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. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonAround…
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 Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonStarring: #PaulLogan #JohannaAnttila #EricGorlow #RyanManuel #HaileyHayes Film Review by: #ChrisBuick Read moreRobert Stack Finally Solves a Mystery in ‘The Strange and Deadly Occurrence’Three years after his daughter Grace’s (Hayes) kidnapping, ex-cop Jordan (Logan) still hasn’t given up on finding out what…
“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. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonOne of…
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. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong…
The inaugural New Works Virtual Festival, founded by actors Kevin Pollack with Bart Shatto and Jim Auld, kicked off on December 5th and is now running through Christmas Day. It features twenty plays performed online by acclaimed performers and artists. All of the festival’s proceeds will go to The Actors Fund, the 501 (c)(3) charitable organization supporting performers and behind-the-scenes workers…
The Itria Valley in Puglia, Italy, is pockmarked by conical, stone structures, many of them fitting naturally into the fields where farmers built them centuries ago. Near the picturesque village of Locorotondo, one of these trulli stands out for its thick walls and the date of 1559 imprinted near the entrance. Believed to be its date of…
Brokeback Mountain is not a landscape film. Rather, it’s a film that begins in the great outdoors, specifically the beautiful, idyllic mountains of Wyoming, but does everything it can to warn the viewer that it is not, in fact, your typical romantic, grandiose landscape film. Instead of being shot as a classical landscape, these western…
This month, Gastro Obscura is sharing the recipes and stories behind amazing holiday dishes and drinks from around the world in the ongoing series “Home-Cooked Holidays.” On chilly nights during World War II, a potent elixir known as Moose Milk filled the stomachs and soothed the souls of Canadian soldiers. This rich batch cocktail usually…
★★★★ Directed by: King Louie Palomo Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonWritten by: King Louie Palomo Starring: Flora Gasser, Mercedes Cabral, Azmyth Jake Tanabe Hernandez Read moreRobert Stack Finally Solves a Mystery in ‘The Strange and Deadly Occurrence’,,Film Review by: ,,Jason Knight A mother and her child are visiting grandma. Nene (Gasser)…
Director Vladislav Kozlov’s new film, Immortalist, tackles nothing short of the universal dread of mortality. The legendary Franco Nero plays Paolo, who is dying of terminal cancer. His grandson Max (Jeff DuJardin), an anti-aging company attorney, is determined to save his beloved “Papa” by means of cryonics—the low-temperature freezing of corpses in special canisters in…