Why, if a film is meant to be as historically accurate as possible, should its soundtrack be allowed—even encouraged—to be flagrantly out-of-sync with the times and styles being portrayed on screen? Consider two far-from-celebrated examples.…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
After the warmest North American December on record, Old Man Winter has finally made his appearance in Upstate New York. With the natural world in full, furious retreat, the seasons increasingly have to be visually…
How does a punk-rockish performer experimenting his way through the New York scene of the 1980s end up pasting together a languid soundtrack for a period-piece melodrama involving sumptuously-suited lesbians? I refer, of course, to…
It’s little wonder that Thanksgiving and Christmas are the number one and two movie-going days of the year. The reason for this burst of cinematic fervor is often ascribed to family tradition. If custom is…
The current clan occupying the English throne came to it not through military conquest but the generally less trying expedient of marriage. The route laid out by this marital union was circuitous: two generations after…
While reading Peter Roderick’s account of the dismantling of Britain’s National Health Service in the latest issue of the London Review of Books, I put on the relevant Bach cantata. Bach has many lessons to…
When it comes to piano scenes in movies I go for the kind that are keen to dismantle the homey myths that surround the instrument. In and around the seemingly impregnable bunker of the living…