2000s

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A military junta has taken power on the Philippines. Their takeover is fought by Moslem separatists, communists and rival military. In the middle of the chaos there is Hesus Mariano: academic, musician, poet and sniper. Politically tinted science-fiction action drama with an attitude.

It’s the year 2011 and the Philippines has been taken over by a military junta; the leader, a General Racellos, wields tight control over the country’s single TV station, radio station and newspaper. Racellos’ power is being challenged by Muslim secessionists, by the Communist movement and by a rival military group. In the middle of this turmoil stands Hesus Mariano (a quietly volatile Mark Anthony Fernandez) – scholar, musician, sharpshooter, poet, warrior. Jesus the Revolutionary was made on a shoestring budget (around five million pesos / 75,000 euro) and shot in roughly twenty days, but the ideas teeming in it are enough to fill a half-dozen lesser films. Except for the deserted streets and spray-painted graffiti, you won’t see any evidence of progress, of advanced technology, any sign at all that it’s almost a decade into tomorrow; if anything, things appear to have gotten worse… which is probably precisely Diaz’s point. It’s an action flick with an attitude, a political satire with a philosophical bent, a science-fiction drama with a committed political stance. The film mixes the influences of George Orwell, Jose Rizal and video games, using the future as a prismatic lens to focus on the follies of the present. (NV)Read More »

The Incal 1-12
The Metabarons 1-17
The Technopriests volumes 1 and 2 (ongoing series).Read More »

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Jean-Luc Godard, pioneer of the New Wave, has always delighted in breaking rules. Even with almost 90 features to his name, the long an established master still shows the same glee thumping his nose at convention as he did over thirty years ago, when he burst on the scene with “Breathless.”
His latest film, “Notre Musique,” is a unqiue blend of almost abstract cinema, fiction, and documentary. It opens with a montage entitled “Hell,” which shows real and fictional footage of carnage: soldiers, atrocities, war. As brief as it is, the relentless and strangely beautiful barrage of violence is enough to make anybody despair of the human race.Read More »

Reviews:
Although Eric Rohmer’s fresh, unadorned style rarely sits heavily on his films, The Romance of Astrée et de Céladon, his adaptation of 17th century writer Honoré d’Urfé’s 5th century fable of affronted love, not only features an usual absence of intellectual banter, but is more importantly the lightest and silliest the director has been in ages. These are not pejorative descriptions—the film’s wholesome delight in d’Urfé’s modest whimsy amongst the 5th century Gauls of druids, nymphs and many amorous declarations of assured sincerity and flighty infidelity, the director’s own sweet, unexpected eroticism, and the film’s gentle spirit simply make a work that is light, lovely, and strange.
– D. Kasman (D-kaz.com)Read More »

Description
Tokyo’s Valentine Call is a special kind of phone club. Older salarymen pay to wait for calls from teenage girls, discreet meetings are arranged, and handfuls of yen are exchanged for a quick session of enjo kosai, or paid sex with a high school girl. Plenty of girls are doing it—some to make money for fancy, fashionable clothes and accessories, others to set a trap to rob and brutalize the old perverts. But the Valentine Call staff, horny young Ogisu and the vaguely sinister, makeup-coated Mr. Kuni, have a nasty plan of their own. Listening in on the enjo kosai calls, they conspire to trick the girls into giving them free sex. Mr. Kuni even has a twisted concept behind this scheme. He calls it enboku, his campaign to humiliate the teenage girls, drive them away from prostitution and purify Japan. The enboku plan goes great at first, but then the girls start to wise up to the pair’s tricks and plan their revenge, while Mr. Kuni sets out to take his cruel campaign to even more diabolical extremes…Read More »

Fourth lecture from the ‘Notes Towards a Definition of Communist Culture’ Masterclass Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, 17. June 2009, 3:00pm

A two hour, wide ranging, and topical talk.Read More »

A great Greek short with a shocking climax.
Screened in competition at the Venice film Festival. Read More »

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A thrilling, comprehensive guide to New York’s buzzing downtown underground post-punk scene. Director Scott Crary kicks things off with the birth of No Wave in the late 1970’s, providing an angular rush with a priceless collection of live performances from Suicide, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, the Theoretical Girls and DNA. From this initial explosion of artistic energy, the film moves through the 1980’s, passing the torch to Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo of Sonic Youth and Michael Gira of Swans, before crashlanding in the noisy Now! of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Black Dice, Liars, A.R.E. Weapons and the Gypsy stylings of Gogol Bordello. Interviews connect the threads between the past and the present, an ever-fertile scene is defined, celebrated and trashed with equal amounts of enthusiasm, and the creators of some of the most challenging rock music of all-time get to explain what they do, why they do it and where it’s all heading. – palmpictures.comRead More »

From Stephen Holden review in NYT: “In his unsettling urban panorama, “The Town Is Quiet,” the director Robert Guédiguian invests the French port city of Marseille with the same epic sense of drama that infused Robert Altman’s “Nashville.” Raw, wrenching and more starkly tragic than Mr. Altman’s satire, “The Town Is Quiet” evokes a similar vision of a city as a teeming organism in violent, spasmodic flux.Read More »