Author results: Martyn Pedler
Chuck Palahniuk owned the late ‘90s. From the moment Fight Club splattered into popular consciousness, he stood in the cyclone-eye of our every swirling subcultural anxiety.
It seemed inevitable that we'd be bombarded with so many Palahniuk film adaptations that we'd finally have to learn how to spell his name - and yet it's taken this long to see CHOKE hit cinemas, translated into a dirty indie comedy with delusions of grandeur.
Has David Lynch just become a friendly caricature of American oddness? I mean, once you turn sixty, start evangelising about meditation and release your own brand of coffee - how strange can you really be?
A new five-disc DVD collection gives a before-and-after glimpse of Lynch's career. You can start with the industrial nightmare of fatherhood that is Eraserhead, and then wash your mind clean afterwards with his early short films like the adorable The Frenchman and The Cowboy.
What:
Beyond Our Ken
When:
Very limited season starts today, Thurs Sept 18
Where:
Cinema Nova
Watch the trailer:
Here
Description:
When people are protesting your documentary, you must be doing something right. Beyond Our Ken is a self-funded, low-budget film that turns the microscope onto the controversial KENJA group and their promises of unleashing ‘human potential'. (Feel free to replace ‘group' with ‘cult' and ‘human potential' with ‘charges of sexual abuse'.
Event: Film
Stimulus: A
Why does everyone love Pixar? Exhibit A: when Pixar became aware of footage showing someone who cried every time the hero of their latest film simply said his name, they flew her to the wrap party. They're that awesome.
Director Andrew Stanton's last masterpiece was Finding Nemo and it opened with the massacre of almost an entire family of baby fish.
War might be hell, but it's also totally awesome, right? That's the message embedded in most war movies. François Truffaut even claimed it's impossible to make an anti-war film, as the big screen automatically turns bodies and bullets into fodder for spectacular cinematic ka-boom.
Ari Folman's animated kinda-documentary Waltz With Bashir makes a convincing case that Truffaut was wrong.
Sergio Leone has been a punchline for too long. Half the time someone faces off with an enemy - whether in comedy, soap opera, or sci-fi - suddenly we'll see close-up squinting and hear Morricone's whistled woo-WEE-woo-WEE-woooooo.
Yeah. They're like cowboys. We get it.
Cult-auteur Takashi Miike knows better, and his latest film is one long love letter to Leone.
In Hellboy, Guillermo Del Toro finds the big red muse that lets his artsy aesthetics and blockbuster tendencies combine into a glorious mess of pulp fiction.
Pan's Labyrinth? The Devil's Backbone? Blade 2, even? Del Toro only has one story, but tells it with such heartfelt glee and attention to detail that no one minds.
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