Synopsis: A man stretching the truth for his own sake soon begins doing the same for someone else, with increasingly complicated results, in this gentle comedy from China. Zhao (Zhao Benshan) is a guy in his early fifties who’s out of work but still wants to marry his girlfriend (Dong Lifan). However, his often cranky sweetheart thinks he runs a hotel, and Zhao is trying to keep the illusion alive with the help of his pal Li (Li Xuejian) by turning an abandoned bus into a “love hotel” for couples who lack privacy in their homes. But business isn’t all that good, since the old-fashioned Zhao asks unmarried couples to keep their doors open to ensure nothing untoward happens. As Zhao tries to convince his girlfriend to walk down the aisle with him — and struggles to raise the money she demands first — she introduces him to Wu Jing (Dong Jie), the blind teenage stepdaughter she inherited from her marriage to her now-deceased first husband.Read More »

The plotline follows separate subplots that all coalesce around the meatpacking industry. From the meat company executive sent to investigate charges of shoddy processing, to the processing plant use of illegal immigrant labor, to all the lives that are collaterally touched by each participant in the food chain, the movie examines the entire US ethic of providing a packaged experience better, faster, and cheaper. The movie does not leave out gory details, but instead lets the viewer decide what the end result should be by providing no neat conclusions, nor happy endings, but more importantly imparts a series of possible topics for discussion with a background of how the problem developed and the interdependent parties involved. In total, the film could easily be shown as an instructional video for a college level course in corporate responsibility.
Author: risserobRead More »

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A rare film for blues buffs.

Between the Civil War and World War II, many gifted and restless young black musicians found careers in the traveling patent-medicine shows, a favorite entertainment in the rural and small-town South. They sang and recited comic routines and danced to attract a crowd for the pitchman and his sales of wonder-cure “snake oil.”

“Born for Hard Luck” includes highlights from Peg Leg Sam’s performance at a North Carolina county fair in 1972, the only film record of a live medicine show. It gives excerpts from his comic routines, a mock chanted sermon, “toasts,” folktales, three buck dances, and his brilliant harmonica playing and singing of “Reuben Train,” “Greasy Greens,” “Hand Me Down,” “Who Left My Backdoor Running,” and “Froggie Went A-Courting.”Read More »

Oleg is a young gifted paramedic. His wife Katya works at the hospital emergency department. She loves Oleg, but is fed up with him caring more about patients than her. She tells him she wants a divorce. The new head of Oleg’s EMA substation is a cold-hearted manager who’s got new strict rules to implement. Oleg couldn’t care less about the rules – he’s got lives to save. His attitude gets him in trouble with the new boss. The crisis at work coincides with the personal life crisis. Caught between emergency calls, alcohol-fueled off-shifts, and search for a meaning in life, Oleg and Katya have to find the binding force that keeps them together.Read More »

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Two 17-year-old Moscow girls, Olya and Sasha, are going to the Crimea to meet Olya’s father Sergey. Sergey has lived in a small seaside village his whole life and has never seen his daughter. At the threshold of her father’s house, Olya gets scared of meeting him. She asks Sasha “to trade places with her”. So Sasha introduces herself as Olya and pretends to be Sergey’s daughter while Olya claims to be her best friend. Little did they know that this innocent joke will turn into great drama and change their lives forever.Read More »

Paul Elliot & Sean Lamberth wrote:
Library Music was composed and recorded specifically as an ‘off the shelf’ option for use in film, broadcasts and advertising. It was cheaper than commissioning a composer to score a soundtrack, and the music was written to cover every genre, every instrument and every atmosphere.

The Golden Era of Library Music is generally deemed to have been from the late sixties to the mid-eighties with thousands of albums produced during this time. It was a time when the world’s greatest composers had access to full orchestras in the best recording studios with the very best engineers and recording equipment.Read More »

A drone’s-eye-view recording leads the audience through Hong Kong’s dragon gates, a series of gaps in high-rises that allow dragons to fly from the mountains to the sea while a character relates their relationship with geomancy, remote-selves and therianthropy (the mythical ability to shift shapes).Read More »

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Rendez-vous begins with aspiring actress Nina (Binoche) fresh off the boat in Paris, where she immediately falls into bed with both real estate clerk Paulot (Wadeck Stanczak) and his in-your-face roommate Quentin (Lambert Wilson). Soon enough, secrecy is put aside and the whole affair becomes a messy conflagration of emotion and raw sexuality.Read More »

10-year-old Jojo lives alone with his father, a night watchman. His mother is said to be a country singer touring the US but because his dad won’t tell him anything more, Jojo’s left on his own to worry. When a young jackdaw falls out of his nest one day, Jojo takes him in. He forgets his troubles for a while, caring for the bird and making a new friend too. Life seems to be getting better, though his worries about his mother don’t completely go away. A beautiful film telling a truly touching story about growing up in a tough situation.Read More »