Mother, the latest film by South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho, is an inky affair. The humor is dark and the sky is a soggy shade of gray. The bumbling characters have limited prospects, and when love exists, it’s intense and deranged enough to kill for. The central relationship in the film is between Yoon Do-Joon, a slow-witted young man, and his unnamed mother. The son is played by Wan Bin, a wide-eyed Korean heartthrob cast effectively against type; his good looks leave us continually disappointed by his character’s slow intellect. His protector, oppressor and champion—also known as his mom—is played […]
Just in time for SXSW is this blog post from Mark Suster, an “entrepreneur turned VC” who blogs at “Both Sides of the Table.” Titled “Making the Most of Sitting on Panels,” it begins like this: “Many of us in the technology, media and VC world sit on panels at lot. Many of them are painfully boring.” I have to agree. I’m not a big fan of panels for some of the same reasons that Suster cites. Most panels are too big. By the time everyone gets a chance to talk and each answer a few questions, time is up. […]
When I put together the clips for the “Young Person’s Guide to Kathryn Bigelow,” post below, there is one thing I left out. While scanning through her clips I did come across this music video for New Order’s “Touched by the Hand of God.” I don’t think I had ever seen it before, and I’ll confess that I initially stared at it trying to figure out if it was conceptual parody or whether New Order had had a mid-’80s hair-metal band image makeover I had somehow missed. (Correct answer: the former). Gray Miller posted this link below in the comments […]
As the current Massa Meltdown demonstrates, a lot of crazy talk can come out of legislators’ mouths. (For some of that crazy talk, I will definitely be tuning into Glenn Beck tonight when Massa is on for the full hour.) So when I was forwarded this link from Think Progress about a Florida state representative, Stephen Precourt, proposing a change to Florida’s film tax incentive that would deny the credit to films espousing “non-traditional” family values, I assumed it was just one guy shooting his mouth off and that it wasn’t really worth mentioning. But, as the post as well […]
Receiving its U.S. premiere at SXSW is Jukka Karkkainen’s The Living Room of a Nation, a documentary about six Finnish living rooms. From the production company’s website: The documentary film The Living Room of the Nation opens a portrait-like view into six Finnish living rooms. A collage of everyday events, the film is a story of changes, loneliness, responsibilities and the unavoidable passing of time. The trailer is below. The film plays Saturday, March 20, at 6:15 PM at the Alamo Lamar 3.
Filmmaker Marie Losier is well known in her New York for her beguiling experimental films, which include portraits of a number of today’s most unconventional and important artists. For the last four years she has been filming Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, artist and founding member of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, among other ventures. Beginning in 1993, P-Orridge began a radical art project with his wife and artist partner, Lady Jaye, in which they both underwent plastic surgery to resemble each other, creating, they said, “an indivisible third,” a “pandrogyne.” Lady Jaye passed away in 2007, and Losier’s film will tell […]
If you’re craving the look and feel of an indie from the ’90s then Tao Ruspoli’s debut feature Fix may be the disc you’ll want to pop in. Chronicling a wild one day journey around Greater Los Angeles, we follow Bella (Olivia Wilde) and Milo (Ruspoli) as they shoot a documentary on Milo’s brother, Leo (Shawn Andrews), who they pick him up from jail and attempt to drop off at rehab before 8pm. The catch: they have to raise the $5,000 needed to get Leo in the clinic or it’s back to jail. With an impressive soundtrack leading the way, […]
This powerful adaptation of a 1994 book by French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam of the same title exposes the inhuman practice of stoning women accused of adultery, which supposedly continues to this day. Jim Caviezel stars as Sahebjam, who after his car breaks down is towed to a small Iranian village where he’s approached by Soraya’s aunt (Shohreh Aghdashloo), who reveals to him the village’s dark secret. The film then is told in a flashback as we follow Soraya (Mozhan Marno) as she attempts to provide for her two sons and two daughters though she receives no support from her husband, […]
One of the most puzzling moments from last night’s Oscars came during the Best Documentary acceptance speech. When it came time for The Cove director Louie Psihoyos to speak he found himself in front of a dead mic. Here’s Psihoyos’s acceptance speech, which AJ Schnack at All These Wonderful Things (always on top of the doc news) posted. We made this film to give the oceans a voice. We told the story of The Cove because we witnessed a crime. Not just a crime against nature, but a crime against humanity. We made this movie because through plundering, pollution and […]
A big congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, and the team behind The Hurt Locker for their well-deserved Academy Awards tonight. (I’m pretty sure it’s the first Filmmaker mag cover film to ever win Best Picture and Bigelow the first cover director to win Best Director.) For any newcomers to Bigelow out there, here’s a quick history courtesy of YouTube. (Missing, unfortunately, is her 20-minute Columbia University student film The Set-Up. According to the New York Times‘ Manohla Dargis, it portrays “two men […] fighting each other as the semioticians Sylvère Lotringer and Marshall Blonsky deconstruct the images in voice-over.”) […]