Impenetrable
Conrad on film The silver seam of Jane Austen is all but exhausted for the worthy miners in film and television. Casting her lifeless husk aside, they wonder, squinting, who who will now satisfy the...
View ArticleHorror play
With Hammer composer James Bernard The composer-in-residence at the house of horror is back in business. Writing music to make your flesh creep is his speciality, and he is rumblingly passionate about...
View ArticleFingers and thumbs
With the Art of Noise’s Anne Dudley She doesn’t look like an experimental art-pop terrorist, but then you’d expect them to come in disguise. There could be one sitting next to you right now. The only...
View ArticleEngines of doom
The music of horror What does a vampire sound like? According to Philip Glass, the undead’s aural analogue is a quivering nest of minor arpeggios, pizzicati and dramatic swoops. Glass has written a new...
View ArticleMediate
The rise of the cultural middleman When the artistic history of the 20th century comes to be written, one remarkable development will stand out. That is the rise of the middleman. As our culture became...
View ArticleCamera obscura
Why are there no great films of Nabokov’s novels? Great literature has always been traduced and eviscerated on screen. Yet the peaks of imaginative writing seem to represent an irresistible challenge...
View ArticleShampoo and sand
Tomb Raider, the film The most disturbing moment in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider comes when Lara (Angelina Jolie) is sitting in her mansion and her annoying comedy butler (Chris Barrie) produces a...
View ArticleFantasy stars
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within In the future, your skin never sags. Your clothes never stain or crumple, your eyes and teeth never look dull, and you never have a bad hair day. That is what life is...
View ArticleDanse macabre
Hitchcock’s Music, by Jack Sullivan (Yale) The most famous moment of film music in history was nearly mute. Beginning post-production on Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock instructed his composer, Bernard...
View ArticleArrows of desire
Many allegorical readings of The Hunger Games have been essayed — most recently by no less an intellect than Stanley Fish in the New York Times today. But no one, as far as I’m aware, has understood...
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