Author: Gayle Sherwood Magee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190205334
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
American director Robert Altman (1925-2006) first came to national attention with the surprise blockbuster M*A*S*H (1970), and he directed more than thirty feature films in the subsequent decades. Critics and scholars have noted that music is central to Altman's films, and in addition to his feature films, Altman worked in theater, opera, and the emerging field of cable television. His treatment of sound is a hallmark of his films, alongside overlapping dialogue, improvisation, and large ensemble casts. Several of his best-known films integrate musical performances into the central plot, including Nashville (1975), Popeye (1980), Short Cuts (1993), Kansas City (1996), The Company (2003) and A Prairie Home Companion (2006), his final film. Even such non-musicals as McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) have been described as, in fellow director and protégé Paul Thomas Anderson's evocative phrase, as "musicals without people singing." Robert Altman's Soundtracks considers Altman's celebrated, innovative uses of music and sound in several of his most acclaimed and lesser-known works. In so doing, these case studies serve as a window not only into Altman's considerable and varied output, but also the changing film industry over nearly four decades, from the heyday of the New Hollywood in the late 1960s through the "Indiewood" boom of the 1990s and its bust in the early 2000s. As its frame, the book considers the continuing attractions of auteurism inside and outside of scholarly discourse, by considering Altman's career in terms of the director's own self-promotion as a visionary and artist; the film industry's promotion of Altman the auteur; the emphasis on Altman's individual style, including his use of music, by the director, critics, scholars, and within the industry; and the processes, tensions, and boundaries of collaboration.
Robert Altman's Soundtracks
Author: Gayle Sherwood Magee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190205334
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
American director Robert Altman (1925-2006) first came to national attention with the surprise blockbuster M*A*S*H (1970), and he directed more than thirty feature films in the subsequent decades. Critics and scholars have noted that music is central to Altman's films, and in addition to his feature films, Altman worked in theater, opera, and the emerging field of cable television. His treatment of sound is a hallmark of his films, alongside overlapping dialogue, improvisation, and large ensemble casts. Several of his best-known films integrate musical performances into the central plot, including Nashville (1975), Popeye (1980), Short Cuts (1993), Kansas City (1996), The Company (2003) and A Prairie Home Companion (2006), his final film. Even such non-musicals as McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) have been described as, in fellow director and protégé Paul Thomas Anderson's evocative phrase, as "musicals without people singing." Robert Altman's Soundtracks considers Altman's celebrated, innovative uses of music and sound in several of his most acclaimed and lesser-known works. In so doing, these case studies serve as a window not only into Altman's considerable and varied output, but also the changing film industry over nearly four decades, from the heyday of the New Hollywood in the late 1960s through the "Indiewood" boom of the 1990s and its bust in the early 2000s. As its frame, the book considers the continuing attractions of auteurism inside and outside of scholarly discourse, by considering Altman's career in terms of the director's own self-promotion as a visionary and artist; the film industry's promotion of Altman the auteur; the emphasis on Altman's individual style, including his use of music, by the director, critics, scholars, and within the industry; and the processes, tensions, and boundaries of collaboration.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190205334
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
American director Robert Altman (1925-2006) first came to national attention with the surprise blockbuster M*A*S*H (1970), and he directed more than thirty feature films in the subsequent decades. Critics and scholars have noted that music is central to Altman's films, and in addition to his feature films, Altman worked in theater, opera, and the emerging field of cable television. His treatment of sound is a hallmark of his films, alongside overlapping dialogue, improvisation, and large ensemble casts. Several of his best-known films integrate musical performances into the central plot, including Nashville (1975), Popeye (1980), Short Cuts (1993), Kansas City (1996), The Company (2003) and A Prairie Home Companion (2006), his final film. Even such non-musicals as McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) have been described as, in fellow director and protégé Paul Thomas Anderson's evocative phrase, as "musicals without people singing." Robert Altman's Soundtracks considers Altman's celebrated, innovative uses of music and sound in several of his most acclaimed and lesser-known works. In so doing, these case studies serve as a window not only into Altman's considerable and varied output, but also the changing film industry over nearly four decades, from the heyday of the New Hollywood in the late 1960s through the "Indiewood" boom of the 1990s and its bust in the early 2000s. As its frame, the book considers the continuing attractions of auteurism inside and outside of scholarly discourse, by considering Altman's career in terms of the director's own self-promotion as a visionary and artist; the film industry's promotion of Altman the auteur; the emphasis on Altman's individual style, including his use of music, by the director, critics, scholars, and within the industry; and the processes, tensions, and boundaries of collaboration.
Robert Altman's Soundtracks
Author: Gayle Sherwood Magee
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199915962
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
Robert Altman's Soundtracks offers a compelling new look at this celebrated director's films through his innovative uses of music and sound. As author Gayle Sherwood-Magee illustrates, Altman's considerable and varied output speaks to the changing film industry over decades from Nashville (1975) to A Prairie Home Companion (2006).
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199915962
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
Robert Altman's Soundtracks offers a compelling new look at this celebrated director's films through his innovative uses of music and sound. As author Gayle Sherwood-Magee illustrates, Altman's considerable and varied output speaks to the changing film industry over decades from Nashville (1975) to A Prairie Home Companion (2006).
Robert Altman
Author: Mitchell Zuckoff
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307387917
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 578
Book Description
Robert Altman—visionary director, hard-partying hedonist, eccentric family man, Hollywood legend—comes roaring to life in this rollicking oral biography. After an all-American boyhood in Kansas City, a stint flying bombers in World War II, and jobs ranging from dog tattoo entrepreneur to television director, Robert Altman burst onto the scene in 1970 with M*A*S*H. He reinvented American filmmaking, and went on to produce such masterpieces as McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Nashville, The Player, Short Cuts, and Gosford Park. In Robert Altman, Mitchell Zuckoff has woven together Altman’s final interviews; an incredible cast of voices including Meryl Streep, Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, among scores of others; and contemporary reviews and news accounts into a riveting tale of an extraordinary life.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307387917
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 578
Book Description
Robert Altman—visionary director, hard-partying hedonist, eccentric family man, Hollywood legend—comes roaring to life in this rollicking oral biography. After an all-American boyhood in Kansas City, a stint flying bombers in World War II, and jobs ranging from dog tattoo entrepreneur to television director, Robert Altman burst onto the scene in 1970 with M*A*S*H. He reinvented American filmmaking, and went on to produce such masterpieces as McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Nashville, The Player, Short Cuts, and Gosford Park. In Robert Altman, Mitchell Zuckoff has woven together Altman’s final interviews; an incredible cast of voices including Meryl Streep, Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, among scores of others; and contemporary reviews and news accounts into a riveting tale of an extraordinary life.
A Companion to Robert Altman
Author: Adrian Danks
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118338960
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 534
Book Description
A Companion to Robert Altman presents myriad aspects of Altman’s life, career, influence and historical context. This book features 23 essays from a range of experts in the field, providing extensive coverage of these aspects and dimensions of Altman’s work. The most expansive and wide-ranging book yet published on Altman, providing a comprehensive account of Altman’s complete career Provides discussion and analysis of generally neglected aspects of Altman’s career, including the significance of his work in television and industrial film, the importance of collaboration, and the full range and import of his aesthetic innovations Includes essays by key scholars in “Altman studies”, bringing together experts in the field, emerging scholars and writers from a broad range of fields Multi-disciplinary in design and draws on a range of approaches to Altman’s work, being the first substantial publication to make use of the recently launched Robert Altman Archive at the University of Michigan Offers specific insights into particular aspects of film style and their application, industrial and aesthetic film and TV history, and particular areas such as the theorisation of space, place, authorship and gender
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118338960
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 534
Book Description
A Companion to Robert Altman presents myriad aspects of Altman’s life, career, influence and historical context. This book features 23 essays from a range of experts in the field, providing extensive coverage of these aspects and dimensions of Altman’s work. The most expansive and wide-ranging book yet published on Altman, providing a comprehensive account of Altman’s complete career Provides discussion and analysis of generally neglected aspects of Altman’s career, including the significance of his work in television and industrial film, the importance of collaboration, and the full range and import of his aesthetic innovations Includes essays by key scholars in “Altman studies”, bringing together experts in the field, emerging scholars and writers from a broad range of fields Multi-disciplinary in design and draws on a range of approaches to Altman’s work, being the first substantial publication to make use of the recently launched Robert Altman Archive at the University of Michigan Offers specific insights into particular aspects of film style and their application, industrial and aesthetic film and TV history, and particular areas such as the theorisation of space, place, authorship and gender
The Presence of the Past
Author: Daniel Bishop
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190932686
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
"In the tumultuous era of the late 1960s and early 70s, several currents of American art and culture coalesced around a broad sensibility that elevated and explored the immediacy of lived experience, whether as an aesthetic or political imperative. But in films set in the historical past, this sensibility acquired complex additional resonances by speaking to the ephemerality of the present moment through a framework of history, myth, nostalgia, and other forms associated with temporal alienation or distance. The Presence of the Past explores the implications of this complex moment in Hollywood cinema through several prominent examples released in the years 1967 to 1974. Key genres are explored in detailed case studies: the outlaw film (Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands), the revisionist Western (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, McCabe and Mrs. Miller), the neo-noir (Chinatown) and the nostalgia film (The Last Picture Show and American Graffiti). In these films, however, "the past" is more than a matter of genre or setting. Rather, it is a richly diverse, often paradoxical concern in its own right, bridging conceptual territories within soundtrack studies, including the sixties pop score, myth criticism, the representation of media technology, and the role of classical music in compilation scoring. Against a broader background of an industry and film culture that were witnessing a stylistic and aesthetic diversification in the use of music and sound design, The Presence of the Past argues for the film-philosophical importance of the soundtrack for cultivating an imagined experiential understanding of the past"--
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190932686
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
"In the tumultuous era of the late 1960s and early 70s, several currents of American art and culture coalesced around a broad sensibility that elevated and explored the immediacy of lived experience, whether as an aesthetic or political imperative. But in films set in the historical past, this sensibility acquired complex additional resonances by speaking to the ephemerality of the present moment through a framework of history, myth, nostalgia, and other forms associated with temporal alienation or distance. The Presence of the Past explores the implications of this complex moment in Hollywood cinema through several prominent examples released in the years 1967 to 1974. Key genres are explored in detailed case studies: the outlaw film (Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands), the revisionist Western (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, McCabe and Mrs. Miller), the neo-noir (Chinatown) and the nostalgia film (The Last Picture Show and American Graffiti). In these films, however, "the past" is more than a matter of genre or setting. Rather, it is a richly diverse, often paradoxical concern in its own right, bridging conceptual territories within soundtrack studies, including the sixties pop score, myth criticism, the representation of media technology, and the role of classical music in compilation scoring. Against a broader background of an industry and film culture that were witnessing a stylistic and aesthetic diversification in the use of music and sound design, The Presence of the Past argues for the film-philosophical importance of the soundtrack for cultivating an imagined experiential understanding of the past"--
Film Music in the Sound Era
Author: Jonathan Rhodes Lee
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000091287
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 1155
Book Description
Film Music in the Sound Era: A Research and Information Guide offers a comprehensive bibliography of scholarship on music in sound film (1927–2017). Thematically organized sections cover historical studies, studies of musicians and filmmakers, genre studies, theory and aesthetics, and other key aspects of film music studies. Broad coverage of works from around the globe, paired with robust indexes and thorough cross-referencing, make this research guide an invaluable tool for all scholars and students investigating the intersection of music and film. This guide is published in two volumes: Volume 1: Histories, Theories, and Genres covers overviews, historical surveys, theory and criticism, studies of film genres, and case studies of individual films. Volume 2: People, Cultures, and Contexts covers individual people, social and cultural studies, studies of musical genre, pedagogy, and the industry. A complete index is included in each volume.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000091287
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 1155
Book Description
Film Music in the Sound Era: A Research and Information Guide offers a comprehensive bibliography of scholarship on music in sound film (1927–2017). Thematically organized sections cover historical studies, studies of musicians and filmmakers, genre studies, theory and aesthetics, and other key aspects of film music studies. Broad coverage of works from around the globe, paired with robust indexes and thorough cross-referencing, make this research guide an invaluable tool for all scholars and students investigating the intersection of music and film. This guide is published in two volumes: Volume 1: Histories, Theories, and Genres covers overviews, historical surveys, theory and criticism, studies of film genres, and case studies of individual films. Volume 2: People, Cultures, and Contexts covers individual people, social and cultural studies, studies of musical genre, pedagogy, and the industry. A complete index is included in each volume.
Silent Films/Loud Music
Author: Phillip Johnston
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501366416
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Book Description
Silent Films/Loud Music discusses contemporary scores for silent film as a rich vehicle for experimentation in the relationship between music, image, and narrative. Johnston offers an overview of the early history of music for silent film paired with his own first-hand view of the craft of creating new original scores for historical silent films: a unique form crossing musical boundaries of classical, jazz, rock, electronic, and folk. As the first book completely devoted to the study of contemporary scores for silent film, it tells the story of the historical and creative evolution of this art form and features an extended discussion and analysis of some of the most creative works of contemporary silent film scoring. Johnston draws upon his own career in both contemporary film music (working with directors Paul Mazursky, Henry Bean, Philip Haas and Doris Dörrie, among others) and in creating new scores for silent films by Browning, Méliès, Kinugasa, Murnau & Reiniger. Through this book, Johnston presents a discussion of music for silent films that contradicts long-held assumptions about what silent film music is and must be, with thought-provoking implications for both historical and contemporary film music.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501366416
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Book Description
Silent Films/Loud Music discusses contemporary scores for silent film as a rich vehicle for experimentation in the relationship between music, image, and narrative. Johnston offers an overview of the early history of music for silent film paired with his own first-hand view of the craft of creating new original scores for historical silent films: a unique form crossing musical boundaries of classical, jazz, rock, electronic, and folk. As the first book completely devoted to the study of contemporary scores for silent film, it tells the story of the historical and creative evolution of this art form and features an extended discussion and analysis of some of the most creative works of contemporary silent film scoring. Johnston draws upon his own career in both contemporary film music (working with directors Paul Mazursky, Henry Bean, Philip Haas and Doris Dörrie, among others) and in creating new scores for silent films by Browning, Méliès, Kinugasa, Murnau & Reiniger. Through this book, Johnston presents a discussion of music for silent films that contradicts long-held assumptions about what silent film music is and must be, with thought-provoking implications for both historical and contemporary film music.
The Lost Decade
Author: Chris Horn
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501394479
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
Provides an analysis of Hollywood from a fresh viewpoint that shows the careers of Robert Altman, Francis Coppola, William Friedkin, and others in the 1980s as far from conforming to a monolithic pattern of decline, but rather as diverse and complex responses to political and industrial changes. The 1980s are routinely seen as the era of the blockbuster and of 'Reaganite entertainment,' whereas the dominant view of late 1960s and early 1970s American film history is that of a 'Hollywood Renaissance', a relatively brief window of artistry based around a select group of directors. Yet key directors associated with the Renaissance period remained active throughout the 1980s and their work has been obscured or dismissed by a narrow, singular model of American film history. This book deals with industrial contexts that conditioned these directors' ability to work creatively, but it is also very much about the analysis of individual films, bringing to light a range of unheralded work, from the visual experimentation of One from the Heart (Coppola, 1981) to the experimental production contexts of Secret Honor (Altman, 1984) and the stylistic élan of To Live and Die in L.A. (Friedkin, 1985). Behind the homogenous picture of the decline of the auteur in 1980s American cinema are films and careers that merit greater attention, and this book offers a new way to perceive individual films, American film history, and the viability of sustained authorial creativity within post-studio era Hollywood.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501394479
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
Provides an analysis of Hollywood from a fresh viewpoint that shows the careers of Robert Altman, Francis Coppola, William Friedkin, and others in the 1980s as far from conforming to a monolithic pattern of decline, but rather as diverse and complex responses to political and industrial changes. The 1980s are routinely seen as the era of the blockbuster and of 'Reaganite entertainment,' whereas the dominant view of late 1960s and early 1970s American film history is that of a 'Hollywood Renaissance', a relatively brief window of artistry based around a select group of directors. Yet key directors associated with the Renaissance period remained active throughout the 1980s and their work has been obscured or dismissed by a narrow, singular model of American film history. This book deals with industrial contexts that conditioned these directors' ability to work creatively, but it is also very much about the analysis of individual films, bringing to light a range of unheralded work, from the visual experimentation of One from the Heart (Coppola, 1981) to the experimental production contexts of Secret Honor (Altman, 1984) and the stylistic élan of To Live and Die in L.A. (Friedkin, 1985). Behind the homogenous picture of the decline of the auteur in 1980s American cinema are films and careers that merit greater attention, and this book offers a new way to perceive individual films, American film history, and the viability of sustained authorial creativity within post-studio era Hollywood.
Robert Altman and the Elaboration of Hollywood Storytelling
Author: Mark Minett
Publisher:
ISBN: 019752382X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
Robert Altman and the Elaboration of Hollywood Storytelling reveals an Altman barely glimpsed in previous critical accounts of the filmmaker. This re-examination of his seminal work during the "Hollywood Renaissance" or "New Hollywood" period of the early 1970s (including M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Images, The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us, California Split, and Nashville) sheds new light on both the films and the filmmaker, reframing Altman as a complex, pragmatic innovator whose work exceeds, but is also grounded in, the norms of classical Hollywood storytelling rather than someone who rejected those norms in favor of modernist art cinema. Its findings and approach hold important implications for the study of cinematic authorship. Largely avoiding thematic exegesis, it employs an historical poetics approach, robust functionalist frameworks, archival research, and formal and statistical analysis to demystify the essential features of the standard account of Altman's filmmaking history and profile-lax narrative form, heavy reliance on the zoom, sound design replete with overlapping dialogue, improvisational infidelity to the screenplay, and a desire to subvert based in his time in the training grounds of industrial filmmaking and filmed television. The book provides a clear example of how a filmmaker might work collaboratively and pragmatically within and across media institutions to elaborate upon their sanctioned practices and aims. We misunderstand Altman's work, and the creative work of Hollywood filmmakers in general, when we insist on describing innovation as opposition to institutional norms and on describing those norms as simply assimilating innovation.
Publisher:
ISBN: 019752382X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
Robert Altman and the Elaboration of Hollywood Storytelling reveals an Altman barely glimpsed in previous critical accounts of the filmmaker. This re-examination of his seminal work during the "Hollywood Renaissance" or "New Hollywood" period of the early 1970s (including M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Images, The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us, California Split, and Nashville) sheds new light on both the films and the filmmaker, reframing Altman as a complex, pragmatic innovator whose work exceeds, but is also grounded in, the norms of classical Hollywood storytelling rather than someone who rejected those norms in favor of modernist art cinema. Its findings and approach hold important implications for the study of cinematic authorship. Largely avoiding thematic exegesis, it employs an historical poetics approach, robust functionalist frameworks, archival research, and formal and statistical analysis to demystify the essential features of the standard account of Altman's filmmaking history and profile-lax narrative form, heavy reliance on the zoom, sound design replete with overlapping dialogue, improvisational infidelity to the screenplay, and a desire to subvert based in his time in the training grounds of industrial filmmaking and filmed television. The book provides a clear example of how a filmmaker might work collaboratively and pragmatically within and across media institutions to elaborate upon their sanctioned practices and aims. We misunderstand Altman's work, and the creative work of Hollywood filmmakers in general, when we insist on describing innovation as opposition to institutional norms and on describing those norms as simply assimilating innovation.
Soundtrack Available
Author: Pamela Robertson Wojcik
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822328001
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 506
Book Description
DIVEssays on film soundtracks composed of popular music (rather than the composed film score) both in relation to the films, and circulating separately on record./div
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822328001
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 506
Book Description
DIVEssays on film soundtracks composed of popular music (rather than the composed film score) both in relation to the films, and circulating separately on record./div