Storyline
Li Baicheng is a charismatic fortune teller who services a clientele of prostitutes and marginalized figures whose jobs, like his, are commonplace but technically illegal in China. He practices his ancient craft in a village near Beijing while taking care of his deaf and dumb wife Pearl, who he rescued from her family’s mistreatment. Winter brings a police crackdown on both fortune tellers and prostitutes, forcing Li and Pearl into temporary exile in his hometown, where he revisits old family demons. His humble story is told with chapter headings similar to Qing Dynasty popular fiction. Written by AnonymousRead More »

Quote:
Wagner is a giant, unwieldy beast. Eight hours devoted to the German composer, from the age of 35 to his death. Its sheer length allows the screen to play house to his politics, his person and his loves all within the frame of his music. Yet is enacts a precarious balance between the epic and the personal, between reverence and irreverence and between high art and high camp. Indeed, at its centre is not Wagner, nor Richard Burton who portrays the composer, but director Tony Palmer who grapples with the material throughout, sometimes succeeding and sometimes falling flat on his face.Read More »

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It began life as La Vengenza del sexo, a cheap little melodrama shot in only two weeks by Emilio Vieyra, one of the few Argentinean directors to make fantastic films. The American rights for it and another Vieyra film, Placer sangriento (Bloody Pleasure, which became The Deadly Organ) were bought by Jerald Intrator, the director of movies like Striporama (yes, the one with Bettie Page). Intrator proceeded to insert almost twenty minutes of nude people into Vengenza, feeling, with it’s already liberal amount of nudity, its proper place was in the adult market.Read More »

Over 16 hours, in February, 1987, a man confronts jealously and rage as a love affair falters. Photojournalist Mel Hurley returns home to San Francisco on the eve of his birthday, expecting his lover, Carmen, to meet him at the airport and tell him if she will be exclusively his. She’s not there, she wants more time. Almost 20 years ago, he’d photographed civil war in Biafra, wanting to tell a story that would save people. He now equates that war with his personal struggle: can his photographs save this relationship? He goes to Carmen to talk to her; first he acts the fool, then they seem to connect. But, can he control his jealousy and not force things with her?Read More »

Synopsis:
Ah-Ching and his friends have just finished school in their island fishing village, and now spend most of their time drinking and fighting. Three of them decide to go to the port city of Kaohsiung to look for work. They find an apartment through relatives, and Ah-Ching is attracted to the girlfriend of a neighbor. There they face the harsh realities of the big city.Read More »

Another fantastic Süha Arın documentary, lovingly in-depth, about various types of ancient craftsmanship that are dying out in the modern world. It’s an episode from the series Old Houses, Old Masters. As the title indicates, this is all about wood, from construction to grave markers to prayer beads to violins.Read More »

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Set in a small village in the Moroccan countryside, Alyam, Alyam tells a story culled from the lived reality of young men almost forty years ago while still remaining very much of the present day. A young man named Abdelwahed pins his dreams of a better life for himself and his family on travelling to France and finding work there. As the eldest of eight children, he becomes the principal caretaker and breadwinner for his family after his father passes away. He fills out forms and waits for his work permit to arrive. Meanwhile, Hlima, his recently widowed mother who’s reticent to let him go, tries in vain to dissuade him and enlists the help of Abdelwahed’s grandfather too. As the days flow by to the cadence of life in the countryside, marked by the hardships of farming, Abdelwahed waits. All he can do is wait. Straddling fiction and documentary, Alyam, Alyam is Ahmed El Maanouni’s first narrative feature, and the first Moroccan film ever to be selected at the Cannes Film Festival. Recently restored, the film’s splendor and finely crafted editing has become available once again for cinéphiles and new generations to discover.Read More »

A 16-year-old girl is given 13 hours to solve a labyrinth and rescue her baby brother when her wish for him to be taken away is granted by the Goblin King.Read More »

Shiftless Jeeter Lester (Charley Grapewin) and his family of hillbilly stereotypes live in a rural backwater where their ancestors were once wealthy planters. Their slapstick existence is threatened by a bank’s plans to take over the land for more profitable farming; subplots involve the affairs and marriages of son Dude (William Tracy) and daughter Ellie May (Gene Tierney).Read More »