A more than pleasant, funny and touching short(ened) burlesque comedy of young Y. Ozu.
Two friends provide shelter to an orphan girl they have accidentally knocked down.Read More »

Crispin wrote:

Adam tells us a story about playing with an older cousin, who had cerebral palsy and smells of licorice.Read More »

MARY AND MAX is the claymation feature film from Adam Elliot who won an Oscar for his short film Harvey Krumpet.
It was invited to open the Sundance Film Festival this year, an auspicious start for this very individual film which covers 20 years of a pen-pal friendship between Mary Daisy Dinkle – voiced by BETHANY WHITMORE as a child and TONI COLLETTE as an adult and Max, (PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN) a large sized New Yorker who has problems relating to people. This odd couple friendship has loneliness at its core.Read More »

Description:
It is winter in Saint Petersburg and the streets of the former capital are teeming. Half naked sunbathers stand in the snow; fledgeling dancers watched by throngs of teens are an explosion of underground fashion; a therapist who cannot afford an office sees clients in his car; immigrant street cleaners wander estates in orange vests, hoping they won’t be mistaken for terrorists. Saint Petersburg makes do with what it has.Read More »

Koji Shiraishi is interested in strange indiscriminate murder at a sightseeing resort. He goes behind the camera to investigate the circumstances surrounding strange occurrences and interview the survivors.Read More »

An excellent documentary on the great Zbig Rybczynski, spanning his entire career, from Kwadrat to his most recent Hi-Def works. It’s not an overstatement to say that Zbig is one of the great pioneers of the moving image; a true visionary whose influence and ideas can be found everywhere in contemporary filmmaking and advertising.

Fascinating and moving in equal parts, Zbig discusses his life and experiences and how they have shaped his work. An incredibly eloquent and engaging narrator and storyteller, the man is as interesting as his creations – a beautiful mind, an extraordinary artist and a remarkable man.Read More »

Quote:
In Patagonia, a mechanic who dreams of a different life starts to think big after his adopted pup wins first prize at a local dog show.Read More »

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader wrote:
Except for The Saga of Anatahan, this 1929 release is probably the most underrated of Josef von Sternberg’s sound pictures, and it’s underrated for the same reason: Sternberg is known almost exclusively as a visual stylist, but the most exciting thing here is the highly creative sound track. It’s Sternberg’s first talkie–a near remake of Underworld, a spiritual romance about a doomed gangster, with the same lead (George Bancroft) and Fay Wray–and although this is a minority opinion, I find it better than the original in many ways. With Richard Arlen and Tully Marshall.Read More »

Quote:
Yukio Mishima’s acclaimed 1956 novel Kinkakuji (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion) was inspired by an actual incident in 1950 when a disturbed monk burned down one of Kyoto’s most beautiful temple buildings. The temple requested that the name be changed to Shukakuji for this adaptation, which opens out the book’s internal monologue, structuring the anguished protagonist’s progress towards final conflagration through flashbacks as the police piece together their investigation. Raizo Ichikawa’s central performance attracts sympathy for this stuttering temple acolyte from a broken family, who sees in the Golden Pavilion a purity of beauty in direct contrast to his own imperfect existence. It’s a purity in danger of being defiled, however, as post-war occupation and reconstruction open the site to tourism, so he resolves to destroy pavilion in order to preserve it. Ichikawa’s fragmented direction draws together this awful logic, leaving the audience dangling exquisitely between understanding and outright horror as flames obliterate a priceless cultural monument. The director’s favourite among his own films.Read More »