Last night I had one of the best movie experiences I've partaken in in quite some time...a screening of the 1922 German Expressionist silent film, Nosferatu...accompanied live by the band Tortoise. Put simply, it was wonderful. The music meshed perfectly with the film...it was intense, moody, and added to the sense that the film's participants were inexorably being consumed by darkness.

The only low point was that most of the audience seemed to regard the whole thing as a music show that happened to have a video accompanying it...which is particularly odd since the band were facing the screen, i.e. turned away from the audience. Is this the MTV effect? That the visual element, whatever it is, must be subservient to the music...a case of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik Uber Alles?