Sacha Baron Cohen wouldn’t be a household name without “Borat.” Yes, the British comic previously gave us “Da Ali G Show,” a wacky spin on the talk show genre. Still, it took the runaway success of his 2006 comedy “Borat” to become a superstar. And he earned every ounce of it. Not only did “Borat”…
To this day, fishing and seafood represent a very significant part of Shetland’s economy. The main fish caught from the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean waters surrounding the archipelago include herring, cod, and mackerel. The first of these has been historically very popular in the Netherlands. Between the early 17th and late 19th-centuries, Dutch fishing…
Trentino Alto Adige, now an Italian region, was contested between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I, with much of the fighting concentrated in Southern Trentino. The area was located around the former border between the two powers. Here, thousands of people lost their lives in combat. Now, the remains of around 20,000…
Liam Neeson gets another mission in The Marksman, the latest from director Robert Lorenz. This time around the aging action hero plays a rancher barely hanging on to his place near the border. Trouble comes his way when a boy and his mother cross onto his property with the cartel hot on their heels, and being…
According to legend, three monks miraculously found an icon of the Virgin Mary hanging from a myrtle branch on the island of Chios. The Nea Moni, or New Monastery, now stands on the site of this discovery, and it contains both centuries-old artwork and an ossuary filled with bones from the area’s greatest tragedy. Per the…
I first discovered the Mahoning Drive-In theater in the spring of 2016, just as a young filmmaker, Alexander Monnelli, began shooting a documentary about this most unlikely of businesses: A classic drive-in theater which, despite lagging attendance, was determined to continue presenting movies on 35mm. Two years later, now also an employee of this drive-in,…
Situated on a small hill that leads up to Mt Faber, the abandoned Keppel Hill Reservoir serves as a hidden sanctuary for thrill-seekers and urban explorers. Although its origins are unknown, it dates back more than a century, yet was absent from official maps for decades until it came to the attention of the National…
This month, Gastro Obscura is sharing the recipes and stories behind amazing holiday dishes and drinks in an ongoing series, Home-Cooked Holidays. Winter’s the time for hot toddies and eggnog, or any cocktail that combines fistfuls of spices with warm sweetness. But when it comes to sweetness, spice, and sheer boozy firepower, boilo has them…
★★★★ Directed by: Sada Rajiah, Desire Prevost Written by: Sada Rajiah, Deane Thomas, Bala Indradev Kanaram, Yudishta Varoona Gokool, Vikram Mugon Starring: Deane Thomas, Joshua Rose, Mahmade Meersaheb ,,Film Review by: ,,Jason Knight A wonderful journey that explores the lives and achievements of three extraordinary individuals. These three people are: Deane Thomas, an Englishman and…
This month, Gastro Obscura is sharing the recipes and stories behind amazing holiday dishes in an ongoing series, Home-Cooked Holidays. In the winter of 1984, Timothy Tangherlini worked on a dairy farm on the Danish island of Funen. One day, while brushing cattle in the barn, he spotted a tiny man in a hat sitting…
“It’s just code.” Gravitas has released an official trailer for Hello World, an indie documentary about bias in coding and building more diverse programming teams. A good double feature with Coded Bias, another doc film this year about bias and prejudice being worked right into software and algorithms. The film delves into the history of…
As a curly-haired writer living in a big city, I often find myself comparing my life to Carrie Bradshaw’s in Sex and the City. I know I’m not the only one: somehow her mediocre sex column pays for a massive apartment, a new pair of designer shoes each week, and countless brunches and cocktails with…
And we’ll all go together To view Wild Mountain Thyme And fill the room with laughter Will ye go, buddy, go? Fantasy is a surprisingly large element of Wild Mountain Thyme, a romance with bookend narration that suggests the will-they-won’t-they dynamic between two lifelong neighbors might be a tale spun by Christopher Walken’s grumpy Irish…
The trail networks crisscrossing El Malpais National Monument are often marked with lava cairns, rocky reminders of the arid New Mexican park’s previously volcanic life. Below the monument’s striking surface are numerous corridors—close to 500 lava tubes, formed when searing channels of liquid rock made trails through the land. Recently, one of those tubes gave…
David Cronenberg‘s films are some of cinema’s finest enigmas. Each entry in his filmography seems to have developed a cult following over the years since their respective releases, not the least of which include 1981’s Scanners, 1983’s Videodrome, and 1991’s Naked Lunch. Another standout in his repertoire is Crash, released in 1996. The film stars James…
Suggest women aren’t funny and you’ll be quickly attacked, if not outright canceled. Podcast giant Adam Carolla found that out the hard way. Say that conservatives lack a sense of humor, though, and there’s little to no outrage. After all, the comedian class is overwhelmingly left of center. There’s no current late night show that…
A dying man trudges across a dying planet in George Clooney’s ambitious sci-fi epic for Netflix, “The Midnight Sky.” Based on the book by Lily Brooks-Dalton, this is a piece that almost feels designed by a screenwriting algorithm informed by some of the top genre films of the last couple decades. The recipe here is a base…
Constructed between 1905 and 1907, this amazing twin swing bridge links the harbor area of Wilhelmshaven, Germany with the popular South Beach. It’s not the only route to the thin strip of land where South Beach is located, but it’s seen as the most direct and picturesque. South Beach is unique in Germany as it is…
The Temple of Minerva in the town of Assisi, in Umbria, appears to be a perfectly preserved example of a Roman temple from the outside, but inside is home to a Catholic church. The Roman building was christened during the 1st-century BCE, probably as part of the town’s forum. The structure is a typical Roman…
If you bike along the scenic, border-crossing Vennbahn, or Fen Railway, you’ll pass through a section that’s in Belgium, but where Germany is visible to your left and right—an unusual legacy of the days when Europe’s borders were more contentious and fluid. Constructed by the Prussian State Railway around 1889, the Vennbahn traversed land which, on German…
Hidden among the bustling streets of central Tokyo, a dimly lit porch leads to a venue that feels a world away from the Korean barbecues and neon-lit karaokes that draw night-time crowds to the Ōkubo neighborhood. Through the door, which is often left open, is a corridor lined with photographs and a softly lit room….
Even within Japan, the food, culture, and history of the Ainu—an Indigenous people native to the country’s northernmost main island, Hokkaido, as well as Russia’s Sakhalin and Kuril Islands—is not well known. But at Harukor, a small izakaya in Tokyo, diners can order ohaw (a delicate soup of wild vegetables and salmon that was once an Ainu staple), a crisp…
History is changed by poking around in the backyard in The Dig, the latest from director Simon Stone. The mounds had been around for forever, or at least seemingly forever, and Edith decided it was time to find out what they covered. Never mind the looming war and the lack of supplies and experts. It…
This artwork by Lulu Quinn, with assistance from Alan Hart, consists of a series of speakers assembled with stone such as granite and serpentine, tying them to the iconic geology of Shetland. They are also dotted with seashells and play a series of recordings by Shetlanders. Around 300 recordings, most of them from 2006, consist…
Sweet Parents is a feature film fresh off the festival circuit. It follows a young couple: Will, a talented but overlooked chef, and Gabby, a yet-unrecognized sculptor, struggling to get by in New York. When each finds an interested and wealthy older companion who supports and bolsters their career, things become tense as they try…
★★★ Written & Directed by: #ArunKonda Starring: #PaulLogan #JohannaAnttila #EricGorlow #RyanManuel #HaileyHayes Film Review by: #ChrisBuick Three years after his daughter Grace’s (Hayes) kidnapping, ex-cop Jordan (Logan) still hasn’t given up on finding out what happened to her, nor has he wavered in his belief that she is still alive. With his former colleagues in…
“I was face to face with Rembrandt.” Strand Releasing has unveiled an official US trailer for a documentary titled My Rembrandt, which originally premiered at the IDFA Film Festival in The Netherlands last year. Rembrandt, the grandmaster of intimacy rocks the art world… many people, even entire nations, are still obsessed with his paintings. Aristocrats…
Streaming might be the future, but physical media is still the present. It’s also awesome, depending on the title, the label, and the release, so each week we take a look at the new Blu-rays and DVDs making their way into the world. Welcome to this week in Home Video for December 8th, 2020! This week’s…
Over the course of his filmmaking career, Mariusz Wilczynski has been creating animated shorts. However, at the time of making shorts, Wilczynski was also trying to finish his first feature-length film. Fifteen years in the making, Mariusz Wilczynski’s debut feature-length film, Kill It and Leave This Town, is starkly animated, composed of frazzled, curly sketches…
Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi was born in Leith, a northern suburb of Edinburgh to Italian immigrants. He would go on to become one of the most influential sculptures of the 20th and 21st-centuries. In 1994, he personally donated his entire Chelsea based studio to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. This included a vast…
From 2017 to early 2020, Dr. Mieneke te Hennepe prepared to warn the world about the devastating potential of viral outbreaks. Dr. te Hennepe is a curator at the Netherlands’ Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, a museum in Leiden dedicated to the medical sciences, research, and innovation. The exhibit she was working on, Besmet! (“Contagious!”), was scheduled to…
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Two hundred years ago, on November 17, Connecticut ship captain Nathaniel Palmer spotted the Antarctic continent, one of three parties to do so in 1820. Unlike explorers Edward Bransfield and Fabian von Bellingshausen, Palmer was a sealer who quickly saw economic opportunity in…
The lonely limestone mountain of Mount Soratte looms on the horizon north of Rome. Although its height is modest, its peculiar isolation and history enhance its mysterious aura. Goethe in his Italian Journey, described the mountain in these terms: “Soracte stands out by itself in magnificent solitude. Probably this mountain is made of limestone and…
One of the earliest films of 2020 to ride a wave of critical acclaim through the festival circuit is Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland.” Frances McDormand stars as Fran, a hard-working woman who loses her job and everything else in the Great Recession of 2008. Her entire town has gone deserted and, after working a few dead-end…
The Song of Roland is one of the most significant romances in medieval literature, often compared to the legend of King Arthur. During the Renaissance, it was transformed by Italian poets into a two-part epic called Orlando Innamorato and Orlando Furioso, which contained elements of fantasy and even science fiction. One of the twelve paladins that served Charlemagne, Roland fought…
Created and serviced by railroad enthusiasts, the Apple Valley Model Railroad Club operates a free museum of miniature scenes. In 1992, the club received permission from the city to move the organization into the building. The club renovated the structure and incorporated various model trains and railroad artifacts. The lines are replicas of railroad towns…