Quote:
Hailed as one of the masterpieces of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema, Bashu, the Little Stranger opens during an Iraqi air-raid on a small Iranian village bordering the war-front in Khuzestan. When 10-year old Bashu’s loses his home and his entire family in the raid he takes refuge in a truck that unexpectedly drives north, close to the Russian border. There he is assumed to be ‘wild’ because of his incomprehensible dialect and dark skin; only Nai, a mother of two whose husband is away for work, takes pity on him. Soon she and Bashu weave a relationship strong enough that Bashu’s traumatic experience with the war makes way for hope and trust.Read More »

Orson Welles’ BBC series is basically a bunch of monologues by Welles, with some illustrations by Welles, about — theatre; theatre critics; voodoo magic used to kill theatre critics; bullfighting; customs officers; the false nose; and many other topics, all connected to Welles’ career in film, theatre and radio.

Very very funny, charming as hell, and an absolute must for Wellesians.Read More »

Quote:
“Richard, an isolated programmer who made millions with his company, meets a pretty girl in a café. The pretty girl is a drummer; she is also a stripper. Richard wants to live it up and after careful negotiations, takes Florence to Las Vegas for a weekend. He pays her 10,000 dollars and promises to adhere to her conditions, which include no kissing on the mouth, no penetration, and limits their time together to the hours between 10pm and 2am. “Read More »

a review
by Ian Jane

I don’t know what it is with Japanese cinema and it’s affinity for violence and cruelty, but man, when they pull out all the stops they sure do a damn good job of grossing me out. This movie, Shogun’s Sadism (Ushiaki No Kei), is one of those times.

Essentially what we have are two stories, totally unrelated to each other, that exist for the soul reason of piecing together assorted scenes of torture. You see, back in the sixties there was a very popular series of films entitled The Joy Of Torture (Tokugawa Onna Keibatsu-Shi) directed by Teruo Ishii. This series ran for a total of eight volumes and proved to be quite successful. Toei Studios cashed in with this film, directed by Yuji Makiguchi (which some people believe was a pseudonym for Tereo Ishii) and gave it a similar title – the film is also known as Oxen Split Torturing.Read More »

Synopsis
A young woman becomes the fourth wife of a wealthy lord, and must learn to live with the strict rules and tensions within the household.Read More »

Complete 7-part, 290-minute BBC miniseries plus BBC interview – John Le Carre – The Secret Centre

Complex but compelling, this miniseries is based upon one of John Le Carré’s greatest works and serves as a grand summing-up for the late Sir Alec Guinness, one of Britain’s greatest actors. Guinness literally is Smiley: Le Carré said that Guinness served as a template for the character’s cunning and mournful rectitude. In anyone else’s hands, Smiley might have seemed a blank and lifeless character, but Guinness’ matchless ability to play within a scene while seeming to think well beyond it is magnetic. Guinness was the great everyman and underplayer of the generation that gave us such great British Shakespearean actors as Olivier, Richardson, and Gielgud. He’s helped, too, by sharp dialogue lifted almost word-for-word from the book and terrific supporting performances (particularly an entirely silent but amazingly communicative Patrick Stewart, who has a cameo as Karla), which almost entirely obscure the fact that the miniseries largely consists of people sitting in rooms talking. It’s a literate treat that brings to life the gray morality and conflicting loyalties of the Cold War. Be advised: viewers can get lost in the intricate plot if they don’t pay close attention.
— Nick Sambides, Jr.Read More »

Quote:
The movie begins with a startling, intimate sex scene. A hefty middle-aged man is making love with an attractive middle-aged woman. He is avidly concerned with bringing her to orgasm, each one worries that the other is worried that the other is taking too long—“I feel good. I’m good,” insists one of them— the sex ends in resignation. What’s startling about the scene is not its explicitness, which is not inordinate. It’s the way the characters are framed, in medium closeup, in compositions that emphasis the space between their faces as much if not more than their faces. (One is reminded of Elie Faure’s writing on Velasquez, quoted by Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Pierrot Le Fou.”)Read More »

Quote:
“The entire town knows that I want to be a train dispatcher for the simple reason that I don’t want to do anything?just like my ancestors?but stand on the platform with a signal disc and avoid any hard work, while others have to drudge and toil.” – Milos HrmaRead More »

Quote:
Nicolas Mallet (Jean-Louis Trintignant, The Conformist), a naive bank clerk, meets Marie-Paule (Jane Birkin, Je Taime Moi Non Plus, Keep Your Right Up), a beautiful but lonely young girl, in a quiet corner of Paris. She smiles at him and he offers to buy her a drink. When she agrees, he assumes that his luck has finally changed. But when later on they rent a room in a cheap hotel, he discovers that she is a prostitute. Before they make love, he forces her to tell him that she came to the hotel because she truly wanted him.Read More »