A soccer star weaving through giant puppies on a stadium pitch clouded by cosmic cotton candy is the wildest and most memorable image from Gabriel Abrantes’s and Daniel Schmidt’s screwball satire, Diamantino, which opens its theatrical run in LA today. Debuting at Cannes in 2018, where it won both the Critics’ Week Grand Prize and the Palm Dog Jury Prize for best canine performance, the roving comedy weaves together a wacky plot with hyper-topical subjects like rising neo-facism, genetic modification and the refugee crisis. Named for its protagonist soccer stud loosely inspired by Christian Ronaldo, Diamantino begins with a fall […]
by Whitney Mallett on Jun 28, 2019In Jim Jarmusch’s 1989 Mystery Train, two rock ‘n’ roll-loving Japanese teenagers arrive in Memphis, Tennessee, and make their way over to Sun Studio, the legendary recording studio once the stomping grounds for the likes of Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and, of course, Elvis Presley, who recorded his first song there at the age of 18. In part because of the faint replay of this scene that had lingered in my head for some years, I’ve long wanted to take the Sun tour, one of my many Memphis to-dos, which also included a bunch of famous barbecue […]
by Kristen Yoonsoo Kim on Nov 14, 2018