Berberian Sound Studio

thanks for the repost, emil.y

(and yes, fuck knows how toby young crept into my mind, a most unwelcome slip, recitified now).

the other film this reminded me strongly of, partly because of the main character and partly because of structure of the film (an unspooling into recursive insanity), is Dead of Night.

i don't think i got this

film of the year. and yeah, i reckon it qualifies as horror.

failed comedy

i don't think you got this.

it was going for comedy in the first half though right? help me through his people

or through this

i didn't think it was comedy as such. cleaely not a film without humour tho. I guess it treats the awkward engaging between v different cultures fairly lightly at first ("Cor, strike a light") - everyone's fairly genial (tho the film is clearly v dark underneath, and gilderoy is v isolated, absurd even). But that engagement clearly becomes something more than awkward that goes some way beyond comedy, if it was ever that.

I don't know, as I say, although amusing, it never really felt like a comedy.

You really didn't get it, NN. Sorry.

ok, so the first half really isn't going for scares though. It's basically misunderstandings with wacky Italians. Then it starts getting a little weirder but it never really builds up any sense of dread. I wanted to love this, i really did. I was prepared for something that uses sound in a properly creepy way (which is a rarity these days) but it just didn't work for me. One of my favourite films ever is the original version of The Haunting (which i think may have been nodded to with the knocking on the door scene) but it didn't even come close to that with its use of sound to evoke fear

i saw this yesterday and really liked it, tho' i don't know whether i've processed it yet.

gilderoy = allusion to gilles de rais?

Ooh, possibly. I was wondering what significance that name had, as it doesn't seem the most obvious choice for a hermit-like quaint olde Englishman.

I haven't seen this movie yet, but couldn't it be this Gilderoy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AlQ0vjCF9g

Ah. Yeah, probably. Would be highly surprised if a hauntologist film is failing to reference archaic British folk.

http://digital.nls.uk/dcn3/7440/74408571.3.jpg

ha, i thought that was too obvious and there was another gilderoy i didn't know about
surprise! i'm on top of this mystery :)

poor gilderoy

Somehow felt this was too long (probably 70 mins instead of 90). I agree that it was much more subtle than the character simply going crazy, how the film subtly played on his mind. But again because the mind was being played with no sort of end game, this was always going to flag if not edited appropriately, and it wasn't. Like how the claustrophobia of the set-up (pretty much a studio and corridor) was offset with a few touches of humour that made their mark whenever they appeared.

Reminded me a bit of Boogie Nights, of all things. As in, people making this thrash (or a work viewed as thrash) thought it themselves to be art that revealed a truth to be told, and loudly (in BN the makers want recognition for showing something no one else wants to see). But the bullshit meter is always on; Gilderoy doesn't get paid.

aw, you lousy bum, xyzzzz__, this was AMAZING and you are provably WRONG (in all probability) and we'll have to have it out at the next ILB FAP where i shall in all probability wag my finger and refer to Toby Jones as Toby Young.

lol, I saw Toby young on Newsnight eralier this week and thought of your post.

FAP soon, once I'm allowed out on parole.

Loved it. Got totally lost in the English encounter with the catholic, sacrificial-sacramental transformations + repetition. Want to see it again, get my head round it some more.

A1 review Fizzles.

The credit sequence was amazing

Is a soundtrack coming out? I can't seem to find anything about it, but you'd think.

OST and DVD out in December I read somewhere.

would have been great if this ended with about ten minutes of the rural england film, when they burned thru to that.

so i suppose this film is about the small incremental degredations that turn a quiet humane man to doing cruel & ugly things for a job. not sure if it's a masterstroke or a cheat to hint (it seemed to me) at darkness rather than establishing his humanity clearly.

NPR is streaming the Broadcast soundtrack. Looks like it is released officially in a week's time.

And here's a selection of promo posters that didn't get to the manufacturing stage; many awesome designs. No word on a release date apart in the States apart from "early 2013" which is maddening, I want to see this film immediately.

there are dvdrips of it out there now if you can't wait

Yeah, might take the plunge with this one, as I've never done torrenting before. But I'll watch it in theatres for sure when it reaches our shores.

felt this was bit of a let-down, ultimately. like, i didn't really buy the basic set-up - why would italian genre filmmakers need to hire a englishman who had never worked on a horror film before? isn't their whole post-production process rather lavish for an exploitation picture? - so the film could, for me, only work as an exercise in atmosphere, design (sound or otherwise), hints and whispers - and on those terms it simply wasn't gripping enough, or surprising enough, or even strange enough (tho' the moment when gilderoy began speaking in dubbed italian was a great coup). obviously not meritless, but for me rather it was all rather 'easy' - a collection of signifiers designed to please and flatter the genre-savvy, without doing any of the very precise character and narrative work that would make it more satisfying as a story.

saw this the other day and wasn't totally convinced. were the pressures applied to gilderoy really enough to send him over the edge? i dunno, i could have used a bit more explicit trauma there, but i'm mean like that. i did like the two voice artists though, and the bored secretary. also funny to see the bohman brothers popping up in the box hill documentary as a couple of walkers

The soundtrack is amazing.

amazingly bad review in the wire

abt how banal "some hauntology" is, like okay we're using that just as a genre descriptor now are we? yes of course it was by mark fisher

sounds like a really good imitation of italian horror soundtracks to me

Hauntology has been used as a genre descriptor for years. Surprised that MF would give this a bad review, though.

Finally, looks like this will be making the rounds in the US, or at least in my neck of the woods (SF Bay Area) come mid-February. I'm really trying not to spoil too much about this film for myself, as the keywords I know thus far being cheeky homage, Broadcast, sound design, and giallo are my equivalent to sugar-frosted crack, so I'm kinda relieved at the hype deflaters keeping me level headed, so I may traipse into the theatre with semi-low expectations and possibly emerge a happy man.

i don't think i got this

― Number None

felt this was bit of a let-down ... a collection of signifiers designed to please and flatter the genre-savvy, without doing any of the very precise character and narrative work that would make it more satisfying as a story.

― Ward Fowler

i am not entirely convinced it's not me though, wonder if a second watching or someone explaining what was happening in the last third would help my appreciation of the film

loved the photography and set design but it eventually got quite repetitive - how many times do we need to see meters and dials?

I'm with you. All feel, little substance.

and i am a big fan of everything mentioned on thread: broadcast, giallo, lynch, boogie nights, etc

Hauntology has been used as a genre descriptor for years. Surprised that MF would give this a bad review, though.

― emil.y, Tuesday, 15 January 2013 11:32 (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really? i mean i've seen the term bandied about for, right, the better part of a decade, it feels like, but this is the first time i'd seen it used in a sentence where syntactically you could have slotted in 'post-punk' or something

also i really want to see this movie. i don't know if i want to hear the record, or at least not until i've seen this movie.

Would've thought a 30 min blast of a sdtrack be better than this.

Like Dancer in the Dark, great soundscapes blah in an otherwise bad film.

This was amazing! Although I found the end a bit sudden/unfulfilling on first viewing. I can't wait to see it again.

would have been great if this ended with about ten minutes of the rural england film, when they burned thru to that.

Yes, my only prob with this is that it peaked about 30 mins too early and then just kind of continued doing what it had always done. Toby was excellently cast, I thought. It just didn't quite resolve itself in a satisfactory way.

I watched it over the weekend and really enjoyed it, but felt a bit unfulfilled too. Like some people upthread I feel that I maybe on some level just didn't ~get it~, which I'm always happy to attribute to my own stupidity rather than any fault in the film.

Anyone want to advance their theory as to what happened?

why do i write "advance" when i simply mean "share"

i'm really going to have to watch it again soon to come up with a theory. were there parallels between the horror film and the actual film?

you mean plotwise? not that i can remember

his deep immersion in an intense and alien aesthetic experience - with its comparatively violent cultural logic - dislocated him from his own sense of place and identity - and he became hauntology.

^^ SPOILERS

yeah, plotwise.

it took me a while to realise he actually resided in the studio. when toby walks out of his room and starts walking on the twigs, i thought he'd either left the house and was walking outside or he was dreaming, which i guess is the intention maybe?

I'm pretty sure that scene was meant to resemble a giallo scene, like the genre/aesthetic he was working on daily and his life were beginning to blend into each other

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

man I LOVED this

I really dug this. Those wacky eye-talians, amirite?

I'm not a huge giallo fan but I've seen and enjoyed enough of them to lol at lines about aroused goblins

I enjoyed the movie immensely up until the big transition 15 minutes before the end. I'm quite skeptical about how this movie is alternately classified as a horror movie or a thriller. Though broad, both of those labels presuppose certain elements that are completely missing from this experimental film. Still, it was a fairly good movie and I am so happy to see Toby Jones in a starring role. Though he has starred before, this is the kind of "actor's actor" that is all too often relegated to outer reaches of the supporting cast.

just went to see the duke of burgundy. v enjoyable. long-game fetishism and lepidoptera. a small figure of eight of sexual domination.

sound again central. the list of recordings listed at the end as if not more important than the visual scenery. pleasing joke in the credits - the informal English names of the moths and butterflies played by their Latin classification.

WHY NOT START A THREAD FOR IT?

v nearly did - or a P Strickland thread - and still might, but the film itself feels a little lightweight. not all in a bad way - wish there were more films that were intriguing bagatelles - but I'm still thinking.

actually that's not true, I'm sitting in the cinema bar drinking, but that's what passes for thinking round my way recently.

A Strickland thread would be better.

Title keeps making me think of the Mr. Show Burgundy Loaf skit

no men in this film btw. relying on Morbs or someone equally well informed to mention other general release films where this is the case.

That's a really good question, and a unique aspect I'm not sure I've encountered reading about this film yet.

the film is superbly punctuated by lectures on lepidoptera, with slow scans of the all women audience - they're all fantastically dressed and individually beautiful - in the way that is sometimes demeaningly termed "striking". the only exception being a slightly toppling badly wigged mannequin.

this film is as much about dress and dressing up as it is about anything else. the visual and aural aspects of the fabric are v sensually indulged in.

very high among 2015's anticipatings

will port all this over to a new thread when I get 'ome.

Saw the trailer when I went to see Goodbye to Language (another film of tiny bits of very beautifully done sound) (as almost all Godard) and I quite like to see this as well.

Thanks for reminding me that I missed my chance to see "Goodbye to Language" in Chicago, apparently. How does Herzog get a 3D documentary about a cave into theatres, and Wenders gets a 3D doc about a dance into theaters, but Godard's lauded latest barely sneaks in for a couple of weeks? And alas because this is meant for 3D, I have a sad feeling that means I will never get to see it.

I was quite taken with Duke of Burgundy.

The psych/soft folk soundtrack by Cat's Eye sounded good as well.

i missed this at ifc, sadface
josh, tbf, both herzog and wenders' films are narrative and about subjects people can easily grasp and are in focus

Hope I manage to see this next week.

I seen it. Very lovely and cosy, I wish I lived there. It is a lot like Morgiana minus the crime and identical twin stuff. At the beginning I thought the plot was going to be totally unimportant but it gradually becomes more interesting.
I think it's too long but I liked it a lot.