Dec
02
Award-winning novelist Julia Leigh makes a hell of a directorial debut with her quiet fantasia, SLEEPING BEAUTY, the story of a young college student (Emily Browning) who becomes immersed in a strange world of desire when she signs on as employee of a service that drugs women and allows men — frequently much older — …
Nov
14
It’s a good week for lush, exquisite cinematography and vividly stylized worlds; maybe not so good a week for compelling narratives. In IMMORTALS, director Tarsem Singh Dhandwar uses Greek mythology as the raw material upon which to invest his skill with staging beautiful, beautiful actors in elaborate tableaux, all in the service of the tale …
Nov
09
I’m a lucky guy. I’ve wanted a reason to break out of my cramped, unkempt studio and check out Carsten Höller: Experience, the new exhibit at the New Museum that provides a comprehensive survey of the German-born artist known for his immersive, sensory-confounding — and sometimes adrenaline-pumping — installations, and along comes Air France to …
Oct
28
It’s a curious path that takes one from rock outcast to full fatherhood, yet many of the practitioners of that most confrontational of musical forms, punk, find themselves following it. In THE OTHER F WORD, filmmakers Andrea Blaugrund Nevins and Cristan Reilly have tracked down the men who built lives upon artistic rebellion — prime …
Oct
27
Lest we forget that Jim Henson was about more than Kermit and Big Bird (ahem, DARK CRYSTAL, THE STORYTELLER, and on, and on…), this year’s New York Comic Con staged a panel in which Henson archivist Karen Falk and Archaia Editor-in-Chief Stephen Christy exhibited footage from the Muppet-master’s experimental short films, commercials, and TV plays, …
Oct
18
Cinefantastique hit the floor of New York Comic Con 2011 and discovered… people. Lots ‘n’ lots of people. NYCC sold out for the entire weekend, and the upshot was that even the isolated reaches of the show floor became navigational nightmares at certain points during the day. Woe betide the mortal wandering Artists Alley who …
Sep
02
Cause for celebration, indeed: Hong Kong director Tsui Hark is back, and if anything, his vision has gotten more crazily energetic and eye-dazzling in his latest effort. In DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME, Andy Lau plays actual historical figure Dee Renjie, a disgraced judge who’s compelled to confront the undeniably fantastic …
Aug
18
Cashiers du Cinemart’s Mike White hangs out after the Cinefantastique Spotlight to talk to Dan Persons about his magazine, his anthology, Impossibly Funky: A Cashiers du Cinemart Collection, the clouded future of 3D, and, of course, the indelible allure of BLACK SHAMPOO.
Aug
12
Think of it as one spiritual brother reaching out to another over the span of almost an entire century: Bill Plympton — the innovative animator known for his edgy surrealism and distinctive, hand-drawn style — has decided to rejuvenate the work of one of animation’s first fathers, Winsor McCay, the man who painstakingly and single-handedly …
Aug
06
The course of true love is never easy. When an imposing, MAD-MAX-like, fire-breathing automobile intervenes, it can get downright complicated. Evan Glodell’s BELLFLOWER is the tale of two Southern Californians — Woodrow (Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) — who fill their free time with speculations of the post-apocalyptic future and preparations for same that include …
