Tag: performing

The History of Sound

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 23 January 2026
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Director – Oliver Hermanus – 2025 – UK, US – Cert. 15 – 128m

****

A Kentucky man falls for a music professor in Boston and accompanies him on a field trip recording folk songs – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 23rd

In 1917, having grown up on a farmstead in rural Kentucky and his remarkable singing voice being noticed by a local schoolteacher, Lionel Worthing (Paul Mescal from Hamnet, Chloé Zhao, 2025; Gladiator II, Ridley Scott, 2024; All of Us Strangers, Andrew Haigh, 2023) gets a student scholarship to Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music. One Saturday evening in a Boston pub with friends, he makes the acquaintance of David White (Josh O’Connor from La Chimera, Alice Rohrwacher, 2023; Mothering Sunday, Eva Husson, 2021; The Crown, TV series, 2019-20; God’s Own Country, Francis Lee, 2017) who is playing folk songs on the piano and, it turns out, is a tenured academic with an obsessive hobby: travelling around the country collecting, recording and cataloguing folk songs. David has what Lionel describes as the sound equivalent of a photographic memory: he can remember word for word and note for note, any song sung in his presence.… Read the rest

Tags 1910s, 1920s, 1980s, abusive relationship, academic holidays, army, assistant, bereavement, Boston, Briana Middleton, call up, catalog, catalogue, choir, Chris Cooper, church choir, collect, college, community, coughing, countryside, death of mother, Dion Graham, drafted, Emma Canning, England, ethnic, ethnomusicologist, eviction from the land, family farm, farm, field trip, fireman, folk songs, Frist World War, gay relationship, Hadley Robinson, hobby, indigenous, indigenous folk songs, Italy, Josh O’Connor, Kentucky, Lake District, letter, LGBTQ, LGBTQI, mail, Maine, Malaga Island, Michael Schantz, military draft, mixed black and white ethnic, Molly Price, mothers and sons, music, musicologist, negro spiritual, New England Conservatory of Music, obsession, Oliver Hermanus, Oxford University, paper candle, parents and children, Paul Mescal, performing, photographic memory: Silver Dagger, pianist, piano, police, policemen, poor people, porch, post-WW1, promote a book, pub, record, recording, relationships, Rome, rural, rural and urban, scholarship, sex, shell shock, socialite, song, song gathering, spiritual, stately mansion, student, suitcase, sweet-talking, tent, tenured academic, the happiest time of your life, The History of Sound, travelling, truncheon, tuberculosis, TV appearance, UK, US, war, wax cylinders, wax phonograph cylinders, widow, working the fields, World War 1, World War I, World War One, WW1

Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Eno

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 8 July 2024
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Director – Gary Hustwit – 2023 – UK – Cert. 12a – 83m

**** (on this occasion)

Musician, artist and activist Brian Eno has been at the cutting edge of creativity for 50 years, and this generative, AI-programmed film plays in a different version every time it is shown – 24-hour online screening event 5pm GMT on Friday, January 24th 2025, ticket info below review

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Disclaimer: This film is being touted as a film that’s different every time it screens: thus, I need to declare that I saw the version shown to press in London on 03.07.2024 (which was prepared as a file for viewing on 26.04.2024). Things included in that version might or might not be in the one you see. So, in a sense, you have to take this review with a pinch of salt. The version I saw ran 83 minutes. Officially, it’s supposed to be 90, so that exact running length may vary too. Or not. I really don’t know.

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Brian Eno hasn’t made the film himself, yet clearly he’s the perfect subject for it. He talks about “accidentally” getting involved with Roxy Music after being asked by band member Andy Mackay to help them record (as in, do the work required to record them at a recording studio) some pieces and realising that recording and performing with the band would help him pursue his interest in exploring emerging new technologies and their creative possibilities.… Read the rest

Animation Features Movies

Noah’s Ark
(Arca de Noé)

Directors – Alois di Leo, Sergio Machado – 2024 – Brazil, India – Cert. U – 96m

Two musical performing mice attempt to board Noah’s Ark, where a despotic lion and his thuggish entourage attempt to lord it over the other animals in a singing contest –animated feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 23rd

Two mice – Tommy (voice: Marcelo Adnet) who sings and his accompanist pal Vini (voice: Rodrigo Santoro) who plays a four-string guitar – appear to be at the pinnacle of success, but when the lights go down, they are revealed to be playing the empty bar of Mrs Ferret (voice: Rachel Butera), from which they’re unceremoniously ejected.

On the lam, one of them overhears an old man in the desert wilderness remonstrating with a voice in the sky at its wits end – “I tried my best, it says, but what’s a God to do?” – and being instructed as per the Biblical myth to build an ark and fill it with male and female members of each animal species. “How do I tell the animals?”, asks the bewildered Noah (voice: Ian James Corlett), for it is he. “Well,” says God (voice: Luis Bermudez) in a rare moment of wit uncharacteristic of the screenplay overall, “I can get the invitations out.”… Read the rest

Tags 3D animation, accompanist, Alice Braga, Alois di Leo, animal, animation, anthropomorphism, ark, bar, Bible, Biblical, Brazil, bully, Busby Berkeley, CG, CG animation, Christopher Corey Smith, Debra Wilson, desert, despot, dove, entourage, flocks of birds, God, gorilla, hyena, Ian James Corlett, impresario, India, invitations, Keith Silverstein, Lala McCann, leaflet, lion, lioness, lord it over others, Luis Bermudez, Marcelo Adnet, mice, military precision, mixed race couple, music, musical, myth, Noah, Noah’s ark, Orwell, performing, pretender, Rachel Butera, roach, Rodrigo Santoro, scam, self-confidence, Sergio Machado, singer, singing contest, snake, song contest, thug, tone-deaf, Triya Leong, two by two, vegetarian, villain, Vinicius de Moraes, voice in the sky, whale, wilderness, woodpecker

Documentary Features Movies Music

Poly Styrene:
I Am A Cliché

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 2 March 2021
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I Am A Cliché

Punk biopic

Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché
Directed by Celeste Bell and Paul Sng
Certificate 12a, 96 minutes
Released 5 March at www.modernfilms.com
Viewers can select a participating local cinema to share the revenue of the virtual box office

This documentary about the late Poly Styrene (real name Marion Elliot), the iconic front woman of the 1970s punk band X-Ray Spex, paints a compelling picture of a creative and innovative young woman going against the grain to break new ground in pop music. The band was very much her baby which she put together by advertising for musicians in the music press. She wrote all their material.

Her literal baby is the film’s co-director and co-writer Celeste Bell, who as a young child escaped from her well-intentioned but unfit mother during their time living on the Hare Krishna estate in Hertfordshire. On her mum’s death, Celeste found herself the guardian of Poly’s vast archive. It was five years before she could bring herself to look inside and see what was there… Read more

Full review in Reform magazine.

Trailer: