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In
this second dispatch collected from SXSW 2012, our critic
dives into the Zellner Brother's Kid-Thing,
Guy Maddin's Keyhole,
the LGBT doc Wildness,
and Indonesian martial arts flick The Raid: Redemption.
Credited as sole director, Austin-based filmmaker David
Zellner—who co-created
Goliath
and numerous shorts with his brother Nathan,
credited here as producer and cinematographer—incorporates
the duo's dark, quirky brand of comedy to their beautifully shot
Southern Gothic fairy tale Kid-Thing.
Present in nearly every frame is prepubescent Annie, played by
first-time actress and Zellner family friend Sydney Aguirre. Read
more >>
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In
This Dispatch:
- What's
New:The Muppets, Red Persimmons, A Lonely Place to Die, and
more.
- What
We're Watching: Letter Never Sent; Young, Violent, Dangerous.
- Explore:
DVD of the Week - The Adventures of Tintin, Retro Active - City on
Fire.
- Contest:
Columbus
Circle DVD Giveaway!
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Does
the Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller-penned Muppets film live up to
childhood expectations? The Atlantic's Christopher
Penn certainly thinks so. "The
film is an utter delight, a tidal surge of joyful nostalgia cunningly
repackaged and updated. Take your kids, take your parents, take a
friend or someone you'd like to become one. Bobin (Director), Segal,
and Stoller propel the proceedings with wit and verve, genre winks
tumbling out over timely demolitions of the fourth wall... The Muppets
is equal parts tender and hilarious, heartfelt and sly."Also available
on Blu-Ray.
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The
documentaries of Shinsuke Ogawa are legend in Japanese documentary
circles, having chronicled many of Japan's turbulent political and
social upheavals during the 60's and 70's. Icarus films is reviving his
work in the west, having released A Visit to Ogawa
Productions (about both Ogawa
and fellow Japanese New Wave Director Nagisa
Oshima), and now, Red Persimmons,
a
film started by
Ogawa in the late 80's and finished by his protege Xiaolian Peng
shortly before his death in 1992. The doc focuses in on Kaminoyama, a
city in the Japanese countryside which prides itself on its cultivation
of the titular crop. "We observe, through the course of the film, that
the persimmon itself becomes representative of ‘the Japanese
village’ in the way it goes from being an organic part of a
lifestyle, through being a commodity under simple capitalism
and then a fiercely competitive economy, to gradually losing its
ritualistic qualities and finally ending up as a low-demand produce.
Beautiful, like a Dovzhenko
film, humble, essential," writes Just
Another Film Buff.
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What
on the surface may appear to be your run-of-the-mill stranded and
stalked survival horror film is more than meets the eye, says Badass
Digest's Devin
Faraci.
" A
Lonely Place To Die
doesn’t fit into any one genre. It’s survival
horror, it’s high wire action, it’s international
intrigue, it’s a touch of paranoid conspiracy thriller, some
stalk and slash and even a little hint of pagan British weirdness, a la
Wicker
Man. The film slowly morphs
from one kind of a movie into
another, never lagging, always keeping you on your toes. It’s
an incredibly fun ride." Scott
Weinberg adds, "The 'victim'
characters are thinly-drawn but well-realized, the 'hunters' are more
than suitably malevolent, the setting is both beautiful and brutal, and
to the flick's inestimable credit, it simply moves forward, virtually
non-stop, on all cylinders."
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In
one of the opening shots of Mikhail
Kalatozov’s Letter
Never Sent,
four Soviet explorers struggle wordlessly through a throng of birch
trees in the middle of a Siberian hinterland. The hand-held camera
lurches along with the adventurers as they push on, hip-deep in water
and dragging their gear behind them on rafts. There’s
something about this scene – the close-up, shaky images of
desperate characters fighting against a cold, indifferent nemesis
– that instantly recalls George
Romero’s Night
of the Living Dead.
In fact, much of Letter Never
Sent’s man-vs.-nature
conflict plays like a horror film. Here the relentless boogeyman
doesn’t wield an axe but fire and ice. Read more >> |
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The
wonderful Raro
Video is single-handedly
reminding the world that the Italian crime director Fernando
Di Leo once existed. Last year
they released a wonderful four-disc
box set of Di Leo films (with a
Blu-Ray set added just a month ago). The company has also been
releasing some of Di Leo's screenwriting efforts for other directors,
notably the awesome
Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man
(1976). Now comes Young,
Violent, Dangerous ( Liberi
Armati Pericolosi) (1976),
directed by Romolo
Guerrieri. Though it has an
equally crazy title, it's distinctly different in tone. This one is
more cautionary, and comes with a little bit of conscience. Read more >> |
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Retro
Active: City
on Fire. This week's "Retro
Active" pick is inspired by the undercover-cop action of the 21
Jump Street
remake. Women factor into City
on Fire
but Ringo
Lam's 1987 crime saga is a
strictly masculine affair awash in male love. An influence on Quentin
Tarantino's Reservoir
Dogs—with
which it shares similarities both in terms of narrative (heists,
undercover cops, gun standoffs, torture) and themes (shifting
allegiances, loyalty, the boundary between nobility and
criminality)—Lam's film pivots around Ko Chow ( Chow
Yun-Fat), a brash Hong Kong
police officer intent on retiring. Read more >>
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A
dark and suspenseful thriller starring Selma Blair as an agoraphobic
heiress confronted with a murder next door and new tenants to boot, Columbus
Circle, made its debut on
Blu-ray™, DVD, Digital Download and On Demand on March 6,
2012, from Universal Studios Home Entertainment. And here's your chance
to win a copy of Columbus Circle on DVD! Read more >>
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Southern
Gothic
Podcasts!
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