Letter from the Editor

Editoria

Cash Cows: Comedy Condensed

This is my film review of Shubham Chhabra's Cash Cows (2023) from my second year film class. This review has been read by Shubham himself and covers how Cash Cows is a compelling black comedy that pulled off a limited runtime while capturing the essence of the genre and shedding light on the issues important to the film.&nbsp

Threading Together Time, Space, and Emotion with Music: : An Interview with Film and Television Composer Jeff Russo

In 1993, American guitarist, songwriter, and composer Jeff Russo co-founded the Grammy-nominated rock band Tonic. During the band's four-year hiatus between 2004-2008, Russo discovered his interest in composing music for pre-written narrative stories in film and television. His first opportunity was Noah Hawley's crime drama series The Unusuals (2009). Since, Russo has composed the music for all five seasons of Hawley's Fargo (2014-present) as well as Hawley's psychological feature film, Lucy in the Sky (2019). Russo has also struck up a collaborative relationship with writer and director Steve Zaillian, composing the score for the crime miniseries The Night Of (2016), and the Netflix limited series, Ripley (2024), an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1955 psychological thriller, The Talented Mr Ripley. Russo has scored a diverse collection of stories, from crime to sci-fi, black comedy to action thrillers. His works include Star Trek: Discovery (2021-present), Picard (2020-23), Peter Berg's espionage action-thriller Mile 22 (2018), Craig William Macneill's biographical thriller Lizzie (2018), and Nick Tomnay's delightfully dark comedy, What You Wish For(2023), about a chef with gambling debts who assumes the identity of a friend, only to find himself asked to procure an unusual menu for an exclusive dinner party. Speaking with MSJ, Russo acknowledges the difficulty of discussing music given its subjectivity. The conversation is not difficult. Instead, what becomes apparent is the limitations of words to explain how music makes us feel. It can be described, but there's something evasive and ambivalent about this description. We're left searching for a fuller way to verbally and intellectually articulate what it is that music makes us feel. Two of today's prominent composers, John Williams and Hans Zimmer, shape the conversation about the role of music in storytelling. Russo identifies some fascinating contradictions in how we can compare the pair. It becomes apparent that Russo understands the process of composing music is the pursuit of connection and, for viewers, the subliminal manipulation of music is intrinsic to the emotional connection. This idea of connection is a recurring theme that he returns to when he discusses sublimating the experiences of characters in his own process for Fargo, Picard and Ripley

David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and the Los Angeles Uncanny

Unlike other American metropolises, Los Angeles’ identity is inextricably intertwined with moving images and postmodernism, thereby ascribing the city with an ahistorical character and evoking a sense of the uncanny—a subject rooted in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. An interdisciplinary study of various theories of the uncanny synthesizes a new Los Angeles Uncanny that acknowledges the complexities of urban experiences that are unique to the City of Angels. David Lynch's Mulholland Drive is a film that fundamentally relies on its setting in Los Angeles for its metaexploration of the implications of the media and entertainment industry. Placing the synthesized theory in conversation with Lynch's film unveils the hidden histories and identities of Los Angeles—the suppression of which, this essay argues, is ultimately responsible for the uncanniness and horror experienced in Mulholland Drive

“…a More Sympathetic Reunion…”: : Ben-Hur (1959), Subtextual Adaptation, Sexual Politics and the Art of Homoerotic Performance

In this essay I will take a closer look at a legendary ‘gay subplot’ in the history of mainstream Hollywood film production—the unrequited love story between the Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur and the Roman tribune Messala in the 1959 Hollywood “sword and sandle” blockbuster Ben-Hur. I will focus on three heretofore neglected dimensions. First, the extent to which the subplot makes it possible to understand Ben-Hur as a subtextual adaptation of Gore Vidal’s controversial 1948 novel, The City and the Pillar; secondly, how the link between the film and the novel by Vidal sheds light upon the sexual politics of homosexual rights as they were being conceptualized and developed after World War II; and, thirdly, how this subplot, far from having been ‘slipped in’, was fully integrated into the production not only through subtextual adaptation, but also via cinematography, music, and especially dramatic performance

Theatre and Film Intertwined: Transgression and Intermediality in Fleabag

The essay examines the critically acclaimed theatrical performance and limited television series, both named Fleabag in the relation of each other’s mise-en-scène techniques. While both works are widely known for their captivating use of breaking the fourth wall, a comparative analysis might reveal the key differences in the mechanisms by which transgression and mediality operate. In Fleabag – play and series alike – theatre and film live inseparably together, pointing toward a new quality of self-reflection. &nbsp

Journeys in Solidarity: A Review of KDocsFF 2024

A review of KDocsFF 202

Fun, Fresh, and “Deliriously Pop”: Clueless and the Parodical Austen

A consideration of the film Clueless and its treatment of Austen's authorial voice

To Hear Your Voice: Analyzing Choice and Consent in Jane Austen’s Proposal Scenes

A comparative assessment of proposal scenes in Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma