Author Archive: Kylah Magee
Kylah Magee received an MA in film studies from Chapman University and a music degree from Texas State. She has worked with the LA Film Festival and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. She owns and operates Nine Muses Studio where she teaches private voice lessons in Austin, TX.
Gottfried Helnwein and The Dreaming Child
“Every artist has one basic theme they want to talk about.” This is the essence of the film Gottfried Helnwein and The Dreaming Child. Helnwein, an Austrian artist born in Vienna a few years after the end of World War II, became obsessed with violence against children when he learned of the horrors they endured [...]
Music and Story – An Interview with Film and TV Composer, Joey Newman
For film and television composer, Joey Newman, writing music for the big and small screens runs in his family. But for Newman, the desire to work as a composer evolved organically, starting with learning both the drums and piano at a very young age, attending Berklee College of Music in Boston, and falling in love [...]
History of the World in Two Hours
The History Channel creates another exciting adventure with their documentary special History of the World in Two Hours. This program provides a thorough chronology of the entire universe, from the infinitesimal flash of the Big Bang to the introduction of the Space Age. While I could have done with a little less emphasis on how [...]
Beneath the Darkness
Most of the frights in the 2011 film Beneath the Darkness come from Dennis Quaid’s intensely violent character Ely. As the local embalmer who seems to kill people when he’s in a bad mood, Quaid provides a serious level of creepiness that never quite frightened me but instead, left me with a rather uneasy feeling. [...]
The Debt (Ha Hov)
How do you know when you’re doing the right thing? This question permeates the thoughts of the main character, Rachel, in the 2007 Israeli film The Debt (Ha Hov). The story follows a woman who, in 1965, played a role in the capture and killing of a Nazi war criminal. Rachel and two other Mossad [...]
Editing
Anyone who thought editing was purely a technical or practical sort of job should be required to read Justin Chang’s new book, Editing. Never have I been so convinced of the detrimental role an editor plays in shaping a story. Emotion, intuition, perception, reaction – these are the key words used most often by the [...]
Finding Joe
In the first few minutes of Finding Joe, the question is posed: Who is Joseph Campbell and why should we care? The question is never fully answered. This documentary is more of a self-improvement guide rather than a film about the life and work of mythologist Joseph Campbell. While somewhat disappointing to someone who was [...]
The Rum Diary
At the Austin Film Festival premiere of The Rum Diary, the presenter introduced Johnny Depp as an actor capable of perfectly combining comedy and fear. That’s precisely what Depp skillfully executes in this film based on the novel by Hunter S. Thompson. Not only Depp, but the entire cast, is effective in this story of [...]
The Lost Future
I was very excited to see the SyFy original film The Lost Future because I absolutely love any film that predicts a future dystopia. It’s one of my many guilty pleasures. I learned of the plot before viewing the film and the preposterousness of it made me even giddier. Unfortunately, the best thing about The [...]
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