Box of Broadcasts (BoB) is an online archive of radio and TV broadcasts, available to subscribing educational institutions in the United Kingdom. I curated this playlist for the service in summer 2020, and have made my accompanying notes available here for those without access to BoB. The original playlist can be found at…[Read more]

The collaborations of Zbigniew Preisner and director Krzysztof Kieślowski contain an elaborate network of fictional composers and compositions. This network stretches from their first project — No End (1985) — to their last — Three Colours: Red (1994) — and is exemplified most obviously by the fictitious eighteenth-century composer Van den Bude…[Read more]

In his review of Martin Scorsese’s 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street, Variety’s Scott Foundas suggests that having ‘a quadruple album’s worth of classic rock and blues fill up the soundtrack’ contributes to the film being ‘almost self-consciously Scorsesean’ in its style. Yet even a cursory survey of the music heard both in that film and across Sc…[Read more]

This article considers Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Mrs. Robinson’ in its original context of The Graduate (Nichols, 1967) in relation to its composition, lyrical content and narrative role. The song’s later use in other films is then examined, with consideration of issues of intention and reception in regard to evocation of The Graduate, and of the par…[Read more]