Documentaries, by their very nature, are driven by curiosity. Nonfiction filmmakers arrive at their subjects — be they people, places or events — with a wide-eyed sense of wonder. But as Max Kestner’s “Life and Other Problems” attests, curiosity can only take you so far. Ostensibly structured around the director’s interest in big questions about life and consciousness, this journey through philosophy, biology, and evolution never quite brings its many-pronged interrogations into a cohesive whole. Eager to posit that we are no different from the microbes that live within us — or the animals we keep in zoos — the documentary never does more than meander around its many provocative questions.
The precipitating incident at the start of Kestner’s film is a global headline-grabbing moment from 2014. That’s the year the Copenhagen Zoo decided to euthanize Marius, a 2-year-old giraffe under their care. Clearly rankled by the incident and the issues...
The precipitating incident at the start of Kestner’s film is a global headline-grabbing moment from 2014. That’s the year the Copenhagen Zoo decided to euthanize Marius, a 2-year-old giraffe under their care. Clearly rankled by the incident and the issues...
- 3/13/2024
- by Manuel Betancourt
- Variety Film + TV
By Lai Kun-Yu
“Missing Johnny” is a story that records young people in Taipei. Filled with energy and power, this film expresses different faces of Taipei with the soul of the Taiwanese New Wave. It is an unforgettable work in this year Taipei Film Festival.
The story is about three young people who live in the same building, in different apartments. Lee is the landlady’s son who is autistic. Feng is a worker who helps the landlady to maintain her house. As for Hsu Zi Qi, she is a girl from Hong Kong who loves birds. These three main characters live their own lives and have their own troubles. Hsu Zi Qi is confused about the future between her and her boyfriend. Feng is involved in an embarrassing family argument. Lee tries to find himself in this complicated world. Their own individual storylines sometimes connect, making the film very interesting.
“Missing Johnny” is a story that records young people in Taipei. Filled with energy and power, this film expresses different faces of Taipei with the soul of the Taiwanese New Wave. It is an unforgettable work in this year Taipei Film Festival.
The story is about three young people who live in the same building, in different apartments. Lee is the landlady’s son who is autistic. Feng is a worker who helps the landlady to maintain her house. As for Hsu Zi Qi, she is a girl from Hong Kong who loves birds. These three main characters live their own lives and have their own troubles. Hsu Zi Qi is confused about the future between her and her boyfriend. Feng is involved in an embarrassing family argument. Lee tries to find himself in this complicated world. Their own individual storylines sometimes connect, making the film very interesting.
- 8/26/2019
- by Rhythm Zaveri
- AsianMoviePulse
A major glossy magazine that used to be devoted largely to music -- but long ago fell under the spell of Hollywood celebrity -- still continues to cover music, specializing in listicles that seem designed mainly to provoke ire in those who care more about music than does said magazine (named after a classic blues song, in case you can't guess without a hint). This summer it unleashed a list of songs that, with that aging publication's ironically weak sense of history, managed to overlook the vast majority of the history of song. To put it bluntly, if you're claiming to discuss the best songs ever written and you don't even mention Franz Schubert, you're an ignoramus. My ire over this blinkered attitude towards music history festered for months, so I finally decided to do something about it by writing about some of the timeless songs omitted in the aforementioned myopic listicle.
- 10/25/2015
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Belgian director Gust Van den Berghe concludes his triptych on the emergence of human consciousness that began with Little Baby Jesus of Flandr and continued with Blue Bird, the enticingly titled Lucifer. Speaking of consciousness, a better-suited mythological figure in the Western canon would be hard to find. The script is adapted from a 1645 play of the same name written by Joost van den Vondel, from which, supposedly, John Milton drew inspiration for his Paradise Lost. Van den Berghe's previous indigo-tinged film Blue Bird was also an adaptation of 1908's symbolist play by Belgian literature Nobel Prize laureate Maurice Maeterlinck. The director keeps the classic three-act structure, introducing each act with a particular title, Paradise, Sin and Miracle, that bears more figurative than literal meaning. A ladder...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 2/5/2015
- Screen Anarchy
Review by Sam Moffitt
I never was a fan of Shirley Temple, far from it. I do recall seeing most of her movies years ago. Back in the Sixties Channel 11, in St. Louis, used to have a Shirley Temple Theater on weekend afternoons. My sister Judy, for some reason, had to watch those Shirley Temple films. So I can recall seeing Bright Eyes, the Little Colonel, Heidi, Little Miss Marker and what have you.
To say I was not impressed would be a major understatement. Even as a young kid I realized there was a strict formula to Shirley’s movies, namely her sunny disposition and optimistic outlook would win over cranky old adults and straighten out bratty little kids, who were usually the villains, in her films, and that was about all.
I do recognize and respect Shirley Temple’s place in film history. She was the biggest star...
I never was a fan of Shirley Temple, far from it. I do recall seeing most of her movies years ago. Back in the Sixties Channel 11, in St. Louis, used to have a Shirley Temple Theater on weekend afternoons. My sister Judy, for some reason, had to watch those Shirley Temple films. So I can recall seeing Bright Eyes, the Little Colonel, Heidi, Little Miss Marker and what have you.
To say I was not impressed would be a major understatement. Even as a young kid I realized there was a strict formula to Shirley’s movies, namely her sunny disposition and optimistic outlook would win over cranky old adults and straighten out bratty little kids, who were usually the villains, in her films, and that was about all.
I do recognize and respect Shirley Temple’s place in film history. She was the biggest star...
- 2/24/2014
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Born August 22, 1862 in St.-Germaine-en-Laye, France, Claude-Achille Debussy was a child prodigy pianist who was admitted to the Paris Conservatory at age 10. Now generally considered to have been the greatest French composer, Debussy is proof that great art can come from terrible human beings. He was supremely self-centered and selfish. Two women -- one his wife -- attempted to kill themselves after he ended his relationships with them in cruelly casual fashion; his behavior was so beyond acceptable norms, even by bohemian French standards, that many of his friends turned their backs on him. In the midst of his greatest personal controversy, when he'd left his wife for a married woman and moved with the latter to England for awhile after to escape the constant recriminations, he wrote his biggest masterpiece, La Mer.
But, of course, there's nothing the French enjoy more than a controversy. Debussy's music was controversial as well.
But, of course, there's nothing the French enjoy more than a controversy. Debussy's music was controversial as well.
- 8/16/2012
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
A late-Romantic composer who occasionally worked in a more modern style, Alexander Zemlinsky (October 14, 1871 – March 15, 1942) was something of a prodigy. Anton Bruckner was among his teachers. Brahms, impressed by the Symphony in D and a quartet, recommended Zemlinsky to Simrock, Brahms's publisher and arranged a stipend for the young composer. Zemlinsky was friends with the slightly younger Arnold Schoenberg and taught him counterpoint (in which Brahms had tutored Zemlinsky); Schoenberg later married Zemlinsky's sister.
The connection to Schoenberg (who studied music with no-one else) probably contributed to the revival of Zemlinsky's music, which was largely forgotten in the decades after the Nazis drove the Jewish composer first from Germany back to his native Vienna, and then to America, where he found none of the success Schoenberg achieved in exile.
A few choice volumes Decca's Entartete Musik series ("decadent music," the Nazis' phrase for music they found insufficiently Aryan or overly...
The connection to Schoenberg (who studied music with no-one else) probably contributed to the revival of Zemlinsky's music, which was largely forgotten in the decades after the Nazis drove the Jewish composer first from Germany back to his native Vienna, and then to America, where he found none of the success Schoenberg achieved in exile.
A few choice volumes Decca's Entartete Musik series ("decadent music," the Nazis' phrase for music they found insufficiently Aryan or overly...
- 10/14/2011
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy's La Fee (The Fairy) will open this year's Directors' Fortnight on May 12 and Bouli Lanners's Les Géants (The Giants) will close it on May 22. Here's how the full lineup of 25 films pans out.
The Fairy. From MK2: "Dom works the night shift in a small hotel near the industrial sea port of Le Havre. One night, a woman arrives with no luggage and no shoes. Her name is Fiona. She tells Dom she is a fairy and grants him three wishes. Fiona makes two wishes come true, then mysteriously disappears. Dom, who by then has fallen in love with Fiona searches for her everywhere and eventually finds her. In the psychiatric hospital where she has been interned. The filmmakers behind the critically acclaimed Iceberg and Rumba are back to enchant the world."
Karim Ainouz's O abismo prateado.
Urszula Antoniak's Code Blue.
The Fairy. From MK2: "Dom works the night shift in a small hotel near the industrial sea port of Le Havre. One night, a woman arrives with no luggage and no shoes. Her name is Fiona. She tells Dom she is a fairy and grants him three wishes. Fiona makes two wishes come true, then mysteriously disappears. Dom, who by then has fallen in love with Fiona searches for her everywhere and eventually finds her. In the psychiatric hospital where she has been interned. The filmmakers behind the critically acclaimed Iceberg and Rumba are back to enchant the world."
Karim Ainouz's O abismo prateado.
Urszula Antoniak's Code Blue.
- 4/21/2011
- MUBI
Brighton Beach Memoirs is being pulled from the Vagabond Players current season. Speed-the-Plow by David Mamet, directed by Steve Goldklang will be its replacement. Performances will run from April 16, 2010 until May 16, 2010.
David Mamet's comedy is a raw, funny and ruthless behind-the-scenes dissection of Hollywood --- how deals are cut and how movies get made. A phenomenal success in New York, Speed-the-Plow garnered three Tony Award nominations including Best Play.
Auditions will be held at Vagabond Theatre, 806 South Broadway in Fells Point, on Thursday, November 19 at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, November 21 at 1:30 pm. Non-Equity actors only, please.
Two highly experienced male actors (30's - 40's) are needed for the roles of Bobby Gould and Charlie Fox (Hollywood producers). The role of Karen is already cast.
Rehearsals will begin in late February 2010.
Please contact Steve Goldklang (Director) at steve.goldklang@gmail.com or (410) 435-7697 to schedule audition time.
The...
David Mamet's comedy is a raw, funny and ruthless behind-the-scenes dissection of Hollywood --- how deals are cut and how movies get made. A phenomenal success in New York, Speed-the-Plow garnered three Tony Award nominations including Best Play.
Auditions will be held at Vagabond Theatre, 806 South Broadway in Fells Point, on Thursday, November 19 at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, November 21 at 1:30 pm. Non-Equity actors only, please.
Two highly experienced male actors (30's - 40's) are needed for the roles of Bobby Gould and Charlie Fox (Hollywood producers). The role of Karen is already cast.
Rehearsals will begin in late February 2010.
Please contact Steve Goldklang (Director) at steve.goldklang@gmail.com or (410) 435-7697 to schedule audition time.
The...
- 11/3/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
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