Category Archives: Film

Reverb-erations

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“This is a journey into sound” reads the sub-title of ACMI’s Melbourne edition of “Reverb”, the London exhibition organised by Vinyl Factory and hosted by 180 Studios in 2024-25.

Spoiler alert: the ACMI show is a heavily edited/remixed/redacted version of the original, and because it was grafted on to the concurrent Rising festival, it feels like the original’s agenda has been co-opted due to curatorial choices.

Overall, I found ACMI’s Reverb a quite underwhelming experience – with the disappointment being compounded by high expectations. For a start, Vinyl Factory described their show as a celebration of “art and sound with [an] immersive exhibition”. 180 Studios called it an exploration of “the lasting impact and influence of electronic music on contemporary art and culture”. Both of which are big calls, and quite different in terms of scope and intent, despite describing the same exhibition.

ACMI’s re-adapted synopsis boasts that the exhibition “explores music’s influence on art, film and social movements, traversing hip hop and rap, house, techno, dancehall and Jamaican sound system culture”. Quite a different purpose to the original event.

For logistical reasons, I understand that ACMI could not simply replicate the London show, and many items were omitted. But given ACMI’s success in bringing “David Bowie is” to Melbourne, their world premiere of Julian Rosefeldt’s “Manifesto”, and the “Light” show comprising works from the UK’s Tate Gallery, it’s a shame that “Reverb” didn’t deliver to the same level.

First, there was only one interactive work, by Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto) – so hardly an “immersive” experience, unless you include the ACMI Listening Room, which served more as a passive audio space and vinyl lounge (albeit a very nice one!).

Second, the only two works that really engaged with and explored the interaction between electronic music and popular culture were: a semi-educational documentary by Jeremy Deller on the second summer of love and the UK rave culture; and an informative and creative account of the Detroit techno scene by Jenn Nkiru.

Third, as much as I enjoy the work of William Kentridge, his video installation of animated drawings seemed out of place and out of context – although it appears this same work was included in the original London show.

Not having had the opportunity to see the original version, direct comparisons are difficult. But it felt like there were huge gaps. For example, nothing about the role of music videos on MTV (much of it electronic music) in shaping the visual packaging of pop artists and how these videos themselves brought a cross-fertilisation of different sub-cultures, fashion styles and musical genres into mainstream publishing, advertising and the broader entertainment industry. Nothing about the technology that helped electronic music to propagate and which led to scratching, remixing and sampling, and also shaped how, where and when we listen to music. I could go on but hopefully the point is made.

Maybe the point is that the original exhibition was simply the source material for galleries and museums to each put their own spin on the impact of music on art and culture, like a series of reverberating events around the world.

But at the very least, surely there should have been a video of Coldcut’s classic remix of “Paid In Full” by Eric B and Rakim? Now that’s what I call a “journey into sound!”

Next week: End of the road for Lime?

 

“Megalopolis”? More like mega-flop it is!

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Last week I went to see “Megalopolis”, the latest (and last?) film by Francis Ford Coppola. In the past, a Coppola production was usually something to relish, and I was looking forward to this addition to his canon of work. I purposely avoided reading any reviews beforehand; I was aware that this movie had endured a long gestation, and had experienced a number of challenges during production, so I did not want to arrive with any preconceived ideas. I wasn’t even aware of the plot or the cast.

Oh dear – what a disappointment. For something that was 40 years in development, and reportedly cost $120 million of the director’s own money, it was one of the worst films I have seen in a long while. No wonder it has attracted a very small audience, judging by the box office receipts. At the screening I attended, there were only 4 people in the entire cinema.

Despite the promising plot, the stellar cast, and the director’s own distinguished career, nothing can rescue this dog’s dinner of a film. It’s so bad on so many levels. First, the use of a voice-over to explain the plot is often a dodgy narrative device – especially as the narrator in this case is neither the main protagonist, nor an impartial observer. Second, the script and much of the acting is painfully bad – plodding, hackneyed, derisory, derivative and at times just plain over-wrought. Third, the set design looks cramped and feels claustrophobic. Many of the costumes are straight out of a Christmas pantomime, giving rise to an unintended comic effect. And as for the CGI images of the future city, it’s as if the design team simply gave Dall-E a few prompts and rendered the results on screen wholesale, without any editing or quality control.

At times, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be watching a Batman movie directed by Baz Luhrmann, or Christopher Nolan’s take on “Julius Caesar”.

I think part of the problem is that the characters and events that the film attempts to satirise are actually beyond parody. They are soft, obvious targets; and no matter how outrageous the story line, it can never out-do real life, or upstage current affairs. No doubt, the timing of its release is designed to raise questions about current social and political events, in the USA and elsewhere. Venal, vindictive, incompetent and impotent politicians; tech billionaires and media moguls who think they can determine election results; nepo babies who think they are talented just because of their family connections; social media influencers driven by a sense of their own entitlement and self-importance.

But it’s all been done before, and in many cases, far better.

Next week: Pudgy Penguins come to Melbourne

 

 

Postcript on Tarantino vs Ritchie

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One of the most popular entries on this blog is about the film directors Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie. I can’t really explain the amount of traffic this article has generated, but I’m glad readers seem to like it.

I recently watched Guy Ritchie’s latest film, “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare”. And since Tarantino has signalled his intention to stop making movies, I can’t help feeling that Ritchie is attempting to pick up the baton from where Tarantino has left off. Because “The Ministry…” comes across as Ritchie’s version of “Inglorious Basterds” – but more like “The Italian Job” than “Dirty Dozen” or “Where Eagles Dare”.

This competition between film makers may not quite equal the creative rivalry between The Beach Boys and The Beatles in 1966-7, but it will be interesting to see what each director does next.

Next week: Unintended Consequences?

 

AI and the Human Factor

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Earlier this month, I went to the Melbourne premiere of “Eno”, a documentary by Gary Hustwit, which is described as the world’s first generative feature film. Each time the film is shown, the choice and sequencing of scenes is different – no two versions are ever the same. Some content may never be screened at all.

I’ll leave readers to explore the director’s rationale for this approach (and the implications for film-making, cinema and streaming). But during a Q&A following the screening, Hustwit was at pains to explain that this is NOT a film generated by AI. He was also guarded and refrained from revealing too much about the proprietary software and hardware system he co-developed to compile and present the film.

However, the director did want to stress that he didn’t simply tell an AI bot to scour the internet, scrape any content by, about or featuring Brian Eno, and then assemble it into a compilation of clips. This documentary is presented according to a series of rules-based algorithms, and is a content-led venture curated by its creator. Yes, he had to review hours and hours of archive footage from which to draw key themes, but he also had to shoot new interview footage of Eno, that would help to frame the context and support the narrative, while avoiding a banal biopic or series of talking heads. The result is a skillful balance between linear story telling, intriguing juxtaposition, traditional interviews, critical analysis, and deep exploration of the subject. The point is, for all its powerful capabilities, AI could not have created this film. It needed to start with human elements: innate curiosity on the part of the director; intelligent and empathetic interaction between film maker and subject; and expert judgement in editing the content – as a well as an element of risk-taking in allowing the algorithm to make the final choices when it comes to each screened version.

That the subject of this documentary is Eno should not be surprising, either. He has a reputation for being a modern polymath, interested in science and technology as well as art. His use of Oblique Strategies in his creative work, his fascination with systems, his development of generative music, and his adoption of technology all point to someone who resists categorisation, and for whom work is play (and vice versa). In fact, imagination and play are the two key activities that define what it is to be human, as Eno explored in an essay for the BBC a few years ago. Again, AI does not yet have the power of imagination (and probably has no sense of play).

Sure, AI can conjure up all sorts of text, images, video, sound, music and other outputs. But in truth, it can only regurgitate what it has been trained on, even when extrapolating from data with which it has been supplied, and the human prompts it is given. This process of creation is more akin to plagiarism – taking source materials created by other people, blending and configuring them into some sort of “new” artefact, and passing the results off as the AI’s own work.

Plagiarism is neither new, nor is it exclusive to AI, of course. In fact, it’s a very natural human response to our environment: we all copy and transform images and sounds around us, as a form of tribute, hommage, mimicry, creative engagement, pastiche, parody, satire, criticism, acknowledgement or denouncement. Leaving aside issues of attribution, permitted use, fair comment, IP rights, (mis)appropriation and deep fakes, some would argue that it is inevitable (and even a duty) for artists and creatives to “steal” ideas from their sources of inspiration. Notably, Robert Shore in his book about “originality”. The music industry is especially adept at all forms of “copying” – sampling, interpolation, remixes, mash-ups, cover versions – something that AI has been capable of for many years. See for example this (limited) app from Google released a few years ago. Whether the results could be regarded as the works of J.S.Bach or the creation of Google’s algorithm trained on Bach’s music would be a question for Bach scholars, musicologists, IP lawyers and software analysts.

Finally, for the last word on AI and the human condition, I refer you to the closing scene from John Carpenter’s cult SciFi film, “Dark Star”, where an “intelligent” bomb outsmarts its human interlocutor. Enjoy!

Next week: AI hallucinations and the law