Skip to main content

Home/ Groups/ Magma Mag
14More

Lars von Trier's 'Melancholia' - Review - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • “Melancholia,” an excursion from the sad to the sublime by way of the preposterous
  • an emotional disorder described by Freud as “a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment.”
  • The expectation of punishment is, of course, one reason people go to a Lars von Trier movie in the first place.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Suffering — predominantly, though not exclusively, the suffering of women — is both his favorite subject and his preferred method. He is a crafty sadist, but also, for all his tricks and provocations, a sincere one.
  • Total obliteration happens on an intimate scale, and the all-encompassing, metaphysical nature of the drama leaves room for gentleness as well as operatic cruelty
  • The machinery of mass panic and media frenzy that juices up most films on this subject is notably absent. Instead, difficult emotions are registered in close-ups of individual human faces, and a perverse, persuasive idea rises to the surface. The end of the world as we know it might just turn out to be beautiful.
  • Compared with the humorless, grimly responsible Claire, Justine is impulsive, self-indulgent and charming: the flighty grasshopper to her sister’s responsible, dutiful ant.
  • In the second half of the movie Justine’s fatalism will prove a more viable (or at least a more graceful) response to the prospect of global annihilation than Claire’s anxious practicality
  • the imminence of an all-obliterating big bang is a piece of information the audience possesses in advance of the characters on screen, an open secret that makes their earnest, trivial doings all the more dreadful and absurd.
  • Robert Altman, Noah Baumbach and Jonathan Demme might come to mind during the first hour of “Melancholia,” to say nothing of the houses of Windsor and Kardashian.
  • English is the language, and dollars are the currency, but this is less a specific America (a place Mr. von Trier has never visited and the theoretical location of most of his recent films) than an abstract space of moneyed entitlement.
  • Unlike other von Trier victim-heroines — including those played by Emily Watson in “Breaking the Waves”; Nicole Kidman in “Dogville”; and Bjork in “Dancer in the Dark” — Justine is not assailed and humiliated by other people. The element of male aggression that was such a powerful force in those films, and an integral aspect of Mr. von Trier’s creative personality, has been neutralized here. The men who hover around the wedding, including the clueless Michael and the officious John, are not menacing, just useless.
  • All of which, of course, amounts to nothing, since everything and everyone will be ashes soon enough. That is Justine’s state of mind, and Ms. Dunst is remarkably effective at conveying both the acute anguish and the paralyzing hollowness of depression. To the extent that the destructive potential of Melancholia is a metaphor for her private melancholia, it is perfectly apt. One of the chief torments of serious depression is how disproportionate and all-consuming the internal, personal sorrow can feel.
  • There is a grim vindication — and also an obvious, effective existential joke — in Justine’s discovery that her hyperbolic despair may turn out to be rooted in an accurate and objective assessment of the state of the universe. Mr. von Trier, inspired (if that’s the word) to make this movie by his own experience of depression, gleefully turns a psychological drama inside out. The world, Justine declares in her darkest moment of clarity, deserves its awful fate. The perverse achievement of “Melancholia” is how difficult it is to argue with her conclusion.
5More

Melancholia | Movie Reviews | Rolling Stone - 0 views

  • Melancholia, a potent beauty of a film
  • Von Trier opens with a surreal hint of things to come, set to Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde,"
  • The luminous Dunst deservedly won the Best Actress prize at Cannes. Her incomparable performance, a slow accumulation of moods from despair to euphoria, never strikes a false note.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Gainsbourg shatters Claire's careful mask of calm to show the raging insecurities beneath, prompted by concern for her young son and her husband's pompous insistence that disaster will be averted.
  • Von Trier draws us inexorably into the web of these characters. He loses us in a dream of his own devising.
4More

Review: Melancholia - Film - Time Out New York - 0 views

  • Melancholia marks the major return of the artist’s vitality,
  • the movie starts off with nothing less than the end of the world: two planets colliding in Kubrickian grandeur to the strains of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde
  • if Von Trier has gotten there, it is largely due to the vivid yet mysterious presence of Kirsten Dunst
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • As Melancholia’s Justine, though, she does an impressive swan dive
6More

Cannes 2011 review: Melancholia | Film | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

  • Presumably filmed in Denmark, and set in a weirdly stateless, featureless location – a sort of Scando-amerika
  • The montage of images at the beginning is interesting, as are some of the lush, hyper-real tableaux, like the dream sequences from Antichrist
  • the wedding reception scene is nowhere near as good as Thomas Vinterberg's Festen (the obvious model): it is tedious and exasperatingly redundant
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • As for the approaching interplanetary disaster, this does not appear to affect the tides or the weather – there is just this big CGI planet hovering above – and it does not occur to anyone to turn on the TV and find out what's going on. Justine and Claire just carry on with the translated dialogue and the sedated acting, greeting Melancholia with glassy-eyed anxiety and mumbling resentment. Claire's husband, incidentally, is finally found face down in the stables: perhaps he has topped himself or just expired with boredom.
  • Von Trier has written and directed an entire film in his trademark smirk mode: a giggling aria of pretend pain and faux rapture. The script is clunking, and poor Dunst joins Nicole Kidman and Bryce Dallas Howard in the list of Hollywood females who have sleepwalked trustingly through a Von Trier production
  • Perhaps this movie is another symptom of the director's much-discussed depression, or a kind of therapy that involves transferring his depression to the audience.
10More

Melancholia Review | Movie Reviews and News | EW.com - 0 views

  • Kirsten Dunst, who deservedly took home a 2011 award at the Cannes Film Festival for her magnificent work
  • Kirsten Dunst, who deservedly took home a 2011 award at the Cannes Film Festival for her magnificent work
  • Kirsten Dunst, who deservedly took home a 2011 award at the Cannes Film Festival for her magnificent work
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Kirsten Dunst, who deservedly took home a 2011 award at the Cannes Film Festival for her magnificent work
  • Kirsten Dunst, who deservedly took home a 2011 award at the Cannes Film Festival for her magnificent work
  • Claire (a soulful Charlotte Gainsbourg)
  • Melancholia is also the name of a planet that is hurtling on a catastrophic collision course with Earth on the very same day — a cosmic manifestation of that same crushing sadness
  • he sets aside all trickster impulses of provocation to create striking visual tableaux that, in their majestic simplicity, convey a profound emotional depth that transcends words
  • known to have survived a black depression himself.
  • The filmmaker blends the grand romanticism of Wagnerian music — specifically the famous prelude from Tristan und Isolde — with swooning dreamscape cinematography that magically melts sight and sound into one. (Von Trier has said that Antonioni, Bergman, and Tarkovsky are among his influences.
1More

Eugene O'Neill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  •  
    Desire Under the Elms
5More

Bem-vindo ao Teatro Nacional São João - 0 views

  • peça que escrevera em 1924
  • drama familiar inscrito no cenário oitocentista da Nova Inglaterra, marcado tanto pelo puritanismo religioso como pela desenfreada corrida ao ouro da Califórnia.
  • Raízes que se entranham na tragédia grega – os temas do incesto, do infanticídio e do conflito que opõe pai e filho parecem extraídos das peças de Eurípides e Sófocles – e nas Sagradas Escrituras
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • primeiro dramaturgo norte-americano a receber o Prémio Nobel
  •  
    ,
8More

BBC - Music - Review of Twin Shadow - Forget - 0 views

  • George Lewis – AKA Twin Shadow – makes synth-led bedroom music that sounds at once thoroughly new wave and thoroughly fresh.
  • on first impression this is so slick it’s easy to ignore the layers of details
  • Tyrant Destroyed sets the scene – it’s a loving reconstruction of 80s synth-pop, by a solo artist alone in his room; the music low in the mix, as he lays down a sleepy sounding vocal.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • When We’re Dancing is the most stylised, almost camp, piece of electro-chamber-pop, harking back to The Associates or Ultravox.
  • the album’s most exuberant, danceable moment, I Can’t Wait – borne on a melodic bassline that would have The Cure or The Police wondering if they mislaid it, ripples of Moroder-style synths, and a soaring vocal that shows Lewis isn’t afraid to sing like he’s been trained.
  • Castles in the Snow verges on comedy goth, with its deliberately cheap-sounding organ. But its processed, desolate moans and the cute-but-twisted sentiments – "you’re my favourite nightmare" – somehow add up to it being one of the best things here
  • weirdly quacking keys and chinking guitars beneath the prominent synth-string vamps on (say) Shooting Holes at the Moon that make it seem so 80s, or the fluting ‘naïve melody’ of Slow that recalls Talking Heads
  • a magnificently accomplished debut.
6More

Pitchfork: Album Reviews: Twin Shadow: Forget - 0 views

  • George Lewis, Jr.'s self-described bizarre and lonely childhood forms the backdrop for his work as Twin Shadow, and he uses the sounds of the past as a foundation. But while the 26-year-old Brooklynite's music is steeped in 1980s new wave-- he sometimes takes on Morrissey's vocal tone and phrasing, and threads of British bands like Echo and the Bunnymen and Depeche Mode run through his songs-- Lewis does well by this much-revisited era
  • he mostly sticks with a small collection of synth sounds-- strings, organ, piano, and brass-- along with electric guitar and drum machine.
  • Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor handling production,
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Lewis' execution is immaculate, and he manages to make these familiar sounds into something that sounds refreshing and even dazzling.
  • Taken whole, Forget feels undeniably of the moment, fitting in nicely with the craftsmanship of 80s pop revivalists like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Lewis' labelmate Class Actress, and, to some degree, the xx.
  • Instead of merely evoking an established style, Lewis' songs feel honest and straightforward, so the new wave glances are a vehicle for the songwriting rather than the whole point.
2More

campainha electrica: TWIN SHADOW, Teatro Mun. Vila do Conde, 26 de Maio de 2011 - 0 views

  • senhor George Lewis Jr., envergando um chapéu tipo porteiro de hotel (ou à Spirou, como perpicazmente alguém notou)
  • A voz nem sempre esteve no ponto e o mesmo se poderá dizer de alguns arranjos de guitarra, demasiado deslocadas em relação aos originais, a roçar, por vezes, um som a la Simple Minds dos (maus) velhos tempos. 
2More

Twin Shadow @ Lux, Lisboa | Ponto Alternativo - 0 views

  • Se o álbum tem músicas com melodias introspectivas, em concerto elas ganham uma nova vida tornando-se muito mais electrónicas, distorcidas e muito fortes, não dando espaço para a menor melancolia.
  • presentearam-nos com uma música nova
2More

Twin Shadow. Live at The Deaf Institute. Manchester. 26/01/2011 « CITYLIFERS ... - 0 views

  • speeding things up a notch or two, and giving the songs a slightly rockier edge. As a result some of the layers and intricacies that are present on the album are lost, but it’s a testament to the strength of the songs and the enthusiasm with which they are delivered that they are still just as poignant and enjoyable. 
  • The one notable exception is early single ‘Slow,’ which is one of the highlights on record. The speeded up live version whizzes by fairly ineffectively, and the vocal seems lacklustre and hollow, but this remains a small gripe in an otherwise excellent set. 
3More

Twin Shadow - Crawdaddy, Dublin - Live Review | State Magazine - 0 views

  • The guitar is the weapon of choice here, taking a place it doesn’t have on the record (the guitar solo on ‘Forget’ is rocked out for all its worth), while live drums lend the songs a fuller feel.
  • these are early days for Twin Shadow – the band formed last year
  • the spunky attitude he displays onstage
3More

Live Review: Twin Shadow / Live Music Reviews / Music News from THE-FLY.CO.UK - The UK'... - 0 views

  • one of the most impressive live acts around.
  • Twin Shadow turn everything up when they play live, the tempo is faster, the choruses more urgent and the feeling that the band want their audience to have a good time is palpable.
  • one of 2010’s best new bands
2More

Max Rouquette - Medelha - 0 views

  • cet homme se lasse de cette femme et de leur vagabondage sans fin. Il veut s'établir
  • La pièce est construite sur cette opposition constante sédentarité-nomadisme
3More

Des «Corbeaux» de bon augure - Libération - 0 views

  • Il y a quatre ans, Josef Nadj, artiste associé au Festival, avait offert, en compagnie du plasticien Miquel Barceló, un duo mémorable baptisé Paso Doble, une heure d’art et de travail dans la glaise. Quatre ans plus tard, c’est aussi en duo qu’il revient à Avignon, partageant la scène de la salle Benoît-XII avec son vieux complice, le musicien Akosh Szelevényi, avec qui il a créé un festival de jazz.
  • les Corbeaux lorgnent vers le ciel et l’apesanteur, ne laissant comme traces au bout des doigts que les taches d’encre coulant de la plume de roseau. Les roseaux, Nadj les choisit lui-même, dans les marécages autour de son village de Kanjiza, en Voïvodine (Serbie), près de la frontière hongroise
  • Avant de danser, Nadj a peint et dessiné, et n’a jamais cessé. Adepte de la plume et de l’encre de Chine, il a toujours identifié chorégraphie et calligraphie.
1 - 20 of 115 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page