By Michael Miller. Unspooling at eight venues across Center City and West Philly, the 21st Philadelphia Film Festival celebrated mainstream, independent, and foreign cinema from local filmmakers and world masters. The festival offered something for every film lover from its various programs, which included World Narratives, New French Films and […]
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
By Cleaver Patterson. It’s here! After a nine year hiatus in director Peter Jackson’s continuing cinematic visualization of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epics chronicling the adventures of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), starring Ian McKellen and Martin Freeman has eventually arrived. The big question is was […]
(Pro)creative Encounters: From Photo-Painting to Video-Film
By Jonathan Rozenkrantz. Media history often seems to be understood as a (d)evolutionary succession of discrete units – one medium devouring the other (for better or worse). But while it may be true that photography, for instance, put painting into serious crisis, we know in retrospect that neither medium disappeared. […]
The People and the Olive (2012): A Chicago International Social Change Film Festival Review
By Jacob Mertens. In history classes, we follow the path of society from one war to the next, from one tragedy to another. Slavery and a civil war bleed into the Holocaust and the assassination of JFK, and so on. Eventually we come to rest on a current climate of […]
“Can they really live a normal life after porn?”: After Porn Ends (2012)
By Robert Kenneth Dator. The title of this review, lifted from the publicity tagline, assumes the pitch of a midway barker outside the hoochie-coo tent at a wheat belt carnival. “See for yourself! She teases the imagination; he prods the curious, which is everyone, little lady, to take a peek! […]
Nothing Like Chocolate (2012): A Chicago International Social Change Film Festival Review
By Jacob Mertens. In a town buried in the jungles of Grenada, there stands a small cocoa production facility. Inside, Mott Green tinkers with equipment in a frenetic way that recalls the image of a mad scientist bringing some creation to life. However, what Green brings to life is cocoa. […]
Chasing the Sublime into the CLOUDs: ATLAS Overblown
By Matthew Sorrento. All artists reach a point when they want to make their good work great. The intention was right for William Faulkner, whose novel Flags in the Dust was cut down by his agent and publisher, into the much tamer Sartoris. Knowing he was holding back even in […]
The Sessions: A Modest Glimpse of Utopia
By Christopher Sharrett. Ben Lewin’s The Sessions is not a great film, and its status as a good one may in part be due to its circumscription by yet another dreadful “holiday season” of superhero films, juvenile fantasy, and feel-good family comedies. But the film is commendable for its remarkable […]
Viennale: Vienna International Film Festival Report 25 Oct – 7 Nov, 2012
By Yun-hua Chen. This year Viennale celebrates its 50th anniversary. After the opening gala, Ben Affleck’s Argo (2012), Viennale offers two weeks’ feast of feature films, short film programs, In Focus programme, and retrospectives. Especially striking in its selection of documentaries are those documenting musicians of different gender, generations, geopolitical […]
Zombie Flesh Eaters
By Cleaver Patterson. There are some films which everyone, whether they’ve seen them or not, has an opinion on. Virtually everything which fell under the auspices of ‘Video Nasties’ – the notorious witch hunt against a grouping of violent, sadistic and gore soaked films mainly from the late 1970’s and […]