Michael Haneke’s cinema of aesthetic manipulation: Colin Marshall talks to film scholar Peter Brunette

Peter Brunette was the Reynolds Professor of Film Studies and director of the Film Studies program at Wake Forest University. The author of books on such beloved filmmakers as Michelangelo Antonioni, Wong Kar-Wai and Roberto Rossellini, Brunette’s last book was on Austrian cinematic provocateur Michael Haneke. The latest published entry in the University of Illinois…

Seeking mono no aware in and with literary art: Colin Marshall talks to experimental novelist Todd Shimoda

Todd Shimoda is the author of 365 Views of Mt. Fuji, The Fourth Treasure and now Oh!: A Mystery of Mono No Aware. Shimoda calls his stories “somewhat experimental, post-modernish, dealing with Asian or Asian-American themes to some degree, but also broad questions of existence,” or “philosophical mysteries.” His latest novel documents an embodies a…

Living it is writing it is living it: Colin Marshall talks to Creative Nonfiction editor Lee Gutkind

Lee Gutkind is the founder and editor of Creative Nonfiction, the premiere journal of the eponymous genre of writing that combines the literary techniques of fiction with the reality of life itself. With its spring 2010 issue, it’s undergone a radical revision in look, feel and sensibility, shifting from academic journal to wider-interest magazine. He’s…

The cinema of recontextualized relationships: Colin Marshall talks to filmmaker Andrew Bujalski

Andrew Bujalski is the young director of the films Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation and Beeswax, which is newly available on DVD. Though Bujalski's funny, realistic movies are often considered by critics to be of a similar genius to other independently-produced pictures of the 2000s focusing on the personal relationships of twentysomethings, they possess an…

Committing savage satire, respecting readers and finding the odd in sex: Colin Marshall talks to Alexander Theroux, author of Laura Warholic: Or, The Sexual Intellectual

Alexander Theroux is the author of stories, poetry, essays, fables, critical studies and such novels as Three Wogs, Darconville's Cat, An Adultery and his latest, Laura Warholic: Or, The Sexual Intellectual, which came as Theroux's first novel in two decades. Rain Taxi calls the book “a massive, 878-page compendium of vituperation against contemporary society, jabs…

Grilling grasshoppers, communicating non-verbally and creating cinematic spaces: Colin Marshall talks to So Yong Kim, director of Treeless Mountain

So Yong Kim is the director of the feature films In Between Days and Treeless Mountain. The former, a portrait of the alienation of a teenage Korean girl newly relocated to Toronto, won a Special Jury Prize for Independent Vision at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. The latter, the story of a pair of very…

Dissolving forms and genres, breaking apart illusions and reading self-help for the very smart: Colin Marshall talks to David Shields, author of Reality Hunger: A Manifesto

David Shields is a professor of English at the University of Washington and author of fiction, nonfiction and various hybrids thereof about sports, autobiography, celebrity and death. His new book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, uses collage writing to challenge preconceived ideas about form and genre in art, especially as they pertain to literature. Shields advocates…

Uniting listening Canada, pushing hard musical drugs and making a show that’s actually a show: Colin Marshall talks to Laurie Brown and Andy Sheppard, host and producer of CBC Radio 2’s The Signal

Laurie Brown and Andy Sheppard are the host and producer, respectively, of The Signal on CBC Radio 2. Since debuting in March of 2007, the program has evolved to provide a highly distinctive listening experience that offers two skillfully-curated hours of late-night contemporary music to listeners across Canada — and, via the internet, the world…

Unceasing fascination with Japan, immersion in literary culture and the pleasures and sorrows of the “thrown” life: Colin Marshall talks to writer, translator, filmmaker and teacher John Nathan

John Nathan is the Takashima Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Having relocated from the United States to Japan in the early 1960s to enroll as the first American regular student at the University of Tokyo, he became the translator of novels by such Japanese literary luminaries as Kenzaburo…

Bringing art to rock, inviting ambience into albums and cultivating the image of stern boffinhood: Colin Marshall talks to David Sheppard, author of On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno

David Sheppard is the author of On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno, the first and only biography of rock music's foremost intellectual “non-musician,” producer and cultural theorist. The book covers Eno's early life growing up in England listening to early soul records, his formative period in art school, his entrance…

Immersion in propaganda, race-based nationalism and the un-figure-outable vortex of Juche Thought: Colin Marshall talks to B.R. Myers, author of The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why it Matters

Brian Reynolds Myers is contributing editor to the Atlantic and professor of international studies at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea. In his new book, The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why it Matters, he examines North Korean propaganda meant for both internal and external consumption and through it constructs the closed…

Fighting fungibility, changing the definition of marketing and putting Dylan against the Monkees: Colin Marshall talks to writer, speaker and “Agent of Change” Seth Godin

Speaker, writer, blogger and entrepreneur Seth Godin, having already built a large body of published work on the nature of ideas, how they’re conceived, how they’re spread and how they’re executed, has expanded his intellectual purview with his new book Linchpin. Extending the thoughts and observations he applied to marketing in books like Purple Cow…

Ignoring the mainstream, spreading enthusiasm for difficult music and sustaining sonic subcultures: Colin Marshall talks to Chris Bohn, editor of The Wire

Chris Bohn is the editor of London-based monthly music magazine The Wire. Subtitled “Adventures in Modern Music”, the magazine has covered the alternative, the underground, the experimental, the avant-garde and the generally non-mainstream since 1982, featuring a span of artists from Ornette Coleman to Björk to David Sylvian to Jim O’Rourke to field recordists like…

Doing less stuff better, seeing your face in the marble and making immigrants cry: Colin Marshall talks to 43Folders founder, speaker, writer and podcaster Merlin Mann

Merlin Mann is a writer, speaker, blogger, podcaster and student of the creative mind. He's the creator of 43Folders, a popular web site devoted to time, attention and creative work, as well as the man behind such varied projects as The Merlin Show, Kung Fu Grippe, 5ives, the 43Folders podcast, one-third of the crazy-successful comedy…

Taking radio beyond radio, avoiding identity politics and turning off one’s own station: Colin Marshall talks to Ken Freedman, general manager of WFMU

Ken Freedman is the general manager of Jersey City’s WFMU, the longest-running freeform radio station in the United States. Since the mid-1980s, Freedman and his staff have made WFMU’s name a byword for the modern freeform sensibility with a combination of, among other factors, early adoption of new distribution technology, avoidance of identity politics and…

The Humanists: Jia Zhangke’s Still Life (2006)

by Colin Marshall Here we have a movie set on the spectacularly picturesque Yangtze River, each background a minor wonder of natural aesthetics, shot on the same digital video format used by cash-strapped film-student projects. It's a picture seemingly imbued with the hard realism of halting conversation and deep-seated yet somehow accepted character misery, yet…

The magic, mystery and melancholy of Five Leaves Left: Colin Marshall talks to three scholars of singer-songwriter Nick Drake

On September 1, 1969, the English singer-songwriter and guitarist Nick Drake made his recording debut as his album Five Leaves Left shipped to record stores. Released on producer Joe Boyd's Witchseason label with backing by members of Fairport Convention and string arrangements by Harry Robinson and Drake's Cambridge chum Robert Kirby, the album stands as…

Hosting virtual seminars, lying parallel worlds into being and loving Japan: Colin Marshall talks to musician, artist and ex-blogger Nick Currie, a.k.a. Momus

Better known as Momus, Nick Currie has, since the mid-1980s, led parallel careers in music (with 21 albums out so far), prose, art and journalism, exploring the nexuses between them while traveling the world and examining his favorite cultures. He has most recently turned toward traditional ink-and-paper publishing with two volumes, The Book of Jokes…

Staying friendly, wooing the young intelligentsia and using kamikaze vocabulary: Colin Marshall talks to Michael Silverblatt, host of Bookworm

For over two decades, Michael Silverblatt has hosted KCRW's Bookworm, the beloved public radio celebration of fiction and poetry featuring half-hour, one-on-one interviews with writers. Colin Marshall originally conducted this interview on the public radio program and podcast The Marketplace of Ideas [MP3] [iTunes link]. We've talked before about Bookworm listeners and how they consider…