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Tackling classism, inter-racial relationships, infertility and infidelity, Gina Kim's film (with the Neruda-inspired title) Never Forever quietly observes the collapse of a languid, unfulfilled marriage and the concurrent blossoming of a woman's empowerment through her sexuality. The film is "one of the spring season's unlikeliest and most delectable surprises," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. Cathleen Rountree sat down with the vivacious and sophisticated Kim to talk about the history of recent Korean Cinema, her stint at Harvard, where she finds herself in her characters and her upcoming documentary. Never Forever has opened in New York and San Francisco before rolling out in May.
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In This Dispatch:
- What's New: Juno, Lars and a lot more.
- What We're Watching: Le Bonheur (x2), Yacoubian and Blast of Silence.
- Explore: The Future of Filmmaking.
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Rookie scribe Diablo Cody won an Oscar for her acerbic, witty screenplay but the excellent cast and well-chosen director may be just as much to thank for the screwball-ish Juno's overwhelming success. "Call [it] the feel-good film of the pregnant teenager comedy genre," wrote Seattle PI's Sean Axmaker. "The sophomore film from Jason Reitman is as smart and funny as his debut feature Thank You for Smoking, and even more affectionate and full of life." Adds Rolling Stone: "There's a special kick that comes in finding a new star. So step up, Ellen Page, and take your bows. " |
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Craig Gillespie and Nancy Oliver 's sweet-natured indie about a man ( Ryan Gosling) and his girlfriend, who's a real doll, "walks a delicate line through a minefield of potential bad taste," wrote Newsweek's David Ansen. "Directed with patient, low-key sensitivity, it never goes for a cheap laugh at its protagonist’s expense." Adds the LA Times' Kenneth Turan, "The creators of this film were fiercely determined not to go so much as a millimeter over the line into sentiment, tawdriness or mockery. It's the rare film that is the best possible version of itself, but Lars fits that bill." |
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Both Erin Donovan and James Van Maanen volunteered to work their way through Criterion's recently released Agnes Varda collection. While the odds are they'll more or less agree on the overall quality, each has their own unique takes on these films. We start with Le Bonheur (1965). Erin: "makes a statement about sexual politics and the fleeting nature of human affection that feels modern even watching it forty-three years after it was made." James: "Revisiting it, I find it holds up even better than I remembered." Read review here and here. |
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What to make of the sensational (in themes and provenance, if not style and substance) Egyptian movie blockbuster The Yacoubian Building? Several things, actually, but let’s start with provenance and themes. Based on a groundbreaking, hugely popular Egyptian novel by Alaa' Al-Aswany that dealt with unusual subjects (for Egypt, at the time: it was published in 2002) such as homosexuality, adultery, drugs, corruption-in-high-places and the decline of Egyptian society, the novel seemed to have dragged Egyptian literary culture into the 20th Century. Of course, since much of the world is now well into the 21st, this is part of the problem that Westerners may have with the book--and its filmed version, which debuted... read review >> |
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A blast from the past, is this lost noir classic out on DVD today from Criterion. "The film plays like an unholy marriage between the realist films noir of the 40s like The Naked City and the early independent dramas of John Cassavetes, with a narrator (uncredited Lional Stander) speaking in second person like the twisted inner voice of a soul that has been basting in antipathy and spite for years," writes Sean Axmaker for MSN Movies. "The hard-boiled riffs play like pulp beat poetry distilled into pure misanthropic cynicism."... read more reviews >>
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In his second article for GreenCine.com, filmmaker Ladd Ehlinger ( Flatland) prognosticates for us on the future of the film industry. "It's been almost twenty years since I predicted that films would be transmitted digitally, and that this would have a massive deflationary impact upon the economics of show business. Few people witnessed my prediction, so you'll just have to take my clairovayance on faith. Luckily, these new prophecies are more public, so twenty years from now you are free to remind me of my prescience or lack thereof." Full article >>
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Money Trouble$
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