Berberian Sound Studio

i think this is probably 'my favourite film of recent years' tbh, even having watched it with the subtitles off

mb if i watch it with them on i will feel otherwise

That said, of course, there are still plenty of suggestions that Gilderoy is existing in a certain mental state, of which the studio is only a projected fantasy.

i came away from BSS somewhat confused about what, if anything, we were to take as "really real". the line between gilderoy's living space and the recording studio is very fuzzy, and we're given reason to connect both to the small shack that figures in his memories and the letters he periodically receives from his mother. meanwhile, the mutilated birds (ahem) she mentions having found on the ground clearly echo the women butchered in the film gilderoy watches and works on.

one way to read all this might be to suppose that gilderoy never leaves his garden shed. in it, he murders women, his fractured psyche constructing a safe "reality" in which the things he sees are merely a grisly exploitation film made by someone else. the decision-making parts of his mind become the film's overbearing producer & director. the silent soundmen are his hands, doing the dirty work. the sight and smell of the corpses around him are transformed into a tub of rotting refuse that no one ever takes out (note the weird intensity with which the camera stares into that pulpy abyss). and the soundbooth girls, of course, are his victims, trapped and screaming. the innocent, harmless gilderoy we see onscreen is only responsible for the resulting sounds, and even then only indirectly, in their recording and the treatment that attempts to turn them into something less horrible.

this interpretation would provide a somewhat satisfying (if predictable) "answer" to the film's puzzles, but is hard to definitively support. it's where i suspected things would go for the first hour or so, but rather than resolve itself, the film eventually dissolves into almost pure abstraction. suppose i need to watch it again.

Yeah, that's a fun reading too! It's a good sign that this is watchable through multiple lenses and still viable.

my recent short is playing in front of this when it opens in toronto next week.

http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiffbelllightbox/2013/2330002029

i didnt dig this. i was expecting chills and creepiness and it fell well short of the mark.

I was with this for a while, but then it started to seem more and more like a labored attempt at Polanski or Lynch. Liked hearing "The Lark Ascending" (as incongruous as it was), and the receptionist, wow. Didn't get the ending at all, which I'll put down to inattentiveness rather than stupidity. In fairness, I haven't seen a single Bava or Argento film, though I still felt like I understood the atmospherics. But I'm sure someone well versed in the genre would get more out of this than me.

(xxpost) Me when they started up a short beforehand: "Jesus, I don't want to see a short." Quite liked it, though--something to think about--and then when the credits came up, it was "Hey!"

:D

thanks dude!

is your short available to view anywhere else s1ocks?

right now I only have a trailer online for pubic viewing, it's at https://vimeo.com/49685547

I've been mulling over what I'd choose as my Decelerator Moment today...I think it happened in 1978. I was out with some high school friends doing stuff like in the Smashing Pumpkins video, we were all newly hooked on The White Album, and that's as much as I can reconstruct. It was all downhill after that.

I like that moment

u made a short now make a long

i know!!

(its hard)

some guy from ILX started some site where you can raise money for artistic projects.

o yes i know

excellent blogpost on BSS here.

This was just absolutely terrible. Sorry guys.

Really! You got nothing, huh?

Super tedious, which segued into super nonsensical and aimless. Esp painful since I've been waiting to see it since I first heard about it.

huh. well obviously i had a totally different response; it's one of my faves of the year and the soundtrack may be one of my fave albums of the year. did you see it in a theater?

No, but it wouldn't have made me any less bored. At least at home I was able to keep the lights on so I didn't nod off.even then it was a struggle.

Strike a light!

i really liked katalin varga by this guy a lot, but this film was just terrible. really ropey stuff. and the ending was truly embarassing. worst horror ending ever on par with house of the devil. i dont really care for the readings of what happened, it was rendered really poorly. the whole film before that was teetering on this edge of being some kind of a meta horror then the ending came along and the director suddenly decided that he wanted to make a real horror, but it was so hammily executed (not to mention cliche), that it ruined the whole thing. instead of going for a grand climax, id have preferred if he just kept it at the tone it was already at. this was not a film that needed a big blow out, never mind one that arrived with such little warning - it might as well have been a different film. still stunned it got some 5/5 reviews.

climax? big blow out? I thought the ending was totally ambiguous and subdued and not at all horror.

it was like this sudden burst into hallucinatory, nightmarish vision that the film was building up to the whole time - a constant simmer that was more effective at that level than boiling over. i compare the wtf-ness of the ending with kill list, another recent british film that didnt know what to do for its final act.

i love the ending of kill list, think it knew exactly what it was doing

I thought the end of Kill List was sort of cool/funny without maintaining the sense of dread from earlier in the film. BBS much more of a mood piece, I thought.

i didn't really like the way it went totally bonkers and lynchian but then kidn of went back to the original tone except with Toby dubbed in Italian and then just ended abruptly.

it (or ben wheatley) *might* have known what it was doing, but it just seemed so jarring! like suddenly i was in some weird sort of inspector morse episode about cults. im not saying i dont like films that start one way then go another, but both KL and BBS' endings seemed to belong to different films. tbh i saw BBS ages ago when it first came out so i cant remember it perfectly but yeah, the way it went bonkers then ended up dubbed in italian seemed a bit silly for what was a mood piece. i almost wished it had ended before all that happened cos it kinda broke the spell.

i don't know man, seemed pretty obv that KL was heading in the direction it was going in as soon as the creepy guy made it a blood pact - or when their friend drew that occult symbol in their house - i like the way that the film's early 'realistic' mode acted as decoy for the film's ultimate destination.

You guys are idiots.

how so emil.y? conflicting opinions, neither of them right?

I agree with ward fowler about 'kill list'. but i thought the cuts between language and tone in 'bss' were integral to the idea of shifts in sound, language and their source (the ontology of sound?) creating the horror pervading the engineer's displacement from home in his new job (the uncanny?)

BBS woulda worked if it was, like, 45 minutes long. It took its few ideas and stretched them paper thin.

BSS*

i like the end of kill list, but i love wicker man and don't look now, and if you put them together, that's basically the end of kill list.

After having the night/morning to think about it, I think where the film falls apart is the it never established even the slightest sense of eeriness or dread - which isn't a problem per se, but it felt like that was their intention.

its like a british sitcom about an english sound man in italy without the jokes

best thing about it was all the foley/analogue equipment/technique fetishising

made me want to watch blow up or the conversation

xpost yeah, it just wasn't scary or creepy or quite atmospheric enough. it seems to go some of the way, but i totally empathise with those who felt it could've gone further, even though i think overall it's a great movie.

yeah, this was no good

lies. still easily my favourite film of the past few years, having watched again the other day. possible a favourite film of all time.

i think presuming this is a horror music is a grave mistake

er, movie

when i recently watched the new bfi dvd of Dead of Night i got a real BSS vibe from the credits:

http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/mivana/mediaplayer.php?id=b5e1d5fdeb5e2abe5f7b90c98afabdac&media=deadofnight1972&type=mp4

Put off seeing this a long while, wouldn't have if I'd known it's not really a horror film; also a rather forthright critique of the genre's misogyny. Never really liked Toby Jones before, but this frustrated mama's boy role fits him like a glove.

The first guy in the studio (sound editor?) he's working with is a riot, then the director is even funnier.

(I think giallos are the worst shit in the world in case you've forgotten)

Yeah there's definitely some genre critique in here. It's meant as affectionate, but clearly it works either way.

also had forgotten Broadcast did the music