ph: Filippo Fortis
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Tae-poong (2005)
A modern-day pirate plans a massive attack on North and South Korea.
An actioner with a political stance, muddled by its confusing message and an overloaded plot.
New Stuff: Eyes Wide Shut
I must admit, so far I've never watched this one, and now that I have finally decided to do so, I realized I didn't have it on DVD (though I thought so).
Faster (2010)
An ex-con sets out to avenge his brother's death after they were double-crossed during a heist years ago.
Standard actioner, but straightforward and efficient and with a surprising twist ending.
Maltin **: "Saguinary revenger...Overpumped oil slick of a movie wallows in homage (clue: check out the assassin's ringtone), and looks as if it were edited with a strobe. Stirring perforances, though, by Chevelle SS, GTO, and Ferrari."
Friday, May 31, 2013
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From my vaults: Jody Chastain
(with Charlie Feathers and Jerry Huffman)
Bio:
http://www.chastaincentral.com/content/music.html#Jody
First Lines: Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook
Anna meets her friend Molly in the summer of 1957 after a separation...
New Stuff: Ruth Crawford Seeger
Ruth Crawford Seeger, mother of Pete Seeger, was a composer in her own right. Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise: "This earnest, self-deprecating woman went on to write some of the most fabulously byzantine music of her time."
La Pianiste (2001)
A young man romantically pursues his masochistic piano teacher.
Adaptation of Elfriede Jellinek's novel is a harrowing study of a despicable character, staged in a hieratic style with an amazing central performance, but without any irony supposedly present in the novel.
Halliwell (no star): "A gifted director and actress go astray in this intense, unlovely drama; if it has a point, it is that sex and music make unreasonable demands on those who take them seriously."
Maltin ***1/2: "Magnificent, and decidedly adult study...Huppert has the role of her career as a woman with unusual views on intimacy and sex; costar Magimel matches her intensity. Harrowing and haunting, but not entirely humorless."
[ Nota bene: I really didn't see any humor in it.]
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
First Lines: Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red
I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
New Stuff: Hans G Helms
According to The Wire: "Alongside Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge and Ligeti's Requiem, Fa:m' Ahniesgwow is revealed as one of the great post Secod World War pieces, only a historical footnote because no one quite knew hot to deal with Helms's demands; the version by Sprechbohrer was five years in the making."
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