Korean filmmaker goes goth in beautiful, baffling psychothriller
By Devin D. O’Leary
This hyper-gothic thriller is one ravishing and confusing chimera—as if Terrence Malick had directed an episode of “Dexter” written by Charlotte Brontë. It’s lurid, eerie and stylish as all get-out. And apt to drive mainstream audiences crazy.
A big thanks to Showcase participants and attendees
Winners and nominees—23 of them— rocked over a thousand attendees at five venues on March 24, 2018. It was a blast and we’ll see you at next year’s shindig. Here for posterity (and your browsing pleasure) are the winners and runners-up.
This Is How I Might Have Done It If I Had Done It Which I Definitely Did Not Do.
By Robert Masterson
I’m not saying I’d ever do it, but we all know that people have done it, that people do it all the time, that people are doing it right now. Or we know about people who’ve had other people do it for them. Larry Hagman. Or the famous ones that have it done to them like that guy from Masterpiece Theater, Alistair Something-Something. Or Something-Something Alistair. There’s all those straight-to-Netflix-Instant horror movies about young, amoral, taut-bodied Americans boisterously on vacation in exotic locales until they end up on the vivisectionists’ tables.
Just in time for the Easter season, Reelz Channel offers up a ham-handed, hammily acted mini-series of mostly dubious Biblical provenance. Given that our tolerance for corny, overproduced, excessively long Biblical epics is at a seasonal high, though, perhaps some of us are in the mood for a little ham.
Natsumi Hayashi’s blog initially consisted of fairly standard photos of cats, food and her friends. However, in September 2010, images of others (and then more frequently herself) effortlessly floating in mid-air begin to appear. For the better part of a year, she was uploading a new levitation image every single day.
Oh, lost opportunities. In 1931, Anna Pavlova, lodestar of the Imperial Russian Ballet and dancer of the “Dying Swan,” refused a surgery that would have cleared her lungs, but rendered her unfit to dance. She died of pleurisy before she hit 50. In 2013, I traveled to New Zealand for two weeks and failed to procure the national meringue-based dessert named for Pavlova. Tragedies both large and small.
i was driving in the mountains at dawn. there were spots of ice and snow. i spotted two dark lumps in the road that looked like chunks of ice that had fallen off the bottom of a truck. i slowed down. then the chunks moved, just slightly, and i realized, now less than 50m away, that the chunks of ice were in fact a pair of squirrels.
Plan your weekly live music consumption—be it post-punk, electro-industrial, rockabilly, psych-rock, doom or Irish pub songs—with a little help from Music to Your Ears.
If time had a look and a sound, what would it be? Molly Bradbury's video and sound installation "Klang" looks at this fanciful question with a determined eye.
James Franco books a return trip to Oz in Sam Raimi’s fantasy prequel
By Devin D. O’Leary
The massive success of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland three years ago kicked off an at-times wearying string of fairy tale updates (Red Riding Hood, Snow White and the Huntsman, Mirror Mirror, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, Jack the Giant Slayer, ABC’s “Once Upon a Time”). That film’s $330 million domestic box office certainly incentivized Disney to come up with more family fantasy reboots. Oddly enough, instead of dipping into the deep well of already Disneyfied fairy tales, the company has decided to go with a story made famous by crosstown rivals at MGM.
On Saturday, March 16, Albuquerque Studios will host a private farewell reception to “Breaking Bad” from 4:30 to 6 p.m. On Thursday, March 14, the Reel New Mexico Film Series at La Tienda will present the fracking documentary Rooted Lands. The New Mexico Film Experience takes over Santa Fe’s Center for Contemporary Arts Cinematheque on Sunday, March 17. he Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour breezes through the KiMo Theatre on Wednesday and Thursday, March 20 and 21
History Channel, having exhausted the possibilities of Nazi-based documentaries, long ago turned its attention to reality television—both faintly historical (“American Pickers”) and not-at-all-historical (“Big Rig Bounty Hunters”). Sadly, they missed the window of opportunity on a Nazi hunter reality show. (Tracking down 90-year-old mass murderers sounds kinda depressing.) Now, the network is giving fiction a try with its first scripted, episodic series, “Vikings.”
Intimate biopic finds cinematic son hunting musical father
By Devin O’Leary
Documentary filmmaking has a certain reportorial air about it, and there’s an unspoken barrier that exists between documentarian and subject. Get too close and viewers might feel you’ve lost your objectivity. That’s not a problem that seems to concern filmmaker Stanley Warnow. After all, the subject of his film is his father.
At this year’s legislative session, a 60-day palaver between 70 state representatives (38 Democrats and 32 Republicans) and 42 senators (25 Democrats and 17 Republicans), there were about 1,200 bills, memorials, and resolutions representing over 50 subjects introduced, covering everything from a horse slaughtering facility (HB 90) to HB 68, intended to bring a welcome respite to all of us by shortening the political campaign.
It began at an art party when two friends were overtaken by the music, the movements and the camaraderie surrounding them. Like a hippie commune-induced acid trip, they started projecting their minds’ reaction to what was going on around them on a piece of paper and by playing music.
On Thursday, March 7, The Lensic will screen 40 minutes of the PBS documentary “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.” Movie fans with short attention spans are invited to gorge themselves at the sixth annual Taos Shortz Film Fest March 7 through 10. If you can’t make the trip to Taos, you might want to check out Filmstock at the KiMo Theatre this weekend.
Reelz Channel, still testing the boundaries of its slogan “TV About Movies,” decides maybe it should try invading Syfy Channel territory with its new mini-series, the disasterrificRing of Fire. Like every Syfy movie that doesn’t involve an oversized monster mashup (Sharktopus or Boa vs. Python), Ring of Fire features an environmental disaster, a bunch of vaguely familiar TV stars and lots of CGI. Reelz takes it to the next level, though, offering us full-fledged C-list stars (sorry Debbie Gibson and Dean Cain), some more expensive CGI and a couch-busting four-hour runtime.
How local breweries and food trucks serve each other
By Brian Haney
By only selling beer, many taprooms welcome patrons to bring food themselves, which has created opportunity for other businesses. Area restaurants offering takeout and delivery have benefited, but having so many hungry beer drinkers in one place has also provided a niche for food trucks. While most of the trucks regularly visit UNM, office buildings and other locations around town, taprooms make up a large part of their hours of operation.
During its short tenure on Central, east of Carlisle, the now defunct Filipino Kitchen was perhaps the town’s most carnivorous eatery. The restaurant space, which shares a plaza withthe Route 66 Malt Shop, is now inhabited by a new outpost of Thai Vegan, the original being on Osuna near San Mateo.