2000s

Plot:
A drama that follows the travails of the Pineda family in the Filipino city of Angeles. Bigamy, unwanted pregnancy, possible incest and bothersome skin irritations are all part of their daily challenges, but the real “star” of the show is an enormous, dilapidated movie theater that doubles as family business and living space. At one time a prestige establishment, the theater now runs porn double bills and serves as a meeting ground for hustlers of every conceivable persuasion. The film captures the sordid, fetid atmosphere, interweaving various family subplots with the comings and goings of customers, thieves and even a runaway goat while enveloping the viewer in a maelstrom of sound, noise and continuous motion.Read More »

Ah Dik and Jean meet up in Japan to bury the ashes of Ah Dik’s brother and Jean’s sister, who were once lovers. Love soon blossoms between Jean and Ah Dik but their romance is shortlived when Jean’s father appears and abruptly takes her back to Hong Kong to be engaged to a doctor.Read More »

Story: A music group of girls need to learn to play a song before the school festival.

Quote:
What distinguishes Nobuhiro Yamashita’s Linda Linda Linda from the crowd is a refreshing modesty. Rather than the usual underdog struggle against the odds culminating School of Rock style in the obligatory spectacular stage show and a fat recording contract, Linda Linda Linda’s story revolves around four highschool girls for whom learning how to play a single song in time for the school festival is the ultimate challenge.Read More »

ON October 12th 1978 Nancy Spungen, an ex-prostitute, sometimes stripper and heroin addict, was found dead in a bathroom at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. She also happened to be the girlfriend of the Sex Pistols’s bassist Sid Vicious, who was quickly accused of her murder. Less than 6 months later, he died of a heroin overdose and the case was closed. The death fo Sid and Nancy has passed into rock legend and has only added to the controversial and notorious image of the Sex Pistols and punk music. At the request of Sid’s mother, who committed suicide in 1996, rock author and punk expert Alan G Parker has devoted himslef to discovering WHO KILLED NANCY? By interviewing 182 people including close friends such as Don Letts and Glen Matlock and re-examining NYPD evidence, he reveals what he believes happened that night in room 100. (amazon.com)Read More »

Documentary discovering the various ideas Japanese artists find to introduce erotica and rape fantasy in their comics and animations, together with sociological commentary and critique.Read More »

Henjel gwa Geuretel (2007)
A reckless youngster Eun-soo drives to his mother’s and has a car accident. When Eun-soo wakes up, he meets a mysterious girl and is led to her fairytale-like house in the middle of the forest. There, Eun-soo is trapped with the girl and her siblings who never age. Soon he learns all the adults who visited or stayed in the house have met mysterious yet terrible ends. More shockingly, their cruel deaths are drawn in details and made into a fairytale book by the children. Scared Eun-soo tries to find the way out, but the house is secluded in the forest with no way out. Then, Eun-soo discovers a book which tells a brutal end of none other than…himself!Read More »

“An art student disappears after murdering his model. Now his friends and family are being haunted by the resurrected woman, Tomie.”Read More »

Quote:
It is often said that comedy is the most untranslatable element from culture to culture. This is perhaps even more the case with surreal mixed genre films like this. In Shindo Kaneto’s film (his 101st!) the old sensei has given us a strange meditation on male lusts and women’s struggle for independence. It is like a play in that the action takes place almost exclusively in a small cabin in a deserted region of Western Japan. A mother and daughter are stranded in a ghost town and are starving to death. They hit on a plan to get them out of their plight which involves exploiting the few men who stray into their cabin. They offer sexual services and then bump off the happy customers. All goes well until a local cop shows up and, then, a relation of theirs from way back.Read More »

Quote:
About a month after the Holy Week, a major national election will take place. What future does it hold for a motley group of TIRADORS–local slang for petty thieves—whose daily survival depends on fast fingers and yearly atonement on divine grace? The tiradors all live in an old dilapidated tenement building in the slums of QUIAPO, a busy business district of Manila where they ply their trade.Read More »