Phlogiston

The Daily Telegraph’s latest installment of their Film-makers on Film series features Joss Whedon, and in what may seem an initially unlikely candidate for discussion he chooses to discuss Brigadoon. The article features some lovely insights into Joss’s approach to film, TV, and genre.

Whedon has a theory that every movie aspires to the state of the musical. “You can take any genre and say these horror bits, these action bits, these are the musical numbers - these are the moments where we are uplifted. The shoot-out in The Wild Bunch, the Neo and Agent Smith fight in The Matrix - those are the big closing numbers. The way a musical can make us feel is unlike anything else, in song and particularly in dance. I think people fly through plate-glass windows when they get shot because movies don’t have dance scenes any more. This is what we do instead.”

I just saw for the second time the video to Massive Attack’s gorgeous new single Live With Me, featuring the sublime voice of soul legend Terry Callier, and I had to share. Not only is the song amazing, but the video, directed by Jonathan Glazer, just completely blew me away. It’s uncomfortable viewing, but I found it really haunting. It features a young (mid twenties) professional-looking woman drinking herself into oblivion on her own in her flat. I can’t really put my finger on what it is about it that I find so arresting, but I thought it was an incredibly powerful four minute film. There is a quicktime stream of the video availalble here (requires Quicktime, obviously, although on Linux the MPlayer plugin played it in Firefox for me without problem).