Buried beneath the river bed of the River Tyne is a pedestrian and cyclist tunnel that was built to provide a vital link between the communities on either side of the river. Access to these tunnels is via the longest wooden escalator in the world. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonThe Tyne…
The word Kilroot is derived from the Irish words “Cill Ruaidh,” meaning “church of the red” or “the red church.” This name derived from the presence of a red-brown subsoil noted in the area due to the high amounts of Mercia Mudstone, but it has also been suggested that it could have derived from a…
In a northeastern neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, a small coffeehouse stands covered with pictures of bison. For centuries here, on the land of the Cowlitz, Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and Clackamas peoples, there have been no bison. But Bison Coffeehouse still pays tribute to the animal that sustained Native American communities across the country….
Holy gore hell. It’s only March, and we already have at least two incredibly unique, extremely strange mind-fuck animated films that are definitely not for kids. Dash Shaw’s Cryptozoo premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival in January, and The Spine of Night just premiered at the SXSW Film Festival this month. (And let’s not…
The year 2001 gave us a slew of hall of fame comedy stinkers. While everyone tends to gang up on Tom Green’s widely despised (but not entirely laugh-free) “Freddy Got Fingered,” there are more than a few worthier contenders. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonSome will recall the part-animated, part-live action “Osmosis…
In August 2018, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced a new category would be premiering at the Oscars: Best Popular Film. After significant backlash from critics and filmmakers, the Academy renounced the award, but the anxiety remains of an antiquated institution and equally prehistoric awards show falling increasingly out of step with…
★★ Directed by #JeffDesom #SamanKesh #DuganONeal Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonStarring #JoshPeck #KypMalone Film Review by George Wolf Read moreRobert Stack Finally Solves a Mystery in ‘The Strange and Deadly Occurrence’How much better would 2001 have been if there were helpful onscreen text explaining the motives of the monolith? Use that…
If the first two episodes of Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick‘s docuseries Allen v. Farrow seemed slightly one-sided, with the third episode the mask finally slips and all pretension of bipartisanship is obliterated. The third installment is markedly different from the first two and focuses purely on the facts and details of the case as…
Slaxx, directed by Elza Kephart and written by Elza Kephart and Patricia Gomez, is a comedic horror film following a possessed pair of jeans as they rampage through a clothing store reminiscent of fast fashion and high street brands complete with faux ethics and manufacturing processes. Variety of Kills! Slaxx is a fun romp through…
The images flashed across the screen larger than life. King Kong, twenty times taller than the Empire State Building, slapped his foot angrily down into the ocean, causing a tsunami that washed over the East Coast. Then Gojira, or Godzilla as we call him, sprinted up from the depths of the ocean floor, whipping his…
In the fall of 1871, the Mahwah Train Station was constructed. The new building helped the small town of Mahwah grow and to prosper over the years. After spending much of its life as a station, the former depot was utilized as a storage facility. Later, the station was moved to its current location and…
There’s an undeniable purity to Nobody. It’s bloody, bruised, and battered, but that’s the makeup of pure action. Flying punches and lovingly wielded guns hung on a framework plot that’s mostly there to get us from set piece to set piece, this is a specific kind of film that’s just getting back in vogue thanks…
Built in 1816 to carry the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal, the Edstone Aqueduct is the longest canal aqueduct in England (although there are longer ones in both Scotland and Wales and a number of higher ones too). It is 475 feet long and 33 feet high at its highest point. The engineer was William Whitmore. Read moreA…
This old Baldwin locomotive once served the local lumber industry, hauling huge tree trunks from the forest to the mills. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonConstructed in Pennsylvania in 1911, the train came to Arizona in 1917 when it was purchased by the Arizona Lumber and Timber Company. It passed through various…
Old Delhi is bursting with history and with modern-day activity. Built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in the mid-1600s as a walled city called Shahjahanabad, it served as the capital’s empire from then until the British Raj gained supremacy in 1857. Though India’s current center of government rests a few miles south in New…
As filmmakers were forced to adjust to the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic over the past year, the SXSW film slate for 2021 is a good indicator of the many ways it has altered cinema. Many movies were visually and tonally affected by our ‘new normal’ from 2020. Filmmakers had to create narratives around ideas…
If you look closely, you can find a little star embedded in the wall of the Mosque-Cathedral in Córdoba. Known to some as the Estrella de los Deseos (Wishing Star), this star exactly is located in a corner of the Cathedral-Mosque, next to Torrijos street. It is actually a type of fossil. People who walk…
In a remote rainforest in Madagascar’s northeast, Doménico Randimbiharinirina and Dominik Schüßler wandered into a ghost town. Its inhabitants were long gone, and the wooden frames and thatched roofs of dozens of huts slumped and rotted into creeping vegetation. Locals had told the two scientists about this abandoned village. About three years earlier, it was…
The easternmost point in Denmark might be also its most remote. Christiansø is a small Danish island, part of the archipelago known as Ertholmene, which is located 18 kilometers (11 miles) northeast of the island of Bornholm. It is also home to the easternmost point in Denmark (Greenland and the Faroe Islands included). Read moreA Guide to…
When photographer Vladimir Cech saw fresh lynx tracks by a fallen tree in the border region of the Bohemian Forest in Czechia, he hoped that his homemade DSLR camera traps would catch the wildcat. They didn’t, but what he did get was spectacular: a quiet image of a red fox delicately making its way across…
Welcome to How’d They Do That? — a monthly column that unpacks moments of movie magic and celebrates the technical wizards who pulled them off. This entry explains how they shot the trippy “stargate” sequence at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is difficult to speak about 2001: A Space Odyssey without careening…