Explore This Month's E-Resources - School of Film and Television: November 2024

Directed by Alex Garland
Written by Alex Garland

Following on from the success of Ex Machina, Alex Garland returns to cerebral sci-fi with his adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s cult novel: a tale of a biologist attempting to uncover the mystery of her husband’s disappearance into a restricted zone.

What she and her fellow scientists discover is a world populated by mysterious life forms that might offer answers, but which exposes them to madness and death.

by Suzanne Ferriss

Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003) brings two Americans together in Tokyo, each experiencing a personal crisis. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a recent graduate in philosophy, faces an uncertain professional future, while Bob Harris (Bill Murray), an established celebrity, questions his choices at midlife. Both are distant — emotionally and spatially — from their spouses. They are lost until they develop an intimate connection. In the film’s poignant, famously ambiguous closing scene, they find each other, only to separate.

In this close look at the multi-award-winning film, Suzanne Ferriss mirrors Lost in Translation’s structuring device of travel: her analysis takes the form of a trip, from planning to departure. She details the complexities of filming (a 27-day shoot with no permits in Tokyo), explores Coppola’s allusions to fine art, subtle colour palette and use of music over words, and examines the characters’ experiences of the Park Hyatt Tokyo and excursions outside, together and alone. She also re-evaluates the film in relation to Coppola’s other features, as the product of an established director with a distinctive cinematic signature: ‘Coppolism’. Fundamentally, Ferriss argues that Lost in Translation is not only a cinema classic, but classic Coppola too.

Directed by Danny Boyle
Written by John Hodge

First there is an opportunity, then there is a betrayal. Twenty years have gone by. Much has changed but just as much remains the same. Mark Renton returns to the only place he can ever call home. They are waiting for him, of course: Spud, Sick Boy, and Frank Begbie. But they are not alone. Other old friends are waiting too: sorrow, loss, joy, vengeance, hatred, friendship, love, longing, fear, regret, diamorphine, self-destruction and mortal danger, they are all lined up to welcome him, ready to join the dance. In the sequel to Trainspotting, Mark Renton returns, to the chaos of life and death.

by Oliver Fuke (ed)

This collection of Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen’s film scripts vividly evokes the close connection between their influential work as theorists and their work as filmmakers. It includes scripts for all six of Mulvey and Wollen’s collaborative films, Wollen’s solo feature film, Friendship’s Death (1987), and Mulvey’s later collaborations. Each text is followed by a new essay by a leading writer, offering a critical interpretation of the corresponding film. The collection also includes Wollen’s short story Friendship’s Death (1976), the outlines for two unrealised Mulvey and Wollen collaborations, and a selection of scanned working documents. The scripts and essays collected in this volume trace the historical significance of a complex cinematic project that brought feminist, semiotic and psychoanalytic concerns together with formal devices and strategies. The book includes original contributions from Nora M. Alter, Kodwo Eshun, Nicolas Helm-Grovas, Esther Leslie, Laura Mulvey, Volker Pantenburg, Griselda Pollock, B. Ruby Rich and Sukhdev Sandhu.

by Stephen Teo

This study of Hong Kong cult director Wong Kar-wai provides an overview of his career and in-depth analysis of his seven feature films to date. Teo probes Wong's cinematic and literary influences - from Martin Scorsese to Haruki Murakami - yet shows how Wong transcends them all.