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Saturday, November 24, 2012
First Lines: Bruce Chatwin - In Patagonia
In my grandmother's dining-room there was a glass-fronted cabinet and in the cabinet a piece of skin.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
The Mandarin Mystery (1936)
Legendary detective Ellery Queen sets out to solve a mystery involving an extremely valuable stamp.
Typical old-fashioned crime mystery: fast-paced, talkative, witty and at times quite silly.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
First Lines: Olaf Stapledon - Sirius
Plaxy and I had been lovers; rather uneasy lovers, for she would never speak freely about her past, and sometimes she withdrew into a cloud of reserve and despond.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Endgame (2009)
A story based on the covert discussions that brought down the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
An interesting political drama a bit blurred by see-sawing between too many locations and subplots.
Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)
An aspiring reporter is the key witness at the murder trial of a young man accused of cutting a café owner's throat and is soon accused of a similar crime himself.
Crime story with some good Expressionis tphotography and an atmosphere of dread especially enhanced by a long nightmare sequence pre-imagining the plot to follow.
Halliwell *: "Stylish B feature with a striking dream sequence and a curious fleeting performance by Lorre as the real murderer."
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Red Dust (2004)
A former police officer files an amnesty application for a member of the South African Parliament who can't remember the torture he once endured as a captive political activist.
Well-played touching court drama within a unique and fascinating South African judicial institution of forgiveness instead of sentencing.
Maltin **1/2: "Somber drama, based on a novel by Gillian Slovo, explores the possibility of and need for forgiveness in order to heal South Africa's wound. Well meaning but lacks dramatic spark and fire."
Art: Tilo Ettl
Tilo Ettl is a friend and member of our industrial band and performance art group Lyssa humana.
You can find his homepage here:
http://www.tiloettl.com
First Lines: Edith Templeton - Gordon
At a quarter to six in the afternoon on a sunny day in June, I was sitting near the bar counter at Shepherds watching a man above the rim of my glass.
This Must Be the Place (2011)
A retired rock star living off his royalties in Dublin, returns to New York City to find the man responsible for a humiliation suffered by his recently deceased father during WWII.
Quirky and idiosyncratic variation of the road movie genre with a strange and fascinating central character.
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The Descendants (2011)
A land baron tries to re-connect with his two daughters after his wife is seriously injured in a boating accident.
Slow-paced and slightly entertaining epiphany of a mild-mannered man - an instant contender for Academy Awards nominations.
Maltin ****: "Insightful meditation on the absurdity of life - tragic one moment, funny the next - with pitch-perfect performances and a rich sense of place, en hanced by a beautiful score of traditional Hawaiian music. Clooney has never been better."