Synopsis Ida and her mother, a single woman, live in Northern Norway during the Nazi occupation. Ida’s mother works as a cook at a POW camp for Russians captured during the fighting in the Arctic. But she is more involved with the Germans than that… The occupying troops were reputedly encouraged to have relations with local women in Norway (as the racial characteristics of Nordic people were favoured by Nazi ideology…) As a result, lots of Norwegian women got involved in relationships and many children were conceived.Read More »
The made-for-TV BBC adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, directed by Colin Gregg.
From IMDb: A faithful dramatization of Virginia Woolf’s novel. A lecturer, his family, the spinster Aunt Lily, an old friend, and a student, Charles Tansley, spend a summer in an isolated house in Cornwall just before World War I. The stern Mr. Ramsay scolds everybody, while Mrs. Ramsay is the linchpin in keeping the family together. Aunt Lily paints, and the family talk about sailing to the lighthouse, but the trip is always postponed.Read More »
Quote: An innovative concert movie for the rock group The Talking Heads. David Byrne walks onto the stage and does a solo “Psycho Killer.” Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz join him for two more songs. The crew is busy, still setting up. Then, three more musicians and two back-up singers join the band. Everybody sings, plays, harmonizes, dances, and runs. They change instruments and clothes. Bryne appears in the Big Suit. The backdrop is often black, but sometimes it displays words, images, or children’s drawings. The band cooks for 18 songs, the lyrics are clear, the house rocks. In this concert film, the Talking Heads hardly talk, don’t stop, and always make sense. Read More »
When a doctor is found dead and the company’s exclusive data on a cancer drug is missing, detective Taka-yama and Oshita are called to the Nakamitsu pharma-ceutical laboratory. However, a bungled attempt to catch the murderer leave Takayama and Oshita re-assigned to the lackluster task of patrolling public bathrooms and hopefully out of trouble.Read More »
Quote: Tilaï opens to a long sequence, off-axis shot of a lone traveler moving away from view as he slowly traverses the arid, featureless plain on a lumbering, overburdened mule and disappears into the desolate horizon. It is an appropriately distanced and alienated introduction for the weary, but sanguine Saga (Rasmane Ouedraogo) who, after an extended journey away from his native village, has returned to the foreboding sight of anxious villagers assembled at a clearing near the entrance of the intimate community. Greeted by his brother Kougri (Assane Ouedraogo) who heads off Saga at the footpath to the village on behalf of the family, Kougri informs him of an unforeseen (and reprehensible) development during his absence: the marriage of his beloved Nogma (Ina Cissé) to their father Nomenaba (Seydou Ouedraogo), having changed his mind and taken the reluctant young woman – once promised to Saga by the old man himself – as his second wife.Read More »
Quote: A woman with a past that was raped in her school days and broke up with her lover due to it. Later, when she became a high school music teacher, she has dangerous after-school liaisons with her colleagues and students at her apartment. However, the hollow of her heart cannot be filled with only carnal desire. One day, she encounters her old lover by chance, and a turning point comes to her… Roman Porno depicting a nasty private life without fear of a female teacher!Read More »
On March 16, 1978, the Red Brigades kidnapped the head of Christian Democracy, the party in power in Italy since the end of the war. Fifty-five days later, his corpse was found in the trunk of a red Renault. Moro was not only the victim of the Brigades but also of the struggle for power between the Italian parties.Read More »
Quote: Another stunning Tuesday Suspense Theater movie from Obayashi. I love how there is some music playing almost every second of the film. That gives the movie an special feeling of drama and I think of it as another way to telling the viewer like Hey, don’t forget you’re watching a movie!
And the fact that this is a cat monster movie about making a cat monster movie featuring Takeko Irie, also known as the cat monster actress, and her daughter playing a character inspired in herself! I will sure give a rewatch to this after I watch some of Takako Irie’s cat monster movies.Read More »
THE PIED PIPER (KRYSAŘ), 1986, Czechoslovakia, 53 min. Director Jiří Barta’s stop-motion animated masterpiece, based on The Pied Piper of Hamelin, is set in a dark and twisted medieval village of narrow streets and weird Gothic arches, half-CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI and half-Jan van Eyck. The money-obsessed citizens, carved out of wood blocks and speaking in an onomatopoeic babble, are like George Grosz caricatures, literally spouting coins from their mouths instead of words. The rats are far more organic and sympathetic, made of real fur and whiskers, constantly tunneling and burrowing under the towering arches and cobblestone streets above. (In one of the film’s many surreal moments, a rat emerges from a gargoyle’s gaping maw.) Fans of fellow Czech animation legend Jan Švankmajer and the Brothers Quay will adore Barta’s eerie, Expressionist gem, recently restored for its first-ever U.S. Blu-ray release through Krátký Film Praha, Deaf Crocodile and Comeback Company. “Barta’s mastery of all aspects of filmmaking are evident: staging, production design, lighting, animation, editing, sound and music combine into dark worlds of repression and revolt with ironic conclusions.” – Phil Tippett (MAD GOD).Read More »
