The Clockwork Penguin

Daniel Binns is a media theorist and filmmaker tinkering with the weird edges of technology, storytelling, and screen culture. He is the author of Material Media-Making in the Digital Age and currently writes about posthuman poetics, glitchy machines, and speculative media worlds.

Tag: film

  • The Unexpected Awesome of Birdman

    Birdman

    I’m still reeling from Birdman. And I probably will be reeling for some time. It’s definitely a film you need to see more than once, I think.

    First impressions? Where before I believed The Grand Budapest Hotel deserved every Oscar it was nominated for, I’m now torn. Every performance in Birdman is sublime. The cinematography is flawless. The script, while hokey/cliched in parts, allows the actors to fill in the blanks with their performances.

    There’s not much else to say at this point. I’m sure I’ll watch it again soon.

    As I’ve said to a few people: A great many films make me want to write about them. But very few films make me want to write films. Birdman certainly fell instantly into the latter category.

  • Gone Girl

    GoneGirlAmy

    What are you thinking? What are you feeling? What have we done to each other? What will we do?

    About a month ago, I smashed through Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl in a few days. I came away from the book feeling dirty: sullied somehow. My first words to my partner were, “I think I need a shower.” It’s hard to define why this is. I enjoyed reading the book. I was hooked the entire time, utterly engrossed in this deep character study of two seriously messed up people. The book was very well-written, a literary thriller of the first degree, and mesmerising in its wit and structure. The book was funny, at times, too. (more…)

  • Editing

    Rough cut.

    Draft cut.

    Polish.

    Proof render.

    Final cut.

    *crack beer*

    …

    Changes arrive.

    Final cut V2.

    Final cut V3.

    Export for web.

  • Cinemaaaah, cont’d

    I’ve been doing my best to take notes on as many films as I can, but for now I’ll just compile a list of those watched in the last fortnight…

    • The 39 Steps (d. Hitchcock, 1935)
    • Eyes Wide Shut (d. Kubrick, 1999)*
    • OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies (d. Haznavicius, 2006)
    • The Artist (d. Haznavicius, 2011)
    • Fargo (d. Coen, 1996)

    Planned viewing for the next seven days…

    • Tora! Tora! Tora! (d. Fleischer et. al., 1970)
    • L’Appartement (d. Mimouni, 1996)
    • Manhattan (d. Allen, 1979)

    * – Rewatch

  • Michel Chion on film analysis

    eyes-wide-shut-sm

    “The right way to work on a film – to avoid too closed an interpretation – seems to me to be to watch it several times with no precise intentions… As in a police enquiry, one should not set up any hierarchies or look in any particular direction. One should not banish emotions and projections, but rather bring them to light, formulate and be aware of them, let them float.

    “A film is a system, not of meanings, but of signifiers. We must go in search of these signifiers … and we can do this only by means of a non-intentional method; for in cinema, that art that fixes rhythms, substances, forms, figures and all kinds of other things onto a single support, the signifier can sit anywhere.”

    Chion, M. (2013). Eyes Wide Shut. London: British Film Institute, pp. 37-8.