In his discussion of the work of Hal Ashby ['When is the Now in the Here and There?'], Aaron Hunter contributes to the emerging body of scholarship on the technique of “trans-diegesis”. Taking Ashby’s Coming Home (1978) as a case study, Hunter shows how Ashby’s use of trans-diegetic music—music that crosses narrative layers—forms part of a consistently playful approach to cinematic form and functions on several levels: as a tool that allows for a merger between moments in time, as a device to create a transition between incongruent events within the diegesis, or as mechanism to create a temporal confluence between apparently sequential events. [Alphaville, 3, 2012 Editorial by Danijela Kulezic-Wilson, Christopher Morris and Jessica Shine]
Once again,
Film Studies For Free salutes the online journal
Alphaville. Its latest issue, just out, treats the important topic of sound, voice and music in film and television and boasts some excellent contributions.
FSFF enjoyed them all, but particularly liked Michael Dwyer's
The Same Old Songs in Reagan-Era Teen Film and Michael Charlton's
Performing Gender in the Studio and Postmodern Musical, along with the discussion of Hal Ashby's film by Aaron Hunter. There are also some great book reviews and rewarding conference reports, too, perhaps most notably James MacDowell's detailed discussion of
The End Of…? An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Study of Motion Pictures.All the contents are linked to below.
Alphaville, Issue 3, Summer 2012 Sound, Voice, Music Edited by Danijela Kulezic-Wilson, Christopher Morris and Jessica Shine
Editorial by Danijela Kulezic-Wilson, Christopher Morris and Jessica Shine
Book Reviews Edited by Jill Murphy
- Media and Memory, by Joanne Garde-Hansen (2011) Reviewer: Elena Caoduro, University of Southampton
- Film Festivals: Culture, People, and Power on the Global Screen, by Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong (2011) Reviewer: Fiona Lee, City University of New York – The Graduate Center
- Music Video and the Politics of Representation, by Diane Railton and Paul Watson (2011) Reviewer: Antonio Sanna, Università degli Studi di Cagliari (Italy)
- Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media: An Overview, by Graeme Harper, Ruth Doughty and Jochen Eisentraut (eds.) (2009) Reviewer: Penny Spirou, Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia)
- Seeing Through Music: Gender and Modernism in Classic Hollywood Film Scores, by Peter Franklin (2011) Reviewer: K. A. Wisniewski, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (USA)
- Siren City: Sound and Source Music in Classic American Noir, by Robert Miklitsch (2011) Reviewer: James A. Wren, San José State University
Reports Edited by Ian Murphy
- Dysfunctionalities. Annual Conference of the German Society for Media Science (GfM) Postdam, Germany, 5-8 October 2011 Reporter: Patricia Prieto Blanco, Huston School of Film and Digital Media, National University of Ireland, Galway
- The Impact of Technological Innovations on the Historiography and Theory of Cinema Montreal, Canada, 1-6 November 2011 Reporter: Daniel Fitzpatrick, DAH, National University of Ireland, Galway
- The End Of…? An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Study of Motion Pictures University of Kent, Canterbury, 21-22 January 2012 Reporter: James MacDowell, University of Warwick
