By Elias Savada. Oscar-winning (2013’s Twenty Feet From Stardom) documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon, a Grammy Award winning writer, author, and filmmaker, collaborated back in 2007 on the film Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion, which later (2013) became a 463-page book by Gordon. A new version […]
The Human Imperfection of The Falling
June 14, 2015
By Paul Risker. Worlds continue to merge as Carol Morley instigates an ongoing collision between narrative fiction and documentary within her young oeuvre. But with her most recent narrative fiction film The Falling (2015), this collision extends to the very fabric of the film itself. Beneath the surface of its […]
Framing Africa: Portrayals of a Continent in Contemporary Mainstream Cinema (2013)
June 7, 2015
A Book Review by Martin Stollery. Framing Africa is a succinct book, academic in orientation, accessible in writing style, lacking illustrations, but graced with an arresting jacket design. Across an introduction and seven chapters, all but one of them focusing on a single example, Nigel Eltringham and his contributors survey […]
Nuns on the Bus: Radical Grace (2015)
June 5, 2015
By Elias Savada. Before Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected the ultimately enlightened Pope Francis in March 2013, there were a lot of misguided steps taken on behalf of the Catholic Church by his predecessors. While the mishandling of clerical sexual abuse scandals created too many embarrassing headlines, it was the […]
San Andreas: The Empty Catastrophe
June 3, 2015
By Christopher Sharrett. “Today it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” – Quote attributed to Fredric Jameson, or Slavoj Zizek, or J.G. Ballard, or perhaps an urban legend. “It’s quite enjoyable to watch things being destroyed, sequence after sequence of […]
Remorse in Short Supply: Peace Officer (2015)
June 1, 2015
By Elias Savada. William J. “Dub” Lawrence should not be smiling. And yet his bright teeth light up the screen in the mesmerizing, exceedingly well-structured documentary Peace Officer from Scott Christopherson and Brad Barber, a startlingly impressive first feature. His exuberant confidence disarms you, despite some dour opening remarks (“I […]
An Intriguing Population of 94: Uncertain (2015)
May 30, 2015
By Elias Savada. The new film from Ewan McNicol and Anna Sandilands begins like a mystery. It’s a dark night. A lone flashlight scans the Cypress trees and Irish moss of a murky lake, as insects flit about, their buzzing intensifying to an uneasy cacophony of unsettling noise. Uncertain isn’t […]
Nothing Lost in Times Regained: On the Restored Apu Trilogy
May 25, 2015
By Paul Risker. Fifty-six years have passed since Satyajit Ray added Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959) to Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road, 1955) and Aparajito (The Unvanquished, 1956) to create the series of films known as the Apu trilogy. In this passage of time the narrative […]
A Mind Went Black: Dark Star: H.R. Giger’s World (2014)
May 22, 2015
By Elias Savada. You may not recall who the 20th President of the United States was. Or the name of the British Prime Minister in 1980. But mention the name Hans Ruedi “HR” Giger and one word immediately comes to mind: Alien. As Dark Star: HR Gigers Welt (expanded in the subtitled […]
The Un-Dead Walks: The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (2013)
May 22, 2015
By Elias Savada. “Being dead can have its advantages sometimes.” That’s just one of the translated pieces of tossed off dialogue delivered in this Scandinavian smorgasbord of a comedy. No, Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann (The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared), isn’t a […]