It’s rare that one week brings not one but two ambitiously cinematic, outside-the-box music videos. The first is “Cut the World,” from Antony and the Johnsons and directed by Nabil. Starring Willem Dafoe, Carice Van Houten and Marina Abramovic, it starts out like a bittersweet tale of office longing… and then turns into something else. From Tom Waits and ’80s music video superstar director Matt Mahurin is “Hell Broke Luce,” which Waits describes as picturing “an enlightened drill sergeant yelling the hard truths of war to a brand new batch of recruits. The video grew from the gnawing image of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 8, 2012Muscular and involving, Christopher Smith’s medieval adventure film Black Death is a satisfying throwback of sorts — a tense, character-driven period piece that is at once an action film and an act of historical reexamination, with a dash of slow burn horror and spiritual rumination to boot. Eddie Redmayne plays Osmund, a monk in a small bubonic plague-ridden hamlet in rural England. Cloistered from the decimation somewhat, he carries on a forbidden love affair with a young woman (Kimberley Nixon) from his home town. After dispatching her back to their village in order to escape the plague, Osmund is tasked with […]
by Brandon Harris on Mar 9, 2011