The Cinematologists Podcast

Blake Howard (One Heat Minute Productions)

Perhaps the most in-depth analysis possible is focused on an entire film minute by minute. This week's guest Blake Howard has patented that very idea in the format of his highly popular podcast One Heat Minute. Interviewing a guest every week and assigning them a minute from the film, this deep-dive podcast represents a synergy between obsessional fandom, close textual analysis, and explorations of what film means to those who see the form as part of their very identity. The first film that was the subject of this was Heat, and it was a testament to the success of the show that the director, Michael Mann was the final guest of that series. Since then Blake has done series: The Last (12 minutes) of the Mohican's, All the President's Minutes (his current podcast on which Dario recently appeared) and two spin-off shows which he produces: Increment Vice and the upcoming Josie and the Podcats. He has also recently start con-TEN-gen, the film critic's response to the impact of the coronavirus on his colleagues and friends.
In this episode, Dario and Blake realise they have a parallel history in their film education and their taste in films. They discuss Blake's history as a film journalist at the beginnings of the digital age, the challenges and rewards of the 'one-minute' format, film podcasts as a genre, and the possibility of a cinematic experience without images.
In this episode, Neil also reviews three reissues from Eureka/Masters of Cinema: Syncopation (William Dieterle, 1942) Buster Keaton's MGM Boxset, Long Day's Journey into Night (Sidney Lumet, 1962).
Links
Blake Howard is on Twitter as @OneBlakeMinute
Link here for One Heat Minute Productions
Contributor to www.flicks.com.au/ & Dark Horizons
Blake's Article for Vague Visages - Why Criticism: Not Quite the Apocalypse
 

The Cinematic Voice

The voice in cinema is a phenomenon that is in many ways taken for granted. Since the advent of the talkies, the speaking voice synchronised to the human body on-screen is the ingrained process for narrative exposition and character development. However, this accepted synchronisation is one of sound cinema’s fundamental illusions.
This major production for The Cinematologists features the analysis from leading film scholars and critics, each focusing on uses and interpretations of cinematic voice, using a plethora of filmic examples. Many aspects of the cinematic voice are explored including star voices, script and performance, sonic aesthetics of the voice, voice-overs, the singing voice, voices in animation, the disembodied voice, and politics of who has a voice and who listens. We draw upon many of the key thinkers on film sound including the seminal work of Michel Chion. Chion developed concepts like Audio-Vision, to explore how sound shapes how the screened image can be understood, and acousmetré, meaning the cinema’s use of disembodied off-screen voice. Using these ideas he forwards the argument that sound is not a secondary addendum to image in the cinematic experience, but fundamentally structures how we see and understand film.
Unlike our usual conversational format, this episode is an audio-essay; recorded interviews cut together with indicative clips in a sonic collage which is hopefully an immersive experience transversing the boundaries between creativity and criticism. We recommend that you listen to this episode on headphones to get the full effect. As always Dario and Neil discuss the themes of the podcast but also engage with the production and formal approach in the context of film podcasts more broadly.
Contributors to this episode are (in order of appearance are):
Dario Llinares - Website - Twitter
Clive Frayne (11:03-19:18)  - Website - Twitter
Neil Fox - (19:56-29:30) Website - Twitter
Laura Tunbridge - (32:08-37:08) Website - Twitter
Catherine Wheatley - (41:46-47:33) Website - Twitter
Ian Garwood  (48:56-55:00) - Website - Twitter
Farshid Kazemi (55:51-1:01:50) - Website
Jennifer O’Meara - (1:06:14-1:14:24) Website - Twitter
Mark Kermode (1:15:40-1:23:22) - Website - Twitter
William Brown (1:23:56-1:36:14) - Website - Twitter
My profound thanks for their time, labour and critical insight which has made this episode possible.
A full transcript of this episode is available at www.cinematologists.com
Film clips (in broadcast order)
The Jazz Singer (1927, Alan Crosland)
Blackmail (1929, Alfred Hitchcock)
Dead of Night [The Ventriloquist’s Dummy (1945, Alberto Cavalcanti)
To Have and Have Not (1944, Howard Hawks)
The Trial (1962, Orson Welles)
Dirty Harry (1972 Don Siegel)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
In the Heat of the Night (1967, Norman Jewison)
Inherent Vice (2014, Paul Thomas Anderson)
Dick Tracy (1990, Warren Beatty)
The Shawshank Redemption (1995, Frank Darabont)
Only Lovers Left Alive (2014, Jim Jarmusch)
White Men Can’t Jump (1992, Ron Shelton)
Daughters of the Dust (1991, Julie Dash)
Félicité (2017, Alain Gomis)
Mary Poppins (1964, Robert Stevenson)
Magnolia (1999) Paul Thomas Anderson
The Wind Will Carry Us (1999, Abbas Kiarostami)
All the President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula)
Her (2014, Spike Jonze)
Toy Story (1995, John Lassiter)
Puss in Boots [Antonio Banderas Voice Session]
Frozen (2013, Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck)
Anomalisa (2016, Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson)
Star Wars (1977, George Lucas)
The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin)
The Exorcist Original Voice Recordings
The Exorcist documentary
Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979, Terry Jones)
The Dark Knight Rises (2012, Christopher Nolan)
The Great Dictator (1940, Charlie Chaplin)
Valkyrie (2008, Bryan Singer)
The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Flemming)
Some Like it Hot (1959, Billy Wilder)
References (in order of mention):
Altman, Rick. 1980. Moving Lips: Cinema as Ventriloquism. Yale French Studies, 60 Cinema/Sound: pp. 67-79 - https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2930005.pdf?seq=1
Chion, Michel. 1999. The Voice in Cinema. Columbia University Press.
 Barthes, Roland. 1978. The Grain of the Voice. In Image, Music, Text. New York: Wang and Hill. pp.179-189.
Whittaker, Tom and Wright, Sarah. 2017. Locating the Voice in Film: Critical Approaches and Global Perspectives. Oxford University Press.
Kozlov, Sarah. 1992. Invisible Storytellers: Voice-Over Narration in American Fiction Film. University of California Press.
Cavell, Stanley. 1994. A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises. Harvard University Press.
Clements, Catherine. 1989. Opera, Or The Undoing Of Women. Virago.
Cavarero, Adrianna. 2005. For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression. Stanford University Press.
Kiarostami, Abbas. 2015. Lessons with Kiarostami. Sticking Place Books.
Dolar, Mladen. 2006. A Voice and Nothing More. Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Sobchak, Vivien. 2005. When the Ear Dreams: Dolby Digital and the Imagination of Sound. Film Quarterly, 58(4), pp. 2-15.
Adorno, Theodor., & Horkheimer, Max. 1944. The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.
Chow, Rey. 2017 ‘The Writing Voice in Cinema’. In Whittaker, Tom and Wright, Sarah. Eds. Locating the Voice in Film: Critical Approaches and Global Perspectives. Oxford University Press.
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Berlinale 2020 Part 2

Part Two of our Berlinale 2020 special is here. You’d think that after 5 years doing this podcast I’d get a little thing like the audio right, but alas, a couple of my solo recordings here are of a very poor quality - lots of peaking and distortion, which I have tried hard to reduce. Apologies.
The content is still pretty good though methinks. Lots of chat with Dario about films including the award-winning The Woman Who Ran [Hong Sangsoo] and Never Rarely Sometimes Always [Eliza Hittman], Siberia [Abel Ferrara], Entre Perro Y Lobo - plus an interview with that film’s director Irene Gutierrez - Rizi (Days) [Tsai Ming-Liang], Nightshift (Police) [Anne Fontaine], Maggie’s Farm [James Benning], White Riot [Rubika Shah] and from the retrospective, King Vidor’s The Sky Pilot. Plus nestled in amongst my ruminations is a chat with friend of the podcast Neil Young and a few choice clips from some of the films mentioned. In the spirit of the master Tsai Ming-Liang they are intentionally un-subtitled. Enjoy. NF.
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Berlinale 2020 Part 1

It's Berlinale time. Our annual sojourn to our favorite European Film Festival is one of the highlights of the year and the programme looks intriguing with a host of big names in art-house cinema showing their latest work. This is the first of a two-part episode in which we bring our thoughts to bear on the big competition entries and fiction and documentary films from other sections of Berlin's extensive programme. We also interview various critics also in the city no only on their festival picks but on any emergent themes of this year's event. Wild mushroom picking, toxic masculinity and signature central sequences were just some of the obvious motifs. 
Dario and Neil see a film together (Hang Songsoo's wonderful The Woman Who Ran) at the festival for the first time and they ruminate, as usual, on all aspects of the experience. Please enjoy.
Thanks so much to the following critics for giving up their time. Please check out their writing and share/support it on your networks:
Joseph Owen - https://www.theupcoming.co.uk/2020/02/24/berlin-film-festival-2020-first-cow-review/
Savina Petkova - https://savinapetkova.contently.com/
Alex Billington - https://www.firstshowing.net/
Serena Scateni - https://vaguevisages.com/2020/02/25/berlinale-2020-review-hong-sang-soos-the-woman-who-ran/
The films discussed in this episode are:
First Cow - Kelly Reichardt
The Salt of Tears - Philippe Garrel
Undine Christian - Petzold
Never Really Sometimes Always - Eliza Hittman
Pinocchio - Matteo Garrone
Little Girl - Sébastien Lifshitz
Malkkrog - Cristi Puiu
Shirley - Josephine Decker
The Assistant - Kitty Green
Mogul Mowgli - Bassam Tariq
The Woman Who Ran - Hong SangSoo
You can also listen to The Cinematologists here:
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Adam Mars-Jones

Adam Mars-Jones is an award-winning novelist and critic. His most recent novel, Box Hill, won the 2019 Fitzcarraldo novel prize. An apt award for someone who is also one of Britain’s most erudite and singular voices in film criticism. In late 2019 a collection of his film criticism, Second Sight, was published. It collects a significant portion of his reviews from his days as The Independent’s film critic (the paper’s first) as well as work for outlets including the Spectator.
In this, the first episode of season 11 proper, Neil sits down in Adam’s kitchen for a chat that takes in art, reappraisal, Kubrick, Altman, music, Galaxy Quest, masterpieces and Don Siegel.
Thanks to Adam for his time and to Reaktion Books for sending out a copy to us and facilitating this conversation.
 
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Filmstock Extra - Kieran Evans

Recorded at Luton’s Filmstock Film Festival (co-directed by Neil) in November 2019, this series features long-form conversations with filmmakers recorded specially for the podcast.
Thanks to The School of Film & Television at Falmouth University for sponsoring this strand of Filmstock to enable these conversations to take place.
The series features conversations with directors Jeanie Finlay and Kieran Evans and screenwriter M.R. Carey.
Finally, it’s Neil’s conversation with director Kieran Evans. Clips screened at the talk came from Kieran’s works Be Pure. Be Vigilant. Behave., The Outer Edges, Kelly + Victor and his music video for Edwyn Collins’ I Guess We Were Young.
Filmstock screened Kieran’s film Truth & Memory, prior to the recording of this conversation.
Follow him on Twitter here.
Thanks to Mark Wooldridge for event photos.
You can also listen to The Cinematologists here:
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Our Website: www.cinematologists.com
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Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists

Filmstock Extra - M.R. Carey

Recorded at Luton’s Filmstock Film Festival (co-directed by Neil) in November 2019, this series features long-form conversations with filmmakers recorded specially for the podcast.
Thanks to The School of Film & Television at Falmouth University for sponsoring this strand of Filmstock to enable these conversations to take place.
The series features conversations with directors Jeanie Finlay and Kieran Evans and screenwriter M.R. Carey.
Next up, it’s Neil’s conversation with comics, novel and screenwriter M.R. Carey. The conversation covers his work in on legendary comics such as Lucifer, his YA novel and subsequent screenplay adaptation of The Girl With All The Gifts (screened at the festival) and his writing process in depth.
For more on Mike (M.R.) go here, or follow him on Twitter here.
Thanks to Mark Wooldridge for event photos.
You can also listen to The Cinematologists here:
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Our Website: www.cinematologists.com
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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0RjNz8XDkLdbKZuj9Pktyh
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists

Filmstock Extra - Jeanie Finlay

Recorded at Luton’s Filmstock Film Festival (co-directed by Neil) in November 2019, this series features long-form conversations with filmmakers recorded specially for the podcast.
Thanks to The School of Film & Television at Falmouth University for sponsoring this strand of Filmstock to enable these conversations to take place.
The series features conversations with directors Jeanie Finlay and Kieran Evans and screenwriter M.R. Carey.
First up, it’s Neil’s career-spanning conversation with documentary filmmaker Jeanie Finlay. Clips screened at the talk came from Jeanie’s films Goth Cruise, Orion: The Man Who Would Be King, Game of Thrones: The Last Watch and Seahorse.
Filmstock screened Jeanie’s film Sound It Out, prior to the recording of this conversation.
For more on Jeanie, go here, or follow her on Twitter here.
Thanks to Mark Wooldridge for event photos.
You can also listen to The Cinematologists here:
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-cinematologists-podcast/id981479854?mt=2
Our Website: www.cinematologists.com
PlayerFM: https://player.fm/series/series-2416725
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0RjNz8XDkLdbKZuj9Pktyh
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists