Every year, on December 13, golden-hued saffron buns bake in ovens across Scandinavia. Eating this sweet bread—known as lussebullar or lussekatter in Sweden, luciabrød in Denmark and Norway, and lucia-pullat in Finland—heralds the celebration of St. Lucia’s Day. In Sweden, eldest daughters often serve their parents buns and coffee in the morning while wearing a…
It’s that time of year again when streaming services and television channels get into the holiday spirit. Lifetime, Hallmark, and now Netflix are the titans of churning out holiday fare, which all seem to be set in the same small snowy town. This is also the time of year to revisit annual favorites. That time when family and friends…
“You must remember to nourish yourself.” Vintage Pictures has released an official trailer for the Icelandic film Agnes Joy, which originally premiered last year and also opened in Iceland last year. After playing at a few other film festivals this year, Iceland has submitted Silja Hauksdóttir’s Agnes Joy as their selection for the Best International…
Jameela Jamil has a bone to pick with Cancel Culture, but it’s so small it could be found in your middle ear. “The Good Place” alum opened up about not just Cancel Culture but those who inadvertently trigger it during a conversation at TheWrap.com’s Power Women Summit 2020. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong…
“The kind of genre cinema we dream of.” RLJE Films has debuted a new official trailer for the upcoming VOD release of a wacky horror sci-fi comedy titled Psycho Goreman. We featured a teaser trailer earlier in the year before the film’s originally planned premiere at SXSW (before the fest was cancelled). This is the…
If there’s a unifying dynamic to be found in Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa‘s last two major films, it’s an intense focus on characters who are totally out of their element. In 2017’s Before We Vanish, the director presented a science fiction spin on the fish-out-of-water narrative, following a group of aliens masquerading as humans in…
I invite you to help me celebrate The HistoryMakers‘ twentieth anniversary with twenty days and nights of panels, discussions and video performances and talks that span the gamut of the African-American experience from December 1st through December 20th (you can find the full schedule of events here). Twenty years ago, visionary attorney Julieanna Richardson looked around and saw…
2020’s International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam (known as IDFA) had one of the richest programmes I’ve seen for a virtual festival. There were over 170 films screened across feature, mid-length and short film categories. Many filmmakers got the opportunity to premiere their latest work for the first time and the festival team ensured there…
On the side of the road in the small town of Kingman, Kansas, two giraffes stand in a park they share with a dinosaur snacking on a human leg, a cowboy riding parallel to train tracks, and a full cast of characters. All these statues are from the collection of Glenn Stark, a sculptor whose yard became…
The Shanghai Film Park is a working film and television studio based around a full-scale replica of Nanjing Road, Shanghai’s famous shopping area circa the 1930s. The set recreates iconic buildings from central Shanghai such as the five-story Sincere Company department store. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonThe streetscape was constructed for…
At the De Akkers metro station in Rotterdam’s suburb of Spijkenisse on November 2nd, 2020, a metro train breached the station’s end barriers and nearly plummeted over 30 feet from the elevated rails. All that saved the train and its operator was the fact the front carriage was caught and held aloft by one of…
Over the last five years, director Marco Porsia had been accumulating a mass amount of footage from recording the concerts of venerated alt-rock group Swans. While gathering this treasure trove of material and getting to know frontman Michael Gira, Porsia set about to create a documentary on the revered music of Swans with the 2019…
Through the village of Chevreuse runs a tiny offshoot of the Yvette river, gently traversing timeworn cottages, ancient wash-houses, and a medieval tannery. There are 22 “petits ponts,” “little bridges,” that span the river, crossing various pathways. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonA popular walk for locals and visitors, this promenade is hidden…
As Edinburgh Castle rests on the remains of an extinct volcano, it’s prominently featured from several visual vantage points. A visitor is by no means cut short on photographic opportunities of this majestic sight. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonAnywhere along the tree line boulevard of Princes Street allows for a more…
Let’s go to Colombia! Disney has revealed an early teaser trailer for Encanto, an original Disney Animation project due for release in November of 2021. This is one of MANY movies featured in Disney’s epic Investor Meeting announcement this week of all their upcoming projects from 2021 onward. Encanto is made by the directors of…
Film journalism spaces this year have been living in the past. That’s not a bad thing — just a fact. Few new releases and the malaise of coronavirus lockdown have inspired or outright forced many critics to revisit old favorites or to seek out films they hadn’t yet seen. Many smaller publications — including this…
It’s not often one needs to make a batter for a cocktail, but so it is with the Tom and Jerry, a Christmas party staple in the American Midwest. The drink begins with a frothy batter of separately beaten egg whites and yolks folded together and mixed with sugar and warm spices. When served as…
★★ Directed by ,#LouisHannan, ,#DominicHodge Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonWritten by ,#GaiusBrown. ,#LouisHannan, ,#DominicHodge, ,#ElliotHughes, ,#RyanJones, ,#AndreReid Starring ,#LeoTaylor-Jannati,,#VictoriaSlinger, ,#KeithFlood Read moreRobert Stack Finally Solves a Mystery in ‘The Strange and Deadly Occurrence’,,Film Review by ,,Lawrence Bennie What if the Cold War never ended? Suppose a coalition was formed by the…
Four films into the five-film Small Axe anthology co-written and directed by Steve McQueen, I’m convinced that this cycle should be celebrated as the cinematic event of the year. In turning his masterful talents as a filmmaker to the telling of five stories about London’s West Indian community in the mid-twentieth century, McQueen has created a…
After being photographed with a cross in one hand and an automatic rifle in the other, Father Hovhannes became a viral sensation in Armenia. He says he never intended to become a symbol of defiance during the recent war over Nagorno-Karabakh, the region within Azerbaijan that has attempted to break away and declare itself the…
It’s pretty likely that there is exactly one product from Madagascar in your home right now—no more, no less. That product is vanilla, and Madagascar is at the moment the world’s leading producer of this ubiquitous natural flavor—despite the fact that Madagascar is a very strange country to be the world’s leading producer of vanilla….