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"Because the story has already been told in Alive, the 1974 best seller by Piers Paul Read, and retold in its 1993 screen adaptation starring Ethan Hawke, why again?" asks Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "The short answer is that in Stranded: I've Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains, all 16 of the survivors, now middle-aged, tell the story in their own words." And Salon's Andrew O'Hehir finds the resulting film "intimate, terrifying and positively riveting... One way of explaining Stranded is that [director Gonzalo] Arijon's after not just the objective facts of what happened and when, which are dramatic enough, but also the subjective reality, the psychological and physiological desolation of the experience." In a new article on GreenCine, David D'Arcy talks with Arijon about why he's retelling a well-known tale. Read article >> |
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In This Dispatch:
- What's New: WALL-E, Girl Who Leapt... and much more.
- What We're Watching: Encounters at the End of the World, What We Do is Secret, and Where is Freedom?
- Explore: Manhattan, Kansas, revisited.
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Pixar's latest triumph, which is often an ingenious silent comedy, is a "film that's both breathtakingly majestic and heartbreakingly intimate," wrote Robert Wilonsky in the Voice. Newsweek's David Ansen: "Once again, the Pixar wizards have pushed the animation envelope in unexpected directions and come up with a winner. Wondrously inventive, funny and poignant, WALL-E is part sci-fi adventure, part cautionary fable, part satire and part love story, which may be the best and most improbable part of all." |
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“Toki O Kakeru Shojo” (or Tokikake) is one of the the most adapted modern short stories in Japanese Literature. But this new take on it, by the same studio who brought us the striking Paprika, is much more than just another rehash; in fact, it "blew my socks off," raved Twitch. Adds THEM Anime Reviews: "Mamoru Hosoda’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time has left me with simultaneous feelings of bliss, melancholy and hope (and the desire to look for friends and play baseball). A modern-day anime masterpiece." |
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Werner Herzog's gorgeous documentary about the people (and creatures) who live at least some of the year on (and under) Antarctica, may not have the shock and drive of his Grizzly Man, but it's a poignant and even haunting work nonetheless. The film was created for the National Science Foundation, and was short around the NSF's headquarters at the McMurdo Station; home to eleven hundred people, it's the one community the continent has. Encounters is a bit episodic in structure as Herzog journeys around the area with the marine biologists, physicists, plumbers, truck drivers and other people into this surreal and often absurd world... Read review >>
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Roger Grossman's film chronicles the story of the seminal Los Angeles punk rock band The Germs. With a style that combines traditional narrative with documentary qualities, the film delivers an intimate look inside the punk rock scene in the late seventies. Those without a deep knowledge of that world will find themselves illuminated, able to see the beauty in its darkness. Founder and leading man of The Germs, the furious Darby Crash (played astonishingly well by ER's Shane West), is a truly fascinating character. The... Read review >> |
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The name Roberto Rossellini generally brings to mind films such as Open City and Paisan, along with the phrase Italian neo-realism. Like most world-class filmmakers, Rossellini is more profound and complex than any label might indicate, as the recent Lionsgate release of two of his lesser-known works (to Americans) should make clear. One of these, Era Notte a Roma (Escape By Night), from 1960, is an interesting example of Rossellini's neo-realist style at work on a tale of Italy toward the end of WWII's German occupation. I've reviewed Notte in greater length on my blog TrustMovies, but it is the second – and earlier (1954) – movie... read review >> |
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Some ways back, GreenCine visited with filmmaker Tara Wray as she worked on a personal documentary about her relationship with her odd mother. We're proud to say that film, Manhattan, Kansas, was not only completed but turned out quite well. Critic Scott Weinberg called it "an intimate documentary... a strangely satisfying movie." And it's now available on DVD. Read article >> |
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Fully Bond-ed
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