GONE is thick with visual layers. It is a wry look at family and friends, where ‘digi-scape’ meets urban monument to reflect a hidden landscape of the underground artist. The story is loosely based on a television series from the early 70′s — a real life TV docu-drama called An American Family staring the “Louds” — and un-folds during a family reunion in New York City. In GONE Dougherty employs archetypal and cartoony characters that drawn from her personal life experiences to tell a story that speaks to the New York fringe. She draws on a world of homegrown talent whose life stories blur with the real and imagined. Painter Amy Sillman plays a visiting mother and musician Frances Sorensen, plays Lance’s ambiguous live-in “other.” Read more
#”THE AMERICAN CYNIC LONGING FOR THE DREAM” Seabiscuit Director: Gary Ross Writer: Gary Ross Studio: Universal Pictures Starring: Tobey Maguire, Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges), Tom Smith (Chris Cooper), Elizabeth Banks, Gary Stevens, William H. Macy, Kingston DuCoeur, Eddie Jones, Ed Lauter Spellbound Director: Jeffrey … Read more
In the end it was Aileen that really made the decision to die, not the courts. She said, “Let God be my judge.” She didn’t fear death. Aileen Wuornos lend a lonely life, clinging to the only intimacy she ever saw, and when that was taken from her too, she took her sentence, and cursed out the judge that gave it to her. Read more
The cinematic seventh seal has been broken with Bill Murray’s deconstructionist Karaoke version of Roxy Music’s “More Than This” in Sophia Coppola’s second movie, Lost in Translation. Murray plays the role of Bob Harris, a fictitious character mimicking his own real-life stardom, struggling with the both success and ultimate meaninglessness of his grandiose life. While filming a multi-million dollar whiskey commercial in Japan, Bob meets a young American woman named Charlotte also staying in his same swanky Tokyo Hotel. Charlotte, a young twenties-something Yale graduate is struggling to find her identity within in her new marriage to a glitzy photographer (Giovanni Ribisi) who remains out of focus when it comes to their seeming incompatibility. Bob, a married man of 25 years, is always trying to come to grips with his struggling relationship coupled with a career crisis. Read more
Can masturbation cause blindness? Does being a homosexual mean you are insane? Is it normal for your boyfriend to touch your anus? Does cunnilingus cause birth defects? These are the questions the students struggle with as they line up at the door of Professor Alfred Kinsey’s office. What is perhaps most shocking about the film, Kinsey is not the discoveries he makes (most woman orgasm by stimulating the clitoris not the vagina) but the level of ignorance about sex in the 50s. Viewing the 50s from the present, it never occurs to us that the Cleavers might have assumed, as did the recently married woman interviewed in Kinsey, that babies come from a woman’s navel, as newly weds. Read more
So I’m sitting in the theatre, already content on giving a couple more bucks, and wasting a couple more hours, out of pure loyalty to the guy, just because of record. I figured, why not, he might have something up his sleeve. I didn’t expect that much from him, but Kill Bill Volume 2, I gotta say is fucking awesome. There are some drawn out monologues like the one Bill (David Carradine) goes on and on about some comic book for two minutes that made me bored to tears. Monologues about comic books, are no longer clever subjects about a subculture, but sound more like generic banter from Clerks. Then there’s the part where Uma is getting trained by her Kung Fu expert, that though are entertaining often drag and should have been shortened. But even with all this, the movie was great. Not because there were some good parts to outweigh the bad. It’s just that the good parts weren’t just good, they were fucking amazing. I mean, amazing like they should be shown in every film school to every film student to say, hey, this is fucking cinema. Read more
One of the biggest problems in American Cinema is the lack of minority representation, especially of Asians and Latinos. These groups have been systematically shunted to the sidelines of contemporary American cinema. The African American community has enjoyed more exposure than other minority groups. Black males on television are represented three times more than they are in the general population. Of course, the roles they are given can be — and often are — criticized as stereotypical. Asians are hardly seen in movies at all, not even in stereotypical roles. And, for the most part, when you see a Latino in a film, you only need to wait a couple of seconds before a crime goes down. Read more
Learning’s of Comedy: Borat Receives a Memo, I respond
Posted by in Essays | Film Reviews - (Comments Off)
“Young people today get most of their news from Comedy shows. Comedy shows are moving closer to what serious news programming used to be and news is moving into the realm of entertainment.” NPR – Nov 13th 2006 Let me take this moment to invoke the early nineties and say, ‘No shit … Read more
Vanity Fair: Better than CliffsNotes, but where is that bad girl Becky? (A review of Mira Nair’s film) By Poonam Srivastava “Vanity Fair” Director: Mira Nair A Tempesta Films/Granada Film production Screenwriters: Matthew Faulk, Mark Skeet, Julian Fellowes Based on the novel by: William Makepeace Thackeray Cast: Reese Witherspoon (Becky Sharp), Eileen Atkins (Matilda Crawley), … Read more
Monsoon Wedding – reviewed by Poonam Srivastava
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“Monsoon Wedding” An Issues Film Untainted by Art Review by Poonam Srivastava I saw Monsoon Wedding, due to all the excited chatter surrounding this “hit”. Who needs two hours of Thanksgiving holiday-type-family ennui at plot speed minus two? For those that do, I highly recommend Mira Nair’s latest box office “success”: Monsoon Wedding. Catchy title, … Read more
