Table of Contents the University of British Columbia’S Film Journal Vol
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CINEPHILE Table of Contents The University of British Columbia’s Film Journal Vol. 6 No. 1 William Friedkin’s The Exorcist and the 4 Proprietary Nature of Sound Spring 2010 Jay Beck ‘Sound on Screen’ Acoustic Infidelities: Sounding the Exchanges between 11 ISSN: 1712-9265 J-Horror and H-Horror Remakes Copyright and Publisher: William Whittington The University of British Columbia Film Program Listening to Silence: The Films of Michael Haneke 19 Editor-in-Chief: Lisa Coulthard Jessica Hughes Layout and Web Editor: Audiovisual Ecology in the Cinema 25 Andrew deWaard Randolph Jordan Public Relations Manager: Joshua Ferguson Lunacy at Termite Terrace: 33 Faculty Advisor: The Slapstick Style of Warner Bros. Animation Ernest Mathijs Andres Lombana Bermudez Program Administrator: Gerald Vanderwoude On the Occult Nature of Sound-Image Synchronization 39 Department Liaison: K. J. Donnelly Jennifer Suratos Art Director and Illustrator: The New Scene Canon 44 Bobby Mathieson Chopping Choppers Unforgettably: Special Thanks: The ‘Nowhere to Go but Down’ Scene in Apocalypse Now Brian McIlroy, Jerry Wasserman Mark Harris Editorial Board: Brenda Cromb, Andrew deWaard, Daniel Guillemette, Dana Keller, Colleen Montgomery, Ross Sheppard, Brent Strang, Jenny van Enckevort Printing: Cinephile would like to thank the following offices and departments East Van Graphics at the University of British Columbia for their generous support: CINEPHILE is published by the Graduate Program in Film Studies at the Department Office of the Vice President Research & International of Theatre and Film, University of British Faculty of Arts Columbia, with the support of the Department of Asian Studies Centre for Cinema Studies Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies centreforcinemastudies.com Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies UBC Film Program: Department of History Department of Theatre and Film Department of Philosophy 6354 Crescent Road Department of Political Science Vancouver, BC, Canada Department of Psychology V6T 1Z2 School of Music Editor’s Note ven with a relatively innocuous theme such as studies on sound synchronization. Moving further behind ‘Sound on Screen,’ by some sick serendipity Cine- the scenes, Jay Beck reveals the complications of owning phile still ended up with bold art and essays about sound with his look at the voice(s) of The Exorcist, and An- Esuicidal families, occult a/synchrony, and ominous sounds dres Lombana Bermudez discusses how the sounds of the eliciting apocalyptic dread. Such is our habit: taking a rela- “slap-of-the-stick” punctuate the comedic aspect of bodily tively straightforward and inoffensive topic and vomiting violence in Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melo- all over it. Nevertheless, our academic aim is sincere in con- dies. In a shift to cultural studies, William Whittington tributing to what is perhaps the most underappreciated and connects East and West in his examination of how horror undeveloped area in film studies. This is not to discount sounds transform in the process of adaptation from Japa- what precious little theory does exist on film sound; our nese to Hollywood cinema. objective is to advance from this base in exciting new direc- The final article in this issue is our inaugural contribu- tions. Hence our enthusiasm to announce these six original tion to ‘The New Scene Canon,’ Cinephile’s ongoing proj- pieces with a loud “blaaaarrrgh!” ect of cataloguing the most influential and iconic scenes Sound design has become a point of interest for film from the last 30 years (see Vol. 5.2, ‘The Scene’). To this scholars and enthusiasts alike, with an increasing amount end, Mark Harris argues why the famous “Ride of the of print and web-based writing being devoted to studies Valkyries” segment from Apocalypse Now is the second-best of Foley and other sound effects, film scores, post-produc- edited sequence in motion picture history. Harris dubs it tion sound, as well as film sound celebrities such as Walter the “Nowhere to Go but Down” scene because this is how Murch and Bernard Herrmann. Of course, changing tech- Coppola reportedly felt at the time, while the scene itself nology continues to be a primary focus of sound studies, as serves as a consummate example of the requisite anguish many viewers forgo high quality Dolby surround in favour that inspires great art. For more information on Cinephile’s of accessibility through laptop, iPod, or YouTube viewing. New Scene Canon, along with embedded video clips of the Cinephile has taken this opportunity to highlight the scenes discussed, visit our website: cinephile.ca way sound has always been a subconscious method of im- mersion into a film: even before the advent of sound-on- s the only graduate film studies print journal in film technology, the cinema, of course, was never silent. Canada, Cinephile focuses on research that contin- Still, we often take for granted the subservient role of sound ues to expand the discipline, discovering original on screen, just as sound takes a back seat to the image in avenuesA for exploration in the dissolution of boundaries film theory. Yet, without sound, we end up feeling uneasy between film and cultural studies, high and low art. We en- about what we are seeing, unsure if the silence is inten- courage articles that satisfy both the academic and alterna- tional, part of the diegesis of the film, or rather a glitch in tive demands of our readership, articles that are intellectual the technology, a malfunctioning speaker, or trouble in the and provocative, intriguing and irreverent. For making this projection room. issue possible, we must graciously acknowledge the sup- With this in mind, Lisa Coulthard’s exploration of port of our advisor, Ernest Mathijs, administrators, Ger- how silence is used in the films of Michael Haneke un- ald Vanderwoude and Jennifer Suratos, art director, Bobby derscores how much we rely on sound as part of the view- Mathieson, layout editor, Andrew deWaard, our editorial ing experience. Two more theoretical approaches to sound board, and the Department of Theatre and Film at UBC. follow, with Randolph Jordan’s ecological interpretation of cinematic sound and K.J. Donnelly’s latest contribution to -Jessica Hughes 2 CINEPHILE Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2010 Contributors Jay Beck is an Assistant Professor in the College of Com- Mark Harris received first his Master’s degree in Film Stud- munication at DePaul University. He has recently co-edited ies, and then his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, from the two book collections—Lowering the Boom: Critical Studies University of British Columbia (the dissertation for his fi- in Film Sound (with Tony Grajeda) and Contemporary Span- nal degree earning him the Governor General’s Gold Medal ish Cinema and Genre (with Vicente Rodríguez Ortega)— in the process). He is the author of the long introductory and his chapter “The Evolution of Sound in Cinema” is essay to Wild At Heart: The Films of Nettie Wild as well as forthcoming in The Routledge Companion to Film History. the prize-winning one act play, “Endserious.” To date, he has published approximately 4,000 articles in more than Andres Lombana Bermudez researches, teaches, and 50 periodicals, including Film Comment, Wired, Canadian practices media. He is especially interested in cinematic Literature, and—especially—The Georgia Straight. He has language and the history of sound technologies and prac- taught Film Studies at UBC for more than a decade, and tices. Andres obtained a Master of Science in Comparative has no intentions of retiring any time soon. Media Studies at MIT and is currently a Ph.D. student in the Radio-Television-Film department at UT-Austin. Randolph Jordan holds an M.A. in Film Studies from Concordia University where he is currently completing his Lisa Coulthard is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the dissertation in the interdisciplinary Ph.D. Humanities pro- University of British Columbia. Her research interests in- gram. His research explores the intersections between film clude film sound, violence, contemporary American and studies, electroacoustic music and acoustic ecology. His European cinemas and theory. She has over a dozen articles writing has been published in several anthologies includ- published or forthcoming in major journals and edited col- ing Music, Sound, and Multimedia (Edinburgh University lections on topics that range from visual arts to contempo- Press, 2007) and has most recently appeared in the film rary cinema. She is currently completing a book on sound sound journal Music, Sound, and the Moving Image. He is and music in the films of Quentin Tarantino, titled The also a musician, sound artist, and filmmaker. Super Sounds of Quentin Tarantino. William Whittington is the Assistant Chair of Critical K.J. Donnelly is reader in film at the University of South- Studies in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of ampton. He is the editor of the ‘Music and the Moving Southern California, where he teaches courses in film and Image’ book series for Edinburgh University Press and his television history, genre studies, audio and digital culture, publications include British Film Music and Film Musicals film and Buddhism, adaptation, and gender and sexual- (Palgrave, 2007), The Spectre of Sound: Film and Television ity in media. He is the author of Sound Design and Science Music (2005), Pop Music in British Cinema: A Chronicle Fiction (University of Texas Press, 2007), and his scholarly (2001) and edited collection Film Music: Critical Approach- work includes articles and interviews on genre, audio and es (2001). This writing represents some early thought in the digital culture, animation and new technology. He is cur- preliminary developments of a book that is contracted by rently writing a new book entitled, Sound Design and Hor- Oxford University Press called Occult Aesthetics: Synchroni- ror (forthcoming from University of Texas Press).