/montage) by Paul Proulx

"A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, I watched a film called Bottle Rocket. I knew nothing about it, and the movie really took me by surprise. Here was a picture without a trace of cynicism, that obviously grew out of its director's affection for his characters in particular and for people in general. A rarity. And the central idea of the film is so delicate, so human: A group of young guys think that their lives have to be filled with risk and danger in order to be real. They don't know that it's okay simply to be who they are." Martin Scorsese, 'Wes Anderson', Esquire, March 1, 2000

"Whenever I am getting ready to make a movie I look at other movies I love in order to answer the same recurring question: How is this done, again? I can never seem to remember, and I don’t mean that to be glib. I also hope people don’t throw it back in my face. Making a movie is very complicated, and it seems like kind of a miracle when it actually works out. Hal Ashby made five or six great movies in a row, and that seems to be practically unheard of." 'Wes Anderson on [Hal Ashby's] The Last Detail' in 'The Director's Director', by Jennifer Wachtel, GOOD, June 18, 2008

"In narrative, whimsy emphasizes the unexpected links that connect disparate ideas or events, but the connections must be meaningful. Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991) is not whimsical because it never proposes that the links between its scenes are anything more than incidental. It embraces insignificance and ponders the possibility of elevating apathy into anarchy. Wes Anderson’s films are whimsical because their unexpected juxtapositions are imbued with sentimental significance. As a visual mode, whimsy favours busy frames and compositions that distract viewers from the centre. It rewards those willing to explore the edges with jokes buried in marginalia or Dalmatian mice sniffing around in the corner of an elaborately composed shot. In all cases whimsy values the ability to appreciate the aesthetic harmony possible among myriad incongruent objects. It draws attention to the act of perception and the sensibility of the perceiver." Charlotte Taylor, 'The Importance of Being Earnest', Frieze Magazine, Issue 92, June-August 2005

'...[S]tuff like Wes Anderson mix-tape cinema...', Michael Sicinski, 'Songs Sung Blue: The Films of Michael Robinson', Cinema-scope, 33 

• Joseph Aisenberg, 'Wes's World:Riding Wes Anderson's Vision Limited', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 59, February 2008
• Nandana Bose, 'The Darjeeling Limited: Critiquing Orientalism on the Train to Nowhere', Mediascape, Spring 2008
• Kirk Boyle, 'Reading the Dialectical Ontology of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou Against the Ontological Monism of Adaptation', Film-Philosophy, Volume 11.1, June 2007
• Elena Gorfinkel, 'The Future of Anachronism: Todd Haynes and the Magnificent Andersons', Cinephilia Movies, Love and Memory, Edited by Marijke de Valck and Malte Hagener (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005 - large PDF: scroll to p. 153)
  
• Brannon M. Hancock, 'A Community of Characters: the Narrative Self in the Films of Wes Anderson', Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 9, No.2, October 2005
• Steven Hyden, Noel Murray, Keith Phipps, Nathan Rabin, and Scott Tobias, '16 Films Without Which Wes Anderson Couldn't Have Happened', AV Club, October 8, 2007 
• Deanna K Kreisel, 'What Maxie Knew: The Gift and Oedipus in What Maisie Knew and Rushmore', Mosaic (Winnipeg), 38/2, June 2005
• Christian Lorentzen, 'Captain Neato: Wes Anderson and the Problem with Hipsters; Or, What Happens When a Generation Refuses to Grow Up', N+1, April 23, 2010 
• James MacDowell, 'The "Quirky" New Wave', Alternate Takes, July 21, 2005
• Suzy Mackenzie, 'Into the Deep', The Guardian, February 12, 2005
• Emily J. May, 'The Darjeeling Limited and The New American Traveller', Senses of Cinema, Issue 49, 2008
• Volker Pantenburg, 'Essay 1: Notes on Matt Zoller Seitz’ ”Wes Anderson: The Substance Of Style”', trans. Kevin B Lee, Shooting Down Pictures, April 23, 2009 
• Carole Lyn Piechota, 'Give Me a Second Grace: Music as Absolution in The Royal Tenenbaums', Senses of Cinema, Issue 38, 2006
• Lee Weston Sabo, 'Inimitable Charm: Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 67, February 2010
• Herbert Schwaarb, 'Buddies that Matter. Philosophical Reflections on the Genre of the New Buddy Film', International Conference on Gender, Laughter, Media: Comic Genres and Strategies“ at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, August 2005

The thrill of transcendence: Kathryn Bigelow Studies

Updated with video and new links on April 12, 2010

Jamie Lee Curtis as Megan Turner in Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow, 1990)

[Kathryn] Bigelow’s earliest works are often radical experiments with genres—combinatory, subtractive, subversive, offering a tool for crafting a mode of vital self-reflexive cinema in which the spectator becomes a thrill junkie, like the restless characters in Bigelow’s films. Ultimately, however, the raw exhilaration experienced by Bigelow’s characters must end so they can come to terms with reality and the laws—be they legal or gravitational—that anchor them to society. The later films show an interest in group dynamics as a form of politics or, perhaps, as an ideal of social living contained but not determined by politics. The turning point between these two parts of Bigelow’s career is Strange Days, whose protagonist attempts to wean himself off his addiction to spectacle in order to face the violence of his urban surroundings.
     This is the double bind Bigelow investigates: while thrill is ultimately an alienating form of individualism, the “real world” tends to be a trap, whether confining or merely banal. While Bigelow’s films reveal genre cinema’s promise of glossy escapism to be a dead end, they also pointedly argue that re-engagement with community is tantamount to conformity. One possible escape is offered to Bigelow’s protagonists by seeking out those extreme situations on the bohemian, criminal and physically fraught margins of society, where the rules can be broken and the self fleetingly transcended. Kathryn Bigelow, 'Filmmaking at the Dark Edge of Exhilaration', Harvard Film Archive, 2009

A little while back, Film Studies For Free promised a list of links to openly accessible scholarly essays on the work of filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow, recent recipient of the Academy Award for Best Director for Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker (2009; see that film's Press Kit/Production Notes). And now FSFF's Bigelow Study Day has finally arrived - maybe not its longest links list ever, but one full of highest quality material nonetheless. The links follow the wonderful embedded video 'Outlaw Vision: Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker' created for The L Magazine by Michael Joshua Rowin and Matt Zoller Seitz.

• Kate Adams, 'Review of The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Transgressor. By Deborah Jermyn and Sean Redmond (eds.) London & New York: Wallflower Press, 2003', Scope, Issue 2, June 2005

• Katherine Barscay, 'Kathryn Bigelow's Gen(d)re', Cinephile (Post Genre Issue), Vol. 4, Summer 2008

• Robert Burgoyne, 'The Hurt Locker: Abstraction and Embodiment in the War Film', University of Minnesota Press Blog, March17, 2010
  

• Kevin L. Ferguson, 'Yuppie devil: villainy in Kathryn Bigelow’s Blue Steel', from Jump Cut, No. 50, spring 2008 

• Tom Jennings, 'Rose Coloured Spectacles', Variant,27, Winter 2006

• Jeff Karnicky, 'Georges Bataille and the Visceral Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow', Enculturation, Vol. 2, No. 1, Fall 1998

• Victoria Large, 'Young Vampires in Love: Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 53, August 2006

• Jenna Ng, 'The Handheld Digital Camera Aesthetics of The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield (via Strange Days)' 16:9, No. 32, June 2006

• Karl Palmås, 'Bodies without Bodhis', First published in Glänta 2-3/2009
  

• Parallax View Special Section on Kathryn Bigelow  February-March, 2010
  
  
  

  • The Loveless Worlds of Kathryn Bigelow by Robert C. Cumbow

  • Black Arts by Kathleen Murphy

  • True Fiction: Kathryn Bigelow on The Hurt Locker – Interview by Sean Axmaker

  • The Way You Don’t Die: The Hurt Locker by Sean Axmaker

• Patricia Pisters, 'Logistics of Perception 2.0: Multiple Screen Aesthetics in Iraq War Films', Film-Philosophy, 14.1, 2010

• Laura Rascaroli, 'Strange Visions: Kathryn Bigelow's Metafiction', Enculturation, Vol. 2, No. 1, Fall 1998

• Laura Rascaroli, 'Scopic Drive, Time Travel and Film Spectatorship in Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys and Bigelow's Strange Days', Kinema, 15 (Spring 2001)

• Michael Joshua Rowin and Matt Zoller Seitz, 'Outlaw Vision: Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker ', The L Magazine, June 26, 2009

• Steven Shaviro, 'Kathryn Bigelow', The Pinocchio Theory, March 10, 2010

• Brenda Wilson, 'Blurring the Boundaries: Auteurism and Kathryn Bigelow', Cinephile (Gender and Violence Issue), Vol. 1, April 2005

María Luisa Bemberg: online resources

Still on the subject of film authorship (see here and here), Film Studies For Free chirpily (cheekily?) cross-posts (again, with Directing Cinema - do visit that blog for some great video clips) a little list of choice, freely-accessible online resources pertaining to the Argentine film director María Luisa Bemberg.

A somewhat late starter as a filmmaker, at the tender age of fifty-eight, Bemberg directed six films against the odds of a hugely difficult economic and political situation in Argentina in the 1980s and 1990s. She has been an important influence on a number of young filmmakers, most notably a favourite of FSFF, Lucrecia Martel (also see HERE). Martel's films have been produced by Bemberg's legendary producer and friend Lita Stantic.

In honour of Bemberg and her films, below is a list of high-quality and freely-accessible online studies of her work:

In English:

• Caleb Bach, 'Maria Luisa Bemberg tells the untold,' Americas 46 (Mar/Apr 1994): 20-7
• Michael Chanan, 'Latin American Cinema in the 90's: Representational Space in Recent Latin American Cinema,' Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 9:1 (enero-junio 1998)
• Catherine Grant, 'Intimista transformations: María Luisa Bemberg's First Feature Films,' originally published in An Argentine Passion: María Luisa Bemberg and Her Films, John King, Sheila Whitaker and Rosa Bosch, eds. (London: Verso, 2000), 73-109
• John King, Sheila Whitaker and Rosa Bosch, eds., An Argentine Passion: María Luisa Bemberg and Her Films (London: Verso, 2000)
• Bernard McGuirk, 'Review of An Argentine Passion: María Luisa Bemberg and her Films, by John King, Sheila Whitaker and Rosa Bosch (eds.), London & New York: Verso, 2000,' Scope, May 2003
• Hugo Salas, 'Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others: María Luisa Bemberg,' Senses of Cinema 22 (September-October 2002)
• Cynthia L. Stone, 'Beyond the Female Gaze: María Luisa Bemberg's Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz,' Ciberletras, Number 13, July 2005
• Fernanda Vitor Bueno,'The Myth of Camila O'Gorman in the Works of Juana Manuela Gorriti, María Luisa Bemberg and Enrique Molina', PhD e-thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, December 2007
• Bruce Williams, 'Bemberg’s Third Sex: Argentine Mothers at the Dawn of Democracy', Cinémas/Cinémas, Volume 15, numéro 1, Automne 2004, p. 125-144
  

In Spanish:

• Mary Elizabeth Barnard, 'Nietzsche y el cine latinoamericano: un estudio de tres obras,' Espéculo: Revista de Estudios Latinoamericanos (marzo-julio 2006)
• Anke van Haastrecht, 'Mujeres en rebelión: el discurso cinematográfico de María Luisa Bemberg', (date unknown)
• Clara Kuschnir, 'La narrativa, el cine y las mujeres,' Estudios feministas = Etudés feministes (agosto-diciembre 2005)
• Jane Mooney, 'Directoras latinoamericanas: Susana Amaral, María Luisa Bemberg, Viviana Cordero y María Novaro', La Tatuana number 3, (Cinenavaja), 2005
• Lourdes Vázquez, 'De identidades: María Luisa Bemberg, filmografía y bibliografía, 1967-2006 [Segunda edición],' SALALM Latin American Information series, no. 6a, edited by Laura D. Shedenhelm, University of Georgia Libraries, 2007
• Guillermina Walas, 'María Luisa frente al espejo: la (auto)_reflexión en María Luisa Bemberg', La Tatuana number 3, (Cinenavaja), 2005
  

In Italian:

• Raffaella Bassetti, et al., María Luisa Bemberg: la passionaria . Italy: Associazione L'Occhio delle donne, 2004

On Auteurism and Film Authorship Theories

Director Jane Campion (right) and cinematographer Laurie Mcinnes on the set of After Hours (1984). Photograph (1981) by Gayle Pigalle

Film Studies For Free will be concentrating on some shorter (but hopefully still useful) posts in the next few weeks. But here's another long one in the meantime: a whole (shiny) host of links to writing devoted to FSFF's author's main topic of research: film authorship and auteur theory. It has consequently been cross-posted at her other blog Directing Cinema, where lots of discussions of authorship and auteurism may be found. The below list of links to freely accessible online material on these topics will be kept updated, so do consider yourselves warmly encouraged to bookmark this post, and also to suggest further good resources to add to the list (by commenting or via email). Latest update: June 3, 2009

• Eduardo Abrantes, ''The Principle of Revelation (review of Catherine Lupton (2005) Chris Marker: Memories of the Future London: Reaktion Books)', Film-Philosophy 10.1, 2006
• Richard Armstrong, 'They Lost It at the Movies: Film Culture in the Age of Positif and Cineaste', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 40, May 2003
• Karyn Ball, 'Hitchcock's 'Material Whirl (Review of Tom Cohen, Hitchcock's Cryptonomies. Volume 1: Secret Agents; Volume II: War Machines. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2005)', Culture Machine, 2006
• Charles Bane, 'Viewing Novels, Reading Films: Stanley Kubrick and the art of adaptation as interpretation, PhD e-thesis, Louisiana State University 2006
• Shyon Baumann, Intellectualization and Art World Development: Film in the United States', American Sociological Review 66:3 (June 2001) pp. 404-426
• Jack Boozer, 'Introduction: The Screenplay and Authorship in Adaptation', Authorship in Film Adaptation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007)
• David Bordwell, Ozu and the poetics of cinema, e-book, originally published by London: British Film Institute; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988
• Peter Brunette, 'Nowell-Smith Meets Visconti, Redux: The Old and the New,', Film-Philosophy, vol. 9, no. 16, March 2005 (See also Geoffrey Nowell- Smith, “It Ain’t Me Babe: A Response to Brunette,' Film-Philosophy, vol. 9, no. 17, March 2005)
• Alan Cholodenko - '(The) Death (of) the Animator, or: The Felicity of Felix1, Part II', Animation Studies, December 9, 2007
• David Church, 'The "Cult" of Kubrick', Offscreen Journal, May 31, 2006
• Paul Coughlin, 'The Mark of Cain: Blood Simple and The Man Who Wasn't There', Scope 3, November 2005
• David Clarke, 'Welcome to Tykwer-World: Tom Tykwer as Auteur', Welcome to Tykwer-World: Tom Tykwer as Auteur', gfl-journal, No. 3/2006
• James A. Davidson, 'Some Thoughts on Alfred Hitchcock and Vladimir Nabokov', Images Journal, Issue 3, 1997
• Alexander Dhoest, 'How queer is L'Air de Paris? -- Marcel Carné and Queer Authorship', Scope, May 2003
• Lucy Fife, 'Review of Joe McElhaney, The Death of Classical Cinema: Hitchcock, Lang, Minnelli. (New York; State University of New York Press, 2006)', Film-Philosophy 11.3, December 2007
• Richard Franklin, “What I Really Want to do is Direct”: (1) Directors as Depicted on Film and Television', Senses of Cinema, Issue 42, Jan-Mar 2007
• Jane Gaines, 'Dorothy Arzner's trousers', from Jump Cut, no. 37, July 1992, pp. 88-98
• Tag Gallagher, 'Reading, Culture, and Auteurs' , Screening the Past, March 1, 2001
• Tag Gallagher, 'American Triptych: Vidor, Hawks and Ford', Senses of Cinema, Issue 42, Jan-Mar 2007
• David Gerstner, 'Queer Modernism: The Cinematic Aesthetics of Vincente Minnelli', Modernity, Vol 2 2000
• Barry Keith Grant, 'Theories of Authorship: Rethinking authorship', from Jump Cut, no. 31, March 1986, pp. 14-16
• Catherine Grant, ‘www.auteur.com?’, originally published in Screen, Vol. 41:1, 2000, 101-108
• Catherine Grant, ‘Secret Agents: Feminist Theories of Women’s Film Authorship’, originally published in Feminist Theory 2:1, 2001, 113-130
• Catherine Grant, ‘Recognizing Billy Budd in Beau Travail: Epistemology and Hermeneutics of an Auteurist “Free” Adaptation’, originally published in Screen 43:1, 2002: 57-73
• Catherine Grant, 'The "Author Function" in Transnational Film Adaptation: The case of El lugar sin límites / The Place Without Limits / Hell Has No Limits (Arturo Ripstein, Manuel Puig, José Donoso)', originally published as 'La función de "los autores": la adaptación cinematográfica transnacional de El lugar sin límites', Revista Iberoamericana, Vol. LXVIII, Núm, 199, Abril-Junio 2002, pp. 253-268
• Asbjørn Grønstad, 'Coppola's Exhausted Eschatology: Apocalypse Now Reconsidered', Nordic Journal of English Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2005
• Andrew Grossman, 'The Belated Auteurism of Johnnie To', Senses of Cinema, January 2001
• Fiona Handyside, 'The Auteur as Imposter', Film-Philosophy, 10.1, 2006
• John Hess, 'La politique des auteurs (part one) World view as aesthetics', from Jump Cut, no. 1, 1974, pp. 19-22
• John Hess, 'La politique des auteurs (part two) Truffaut's manifesto', from Jump Cut, no. 2 (1974), pp. 20-22
• Roger Hillman, 'Fassbinder, and Fassbinder/Peer Raben', Screening the Past, March 1, 2001
• Brian Hu, 'Neither Personal nor Political (review of John Anderson (2005) Edward Yang (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press)', Film-Philosophy 10.1, 2006
• Noel King, 'Changing the Curriculum: The Place of Film in an English Department', Australian Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1983
• Donald F. Larsson, 'Every Picture Tells A Story: Agency And Narration In Film', Panel: Movies as Paradigmatic Narratives, Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., December, 2000
• Katerina Loukopoulou , 'Godard Alone? (review of Michael Temple, James S.Williams and Michael Witt (eds) (2004) For Ever Godard (London: Black Dog Publishing)', Film-Philosophy, 10. 1, 2006
• Harriet Margolis, 'Introduction: "A Strange Heritage" - from Colonization to Transformation?', in Margolis (ed.), Jane Campion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
  
• Adrian Martin, 'Sign your name across my heart, or:"I want to write about Delbert Mann" ', Screening the Past, March 1, 2001
• Tony McKibbin, 'Art Variables and Life Variables in La Belle noiseuse', Senses of Cinema, Issue 42, Jan-Mar 2007
• Andrew Neal, 'Review of Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers, edited by Yvonne Tasker (London: Routledge, 2002) and Contemporary North American Filmmakers: A Wallflower Critical Guide (Second Edition), edited by Yoram Allon, Del Cullen and Hannah Patterson (London: Wallflower, 2002), Scope, May 2004
• Dan North, 'Review of Directed by Allen Smithee, edited by Jeremy Braddock and Stephen Hock (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), Scope, May 2004
• Karla Oeler, 'Signs of the Times: The thirty year trajectory of Signs and Meaning in the Cinema', Film-Philosophy, Volume 3 Number 25, June 1999
• Matt Pearson, Authorship and the Films of David Lynch, e-book, BritishFilm.org.uk, 1997
• VF Perkins, 'Moments of Choice', first published in The Movie, no. 58 (Orbis Publishing, 1981), Rouge 9, 2006
• Dana Polan, 'Auteur Desire', Screening the Past, March 1, 2001
• Trevor Ponech, 'Authorship and Authorial Autonomy: The Personal Factor in the Cinematic Work of Art', Æ Canadian Aesthetics Journal / Revue canadienne d'esthétique, Volume 4 Summer/Été 1999
• Lauren Rabinovitz, 'Past Imperfect: Feminism and Social Histories of Silent Film', Cinémas/Cinémas, Volume 16, numéro 1, Automne 2005, p. 21-34
• Nicholas Rombes, 'The Rebirth of the Author, CTheory, June 2005
• Holger Römers, '“The Moral of the Auteur Theory”: Frank Borzage’s Moonrise (and Theodore Strauss’ Source Novel)', Senses of Cinema, Issue 42, Jan-March 2007
• Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'Potential Perils of the Director’s Cut', originally published in French as Le Mythe du Director’s cut (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2008), JonathanRosenbaum.com, August 6, 2008
• William D. Routt, 'Lois Weber, or the exigency of writing', Screening the Past, March 1, 2001
  
• William D Routt, 'L'Evidence', Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture, vol. 5 no 2 (1990)
• Girish Shambu, 'On Auteurism', girish, March 30, 2008
• David Sorfa, 'Introduction: Reanimating the Auteur', Film-Philosophy , 10.1, 2006
• David Sterritt, Introduction', The Films of Alfred Hitchcock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
• Tony Todd, 'Meanings and Authorships in Dune', Film-Philosophy 13.1, 2009
• Kristof Van Den Troost, « Stephen Teo, Director in Action: Johnnie To and the Hong Kong Action Film », China perspectives, n°2009/1, 2009
• NEW Harry Tuttle, 'Truffaut's manifesto : La Politique des Auteurs- Part 1', Indian Auteur, February 1, 2009
  
• NEW Harry Tuttle, 'La Politique Des Auteurs-2', Indian Auteur, May 3, 2009
• NEW Harry Tuttle, 'French [cinephilic and auteurist] terms and their pronunciation', Indian Auteur, May 20, 2009
  
• Paula Willoquet-Maricondi, 'Peter Greenaway: A User's Manual', Film-Philosophy, Volume 2, 1998
• Brenda Wilson, 'Blurring the Boundaries: Auteurism & Kathryn Bigelow', UBCinephile, Vol. 1, 2005
• Ronald W. Wilson, 'Review of Chris Fujiwara, The Auteur of Darkness: Jacques Tourneur', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 7 No. 2, January 2003
• Daniel Yacavone, 'Towards a Theory of Film Worlds', Film-Philosophy 12.2, September 2008