Author: Mark T. Conard File Type: pdf In 2008 No Country for Old Men won the Academy Award for Best Picture, adding to the reputation of filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, who were already known for pushing the boundaries of genre. They had already made films that redefined the gangster movie, the screwball comedy, the fable, and the film noir, among others. No Country is just one of many Coen brothers films to center on the struggles of complex characters to understand themselves and their places in the strange worlds they inhabit. To borrow a phrase from Barton Fink, all Coen films explore the life of the mind and show that the human condition can often be simultaneously comic and tragic, profound and absurd. In The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers, editor Mark T. Conard and other noted scholars explore the challenging moral and philosophical terrain of the Coen repertoire. Several authors connect the Coens most widely known plots and characters to the shadowy, violent, and morally ambiguous world of classic film noir and its modern counterpart, neo-noir. As these essays reveal, Coen films often share noirs essential philosophical assumptions power corrupts, evil is real, and human control of fate is an illusion. In Fargo, not even Minnesotas blankets of snow can hide Jerry Lundegaards crimes or brighten his long, dark night of the soul. Coen films that stylistically depart from film noir still bear the influence of the genres prevailing philosophical systems. The tale of love, marriage, betrayal, and divorce in Intolerable Cruelty transcends the plight of the characters to illuminate competing theories of justice. Even in lighter fare, such as Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski, the comedy emerges from characters journeys to the brink of an amoral abyss. However, the Coens often knowingly and gleefully subvert conventions and occasionally offer symbolic rebirths and other hopeful outcomes. At the end of The Big Lebowski, the Dude abides, his laziness has become a virtue, and the human comedy is perpetuating itself with the promised arrival of a newborn Lebowski. The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers sheds new light on these cinematic visionaries and their films stirring philosophical insights. From Blood Simple to No Country for Old Men, the Coens films feature characters who hunger for meaning in shared human experience -- they are looking for answers. A select few of their protagonists find affirmation and redemption, but for many others, the quest for answers leads, at best, only to more questions.ReviewThe Philosophy of the Coen Brothers offers a very smart, provocative, and stylishly written set of essays on the films of the Coen brothers. The volume makes a convincing case for reading their films within a wide array of philosophic contexts and persuasively demonstrates that the films of the Coen brothers often implicitly and sometimes explicitly engage with central issues in the history of western philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Baudrillard, and MacIntyre. Michael Valdez Moses, author of The Novel and the Globalization of Culture -- This volume is written for both fans of the Coen brothers and the philosophically curious, without the technical language. Both educational and entertaining, this philosophical compilation is recommended for public and academic libraries, particularly those with degree programs in philosophy and film.--Joshua Finnell, Library Journal -- About the AuthorMark T. Conard is assistant professor of philosophy at Marymount College. He is the series editor of The Philosophy of Popular Culture series and the editor of numerous books, including The Philosophy of Film Noir, The Philosophy of Neo-Noir, and The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese.

Author: Marc Weidenbaum File Type: pdf Extravagantly opaque, willfully vaporous - Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works Volume II, released by the estimable British label Warp Records in 1994, rejuvenated ambient music for the Internet Age that was just dawning. In the United States, it was Richard D. Jamess first full length on Sire Records (home to Madonna and Depeche Mode) under the moniker Aphex Twin Sire helped usher him in as a major force in music, electronic or otherwise. Faithful to Brian Enos definition of ambient music, Selected Ambient Works Volume II was intentionally functional it furnished chill out rooms, the sanctuaries amid intense raves. Choreographers and film directors began to employ it to their own ends, and in the intervening decades this background music came to the fore, adapted by classical composers who reverse-engineered its fragile textures for performance on acoustic instruments. Simultaneously, ambient has moved from esoteric sound art to central tenet of online culture. This book contends that despite a reputation for being beatless, the album exudes percussive curiosity, providing a sonic metaphor for our technologically mediated era of countless synchronized nanosecond metronomes.**ReviewMentioned on Line Out (The Stranger.com), February 2014 If youre already a fan of Aphex Twin, youll revel in Weidenbaums deep dive into one of the artists signature works. If not, youll be surprised to learn that youve likely already heard his music in one form or another. - S.T. VanairsdaleI love how it evokes the way music circa 1994 was suffused with unknowable data. --Rob SheffieldThe chillout room masterpieces of Aphex Twin get the business from incisive writer Marc Weidenbaum. And really, the pairing couldnt be any more delicious. --Marke Bieschke, San Francisco Bay GuardianA must-read for those interested in the artist. --Alarm Will SoundLike all good critical studies, Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works Volume II doesnt provide the illusion of closure rather, it expands minds, fostering the creation of textual meaning. I can offer no higher praise - Paul Gleason, Caught in the Carousel About the Author Marc Weidenbaum founded Disquiet.com, which is focused on the intersection of sound, art, and technology, in 1996. A former editor of Tower Records Pulse! magazine, hes written for Nature, Boing Boing, and the website of The Atlantic. Hes commissioned compositions from such musicians as Scanner, Steve Roden, and Stephen Vitiello, and lectures on the role of sound in the media landscape. He lives in San Francisco.

Author: Eivind Seland File Type: pdf A recent surge of interest in network approaches to the study of the ancient world has enabled scholars of the Roman Empire to move beyond traditional narratives of domination, resistance, integration and fragmentation. This relational turn has not only offers tools to identify, map, visualize and, in some cases, even quantify interaction based on a variety of ancient source material, but also provides a terminology to deal with the everyday ties of power, trade, and ideology that operated within, below, and beyond the superstructure of imperial rule. Thirteen contributions employ a range of quantitative, qualitative and descriptive network approaches in order to provide new perspectives on trade, communication, administration, technology, religion and municipal life in the Roman Near East and adjacent regions.

Author: Nicholas Jones File Type: pdf A Poetry Precise and Free collects 150 lyric poems by the Renaissance Italian poet Giovanni Battista Guarini in new translations, accompanied by the Italian originals and commentary that will enlighten and engage both scholars and general readers. Guarinis madrigals provide insight into northern Italian court culture of the late Renaissance, when poetry and music were enjoyed as companion arts. Hundreds of composers of Guarinis day set his lyric poems to music. Primarily known today in their vocal settings, most famously those of Claudio Monteverdi, the poems merit appreciation in their own right. This volume is organized into ten sections, grouping the madrigals around themes such as the anguish of passion, the asymmetry of desire, the incursions of jealousy, and the possibility of mutual bliss. Nicholas R. Jones renders Guarinis poetry into accessible contemporary English verse that nevertheless stays true to the substance and form of the original texts, reflecting their roots in the Petrarchan poetic tradition and displaying the emotion and musicality that made these lyrics so popular from the start. A substantive introduction provides cultural context for the madrigals and their musical settings brief commentaries follow each translation to illuminate aspects of poetic and rhetorical craft. An extensive appendix lists the madrigal compositions that set these lyrics for vocal performance. The book fills a major gap in the scholarship on Guarinis literary legacy. It will appeal to scholars of literature, Renaissance studies, and musicology, early-music performers, and general readers interested in poetry and classical music.**About the Author Nicholas R. Jones is Professor Emeritus of English, Oberlin College. Also an amateur musician, Jones engages in historically informed performance practice with early music ensembles in the San Francisco Bay Area.