STOWAWAY Trailer

STOWAWAY Trailer

Throwing off the group dynamic could be deadly in Stowaway, the latest from co-writer/director Joe Penna. Michael didn’t actually want to go to space. He worked on the ship as an engineer, but his life on the ground came with far too many commitments to disappear for years at a time. Unfortunately, that’s exactly where he…

The Indigenous Canadian Work of Art with a Life of Its Own

The Indigenous Canadian Work of Art with a Life of Its Own

Along the shores of the Red River in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is a tower of curving glass, steel, and alabaster, a bright place even in the dead of winter. In a gallery on the first floor, conservator Stephanie Chipilski checks equipment that monitors the room’s temperature and humidity. She slips…

Sheffield Botanical Gardens Bear Pit in Sheffield, England

Sheffield Botanical Gardens Bear Pit in Sheffield, England

This bear pit is the finest surviving example in the United Kingdom, and its superb condition of the structure is thanks to the many years it was used as Yorkshire’s biggest compost pit. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonThis is a Grade II listed structure and was built in 1836 to home…

Two Women Are Trying to Make India’s Bad Words a Little Less Bad

Two Women Are Trying to Make India’s Bad Words a Little Less Bad

It was 15 years ago when they first started talking about dirty words. Tamanna Mishra and Neha Thakur often discussed how uneasy popular Indian expletives made them. Mishra, a communications consultant in Bengaluru, and Thakur, an Airbnb host in Mumbai, noticed increasingly casual use of these profanities in mainstream entertainment. The problem wasn’t the swearing…

Zendaya and the Extraordinary Evolution of Celebrity

Zendaya and the Extraordinary Evolution of Celebrity

Welcome to Filmographies, a column for completists. Every edition brings a working actor’s resumé into focus as we learn about what makes them so compelling. In this entry, we spotlight the filmography of Zendaya. Zendaya is an entertainer in every sense of the word. The erstwhile Disney Channel mainstay has cultivated one of the most sensational…

‘Where Are My Children?’ and Lois Weber’s Trailblazing Films About Women

‘Where Are My Children?’ and Lois Weber’s Trailblazing Films About Women

Beyond the Classics is a bi-weekly column in which Emily Kubincanek highlights lesser-known old movies and examines what makes them memorable. In this installment, she highlights the historical value of Lois Weber’s Where Are My Children? Few filmmakers knew how to make silent films about women as well as Lois Weber. Social topics barred from most feature…

Jonathan Rhys Meyers Into the Jungle in ‘Edge of the World’ Trailer

Jonathan Rhys Meyers Into the Jungle in ‘Edge of the World’ Trailer

“Now matter how far you run, you can never escape yourself…” Whoa, this trailer! Signature has released an official trailer for an epic new colonial historic thriller titled Edge of the World, a jungle crusade movie from filmmaker Michael Haussman. The film takes us on the true “adventures” of Sir James Brooke, who defied the…

Berlinale 2021: Writer And Director Fred Baillif On THE FAM (LA MIF)

Berlinale 2021: Writer And Director Fred Baillif On THE FAM (LA MIF)

This year’s winner of the Generation 14plus Grand Prix, the top prize at the youth category at the Berlinale, The Fam (La Mif) is equally haunting and fascinating. The insight into a care home for young girls discusses delicate subjects such as incest and sexual abuse with a verité approach that feels all too real,…

Inside the World’s Largest Jewish Cookbook Collection

Inside the World’s Largest Jewish Cookbook Collection

Roberta Saltzman shopped a lot on eBay. Often, her purchases fit into one narrow category: Jewish cookbooks, the more obscure, the better. Never mind that Saltzman, who died in 2014, was by all accounts not that interested in cooking. Over the years, she accumulated 700 Jewish cookbooks, with a particular focus on community cookbooks from…

The Lost Language of Easter Island

The Lost Language of Easter Island

On the outskirts of Hanga Roa, Easter Island’s only town, the Museo Rapa Nui has a small but striking collection. It includes a rare female version of the monolithic statues known as moai, and sets of piercing moai eyes made from white coral and red volcanic rock. Finely worked obsidian tools sit alongside displays on…

Ritual – Mini-series Review

Ritual – Mini-series Review

★ Written & Directed by: #ElinMargaretaNordin Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonStarring: #VictorNascimento, #VonnyMcNamara, #PauloAragão, #AishaJacobWilliams Series Review by Taryll Baker Read moreRobert Stack Finally Solves a Mystery in ‘The Strange and Deadly Occurrence’Episodes watched: 2 Ritual is a mini-series created by Elin-Margareta Nordin; debuting in 2018, though seemingly never continuing past…

ALLEN V. FARROW Episode Four: The Art & The Artist

ALLEN V. FARROW Episode Four: The Art & The Artist

So we come to this, the final episode in Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick‘s four part docuseries Allen v. Farrow. The overwhelming feeling by this point is of a series determined not to establish the facts but to definitively portray one side’s experiences in what has been no doubt a long and difficult ordeal, especially…

To Save Norway’s Stave Churches, Conservators Had to Relearn a Lost Art

To Save Norway’s Stave Churches, Conservators Had to Relearn a Lost Art

To step into one of Scandinavia’s surviving stave churches is to enter the past. Shadows shift and tell stories in the elaborate carvings of intertwined beasts that are hallmarks of the churches’ unique architecture. Sounds reverberate off the timber as if traveling across centuries. The air feels dense with the tang of hewn wood, peat…

SXSW 2021 Review: R#J: A Horribly Misguided Experiment

SXSW 2021 Review: R#J: A Horribly Misguided Experiment

Can you imagine if every sentence of this review is accompanied by the sounds of me groaning as I type? That would get annoying real quick, wouldn’t it? You’re gonna be hearing a whole lot of sighs and grunts in this 90-minute affair, as characters react and respond to text messages from start to finish….

Tarragona Amphitheater in Tarragona, Spain

Tarragona Amphitheater in Tarragona, Spain

In the city of Tarragona, the ruins of a massive structure stand by the water’s edge. Built in the second century, this amphitheater once held up to 15,000 spectators for various events including brutal gladiator fights. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonFrom a distance this structure looks like a semi-circular Roman theatre, but…

Why the ‘WandaVision’ Visual Effects Team Went Blue for Vision

Why the ‘WandaVision’ Visual Effects Team Went Blue for Vision

Welcome to World Builders, our ongoing series of conversations with the most productive and thoughtful behind-the-scenes craftspeople in the industry. In this entry, Brad Gullickson chats with Tara DeMarco about WandaVision’s hidden and not-so-hidden visual effects. Uh, who the heck is that? The thought rippled through the Twitterverse the moment Disney+ launched their Assembled premiere…

Souq Wakif Blue Road in Doha, Qatar

Souq Wakif Blue Road in Doha, Qatar

There’s a blue road running by Souq Waqif known as Abdullah Bin Jassim Street. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonThe unconventional idea to paint the road blue was approved by Ashghal, the Public Works Authority, as a pilot project designed to reduce heat radiating from the asphalt. The exact composition of the…

Faith-Friendly Angel Studios Defies Hollywood Gatekeepers

Faith-Friendly Angel Studios Defies Hollywood Gatekeepers

Hollywood proved slow to embrace the faith-based market in the wake of “The Passion of the Christ.” Still, select studios dipped a pinky toe in the spiritual waters, witness Sony’s Affirm film slate and features like “Breakthrough” and “The Case for Christ.” Even marquee actors — think Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Garner and Joseph Fiennes —…

Umi-Shibaura Station in Yokohama, Japan

Umi-Shibaura Station in Yokohama, Japan

Umi-Shibaura Station is famed for a few things, none of them quite ordinary. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonFor one, no other train station in Japan is as close to the sea as this one. Built right above the waters of the Keihin Canal, the station’s single platform provides spectacular views of…

Disney+’s The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers Sticks to the Hits

Disney+’s The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers Sticks to the Hits

“The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers” doesn’t make any bones about it—it’s a series-version of the teen hockey movies, which came out in the ‘90s but are accessible as anything else on streaming service Disney+. The one facet that seems different here, in its light family comedy focusing on underdogs on ice, is the reason the game is…

VANQUISH Trailer

VANQUISH Trailer

A woman’s past comes back to bite her in Vanquish, the latest from co-writer/director George Gallo. Victoria used to lead a tough life. As a drug courier in Russia, she was involved in her fair share of scrapes, shootouts, and close calls, but she made it through. Now with a daughter to look after she…