Oatmeal, Scones, and a little Giveaway

Ever since I started baking scones, I have formed the habit of collecting scones recipes whenever I chance upon them.

This particular recipe caught my eye right away as the scones are made with some oatmeal. I like the idea of baking with oatmeal, somehow it makes the baked goods appear more healthy. It is only recently that I began introducing oatmeal into our daily diet...especially for myself and my better half. I think we really need the help from this nutritious food at our age!

So, what's so great about oatmeal?
1. Oatmeal 'soaks up' the Bad cholesterol and gets rid of it from your body, without affecting the good cholesterol.
2. All the nutrients in oatmeal are good for you heart.
3. Oatmeal also helps you lose weight! It is high in fiber but low in fat, and it stays in you stomach longer and hence reduces any cravings for snacks or junk food.
Besides all these, it is also a good source of nutrition to help children grow strong and healthy.

Oatmeal is a perfect morning meal for me as I usually have my breakfast at 6am, and by mid-morning I am tortured with constant cravings for food to keep me going before lunch! By having just a small bowl of oatmeal, it will keep me full for the rest of the morning. This helps to cut down on unwanted calories from snacks or junk food. However, I have not really acquired the taste for this miracle food. The truth is, I find the texture too sticky, chewy and slimy! Even though I started with instant baby roll oats (with no added sugar ), which is smaller and thus less chewy, I still finds it hard to have it for breakfast every other day. While my elder child has no problem finishing up one bowl, my younger one turned his nose up and has since named the bowl of gooey stuff...'the yucky porridge'. I guess it will take a long while before I could advance to regular, old fashioned, roll oats (^_^")

Contrary to the undesirable taste of eating oatmeal on its own, using it for baking creates a nice texture to the bakes. I have since been using oatmeal to bake cookies, scones and even muffins. Sprinkling some rolled oats on a bread dough just before it goes into the oven will not only magically transform it to a rustic looking loaf of bread, but also provide that little extra fiber in your diet.

As usual, I baked these scones with my younger child. Like me, he enjoys playing with flour and sink his hands into a pile of soft dough. He loves to help me with the sifting...an activity which usually lands up with more flour on the table and kitchen floor than the mixing bowl!

These scones are a perfect breakfast treat, of course they also taste delicious any time with tea or coffee. However, do not expect a very soft and fluffy texture compared to scones that are made with buttermilk (an ingredient which really helps in making lighter and tender baked goods). While scones are usually served with jam or clotted cream, however, if we do run out of homemade jam, we are fine eating them plain.

The tricky part about baking scones is how to serve them warm, freshly baked, early in the morning. Unlike muffins, scones only taste best on the day they are baked. Even if you were to warm any 'left over-night' scones in the oven before serving, they just don't taste as good. My way of getting around the problem is to make the dough the night before, usually on a Friday night, and keep the dough, cling wrapped, in the fridge. The next morning, while the oven is preheating, I'll finish up with the remaining steps of cutting the dough into wedges and brushing the top with milk and they are ready to get into the oven. In less than half an hour, my family gets to wake up to a nice aroma of scones baking in the oven, and the 'gurgling' sound of coffee brewing in my coffee maker. What a great way to welcome the weekend, and this also happens to be one of the many precious moments in my life :)

Here's one good news!

To thank frequent visitors to my blog, I am doing a little giveaway! I used to do little giveaways 'privately', especially during my blog anniversaries, by giving away cookie cutters, bottles of vanilla extracts to a handful of blogger pals. This time I would like to make it a public event and extend it to the rest of you.

I got my better half to get me one extra bottle (4 oz) of Nielsen-Massey's Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla extract on his recent trip to the States. So this is the little gift that will be given to one lucky reader. The only restrictions is, you need to have a  local (Singapore) mailing address, or an address in Malaysia, because it really doesn't make sense if the postage comes up to be more expensive than the gift itself.

If you are interested to participate in this giveaway, just leave your comment with this tag: 'I'll love to have it!' before 5 July and I will use an online randomizer, to pick the lucky reader. (Note: You need not leave your email address in your comments, I am worried your email address may get spammed.)

All that I ask from the winner is...bake something with the vanilla extract and share it with your families and friends :)

Cranberry Oatmeal Scones

Ingredients:
(makes 6 ~ 8 scones)

200g cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons caster sugar
one pinch of salt
65g unsalted butter, cold, cut into small cubes
30g instant oatmeal (I used instant baby rolled oats)
100ml milk (I used low-fat fresh milk)
50g dried cranberries (or raisins)
some orange juice or water for soaking

Method:

1. Cover dried cranberries (or raisins) with some orange juice (or water) and soak for 10mins. Drain well and set it aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, sift together cake flour and baking powder. Mix in sugar and salt. With finger tips rub the cold butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. (It is important that the butter be cold so when it is cut into the flour mixture it becomes small, flour-coated crumbs. I use a fork to work the butter into the dry ingredients. If the butter starts to melt away during this process, stop and place the mixture in the freezer for 10-15 mins to prevent the butter from melting further. Continue the process when the mixture is well chilled.
3. Mix in the oatmeal and dried cranberries.
4. Make a well in the centre and add in milk. Stir with a spatula until just combined. The mixture will be sticky, moist and lumpy. Gather up the mixture and place it on a lightly floured surface and give it a few light kneading (not more than 10 seconds) so that it comes together to form a dough. Do Not over work the dough. (Only mix the dough until it comes together. Too much kneading will cause gluten to develop, and the resulting scones will turn hard and chewy. Knead only until the ingredients come together into a combined mass.)
5. Pat the dough into a round disc about 3/4 inch thickness. With a sharp knife cut the dough into 6 wedges (cur into 8 wedges for smaller scones).
6. Place scones on baking sheet (lined with parchment paper), space them apart. Brush the tops with some milk.
7. Bake in preheated oven at 200 degC for about 12- 15 minutes or until they are well risen and the tops are a light golden brown. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool. Serve warm.

Recipe source:adapted from Smile! 幸福小点心, 山王丸由利绘

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Australian national cinema studies

Image from Samson and Delilah (Warwick Thornton, 2009)

Film Studies For Free presents its whopping and interdisciplinary list of scholarly links to online and openly accessible studies of one of its favourite national cinemas, that of Australia. A passable effort for a Pom website, it hopes you agree.

There are some veritably beaut resources here, but FSFF would especially like to flag up one great, but time-limited, free download opportunity: Ben Goldsmith and Geoff Lealand (eds.), Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2010)

• Martha Ansara and Lisa Milner, 'The Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit: the forgotten frontier of the fifties', Metro Magazine vol. 119, pp. 28-39 
• Pieter Aquilia, 'Wog Drama and ‘White Multiculturalists’: The Role of Non Anglo-Australian Film and Television Drama in Shaping a National Identity', originally published in Ruinard and Tilley eds. Fresh Cuts: Journal of Australian Studies no. 67, St Lucia, UQP, 2000
• Susan Barber, 'Runaway, Negligent and Abusive mothers: Alternate mother – daughter relationships in Australian Cinema', Communications, Civics, Industry – ANZCA2007 Conference Proceedings
• Susan Barber, 'Creative Disabilities and Vulnerable Bodies In Women In The Bush', Conference Proceedings, ANZCA, 2006
• Katherine Biber, 'The Threshold Moment: Masculinity at Home and on the Road in Australian Cinema', LIMINA, Volume 7, 2001 
• Christine Boman, '"Let’s get her": Masculinities and Sexual Violence in Contemporary Australian Drama and its Film Adaptations', Journal of Australian Studies, 76: 2003
• Kate Bowles, 'All the evidence is that Cobargo is slipping’: An ecological approach to rural cinema-going', Film Studies, Issue 10, Spring 2007
• Harvey Broadbent, '“A simple epic”: Gallipoli and the Australian media',United Service 61 (1) March 2010
• David Carter, The Empire Dies Back: Britishness in Contemporary Australian Culture', Pacific and American Studies, Vol. 9, 2009
• Felicity Collins, 'History, Myth and Allegory in Australian Cinema', Trames, 2008, 12(62/57), 3, 276–286
• Robert Connolly, 'Embracing Innovation: a new methodology for feature film production in Australia', AFTRS: Centre for Screen Business, February 2008
• Joy Damousi, '“The Filthy American Twang”: Elocution, the Advent of American “Talkies,” and Australian Cultural Identity', The American Historical Review, Vol. 112, No. 2, April 2007
• Joy Damousi and Desley Deacon, Talking and Listening in The Age of Modernity: Essays on the history of sound (ANU E Press, 2007)
• Leanne Downing, 'Sensory Jam: How the Victoria Preserving Company Pushed Australian Cinema Space into the New Millennium', M/C Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 6, December 2006
• Kirsty Duncanson, 'The Scene of the Crime: The Uneasy Figuring of Anglo-Australian Sovereignty in the Landscape of Lantana', Law Text Culture, Vol. 13, 2009
• Kirsty Duncanson, Catriona Elder, and Murray Pratt, 'Entanglement and the Modern Australian Rhythm Method: Lantana’s Lessons in Policing Sexuality and Gender', Portal Vol., 1 No. 1 (2004)
• Katie Ellis, 'Isolation and Companionship: Disability in Australian (Post) Colonial Cinema', Wagadu Volume 4 Summer 2007 • Intersecting Gender and Disability Perspectives in Rethinking Postcolonial Identities
• Katie Ellis, 'Disrupting Strength, Power and Perfect Bodies: Disability as Narrative Prosthesis in 1990s Australian National Cinema', Nebula, 7.1/7.2, June 2010
• John James Emerson, The Representation of the Colonial Past in French and Australian Cinema, from 1970 to 2000, PhD Thesis, Department of French Studies and Centre for European Studies and General Linguistics, University of Adelaide, South Australia, July 2002
• Helen Forscher, Animals in the landscape :an analysis of the role of the animal image in representations of identity in selected Australian feature films from 1971 to 2001, PhD Thesis, Bond University, 2008
• Warwick Frost, 'From Dead Heart to Red Heart: Developing the Destination Image of the Australian Outback',  Monash University, Department of Management Working Paper Series, October 2004
• Ben Goldsmith and Geoff Lealand (eds.), Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2010) free download for a limited time only
• Ben Goldsmith, 'Australian National Cinema', Australian Policy Online, February 2007
  
• Lisa Gye, 'How can you be found when no-one knows that you are missing? [on Baz Luhrmann's Australia and McLean's Wolf Creek] Fibreculture Journal, Issue 15, 2009
• David Headon, 'Filming the Legends of Phar Lap and the Don — the Who, What, Where and When', Sporting Traditions, Vol. 15, no. 1, November 1998
• Alice Healy, '“Impossible Speech” and the Burden of Translation: Lilian’s Story from Page to Screen', JASAL 5, 2006
• Andrew Jakubowicz,'Australian (Dis(Contents: Film, Mass Media and Multiculturalism', n F Rizvi and S Gunew (eds) Arts for a Multicultural Australia: Issues and Strategies, (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2004)
• Anthony Lambert, 'Arresting Metaphors: Anti-Colonial Females in Australian Cinema', Postcolonial Text, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2005
• Anthony Lambert, 'Movement within a Filmic Terra Nullius: Woman, Land and Identity in Australian cinema', Balayi: Journal of Colonialism, Law and Culture, 2:1, pp 7-17, 2000
• Anthony Lambert, '(Re)Producing Country: Mapping Multiple Australias', Space and Culture, 13.3, 2010 
• Anthony Lambert and Catherine Simpson, 'Jindabyne’s Haunted Alpine Country: Producing (an) Australian Badland', M/C Journal, Vol. 11, No. 5, 2008
• Anthony Lambert, 'Landless White Women: Tracking a Non-Aboriginal Landscape Tradition in Australian Cinema', published in Metro, 163, Dec 2009 
• Anthony Lambert, 'White Aborigines: Women, Space, Mobility', Chapter in Diasporas of Australian Cinema (Intellect, 2009)
• Anthony Lambert, 'Mediating crime, mediating culture: Nationality, femininity, corporeality and territory in the Schapelle Corby drugs case', Crime Media Culture 2008; 4; 237
• Anthony Lambert, 'Woman as Cure: Cynthia, Praise and Cinematic Politics of Difference', Metro Magazine No. 124/125
• Raffaele Lampugnani, 'Comedy and Humour, Stereotypes and the Italian Migrant in Mangiamele’s Ninety Nine Per Cent', FULGOR (Flinders University Languages Group Online Review), Volume 3, Issue 1, December 2006
• Suzanne Langford , 'In Search of an Australian Soul: Reflections on Religion and Spirituality in Rabbit-Proof Fence and Japanese Story', in Eternal Sunshine of the Academic Mind: Essays on Religion and Film, edited by Christopher Hartney (Sydney Studies in Religion 2009)
• Pat Laughren, Debating Australian Documentary Production Prolicy: Some Practitioner perspectives', Media International Australia, Vol. 2008 (129), pp. 116-128
• Pat Laughren, 'Australian Documentary: Notes on the State of the Art of the Art of the State in the 1960s', ACUADS 2009 Conference: Interventions in the Public Domain
• David Lowe, 'An Outlaw Industry: Bushrangers on the big screen: 1906-1993', self-published, March 1995
• Sean Maher, 'The internationalisation of Australian film and television through the 1990s', Australian Film Commission Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane 2004 
• Martin Mantle, 'Disability, Heroism and Australian National Identity', M/C Journal, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2008
• Adrian Martin, excerpt from 'Introduction', The Mad Max Movies (Sydney: Currency Press/Australian Screen Classics, 2003)
• Greg McCarthy, 'Australian Cinema and the Spectres of Post- Coloniality: Rabbit-Proof Fence, Australian Rules, The Tracker and Beneath Clouds', London Papers in Australian Studies No. 8, 2004
• Greg McCarthy, 'The Obstinate Memory in Australian Films', Refereed paper presented to the Australasian Political Studies Association Conference University of Tasmania, Hobart 29 September — 1 October 2003 
• Jordi McKenzie, 'Stable Distribution and Paretian Tails: Australian Box Office Revenue Evidence', AFTRS Media, April 23, 2007
• Jordi McKenzie and Nicolas De Roos, '‘Cheap Tuesdays’ and Estimating Movie Demand: An Empirical Analysis of the Australian Cinema Industry', Discipline of Economics, University of Sydney, NSW, 2006
• Trevor Melksham, 'What Manner of Men are These? Peter Weir’s Gallipoli as an Expression of an Australian Civil Religion', in Eternal Sunshine of the Academic Mind: Essays on Religion and Film, edited by Christopher Hartney (Sydney Studies in Religion 2009)
• Toby Miller, The Dawn of an Imagined Community: Australian Sport on Film', Sporting Traditions 7, no. 1. (1990): 48–59
• Lisa Milner, ‘Commos and ratbags: the origins of trade union cinema in Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 60, 1999, pp. 133-139 
• Lisa Milner, 'Kenny and Australian cinema in the Howard era', in H Radner and P Fossen (eds), Remapping cinema, remaking history: XIVth Biennial Conference of the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand. Conference Proceedings. Volume Two: Selected Full Refereed Papers , Dunedin, New Zealand, 27-30 November, Department of Media, Film and Communication, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, pp. 171-181
• Tony Mitchell, '“Wogs still out of work": Australian television comedy as colonial discourse', Australasian Drama Studies, No. 20, 1992, 119-133
• Albert Moran and Errol Vieth, 'Historical Dictionary of Australian and New Zealand Cinema', Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts, No. 6, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham, Maryland • Toronto • Oxford 2005 (long exceprt)
• Meaghan Morris, 'The Man from Hong Kong in Sydney, 1975', in Judith Ryan and Chris Wallace-Crabbe (eds), Literature and Culture in the New, New World, pp. 235 -266, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Committee on Australian, Studies, 2004
• Caroline M. Pascoe, Screening Mothers: Representations of motherhood in Australian films from 1900 to 1988, PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, September 1998
• Mariacristina Petillo, 'Translating Australian Cinema for an Italian Audience The bloody case of Ned Kelly and Picnic at Hanging Rock', inTRAlinea, Vol. 12, 2010
• Ingo Petzke, 'Phillip Noyce', Humanities & Social Sciences papers, Bond University 2006
• Jonathan Pickering. 'Globalisation: A Threat to Australian Culture?', Multicultural Austrlia Research Library, November 2004
• Nick Prescott, '“All we see and all we seem...” – Australian Cinema and National Landscape', Understanding Cultural Landscapes Symposium, 11-15 July 2005
• Fiona Probyn, 'An Ethics of Following and the No Road Films: Trackers, Followers and Fanatics', Australian Humanities Review, Issue 37, December 2005
• Gaetano Rando, 'Migrant images in Italian Australian movies and documentaries', AltreItalie, 16, luglio-dicembre 1997
• Suneeti Rekhari, 'Film Representation and the Exclusion of Aboriginal Identity: Examples from Australian Cinema', TASA & SAANZ Joint Conference 2007, Refereed Papers, 4-7 December 2007 Auckland, New Zealand
• Alan Rosen, Garry Walter, Tom Politis and Michael Shortland, 'From shunned to shining: doctors, madness and psychiatry in Australian and New Zealand cinema', Medical Journal of Australia, 1997
• Mark David Ryan, 'Whither culture? Australian horror films and the limitations of cultural policy', Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy (No 133), 2009, pp. 43-55  
• Mark David Ryan, 'At Breaking Point? Challenges for Australian Film Policy through the Lens of Genre (horror) Films', ANZCA09 Communication, Creativity and Global Citizenship. Brisbane, July 2009 
• Mark David Ryan (2010) 'Towards an understanding of Australian genre cinema and entertainment : beyond the limitations of ‘Ozploitation’ discourse', Continuum : Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 24(6)
• Olga Seco Salvador, 'Strictly Ballroom (1991): Departure from Traditional Discourses or Veiled Confirmation of old National Encouragement Mechanisms?'miscelánea: a journal of english and american studies 32 (2005): pp. 103-114
• Catherine Simpson, 'Antipodean Automobility and Crash: Treachery, Trespass and Transformation of the Open Road', Australian Humanities Journal Issue 39-40, September 2006 
• Brian Tecies, 'Transformative Soundscapes: Innovating De Forest Phonofilms Talkies in Australia', Scope, Issue 1, February 2005
• Keyan Tomaselli, 'The South African and Australian Film Industries: A Comparison', Culture, Communication and Media Studies, 2007
• David Thomas, Extraordinary Undercurrents: Australian Cinema, Genre and the Everyday. PhD Thesis, School of Media, Communication and Culture Murdoch University 2006
• Deborah Tudor, 'Cultural Intersections in Early Australian Sound Films: Rangle River (1936)', Democratic Communique, 19, Spring 2004
• Deb Verhoeven, 'Wool blend: Sheep and the Australian social fabric', from Sheep and the Australian Cinema (MUP Academic Monograph Series, Melbourne University Publishing, Carlton, 2006)
• Susan Ward, 'National Cinema or Creative Industries? Film Policy in Transition', Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy, No. 112 — August 2004
• B. Yecies, 'Failures and successes: local and national Australian sound innovations, 1924-1929. Screening The Past: An International, Refereed, Electronic Journal of Visual Media and History, (16), 2004

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Great Weekend and a Successful Drip!

Keith and I (and Red) had a great weekend up in redwood country. Trinidad is a gorgeous little town. We hiked almost 12 miles on Saturday!?! I was pretty stiff after that over-achievement.

After a lot of agita and bone soup, I got my 6th round of chemo today. My platelet count was back up in the normal range, but of course there was a hitch. I had a bit of a scare when the nurse said that my white blood cell count was low and he'd paged the doctor. Ugh! I got stressed. In the end my doctor approved chemo. When she came in to talk to me she said, "well your blood counts look really good". Of course I asked her about my WBC count and she said "I'm not worried about it, you're on chemo, its going to get low". That sounds dismissive, but it wasn't; it was reassuring.

In other news, my liver enzymes were all within normal range and my tumor markers are also in the normal range too! Neither is a guarantee, but they are all good signs. I'm nervously excited for my scans in July.

The doctor cleared me for the trip to Michigan! I just need to be careful not to get sick. I have a script for antibiotics just in case and I'll keep an eye on my temperature.

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Icy Cold Birthday Treat

I must be out of my mind when I decided that I should make a Baked Alaska just 3 days before my son's birthday. He had asked for fried ice cream as a birthday treat...right after reading one of those 'Horrible Science' series. He explained the 'science' behind why ice cream won't melt when it is deep fried...something to do with baking soda, which is added to the batter that is used to coat the ice cream before it is deep fried. As I don't do any deep frying at all, I told him I would make him a baked alaska. Instead of deep frying ice cream, I thought it would be easier for me to 'bake' it!

After spending the whole night searching the internet for tips and how-tos, I managed to make him this baked alaska just in time on his birthday!

It is not the most impressive cake I have made, with my lack of skills and experience, it was the best I could come up with, plus, it was the first ever baked alaska I have ever baked! After hearing how this delicious dessert is served at restaurants (btw, I have only tried it at the Shashlik restaurant), my boy was more than willing to set his cake on fire. However, I was against the idea, as some photos of flaming baked alaska I have seen on the internet got me really worried!

After hearing my concerns, my good-natured son was equally happy to simply light it with a candle.

If you were as clueless as me when it comes to making a baked alaska, this series of video clips over here will set you on the right track.

To make a baked alaska, you would need to prepare at least one day ahead. The ice cream and the cake base would have to be prepared in advance. In order to create two layers of ice cream, and to create a nice dome, the ice cream has to be molded into a bowl and left to freeze, best over night. After checking with the birthday boy, it was decided that the ice cream would sit on a layer of brownies instead of a sponge cake.

Making the ice cream and brownies layers was no sweat! The only thing I had no confidence was making the meringue. I tend to over-whip egg whites...and without exception, the same thing happened to me. I though I had beaten the egg whites to soft peaks, but no, that extra few seconds of whisking got it almost to the stiff peak stage. The next challenge was to cover the ice cream and cake base with the egg whites...this has to be done quickly before the ice cream starts to melt in the heat. I have to thank the heavy downpour that morning, as it was a cool late afternoon when I was ready to make the meringue. All went well except that my slightly over-whipped egg whites started to separate('weeping') when I tried to make decorative swirls and peaks with the back of a spoon. I had no luck in getting any nice tall peaks except for a few swirls and small 'hills'. It could also likely due to the method I have chosen to prepare the meringue. I opted for the easier way...beating egg whites with just sugar and some vanilla extract. I should have taken the trouble to make an Italian meringue (egg whites beaten with sugar syrup) just like the lemon meringue pie I made sometime back.

After I had given up hope with the swirling, I popped the entire cake back into the freezer again so that it would be ready for the grand finale that night.

The final step calls for baking the cake in a very very hot oven for 3 minutes or so. I cranked up my oven to 250degC and let it preheat for about 20mins. Just before sending this 'space-ball' into the hot oven, I dusted it with some icing sugar as suggested by some recipes I came across. Actually after baking, I realised this is quite redundant!

My earlier fear of ending up with a tray of melted ice cream was unfounded. My ice cream bombe was still intact, fresh out of the oven! The meringue was not evenly browned as my small oven burnt the top before the lower part had time to turn brown. I was left with no choice but to remove the cake from the oven as I didn't want to end up with a black bomb. I am sure a bigger oven or a blow touch will do a much better job.

Despite the burnt top, the ice cream inside remained frozen (this picture was taken more than 10mins after the cake was taken out of the oven)...

even the cake slicer got stuck when my child tried to cut it...I had to use my bread knife to cut into the cake ;)

Even though it sounds like a lot of work involved, breaking up the preparation into different stages make the whole process easier. As for the taste, if you like ice cream, brownies and marshmallowy meringue, I am sure you will enjoy this icy cold dessert. If the bombe were to be drenched with rum or brandy, and flambé, I bet the show and the extra alcohol will bring your taste palette to greater heights!

I can't believe the tremendous speed at which my child has grown...from a 3.6kg (almost 8 pounds) new-born baby to a 36kg, 12 year old boy! On this special day, I want to thank him for being our child.

Happy Birthday, my son, what a precious gift you are to us!

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Michael Haneke Studies: videos, podcasts and article links

Dedicated to the memory of Peter Brunette, 1943-2010

True likeness by Catherine Grant

The above is a new video essay produced for Film Studies For Free's baby sister site Filmanalytical. It explores some of the obvious, as well as the more obscure, similarities between two films: Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960) and Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages/Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys (Michael Haneke, 2000). Like all mash-ups it's best enjoyed and/or most effective if you know the original films. Read an explanation of the context of this work here.

 

Thomas Elsaesser on Michael Haneke (excerpt) And see Elsaesser's book chapter on this work here (pdf -details below)

 

Geoff Andrew on Michael Haneke

Geoff Andrew on The White Ribbon

 Film Studies For Free created a big Michael Haneke links list in October last year to coincide with the flood of online material on this filmmaker as a consequence of the cinematic release of Das Weisse Band/The White Ribbon. The flood shows no sign of abating, however, and so here's a new and updated list of material. For ease of use, FSFF has listed at the top items that weren't included in the October entry.

At the top of this post is a new video essay made by FSFF's author for a new companion website to  this blog: Filmanalytical. The site will focus on video and written essays on films and will necessarily be more "occasional" than FSFF, but hopefully useful nonetheless for those of you who like your Film Studies to be online and freely accessible.

This entry, like two other FSFF posts here and here, is dedicated to the memory of Peter Brunette, the film critic and scholar who died last week. Peter's last book was on Michael Haneke, and below is a link to a wonderful podcast interview that he gave on the subject of this filmmaker.

Finally, there are some other great new English-language books on Michael Haneke -- to join Catherine Wheatley's 2008 Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethics of the Image -- some of which FSFF's author has been poring over. Here are links to limited previews or listings of each of them on Google Books:

• Brian Price and John David Rhodes (eds), On Michael Haneke (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010)
• Roy Grundmann (ed), A Companion to Michael Haneke (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)
• Peter Brunette, Michael Haneke (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010)
• Ben McCann and David Sorfa, The Cinema of Michael Haneke: Europe Utopia (London: Wallflower Press, 2010)

New freely accessible items:

• Peter Bradshaw, 'What Haneke owes to Kafka', The Guardian, November 5, 2009
• Peter Brunette interviewed by Colin Marshall about his University of Illinois Press study of Michael Haneke's films (Podcast), April 15, 2010
• Caché - Videoed roundtable discussion of Michael Haneke's film with Roy Grundman, Edward Nersessian, Brigitte Peucker, Brian Price, and Garrett Stewart (1hr25), Philoctetes Center 
• Matthew Croombs, 'Algeria Deferred: The Logic of Trauma in Muriel and Caché', Scope, no. 16, February 2010
• Thomas Elsaesser, "Performative Self-Contradictions Michael Haneke's Mind Games," in Roy Grundmann (ed), A Companion to Michael Haneke (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)
• Catherine Grant, "True Likeness: Peeping Tom and Code Unknown", Filmanalytical, June 26, 2010 
• Jan Jagodzinski, 'Michael Haneke: The Spectatorship of Self-refleXivity; Between Lacan and Deleuze', 'The Scope of Interdisciplinarity' Conference, Center for Integrated Studies, November 2008
• Dan North, 'Funny Games, Funny Games', Spectacular Attractions, October 14, 2009 
• David Sorfa, "Uneasy domesticity in the Films of Michael Haneke", Studies in European Cinema, 3.2 (2006)
• Robin Wood, 'Michael Haneke: beyond compromise', CineAction, Summer 2007

Full list of freely accessible items:

• Paul Arthur, 'Endgame [on Caché]', Film Comment, November/December 2005
• Karin Badt, 'Family Is Hell and So Is the World: Talking to Michael Haneke at Cannes 2005', Bright Lights Films Journal, Issue 50, November 2005
• Pamela Biénzobas, 'Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon": The Sins of the Father Are to be Laid Upon the Children', Undercurrent, 2009
• Adam Bingham, 'Long night's journey into day Michael Haneke's Le Temps du loup (The Time of the Wolf, 2003)', Kinoeye, Vol 4, Issue 1, Mar 2004
• Adam Bingham, 'Life, or something like it: Michael Haneke's Der siebente Kontinent (The Seventh Continent, 1989)', Kinoeye, Vol. 4, Issue 1, Mar 2004
• Adam Bingham, 'Modern Times: Notes Toward a Reading of Michael Haneke's 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance', Senses of Cinema, January 2005
• Bill Blick, 'The Time of the Wolf', Senses of Cinema, January 2005
• Joe Bowman, 'The Year 2001: The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke)', Film For the Soul, April 28, 2009
• Peter Bradshaw, 'What Haneke owes to Kafka', The Guardian, November 5, 2009
  
• Peter Brunette interviewed by Colin Marshall about his University of Illinois Press study of Michael Haneke's films (Podcast), April 15, 2010 
• Caché - Videoed roundtable discussion of Michael Haneke's film with Roy Grundman, Edward Nersessian, Brigitte Peucker, Brian Price, and Garrett Stewart (1hr25), Philoctetes Center
• Zach Campbell, 'Blog-a-thon: Code Inconnu', Elusive Lucidity, February 12, 2006
• Mary Caputi, 'Ambivalence and Displacement in Michael Haneke’s Caché', Centre for Cultural Studies Research Conference Journal 2007
• John Champagne, 'Undoing Oedipus: Feminism and Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 36, April 2002
• Matthew Clayfield, 'Every Sequence an Unfinished Senten', Esoteric Rabbit Blog, February 13, 2006 [link currently not working]
• Dennis Cozzalio, 'Code Unknown and Crash: Collisions, Connections and Catharsis', Sergio Leone & The Infield Fly Rule, February 13, 2006
• Matthew Croombs, 'Algeria Deferred: The Logic of Trauma in Muriel and Caché', Scope, no. 16, February 2010
• Rob Davis and Robert Parks, 'Podcast Discussion: The Films of Michael Haneke', Errata, April 27, 2008
• Dipanjan, 'Haneke's Optimism' Dipanjan's Random Muses, February 13, 2006
• Maria van Dijk, 'Alienation & Perversion: Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 36, April 2002
• Peter Eisenman, 'Interview with Haneke for Icon', Iconeye
• Thomas Elsaesser, "Performative Self-Contradictions Michael Haneke's Mind Games," in Roy Grundmann (ed), A Companion to Michael Haneke (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)
• Christine Evans, 'Cache', UBCinephile, Volume 2, March 2006
• Richard Falcon, 'Code Unknown', Sight and Sound, May 2001
• Hamish Ford, 'Hidden: A film for our times', RealTimeArts, 75, Oct-Nov 2006
• Mattias Frey, 'Supermodernity, Capital, and Narcissus: The French Connection to Michael Haneke’s Benny’s Video', Cinetext: Film & Philosophy, September 27, 2002
• Mattias Frey, 'Michael Haneke', Senses of Cinema, August 2003
• Andrew Grant/Film Brain, 'A Crumpled Piece of Paper: Scattered and Inconsequential Musings on Code Unknown', Like Anna Karina's Sweater, February 13, 2006
• Catherine Grant, "True Likeness: Peeping Tom and Code Unknown", Filmanalytical, June 26, 2010 
• Asbjørn Grønstad, 'Downcast Eyes: Michael Haneke and the Cinema of Intrusion', Nordicom Review 29 (2008) 1, pp. 133-144
• Roy Grundmann, 'Auteur de force: Michael Haneke's "cinema of glaciation"', Cineaste, March 22, 2007
• Michael Guillén, 'Code Unknown', The Evening Class, February 13, 2006
• Steffen Hantke, 'Postwar German Cinema and the Horror Film: Thoughts on Historical Continuity and Genre Consolidation', in Caligari's Heirs: The German Cinema of Fear after 1945, Edited by Steffen Hantke (Scarecrow Press, 2006)
• Eric Henderson, 'Code Unknown', When Canses Were Classeled, February 13, 2006
• Lee Hill, 'How Do You Think It Feels', Vertigo Magazine, No 16, March 2008
• Aaron Hillis, 'Code Well Known, Or, How to Build a Better Blog-a-thon', Cinephiliac, Fevruary 13, 2006
• Andrew James Horton, 'Locked Out! Michael Haneke's Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages', Central Europe review, Vol 3, No 19, May 2001
• Andrew J Horton, 'De-icing the Emotions: Michael Haneke's retrospective in London', Central Europe Review, Vol 0, No 5, October 1998
• David Hudson, 'The Auteurs Daily: The White Ribbon, How German is it?', The Auteurs Notebook, August 28, 2009
• Darren Hughes,'Code Unknown', Long Pauses, February 13, 2006
• Daniel Hui, 'Fun and Games: On Michael Haneke's 2007 Remake of His 1997 Funny Games', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 61, August 2008
• Nina Hutchison, ' Between Action and Repression: The Piano Teacher', Senses of Cinema, April 2003
• Jan Jagodzinski, 'Michael Haneke: The Spectatorship of Self-refleXivity; Between Lacan and Deleuze', 'The Scope of Interdisciplinarity' Conference, Center for Integrated Studies, November 2008
• Ian Johnston, 'Lost World: Michael Haneke's Time of the Wolf Reconsidered', Brights Lights Film Journal, Issue 56, May 2007
• Chris Justice, 'Funny Games', Senses of Cinema, January 2005
• Dominik Kamalzadeh for Die Tageszeitung, 'Interview "Cowardly and comfortable" Michael Haneke's new film "Cache" on France's colonial history investigates the point where private and collective guilt spill over into each other', Signand sight.com, January 2006
• Daniel Kasman, 'Cannes 09: Review of The White Ribbon', The Auteurs Notebook, May 22, 2009
• Tarja Laine, '"What are you looking at and why?" Michael Haneke's Funny Games (1997) with his audience', Kinoeye, Vol. 4, Issue 1, Mar 2004
• Maximilian Le Cain,' Do the Right Thing: the Films of Michael Haneke', Senses of Cinema, May 2003
• David Lowery, 'Following [On Code Unknown], Drifting, February 13, 2006
• Kartik Nair, 'Caché and the secret image', Wide Screen, Vol 1, No 1 (2009)
• Darragh O'Donoghue, 'Code inconnu: Récit incomplete de divers voyages', Senses of Cinema, January 2005
• Ara Osterwell, 'Caché ', Film Quarterly, Vol. 59, Issue 4, 2006
• Dan North, 'Funny Games, Funny Games', Spectacular Attractions, October 14, 2009
• Brigitte Peucker, 'Effects of the real Michael Haneke's Benny's Video (1993)', Kinoeye, Vol. 4 Issue 1, Mar 2004
• Peter Sainsbury, 'Visions, illusions, and delusions', RealTimeArts, 53, Feb-Mar 2003
• A. O. Scott, 'A Nice Middle Class Couple with their own Stalker [on Caché]', New York Times, December 23, 2005
• Girish Shambu, 'Cache', girish, January 23, 2006
• Girish Shambu, 'Code Unknown: An Auto-Dialogue', girish, February 13, 2006. and for the remaining contributions to the Code Unknown Blogathon:

Aaron Hillis at Cinephiliac;Darren Hughes at Long Pauses; David Lowery at Drifting; Dennis Cozzalio at Sergio Leone & The Infield Fly Rule; .Dipanjan at Random Muses; Eric Henderson at When Canses Were Classeled; Filmbrain [Andrew Grant] at Like Anna Karina's Sweater; Matthew Clayfield at Esoteric Rabbit; Michael Guillen at The Evening Class; and Zach Campbell at Elusive Lucidity.

• Christopher Sharrett, 'The Seventh Continent', Senses of Cinema, February 2005
• Christopher Sharrett, 'The World that is Known: Michael Haneke Interviewed', Kino Eye vol. 4, no. 1, 8 March 2004
• Christopher Sharrett, 'The horror of the middle class: Michael Haneke's La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher, 2001)', Kinoeye, Vol. 4, Issue 1, Mar 2004
• David Sorfa, "Uneasy domesticity in the Films of Michael Haneke", Studies in European Cinema, 3.2 (2006)
• Joerg Sternagel, 'From Inside Us: Experiencing the Film Actor in Michael Haneke’s Cache', Film International, Issue 39
• Harry Tuttle, 'Haneke on Hidden', Screenville, October 17, 2005
• Harry Tuttle, 'Three Times 4 Eggs - Funny Games (2)', Screenville, June 18, 2008
• Justin Vicari, 'Films of Michael Haneke: Utopia of fear', Jump Cut, No. 48, Winter 2006
• Catherine Wheatley, 'Secrets, Lies, & Videotape', Sight and Sound, February 2006
• Catherine Wheatley, Michael Haneke: The Ethic of the Image (London: Bergahn Books, 2008) limited preview on Google Books
• Robin Wood, 'Michael Haneke: beyond compromise', CineAction, Summer 2007

More about → Michael Haneke Studies: videos, podcasts and article links

Interview with Jimmy Moore

About two months ago, I did an interview with Jimmy Moore of the Livin' la Vida Low Carb internet empire. I hardly remember what we talked about, but I think it went well. I enjoyed Jimmy's pleasant and open-minded attitude. Head over to Jimmy's website and listen to the interview here.

I do recall making at least one mistake. When discussing heart attacks,I said "atrial fibrillation" when I meant "ventricular fibrillation".

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Making the meaning affective: Peter Brunette's film studies

Still image from the final shot of L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)

 Luxuriating in the view over the Sicilian coast, the Mt. Etna volcano, and the Mediterranean sea here at the Taormina Film Festival. Oh yeah, and seeing some good films too!
Peter Brunette,  June 15, 2010

Rather than viewing the narrative content of Antonioni's films as symbolic, as representations of an absent meaning, [Peter] Brunette calls for an appreciation of the visual in and for itself, as meaning 'is made affective, through line, shape, and form' (60). Meaning emerges from the image, it is 'made affective'. Searching for authorial intent behind seemingly obvious symbols -- Brunette shows through the discrepancy between Antonioni's own suggestions and the contrasting critical reception of his films -- will inevitably say more about the critical frame employed, than the film itself. What Brunette is claiming is the loss of referent for the sign, the loss of signification. This links nicely to his deconstructive concern, which is itself indicative of the flaws in the existentialist debate. The absences that characteristically mark Antonioni's films (witness the vanishing Anna (Massari) in L'avventura) points not to a transcendental absence, but rather indicates the way out of the Platonic illusion of the coexisting Ideal and (vs) real. 'David Martin-Jones, '[Review of Brunette's book on Antonioni', Film-Philosophy, Volume 3 Number 50, December 1999

Katherine's exclamation [in Viaggio in Italia, Roberto Rossellini, 1954] is also emblematic of the death theme that permeates the film, and that culminates in the sequence so aptly described by Brunette in the following passage: "The parts begin to form themselves into a man and a woman; death has caught them making love, or at least wrapped tightly in each other's arms. Suddenly, the museum, the catacombs, and the Cumaean Sybil all come together in one startling image: the physicality and rawness of the ancient world, the ubiquity of death in life, and love, however inadequate and flawed, as the only possible solution". Asbjørn Grønstad, "The Gaze of Tiresias: Joyce, Rossellini and the Iconology of "The Dead"", Nordic Journal of English Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2002, citing Peter Brunette, Roberto Rossellini, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987, 1996)

In Peter Brunette and David Wills's much under-valued Screen/Play: Derrida and Film Theory [Princeton University Press, 1989] they discuss the form that a deconstructive mode of analysis might take. They write: 'From a deconstructive stand-point, analysis would no longer seek the supposed center of meaning but instead turn its attentions to the margins, where the supports of meaning are disclosed, to reading in and out of the text, examining the other texts onto which it opens itself out or from which it closes itself off'. [...] [I]t strikes me that a serious discussion of Brunette and Wills's book would be essential to any work purporting to discuss cinema and deconstructive politics.[...]  David Sorfa, Film-Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 23, 1998

A number of the tributes to film critic and scholar Peter Brunette, who died last week at the Taormina Film Festival in Italy,  conveyed very movingly their opinion that he left this world while doing what he loved.

Those of us who followed Peter's activities and travels, at least from the vantage point of his social media network, certainly loved his updates on them, like his final Facebook posting above. His death was a huge shock, and a great loss, notably to the two spheres -- film scholarship and theory, and film criticism -- that he managed to join up, much more successfully than most, through his own prolific practice (he gave an account of some of the issues at stake in this choice in an interview here, and Gerald Peary's obituary beautifully refers to his unusual trajectory, for an academic, here).

FSFF's author's acquaintance with Peter Brunette began with his 'director books' (listed with his other work in his CV here), and in particular with his marvellous study of the films of Roberto Rossellini, now one of the best freely accessible e-books online, thanks to Peter and his publishers. Peter was a fan and an important supporter of freely accessible culture and ideas on the Web, as this article he wrote in 2000 testifies.

Fortunately, a very good selection of other articles and chapters (and a substantial podcast) by him may be experienced at the click of a mouse, quite aside from the virtual reams of online movie criticism under his byline. That means that the following list of links to the former work - to Peter Brunette's formal film studies - is, then, the most fitting tribute that FSFF can give to a scholar who gave so much and influenced so many in his too short (or just long enough) life.

• Peter Brunette, Roberto Rossellini (Berkeley: University of California Press, c1996 1996)
• Peter Brunette, 'Introduction [excerpt]', The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
• Peter Brunette, 'Blow-up', The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
• Peter Brunette, 'Miniature Movies, Big Ideas: Cinephiles move on to the Web', Adobe Magazine, June-August 2000
• Peter Brunette, 'The Flowers of St. Francis: God's Jester', The Criterion Collection: Film Essays, August 22, 2005 
• Peter Brunette, 'The Children are Watching Us: A Movement is Born', The Criterion Collection, Film Essays, March 27, 2006 
• Peter Brunette, 'Nowell-Smith Meets Visconti, Redux: The Old and the New', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 9 No. 16, March 2005
• Peter Brunette, 'Rossellini and Cinematic Realism', Cinema Journa1, 25,  No 1, Fall 1985
• Podcast: Peter Brunette interviewed by Colin Marshall about his University of Illinois Press study of Michael Haneke's films (see below), April 15, 2010

More about → Making the meaning affective: Peter Brunette's film studies

What's for dinner tonight?

That's what my elder child would usually ask me over lunch. He will ask about lunch when he's having breakfast and about dinner during lunch. How I wish he shows the same amount of enthusiasm when it comes to his studies (^^')

I had planned to cook some angel hair with meat sauce, but only realised that there was less than 1 serving of noodles left. Luckily, there was still half a pack of elbow macaroni. I told him dinner would just be macaroni with bolognese sauce.

"Oh, ok, that will be great! But can you bake it with cheese please?"

"Hmmm...yes, I do have a pack of cheese, but I have not done it before. Let me google and see whether I can get some idea, but I can't promise it will turn out well."

So, that was how our pasta with tomato sauce got evolved into a baked version.

I was surprised at how easy to transform the dish...and was even more delighted when the baked version turned out to be so delicious!

I cooked the macaroni and the bolognese sauce as usual, and as usual, I rely on ready-made pasta sauce. I guess it will be several years before I would venture into making homemade pasta sauce, to me, store-bought sauces are really time savers.

Instead of serving the macaroni right away, to make the baked version, I had to layer the macaroni and bolognese sauce in a baking dish...ie, one layer of cooked macaroni followed by half of the bolognese sauce, then the remaining macaroni,  and top it off with the remaining sauce...

followed by a layer of shredded cheese...

before baking it at 190 degC for 15~20 minutes, or until the top turns brown and bubbly.

I wish you were in my kitchen when this pipping hot dish was taken out of the oven. The fantastic aroma from the mozzrella cheese and the bolognese was unbelievable. My oven has got hot spots, this photo happens to show the 'fairer' side of the dish (^_^''')

That was our dinner last night. Both my kids love this tasty, simple and quick to prepare everyday meal. If one dish meals are a mother's best friends, I am glad I have stumbled upon this new found friend. I am sure it will become a regular family friend very soon :)





Baked Macaroni with Bolognese Sauce

Ingredients
(serves 3)

2 tablespoons oil
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 teaspoon mixed dried herbs (optional)
200g minced beef
1 tomato, chopped into small chunks
1 1/2 cups ready-made pasta sauce (I used Leggo's)
1/2 teaspoon salt (adjust according to taste)
1 teaspoon freshly grounded black pepper
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon dried parsley (optional)
150g macaroni
100g shredded mozzarella cheese


Method

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C. Lightly grease (I used olive oil) an ovenproof dish. Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the garlic. Let it cook on low heat for 1 minute. Add the dried mixed herbs (if using). Cook for another 1 minute.
2. Add the minced beef and cook for 5 minutes, breaking up lumps as it cooks, until well browned. Add in the tomatoes, stir and cook for 1 minute.
3. Add the pasta sauce. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat slightly and simmer for 5 minutes. Season to taste with salt, pepper, sugar and dried parsley (if using).
4. In the meantime, cook the macaroni in salted boiling water until al dente. Drain well.
5. Spread half of the cooked macaroni evenly into the prepared dish. Top with half of the bolognese sauce, then the remaining macaroni, followed by the remaining sauce. Sprinkle the top with some extra dried parsley, if desired. Top with shredded cheese and bake for 15~20 minutes, until the top turns brown and bubbly. Serve warm.

(Note: this recipe serves as a rough guide only. Adjust the ingredient amounts according to individual preference.)

More about → What's for dinner tonight?