1257438361 http://com.miami.edu/site/index.php/site/index/ en webmastercom@miami.edu Copyright 2009 2009-11-05T15:24:00-04:00 http://com.miami.edu/news/index.php/site/entry/not_just_a_title_sequence_shadow_of_a_doubt_and_the_waltz_of_american_life/ http://com.miami.edu/news/index.php/site/not_just_a_title_sequence_shadow_of_a_doubt_and_the_waltz_of_american_life/#When:10:36:00Z While reading William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade, I developed the prejudice that the title sequence of a film merits scant discussion, because the “meat” is elsewhere.  With a director as thorough as Alfred Hitchcock, however, the “meat” is everywhere, and even the title sequence plays an integral role in the film’s thematic structure, revealing much beyond the identity of those who worked on the film. Consider the title sequence from Shadow of a Doubt (1943), which features conventional title cards superimposed over a low-angle shot of couples clad in Victorian formal wear dancing around a ballroom to the tune of Franz Lehár’s “The Merry Widow Waltz” from his 1905 operetta The Merry Widow.What does this shot signify? In-short Film Journal 2008-12-09T10:36:00-04:00 http://com.miami.edu/news/index.php/site/entry/the_art_of_reduction_notes_on_the_dramaturgy_of_the_short_fiction_film_by_m/ http://com.miami.edu/news/index.php/site/the_art_of_reduction_notes_on_the_dramaturgy_of_the_short_fiction_film_by_m/#When:19:14:00Z Short films are often reduced to beginners’ first exercises or to quick and superficial amusements, and shortness is usually seen as a handicap and not an opportunity. “The Art of Reduction” looks at short films from the opposite angle and asks what they are capable of not despite of but because of the limitation in time. A close analysis of four examples shows a number of narrative patterns and effects working especially well in the short format. Among them are the establishment of paradox situations, a fragmentary slice-of-life-structure, the sudden shift from literal to allegorical meaning, the play with narrative conventions, a laconic or allusive style and the open or ambiguous ending. In-short Film Journal 2008-05-28T19:14:00-04:00 http://com.miami.edu/news/index.php/site/entry/boy_meets_girl_architectonics_of_a_hitchcockian_shot_by_murray_pomerance/ http://com.miami.edu/news/index.php/site/boy_meets_girl_architectonics_of_a_hitchcockian_shot_by_murray_pomerance/#When:20:42:00Z So captivating are Alfred Hitchcock’s narratives, much scholarship has neglected to study him at the microstructural level. A close examination of Notorious, however, shows how the construction and contexting of a single shot produces an intensive and powerful turning of the story as a whole. Attention is paid here not only to editing, camera position, and framing, but also to the smallest expressive gesture made by a performer: in Hitchcock, smallness is often central to the unfolding of the tale. In-short Film Journal 2008-05-27T20:42:00-04:00 http://com.miami.edu/news/index.php/site/entry/video_art_off_the_grid_tacita_dean_and_atemporality_by_christian_gay/ http://com.miami.edu/news/index.php/site/video_art_off_the_grid_tacita_dean_and_atemporality_by_christian_gay/#When:20:07:00Z This paper executes an in-depth analysis of the exhibited works of filmmaker Tacita Dean. This analysis is informed by a discussion with the artist herself that occurred on January 20th, 2007 at her Miami Art Central exhibition in Miami, Florida. The discussed works include A Bag of Air (1995), Disappearance at Sea (1996), Bubble House (1999), Sound Mirrors (1999), Teignmouth Electron (2000), The Green Ray (2001), Fernsehturm (Backwards into the Future) (2001), Pie (2003), Palast (2004), and Kodak (2006). The author argues Dean’s installations are striking in their sense of loneliness; a haunting loneliness that is nostalgic while remaining unfixed in time. In-short Film Journal 2008-05-22T20:07:00-04:00 http://com.miami.edu/news/index.php/site/entry/tomorrow_never_comes_reading_wong_kar_wais_cinematic_desire_in_the_six_days/ http://com.miami.edu/news/index.php/site/tomorrow_never_comes_reading_wong_kar_wais_cinematic_desire_in_the_six_days/#When:19:58:01Z This paper analyzes Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai’s contribution to the world of music imagery in the form of his music video for DJ Shadow’s song “Six Days”. Undermining the typical presence of the music artist within the space of the music video, Wong transplants his cinematic themes and conventions into the music video genre. This article will argue that an analysis of “Six Days” requires a broader framework that looks beyond the narrative of the music video and into the world of cinema. In-short Film Journal 2008-05-20T19:58:01-04:00 http://com.miami.edu/news/index.php/site/entry/dear_deleuze_youtube_virginia_tech_and_the_reterritorialization_of_media_vi/ http://com.miami.edu/news/index.php/site/dear_deleuze_youtube_virginia_tech_and_the_reterritorialization_of_media_vi/#When:19:07:01Z The Saturday Night Live video short known as “Dear Sister” has inspired an enormous number of YouTube variations, each of which enacts an obscure but suggestive commentary on the nature of fictional and nonfictional violence as it is represented in the media.A Deleuzian model of repetition as creative resynthesis provides a framework for understanding how these videos manage to engage and reterritorialize the culture of media violence. In-short Film Journal 2008-05-20T19:07:01-04:00