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18 July 2010
Ringu and the cinema of attraction
by Abla KandalaftRingu was released in Japan in 1999 and was an instant hit. It became the highest grossing horror film in Japan at 15.9 billion yen ($137.7 million). Its reception in the UK was much more muted when it was released in a handful of art house local cinemas and then on Channel four in 2002. A few months later remakes where on the way in the US and in Korea as, mainly through word of mouth, its popularity gathered momentum. From a small number of horror fans, Ringu reached an international (...) Continue Reading »
18 July 2010
Transamerica, a gendered perspective!
by Abla KandalaftI first caught Transamerica about 15 min in, on a tiny television set in a small family-run hotel in St Malo. That was back in 2006, about a year after its release and I was working as a tour guide in France. In the first few minutes this is what I thought was going on: a very masculine-looking woman teenage hitchhiker are driving through the US. What I didn’t get was whether it was a man or a woman playing Bree. It was only when the credits rolled that I realised it was Felicity Huffman. (...) Continue Reading »
18 July 2010
Kick Ass
by Judy HarrisSuperheroes are something else; it’s what makes them super. The premise of Kick Ass is to make ‘the superhero’ just another performance that any geek in a wetsuit can pull off. In fact, white nerd Dave Lizewski’s turn as Kick Ass is almost as easy as the ‘homo’ persona he adopts in order to get into the bedroom and under the bra of the school hottie, Katie Deauxman.
What makes Dave Lizewski’s metamorphosis from everyday nerd to crime-fighting ‘Kick Ass’ so pathetically offensive is that in order (...) Continue Reading »
18 July 2010
Glee
by Judy HarrisSwept up in the recent scuffles over representation in parliament (PR/AV/FPTP…) I’ve been thinking about representation on my little tv. It’s clear that of all my machinery the tv is the one least likely to make me ‘think the world more radically’. I expect it to be disgusting, disappointing and particularly muffling- like stuffing a load of sponge in your ears (I’ll admit the muffling is especially desirable sometimes).
Glee facetiously claims to rupture the mind-numbing life-scheduling of most (...) Continue Reading »
18 July 2010
Bronson
by Abla KandalaftThis theme is a chance to look back at what to me was one of the best films of 2009. Director Nicolas Winding Refn’s most mainstream effort since the Pusher trilogy is a surrealist portrait of one of Britain’s most notorious prisoner, Michael Peterson or as he liked to be called, Charles Bronson, whose miserably comical attempt at robbing a post office in 1974 lands him in prison. Originally meant to serve a seven-year sentence he is still behind bars, and has spent 30 of those 36 years in (...) Continue Reading »
18 July 2010
Sex and the City 2
by Judy HarrisI want to silently sew up every orifice of my body to violently impede my ingestion or production of any sub-atomic particle of matter.
Terminate.
(Vagina Eyeliner will return to this postcolonial nightmare when we’re ready to remove the stitches and inhale.)
Now for some corporal haberdashery…
Dir: Michael Patrick King, 2010 Continue Reading »
18 July 2010
Zillakiller on Big Brother 2010
by ZillakillerHere begins Zk’s mapping of the final series of Big Brother UK:
DAY ONE
DAY ONE IN THE BIG BROTHER HOUSE the creative director saying there would be EIGHTY of them. I think he said EIGHTY. All day I run through the practicalities and possibilities of this variation in format. Can Endemol guarantee our trust? Do they really have the resources?
THE FIRST RITUAL OF BIG BROTHER, as with any suburban do, is a tour of the house. Minor format changes are now inbuilt in the format.
There (...) Continue Reading »
18 July 2010
A double-bill from the Human Rights Film Festival: The Blood of Kuan Kuan and The Tumultuous Life of a Dismissed Worker
by Abla KandalaftThis is a special review of two of my coups de coeur from the recent International Human Rights Festival in Paris. This post is a little outdated as the festival took place in March, but many of the films have yet to be distributed on a larger scale and hopefully, some will be showing at cinemas or TV screens near you soon enough. The films are basically documentaries, but they are selected and awarded prizes in large part for their cinematic qualities; the manner with which they cover (...) Continue Reading »
17 July 2010
The Human Centipede
by Abla KandalaftA doctor connects three people arse to mouth. A doctor connects three people arse to mouth. If I read that somewhere I think my initial reaction would be to laugh. I watched the film and didn’t laugh. One thing’s for sure, it’s not for the faint-hearted. Technically less torture-heavy than, say, the Saw franchise, I found it more stomach churning. It left me unsure whether I liked it or not. Where to begin?
The premise is straightforward: somewhere in Germany, two hapless American girls and (...) Continue Reading »
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