Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • One face in a thousand

    One face in a thousand

    In Rhetorics of Fantasy, her important structural taxonomy of fantasy literature, Farah Mendlesohn identifies four key types of fantasy, defined by the way that they relate the fantastical to the prosaic. The first and most widely used is the ‘portal-quest fantasy’, in which the protagonists either pass through some kind of portal from the primary Read more

  • The past present serious tense

    The past present serious tense

    Roger Deakins’s brilliant cinematography has been conspicuous in some of the Coen Brothers’s films—in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, for example, which is not one of their strongest releases, or the black and white The Man Who Wasn’t There, which was. But in other movies it’s just quietly excellent, conveying a narrative from actors to Read more

  • What punk is for

    What punk is for

    A lot of the time, I listen to contemporary punk records, and I wonder where the anger’s coming from. I mean, obviously there’s still as much to be angry about as there was in 1977, in terms of inequality and injustice, but sometimes it all feels a bit forced. Much of the best modern punk Read more

  • Upended trajectories

    Upended trajectories

    At the point at which Burn After Reading was released, the Coen Brothers had a certain amount of form, in terms of making mainstream comedies populated by Hollywood stars. Like O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty it stars George Clooney, but in contrast to those films, and to their unnecessary remake of The Read more

  • A commercial flick gone weird

    A commercial flick gone weird

    Of the four films that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made together, Dark Passage is undoubtedly the most outlandish, in both narrative and formal terms. Its central conceit, of an escaped convict undergoing plastic surgery to completely transform his appearance, would be a challenge for modern techniques, but for a surgeon in the 1940s to Read more

  • Presence

    Presence

    There are no cum shots in Black Oni. There are long builds, ecstatic crescendi, contemplative soundfields, thunderous riffs, all the appurtenances of narrative, without any lazy concessions to closure. If you want fan service fuck off and listen to Dream Theater. Like the protagonist of a W.G. Sebald novel, the wayward present moment of this Read more