One of the happy byproducts of Sundance’s digital incarnation is time. Space to first consider, more space to reconsider. On first blush, Jessica Beshir’s abstract anthropological directorial feature debut, “Faya Dayi,” left me underwhelmed. Bewildered. In a normal festival setting, short on time, and with other movies to see, I would have bitten the bullet…
Harrison Ford’s character in “The Mosquito Coast” is a genius, a quality he goes out of his way to ensure everyone around him knows. Ford’s Allie Fox is a tireless inventor who has never received the recognition and respect he feels he deserves. He passive aggressively butts heads with anyone who disagrees with him or…
Welcome to How’d They Do That? — a bi-monthly column that unpacks moments of movie magic and celebrates the technical wizards who pulled them off. This entry explains why the “Ave Maria” sequence in Disney’s Fantasia was one of the most challenging filmmaking moments in animation history. Fantasia was Walt Disney’s greatest and weirdest experiment….
Nothing can compare to that experience of watching a film premiere for its first time, knowing that from this point on it will reshape the industry. That’s the case with CODA (which stands for Child of Deaf Adults) – one of the Opening Night films at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Despite all the hardship…
Fairness has been long delayed and denied in Zimbabwe. Following a military-backed coup of the country’s president-dictator Robert Mugabe after a 38-year reign, his former Vice President and successor President E.D. Mnangagwa is running for reelection against an upstart challenger, the young MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) leader Nelson Chamisa. Camilla Nielsson’s “President” retells the…
This story is excerpted and adapted from Megan Rosenbloom’s Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin, published in October 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In the summer of 1868, a 28-year-old Irish widow named Mary Lynch was admitted to Ward 27 of Philadelphia General Hospital….
Editors’ note: This story contains images of metal badges depicting human genitalia. In medieval Europe, Christian pilgrims walked all the way from England to Spain (with a brief reprieve on a boat), their long robes dragging along dirty, treacherous roads where solo travelers were frequent targets of thieves. Pilgrims carried only a leather pouch holding…
Serve spaghetti and meatballs to an Italian, and they may question why pasta and meat are being served together. Order a samosa as an appetizer, and an Indian friend might point out, as writer Sejal Sukhadwala has, that this is similar to a British restaurant offering sandwiches as a first course. Offer an American a…
“If anybody that looked like me tried anything like that we’d be shot dead.” This captivating short doc film profiles the powerful movement to flip the vote in Atlanta, Georgia this January. Flipping Georgia Blue is a short doc made by i-D and filmmaker Issey Penwarden. The story they’re focusing on is the youth movement…
Phoebe Bridgers‘ new Christmas EP, “If We Make It Through December,” features four incredible, depressing odes to the holidays and loneliness, but the most formally interesting is “7 O’Clock News / Silent Night.” In it, Bridgers and Fiona Apple harmonize “Silent Night” over Matt Berninger’s news anchor readings, a highlight reel of awful stories from…
★★★★ Directed by: Ana Barredo Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonWritten by: Ana Barredo Starring: Rhandy Torres, Noreen Lanie Read moreRobert Stack Finally Solves a Mystery in ‘The Strange and Deadly Occurrence’Film Review by: Jason Knight A man and a woman begin a distant relationship during COVID-19 lockdown. The coronavirus is spreading…
At the start of the Civil War, the current Cumberland Presbyterian Church was still unfinished. The property had been purchased by the church from then-Senator Andrew Johnson in 1860. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonIt was designed to replace a smaller building nearby that its congregation had outgrown. Located on the facade…
Typically, I would preface the names of Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci with “award-winning actors,” but for this particular film, the more appropriate description would be “longtime friends.” These two have more chemistry with each other within the first five minutes than most other acting duos have in their entire runtimes. Supernova is a remarkable…
In the 1850s thousands of people traveled to Victoria, Australia in search of fortune as part of the Victorian gold rush. The first recorded discovery of gold in the Moliagul area occured in September 1852. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonTwo miners, John Deason and Richard Oates originally from Conwell, England, both…
Jim Myers opened the Sasquatch Outpost in 2014 and the museum followed in 2016. He originally opened a general grocery store at the location, but after talking with locals about Bigfoot sightings in the area, he decided to convert his store into what it is today. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonWhen…
It would be shortsighted and misguided to believe that Donald Trump is solely responsible for all of the problems that plague the United States of America and its government, but needless to say, in the aftermath of his four years as president, the notion of proper governance — however one happens to define it —…
In the green expanses of Esplanade Park, stands a bronze statue that honors Prince Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, a brilliant military strategist and commander-in-chief of the Imperial Russian Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonThe original statue, representing a life-sized Barclay de Tolly in uniform, was unveiled in…
The Zapadna Morava river meanders between the cities of Požega and Čačak. After a dam and a hydroelectricity power plant were established in the region, part of the river became the Međuvršje lake. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonHowever, centuries before the creation of the dam during the 13th-century, a Gradina military…
Writer/director Harry Mcqueen’s tremendously moving “Supernova” begins with a completely black screen. White dots appear, one by one, until we’re gazing at a field of stars and a rapturous vista of the cosmos. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonGradually, Mcqueen reveals why the emphasis is on the Milky Way — he circles…
Not many cookbooks kick off with the creation of the universe. Yet that’s where Monique Fiso begins Hiakai, a groundbreaking new book on Māori cuisine. First, there was nothing. Then, in the nothing, there were two lovers, Ranginui and Papatūānuku. Ranginui and Papatūānuku held each other so close that their children were trapped between them….
“There’s no need to escalate this to the point of no return!” STX Films has unveiled an official trailer for a dark comedy called Me You Madness, a kooky neon-filled romcom mashed up with American Psycho. Louise Linton stars in, wrote, directed, and produced the tongue-in-cheek movie. Linton plays Catherine Black, a brilliant, ruthless business…