Placeholder Content Image

Martin Scorsese exposes Leo DiCaprio’s irritating on-set habit

<p dir="ltr">Martin Scorsese has exposed Leo DiCaprio’s irritating on-set habit that came to light while the pair were filming the new movie <em>Killers of the Flower Moon</em>. </p> <p dir="ltr">The award-winning director called out the A-list actor in a conversation with the <em><a href="https://www.wsj.com/style/martin-scorsese-killers-flower-moon-b4989f0c" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wall Street Journal</a></em>, saying that the <em>Titanic</em> star tends to flesh details out and improv while filming, describing his technique as “endless, endless, endless!”</p> <p dir="ltr">Although Scorsese and DiCaprio have worked together on six other films, there was one more actor on the set of the new film that could not stand the ad libbing: Robert de Niro.</p> <p dir="ltr">“Then Bob didn’t want to talk,” Scorsese explained. “Every now and then, Bob and I would look at each other and roll our eyes a little bit. And we’d tell him, ‘You don’t need that dialogue.’”</p> <p dir="ltr">While de Niro wasn’t able to deal with DiCaprio’s improv, director Quentin Tarantino said the actor’s famous freakout scene as Rick Dalton in <em>Once Upon a Time in Hollywood </em>“wasn’t in the script,” but was brought to the table by DiCaprio himself, and took the film to another level. </p> <p dir="ltr">Despite the “endless” technique of DiCaprio’s acting, Scorsese said the actor was instrumental in the film’s success, after he helped determine that the film needed a rewrite in order to avoid being a “movie about all the white guys.”</p> <p dir="ltr">“It just didn’t get to the heart of the Osage,” DiCaprio told <em><a href="https://deadline.com/2023/05/martin-scorsese-interview-killers-of-the-flower-moon-leonardo-dicaprio-robert-de-niro-1235359006/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Deadline</a></em> in May, with reference to the original script. </p> <p dir="ltr">“It felt too much like an investigation into detective work, rather than understanding from a forensic perspective the culture and the dynamics of this very tumultuous, dangerous time in Oklahoma.”</p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Killers of the Flower Moon</em> is in cinemas now. </p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p>

Movies

Placeholder Content Image

Robert De Niro seriously injured on set of new movie

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Robert De Niro is recovering after suffering a serious injury while filming.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">De Niro, 77, hurt one of his quad muscles while on the set of Martin Scorsese’s </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Killers of the Flower Moon</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in Oklahoma.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I tore my quad somehow … [It was] just a simple stepping over something and I just went down,” De Niro said in an interview with </span><a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2021/05/robert-de-niro-leg-injury-martin-scorsese-flower-moon-1234637854/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">IndieWire</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. “The pain was excruciating and now I have to get it fixed. But it happens, especially when you get older; you have to be prepared for unexpected things.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Luckily, the actor clarified that his injury was “manageable”.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">De Niro went on to describe his role in the Scorcese film as a “sedentary” one.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I don’t move around a lot, thank god. So we’ll manage,” he said.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">According to </span><a href="https://people.com/movies/robert-de-niro-leg-injury-update-pain-was-excruciating/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">People</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> magazine, De Niro returned to New York to receive medical treatment for the injury on Thursday.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A representative for the actor reportedly told the magazine De Niro’s departure “will not affect production as he was not scheduled to film again for another three weeks.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">De Niro will play cattleman William Hale alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, who will play Ernest Burkhart, Hale’s nephew.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The movie, set in 1920s Oklahoma, is currently being produced by AppleTV+. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Based on the nonfiction book written by journalist David Grann, the film will dive into the serial murders of the Osage Nation that sparked a “major investigation involving J. Edgar Hoover”, according to </span><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5537002/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">IMDb</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p>

Movies

Placeholder Content Image

Martin Scorsese speaks up on embracing death

<p><span>Martin Scorsese has shared that embracing his mortality motivates him to continue making films. </span></p> <p><span>“You just have to let go, especially at this vantage point of age,” the 77-year-old director said in a new interview with <em><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/movies/martin-scorsese-irishman.html">The New York Times</a></em>.</span></p> <p><span>Scorsese said his acceptance of death encourages him to keep working, even after more than half a century in the film industry.</span></p> <p><span>“Often, death is sudden … If you’re given the grace to continue working, then you’d better figure out something that needs telling,” he said.</span></p> <p><span>“As they say in my movie, ‘It’s what it is’ … You’ve got to embrace it.”</span></p> <p><span>The <em>Taxi Driver </em>director said there are other things he wants to carry out apart from producing movies. </span></p> <p><span>“I would love to just take a year and read,” he said. “Listen to music when it’s needed. Be with some friends. Because we’re all going. Friends are dying. Family’s going.</span></p> <p><span>“The problem is, time is limited and energy is so limited – the mind, also, of course ... Thankfully, the curiosity doesn’t end.”</span></p> <p><span>The director also shared that he has not seen the 2019 thriller <em>Joker</em>, which paid homages to his own work. “I saw clips of it,” Scorsese said of <em>Joker</em>. “I know it. So it’s like, why do I need to? I get it. It’s fine.”</span></p>

Retirement Life

Placeholder Content Image

How Scorsese cinema boycott will shape the future of movies

<p>Cinema has always been a medium in crisis. After the so-called golden age of Hollywood came television: why go to the movies when you can sit in the comfort of your home, watching recycled movies in letterbox format? Yet cinemas adapted and survived.</p> <p>This week, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/nov/07/why-martin-scorseses-the-irishman-wont-be-coming-to-a-cinema-near-you">major cinema chains</a> said they would not run Martin Scorsese’s upcoming film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1302006/">The Irishman</a> because Netflix - who partially funded production and own distribution rights - were restricting its theatre run to four weeks before it hit small screens.</p> <p>The news signals a looming threat to cinema as we know it.</p> <h2>Big screen blues</h2> <p>Television made movies a commodity audiences could consume on their own terms. Yet cinema survived. In fact, it became a global mass cultural medium in the late 1970s and in the <a href="https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/very-short-history-of-cinema/">multiplexes</a> of the 1980s.</p> <p>Even the turbulent digital turn that brought cinema to a second crisis point in the early 2000s was navigated by the major Hollywood studios with the rebirth of the blockbuster in pristine form: <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/?ref_=nv_sr_2?ref_=nv_sr_2">Avatar</a> (2009) in stereoscopic 3-D, the high-tech Marvel <a href="https://hbr.org/2019/07/marvels-blockbuster-machine">cinematic universe</a>.</p> <p>This is all to say that cinema, for the time being, is alive and well.</p> <p>But shrinking diversity in cinema offerings - Scorsese is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/nov/05/martin-scorsese-superhero-marvel-movies-debate-sadness">no Marvel fan</a> - has forced even big name directors to seek funding from alternative sources. This is especially necessary when their movie <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/business/media/netflix-scorsese-the-irishman.html">costs US$159 million</a> (A$230 million) to make. Enter television streaming giant Netflix.</p> <h2>Are you talking to me?</h2> <p>The Irishman, Scorsese’s eagerly anticipated gangster epic, opened this week in a number of independent <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-irishman-australian-cinemas-2019-11">Australian cinemas</a>.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WHXxVmeGQUc?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><span class="caption">The Irishman tells the story of war veteran Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) who worked as a hitman alongside Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino).</span></p> <p>Scorsese is perhaps America’s greatest living auteur, the director of films including <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075314/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Taxi Driver</a> (1976), <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081398/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Raging Bull</a> (1980), <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099685/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Goodfellas</a> (1990), and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112641/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Casino</a> (1995).</p> <p>But what makes The Irishman unlike any other Scorsese film is that it is being distributed by Netflix. After its short theatre run it will be distributed to our homes, where it will do its major business.</p> <p>In February, the tension between Netflix and theatrical distributors escalated with the nomination of Alfonso Cuarón’s Netflix-distributed <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6155172/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Roma</a> for a Best Picture Oscar. Director Steven Spielberg subsequently <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/03/steven-spielbergs-netflix-fears/556550/">declared</a> a Netflix film might “deserve an Emmy, but not an Oscar”.</p> <p>A Netflix production – whether David Fincher’s monumental longform series, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5290382/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Mindhunter</a>, or Scorsese’s The Irishman – was television and therefore not cinema.</p> <h2>Goodfellas or bad guys?</h2> <p>Netflix represents a very real threat to theatrically screened cinema and its distribution apparatus, which is why several large cinema chains in the US (and, indeed, Australia) are boycotting The Irishman.</p> <p>While Netflix has consistently produced high quality content either through internal production or by acquiring and distributing titles, its assimilation of an auteur picture – a Scorsese gangster epic, no less - signals an aggressive move into the once sacrosanct domain of cinema entertainment.</p> <p>One wonders: if Scorsese capitulates to the economic strictures of the contemporary studio system, what will independent filmmakers do? How will low budget features be funded in an era in which Netflix colonises the large and small-scale productions alike?</p> <p><iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SshqfhmmtSE?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> <span class="caption">Scorsese has directed many of the greatest characters of modern cinema.</span></p> <p>Netflix is not cinema, but neither is it television. Directors such as Spielberg struggle to understand that the new media entertainment regime is far removed from the projection (theatre) or broadcast (television) media environment of a predigital era.</p> <p>Instead of declaring a Netflix production unworthy of an Oscar, we could invert this measure: perhaps it is the Oscar that is increasingly outmoded as an artistic and cultural mark of value.</p> <h2>‘The End’, roll credits</h2> <p>The digital economic currents that carry Netflix intuitively seek expansion into proximate markets, and cinema is a natural fit. Netflix’s move into cinema distribution – with Scorsese at the helm – is therefore a smart negotiation. Even if Scorsese is an unwilling participant, it sets a clear precedent.</p> <p>It seems unlikely that cinema will end in any formal sense, at least within the next few decades.</p> <p>But a Netflix-distributed Scorsese film gives us cause to lament the ailing cinema experience. Christopher Nolan’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5013056/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Dunkirk</a> (2017) exemplified cinema’s ability to assault us with big screen images and jolt our bodies with a powerful soundscape. Only a grand technological scale can provide this kind of visceral experience.</p> <p>And yet, like Scorsese, I’m tired of Marvel. I’m tired of the rigidity of formulaic narrative and image structures intrinsic to the contemporary studio system. I’m disappointed at Hollywood’s capitulation to an instrumental economic model. Could a studio have produced The Irishman? They had a chance, and they <a href="https://variety.com/2019/film/news/theater-chief-blasts-netflix-over-handling-of-martin-scorseses-irishman-its-a-disgrace-1203390726/">turned it down</a>.</p> <p>Hollywood - and media entertainment structures more generally - will need to find a way for the big and small screen distributors to get along in order to keep the dynasty alive.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126598/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: http://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em>Written by <span>Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sydney</span>. Republished with permission of </em><a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/pass-the-popcorn-scorsese-cinema-boycott-will-shape-the-future-of-movies-126598" target="_blank"><em>The Conversation</em></a><em>. </em></p>

Movies

Placeholder Content Image

How Martin Scorsese is going to change your home movie experience

<p><span>Hollywood’s biggest filmmakers have teamed up to launch a technology that will make the experience of watching movies at home more like what they intended.</span></p> <p><span>In partnership with the UHD Alliance, leading directors including Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, Patty Jenkins, Ryan Coogler, Rian Johnson and Paul Thomas Anderson revealed the new “Filmmaker Mode” for upcoming TVs from LG, Panasonic and Vizio that removes technical features that have frustrated the industry.</span></p> <p><span>There has been a growing concern among the creators’ community over features such as motion smoothing, a setting used to adapt movies to smaller screens and reduce blur in fast-moving scenes. It is often referred to as the “soap opera effect” due to the way it makes the actors and backgrounds appear fake or set-like. </span></p> <p><span>“Modern televisions have extraordinary technical capabilities, and it is important that we harness these new technologies to ensure that the home viewer sees our work presented as closely as possible to our original creative intentions,” said Nolan.</span></p> <p><span>“Through collaboration with TV manufacturers, Filmmaker Mode consolidates input from filmmakers into simple principles for respecting frame rate, aspect ratio, color and contrast and encoding in the actual media so that televisions can read it and can display it appropriately.”</span></p> <p><span>Michael Zink, chairman of the UHD Alliance said the initiative highlighted the importance of home viewing. </span></p> <p><span>Johnson, director of <em>Star Wars: The Last Jedi</em>, said the Filmmaker Mode provides “a single button that lines up the settings so it works for the benefit of the movie and not against it”. He said, “If you love movies, Filmmaker Mode will make your movies not look like poo-poo.”</span></p> <p><span>Scorsese said more people view classic flicks in the comfort of their home rather than in theatres. “I started The Film Foundation in 1990 with the goal to preserve film and protect the filmmaker’s original vision so that the audience can experience these films as they were intended to be seen,” he said.</span></p> <p><span>“Most people today are watching these classic films at home rather than in movie theaters, making Filmmaker Mode of particular importance when presenting these films which have specifications unique to being shot on film.”</span></p>

Movies

Placeholder Content Image

How Martin Scorsese entwines music and movies

<p>Music and movies are umbilically entwined in the films of Martin Scorsese. It’s almost impossible to think of his cinema without the propulsive accompaniment of a track by The Rolling Stones, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, a Neapolitan street singer or any number of other smaller and even obscure doo-wop, Latino, Brill Building and r'n'b wonders of the 1950s, 60s and early 70s.</p> <p>Although Scorsese has memorably employed the services of great film composers like Bernard Herrmann and Elmer Bernstein on iconic movies such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075314/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Taxi Driver</a> (1976) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106226/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Age of Innocence</a> (1993), it is the music of his adolescence and early adulthood that dominates the dense, highly subjective, hyper-masculine and combative worlds of many of his best and most fondly remembered films.</p> <p>Most of the music documentaries he has made – such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077838/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Last Waltz</a> (1978), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367555/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">No Direction Home: Bob Dylan</a> (2005) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0893382/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Shine a Light</a> (2008) – equally expose these formative tastes.</p> <p>This is personal and reflects Scorsese’s upbringing in the crowded neighbourhood of Little Italy with its melting pot of sounds leeching across spaces and situations. Some of the numbers in his protean first feature, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063803/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3">Who’s That Knocking at My Door</a> (1969), were even supplied from the filmmaker’s own collection. The signature music of Scorsese’s films comes to us with his “fingerprints” all over it.</p> <p>This fascination with the everyday history, materiality and atmosphere of popular music – the way it seeps into and scores the world around us – gives Scorsese’s films a musicological dimension that rhymes with his obsession with film history.</p> <p>Although his use of popular music appears more organic or sociological than Quentin Tarantino’s, it still has the sense of the archivist-collector about it.</p> <p>When the Melbourne Cinémathèque sought Scorsese’s permission to screen his documentary <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071680/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Italianamerican</a> (1974) in the early 1990s, all he asked for in return was that we send him a complete CD edition of Bob Dylan’s [Masterpieces](then only available in Australia) to add to his collection.</p> <p>Although Scorsese is deeply attuned to specific, mostly urban forms of popular music from the mid-20th century, he has also found his inspiration in the groundbreaking found soundtracks of Kenneth Anger’s homo-erotic <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058555/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Scorpio Rising</a> (1964) and Stanley Kubrick’s classical-modernist <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/?ref_=nv_sr_1">2001: A Space Odyssey</a> (1968), as well as his experience as a cameraman and editor on <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066580/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Woodstock</a> (1970). The latter, he has said, was a life-changing event that made him shift from slacks to jeans.</p> <p>The music in Scorsese’s earlier features sits alongside the pioneering compilation scores of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061722/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Graduate</a> (1967) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064276/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Easy Rider</a> (1969), but his work represents a less nostalgic (in comparison to, say, Woody Allen) and temporally shallow notion of the musical “past”.</p> <p>This is a lesson well learned by Scorsese acolytes such as Tarantino, Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson. The golden rule in Scorsese’s films is that the music must have been released by the time a particular scene is set – but it should also reflect the depth of music history.</p> <p><strong>How Scorsese uses music in film</strong></p> <p>Scorsese often conceives a sequence or moment with a particular song in mind.</p> <p>For example, a key motivation for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163988/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Bringing Out the Dead</a>(1999) was the opportunity to use Van Morrison’s fetid, churning T. B. Sheets as a leitmotif. This song weaves around intense and strung-out tracks by REM, Johnny Thunders and The Clash, a reminder perhaps that an earlier vision of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0217505/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Gangs of New York</a> (2002) prominently featured the British group (a Scorsese favourite).</p> <p>Scorsese also plays music on his movie sets to get at the rhythm and feeling of a specific moment.</p> <p>The coda of Derek &amp; the Dominos’ Layla was played on the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099685/?ref_=nv_sr_1">GoodFellas</a> (1990) set from the first day of shooting and lyrically scores the sequence of the bodies being uncovered. It also intimates the excess and decadence that will be the gangsters’ ultimate downfall.</p> <p>The necessary inspiration of popular music is also playfully referenced in the frantic, epic expressionist strokes of Nick Nolte’s painter working to the blisteringly loud strains of Procol Harum and Bob Dylan and The Band in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097965/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Life Lessons</a> (1989).</p> <p>Although this use of popular music reflects the director’s own tastes, upbringing and fondness for counterpoint, it is also deeply enmeshed in the worlds and subjectivities of his characters.</p> <p>The downbeat at the opening of The Ronettes’ Be My Baby ushers in the immersive world of Scorsese’s breakthrough feature, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070379/">Mean Streets</a>, entreating us to experience and even share the excitement, danger and periodic abandon of a group of small-time, would-be gangsters who then light up the screen.</p> <p>As critic Ian Penman has argued, the music does not seem to operate as a soundtrack in the traditional sense, but appears</p> <p>to be released into the air by breaking glasses or moving bodies.</p> <p>It is sound as much as it is music.</p> <p>When we see Robert De Niro’s Johnny Boy sashay into a bar in slow motion to the intricately timed and edited adrenaline rush of Jumpin’ Jack Flash, we cannot really determine where the music is coming from: is it the heightened sound of the jukebox (a fixation of the director’s cinema) or from somewhere inside of Johnny Boy himself?</p> <p>Mean Streets, like such later masterworks as GoodFellas and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112641/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Casino</a> (1995), has something of the jerky propulsiveness and programmed randomness of the jukebox. The music also drops in and out, rises and falls, in a way that reflects and galvanises the cramped bar interiors that are Scorsese’s abiding milieu. Its use of music feels programmed and even curated but also organic and intuitive.</p> <p><strong>Chelsea Morning</strong></p> <p>There is a wonderful sequence in one of Scorsese’s most underrated films, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088680/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">After Hours</a>(1985), which features the lead character retreating to the apartment of a beehive-haired and go go booted cocktail waitress played by Teri Garr. Unworldly Paul (Griffin Dunne) has become lost down the rabbit-hole of late night Soho and is trying to find a way to get home to the safety of his mid-town apartment.</p> <p>As he unburdens himself of the nightmare of his evening, Garr’s ’60s-revivalist sympathetically changes records from the initially peppy pop confection of The Monkees’ Last Train to Clarksville (he has just missed his train) to the introspective wistfulness of Joni Mitchell’s more geographically apt Chelsea Morning.</p> <p>This moment is remarkable in Scorsese’s work, as it is one of few where characters consciously recognise and respond to the music.</p> <p>It also provides a critique of Scorsese’s own practice and how he locates songs that illustrate an emotion, a situation or work in counterpoint to the onscreen action.</p> <p>This scene shows us – in a very unselfconscious fashion – the mechanics of Scorsese’s use of popular music and the way it can shift the tone and atmosphere, create a narrative arc and embed itself into the lives of its characters.</p> <p>The use of Chelsea Morning is also one of the few times that Scorsese draws upon the early ’70s singer-songwriter tradition. Another occurs in the pivotal moment in Taxi Driver where De Niro’s profoundly solipsistic Travis Bickle watches forlornly, lost as he takes in couples slow dancing around a pair of empty shoes on American Bandstand scored by Jackson Browne’s mournful Late for the Sky (or is this only in Travis’s head?)</p> <p>In some ways, this moment seems all the more powerful due to its isolation and incongruity – Travis has earlier misread the lyrics of Kris Kristofferson’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlGZ93XcmhI">The Pilgrim, Chapter 33</a> – illustrating he has no understanding of or affinity for popular music.</p> <p>Scorsese’s characters often seem to take music with them, but Paul and Travis are so out of place they cannot imbibe the music around them other than, in the latter case, through the isolating darkness of Herrmann’s ominous score.</p> <p>After Hours features a bracingly eclectic soundtrack that reflects the gear-shifting nightmare and occasional respite of Paul’s downtown odyssey. For example, after leaving a nightclub, he returns only a short time later to find it has miraculously transformed from hosting a hedonistic, crowded and threatening “Mohawk” theme night, scored by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thnb3UlH2zE">Bad Brains’ Pay to Cum</a>, to an abandoned space with a singular middle-aged customer and a jukebox sympathetically playing Peggy Lee’s Is That all There is?</p> <p>(Once again an unusual choice consciously selected by the uncharacteristically self-aware protagonist).</p> <p>By using a soundtrack less beholden to his own tastes, Scorsese is able to stretch out.</p> <p><strong>The Italian-American gangster trilogy</strong></p> <p>Nevertheless, it is the three films that make up Scorsese’s Italian-American gangster trilogy – Mean Streets, GoodFellas and Casino – that best illustrate the full potential of his use of “found” popular music to score and populate his films.</p> <p>These movies can also be described as essentially musicals. It is important to note that music is not a constant presence in these movies, even though that may be the lasting impression we are left with.</p> <p>Music is pointedly dropped out or even abandoned at particular moments – such as during the final section of GoodFellas where the gangster’s world comes tumbling down. All that is left is the memory of Joe Pesci firing into the camera and the final ragged, debased strains of Sid Vicious singing My Way.</p> <p>Both GoodFellas and Casino use music to chart the rise and fall of their characters and the rarefied enclaves they occupy.</p> <p>In Casino this is signified by the shift from the gaming table friendly Italian-American-derived songs of Louis Prima and Dean Martin to the pointed use of Devo’s truly frustrated version of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jadvt7CbH1o">(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction</a>, B. B. King’s The Thrill is Gone and The Animals’ The House of the Rising Sun to plot the changing demographics and economies of Las Vegas.</p> <p>In many ways, Casino represents something of an endpoint for Scorsese. The energy of Mean Streets and GoodFellas is depleted by the manically expansive “found” song soundtrack, the blunt violence and the forensic detail dedicated to mapping Las Vegas and the failed relationships between Ace, Ginger and Nicky.</p> <p>The operatic, tragic dimensions of this demise are signposted by bookending Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Georges Delerue’s melancholy cues from Jean-Luc Godard’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057345/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Contempt</a> (1963). Where do you go after that?</p> <p>Over the last 20 years, Scorsese’s work has only ever intermittently matched the multiple highpoints of his earlier career. Films such as Gangs of New York, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/find?ref_=nv_sr_fn&amp;q=The+Departed&amp;s=all">The Departed</a> (2006) and his return to form, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993846/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Wolf of Wall Street</a> (2013), do feature further intriguing examples of the use of popular music – and expand the director’s reach in terms of ethnicity – but don’t really develop this aspect or create truly memorable combinations of image and sound.</p> <p><strong>The documentaries and Vinyl</strong></p> <p>During this time, Scorsese’s major contributions to the nexus between popular music and cinema and television have been his somewhat conventional compilation documentaries and concert films and the recent HBO drama series, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3186130/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Vinyl</a>, co-created by Scorsese, Mick Jagger and Terence Winter.</p> <p>Although Scorsese’s documentary on <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1113829/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">George Harrison: Living in the Material World</a> is commendable, and The Rolling Stones’ concert film Shine a Light provides a shared portrait of resilience, easily the best of these documentaries is No Direction Home: Bob Dylan.</p> <p>An archivist’s project the filmmaker took on as compiler and editor, it features some stunning audio-visual combinations as it explores Dylan’s explosive and mercurial early career.</p> <p>But it is with Vinyl that Scorsese’s concerns and abiding preoccupations come full circle.</p> <p>The first episode, the only one directed by Scorsese so far, takes him back to the early 1970s and the drug-fuelled, propulsive and heightened impressionism of his earlier work.</p> <p>The soundtrack features an eclectic array of period specific tracks including Mott the Hoople’s All the Way to Memphis – used 40 years earlier in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974).</p> <p>It is only during the staging of the collapse of the downtown Mercer Arts Center – anachronistically, while the New York Dolls are playing Personality Crisis – that the episode comes to imaginative life. You can almost imagine De Niro’s Johnny Boy waiting for the building to fall.</p> <p><em>Written by Adrian Danks. Republished with permission of </em><a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-it-felt-like-a-kiss-movies-popular-music-and-martin-scorsese-59231"><em>The Conversation</em></a><em>.</em></p>

Movies

Placeholder Content Image

Netflix pays $105 million to reunite world’s greatest actors

<p>Netflix has just purchased the rights to the film <em>The Irishman</em> which will be released in 2019.</p> <p>Although the film is only in pre-production, Netflix have made the expensive but worthwhile $105 million investment to purchase the rights to the film.</p> <p>Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese will be directing the film with a top tier acting crew set to star in the film.</p> <p>The film follows the story of mob hitman Frank Sheeran, who allegedly admitted to killing his friend Jimmy Hoffa. The union leader’s disappearance went down in American history as one of the biggest unsolved mysteries. </p> <p>Robert De Niro will collaborate with Scorsese for the ninth time and play Frank Sheeran.</p> <p>Al Pacino will star as Jimmy Hoffa and this will be his first time working with Scorsese. </p> <p>Other standout actors who have been cast include Oscar-winner Joe Pesci from <em>Goodfellas</em>, Harvey Keital from <em>Who’s That Knocking at My Door</em> and Emmy-winner Bobby Cannavale.</p> <p>The deal between Netflix and Scorsese allows the streaming service to release the film to their 93 million worldwide subscribers.</p> <p>Paramount Pictures reportedly dropped out of the project, creating the opportunity for Netflix to sweep in and make a deal. </p> <p><strong>Related links:</strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/entertainment/movies/2017/02/steven-spielberg-not-slowing-down/"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em>70-year-old Steven Spielberg not slowing down</em></span></strong></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/entertainment/movies/2017/02/celebrities-facial-reactions-to-the-oscar-mix-up/"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em>Celebrities’ jaw-dropping reactions to the Oscar mix-up</em></span></strong></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/entertainment/movies/2017/01/famous-biopics-ranked-from-most-to-least-accurate/"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em>Famous biopics ranked from most to least accurate</em></span></strong></a></p>

Movies