Nearly 40 years after its initial release, The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) will return to UK cinemas, in a brand new restored and remastered version. Considered by many to be a masterpiece, the picture is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed films of all time. Winner of 3 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, the movie also currently sits at number 2 on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB)’s list of the 250 greatest films of all time. Its success on this particular register, which is collated from votes by public and industry members across the globe, is a testament to the film’s timeless success, and its continued relevance.
The narrative begins in a darkened room, during the lavish wedding of Godfather, Don Vito Corleone’s daughter. From the very first beats the tension is palpable; Marlon Brando in his most iconic turn, sits in his chair stroking a cat, while a despairing father sits pleading for his daughter’s redemption. Already, the viewer is mesmerized by this enclosed world, where the possibilities of power, wealth and violence all seem to fall hand in hand.
At the same time, it is the emphasis on maintaining this intricately ‘closed world’ that allows the audience to relate to characters who are, essentially, evil. Coppola’s universe exists by its own set of rules. As such, the characters in the story aren’t delineated by violence or aggression, but by lust, greed or love, and yearning or a desire for respect. In other wards, Coppola takes Mario Puzo’s epic story as a blueprint, using it to emphasise the humanity behind the Mafia, allowing us to feel sympathy for the players.
Glasgow Film Theatre, 2009
From CD to MP3: The Degradation of Music Curating
In 1999, on the eve of PopMatters’ inception, I was an angst-ridden teenager, who had a tendency for ditching classes only to sit in the toilet reading back issues of Rolling Stone. By the end of the decade, my love for grunge music had sent me searching through expanses that spanned Punk & New Wave to classic rock, gospel, and soul.
But despite my obsession with the retrospective milieu, I was always conscious that I was, of all things, a product of the ‘90s. As such, the world mythologized in the pages of music magazines about vinyl records, played on analogue players was something that I believed, belonged to my forefathers. Certainly, the rickety sound of a spindle scratching the surface of an old record was romantic, and the large artwork was appealing—but nevertheless, I was a staunch believer in the compact disc (CD). With its plastic shell, artwork, and liner notes, the CD had all the positive bearings of an old gramophone disc, except they were portable. This isn’t too mention, the shimmering and ‘untouchable’, optical surface intrinsic to every CD—for a music aficionado like myself there was something quixotic about this; it felt like music was sacred. It was something worth protecting.
Keep on Reading…
Pop Matters, Special Feature: PopMatters@10, 2009
No Comments » | Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
//