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Following up on the surprise success of their micro-budget production THE PUFFY CHAIR (2005), brothers Jay and Mark Duplass turn their handheld DV camera toward skewering the pretentiousness of the independent film world while tossing in a few horror film scares for good measure. The result is entertaining and unique, with enough laughs, insight, and excitement for adventurous viewers. After seeing the accolades heaped up on a colleague for his laughable film (WE ARE NAKED) at a Los Angeles film festival, Matt (Ross Partridge) decides that he can do better. With his sometime girlfriend, Catherine (Elise Muller), and friends Michelle (Greta Gerwig, HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS) and Chad (Steve Zissis) in tow, they immediately set off to a cabin in the woods for the weekend to create the film that will make them all famous on the festival circuit. While Chad focuses his energy on winning the affections of uninterested Michelle, Matt comes up with the cinematic construct of a stranger with a paper bag on his head terrorizing a group of people in the woods. After the initial evening of alcoholic brainstorming, though, the idea becomes reality, and the friends’ relationships are tested as they find themselves in a truly scary situation. The idea for BAGHEAD was hatched on the set of the THE PUFFY CHAIR when, during a discussion requesting those involved to think of the scariest thing imaginable, someone said, “A guy with a bag on his head staring into your window.” Though it may be a flimsy starting point for a film, the Duplasses surround the idea with a believable cast, truthful insight into relationships, and a few genuine chills. The result is clever, funny, and refreshingly difficult to classify.Read More »
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Jay Duplass – Baghead (2008)
2001-2010ComedyJay DuplassMumblecoreUSA -
Atom Egoyan – Calendar [+Extras] (1993)
1991-2000ArmeniaArthouseAtom EgoyanDramaAtom Egoyan directs and stars in this painfully honest account of an Armenian photographer’s search for love in spite of himself. His marriage in tatters, he starts dating again, but can’t quite jump in with both feet, and his heart, first. With every date, he puts the women through the paces, asking them to make sexually charged phone calls to others. When he finally meets his match, his ex suddenly comes back into the already murky picture.
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Yasujirô Ozu – Shukujo to hige aka The Lady And The Beard [+Extras] (1931)
1931-1940DramaJapanSilentYasujiro OzuThe Lady and the Beard, directed by Yasujiro Ozu and starring Tokihiko Okada, is a charming light comedy about a young man who graduates from college, falls in love, shaves his beard at his lady’s suggestion, and finds a job. It’s very charming, and very light. Even my brief summary suggests more plot than actually exists. The film is largely a series of comic vignettes about a vibrant young man and three young women of differing temperaments who take an interest in him. [commentarytrack.com]
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Marianne Kaplan – The Boy Inside (2006)
2001-2010DocumentaryMarianne KaplanUSAQuote:
Award-winning filmmaker Marianne Kaplan shares her son’s struggle to graduate elementary school in this intensely personal documentary about growing up with Asperger Syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism characterized by socially inappropriate behavior. The Boy Inside follows 12-year-old Adam as he tries desperately to control his outbursts and make sense of bullies, girls and life in the real world. A rare insight into an increasingly common neurological disorder, this film is the story of a family on the edge as they work to overcome a form of autism the world is only now beginning to recognize.Read More » -
Pier Paolo Pasolini – Appunti per un film sull’india AKA Notes for a Film on India (1968)
Documentary1961-1970IndiaPier Paolo PasoliniShort Filmhere’s very little about this film on the internet. Pasolini travels to India to make notes about a future film he planned on making. He examines differences between the modern India and the historical one found in its mythologies and vedic texts by posing a particular question based on a didactic anecdote that no longer seems to apply in a twentieth century world. This ‘prehistory’ forms most of the first part of the film. The second part covers a modern India marred by social divisions, overpopulation and poverty. Pasolini keeps his focus on the human tragedy involved at all times.Read More »
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Pier Paolo Pasolini – Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma AKA Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
1971-1980ArthouseItalyPier Paolo PasoliniSet in the Nazi-controlled, northern Italian state of Salo in 1944, four dignitaries round up sixteen perfect specimens of youth and take them together with guards, servants and studs to a palace near Marzabotto. In addition, there are four middle-aged women: three of whom recount arousing stories whilst the fourth accompanies on the piano. The story is largely taken up with their recounting the stories of Dante and De Sade: the Circle of Manias, the Circle of Shit and the Circle of Blood.Read More »
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Pier Paolo Pasolini – Il Fiore delle mille e una notte AKA Arabian Nights (1974)
Arthouse1961-1970FantasyItalyPier Paolo PasoliniQuote:
The concluding part of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Trilogy Of Life”, following The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights corrects many of the mistakes found in the latter, noticeably its ramshackle, uneven approach, and returns to the charming territory of the former. Indeed, the film is as good as The Decameron, if not better, and is generally considered to be the trilogies crowning moment and one of Pasolini’s finest films (critic Tony Rayns recently included it amongst his choices for Sight and Sound’s 2002 Top Ten Critics’ Poll).Read More »
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Pier Paolo Pasolini – Porcile aka Pigsty [+Extras] (1969)
1961-1970Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseDramaItalyPier Paolo PasoliniQuote:
One of Pasolini’s most enigmatic films, it extends his cinematic obsessions into the realms of cannibalism and bestiality with two interweaving stories of two young men who become sacrificial victims of their different societies. One of them is a soldier and cannibal (Clementi) in a medieval wasteland and the other a son (Léaud) of an ex-Nazi industrialist (Tognazzi) in modern-day Germany. The young German is more attracted to pigs than to his fiancée (Wiazemsky). This rather silly parable, very much a product of the late 1960s, in which the bourgeoisie is caricatured, is filmed with such calm beauty and underlying disgust that it seems to gain in significance. Theorem (1968) and Pigsty were the only films in which the Marxist Pasolini dealt directly with the hated middle classes; thereafter he left the 20th-century behind until his final film, Salo (1975), which looks at even more extreme human actions.Read More » -
Jovan Jovanovic – Mlad i zdrav kao ruza aka Young and healthy as a rose (1971)
Arthouse1971-1980Jovan JovanovicYugoslaviaYugoslavian Cinema under TitoQuote:
A director with a very distinctive style, Jovan Jovanovic has filmed in 1971 one of the most significant works in the history of contemporary Serbian film. “Young and Healthy Like a Rose” is a strong visionary achievement that still looks topical today as back in the times when it was filmed and banned by the then communist censorship. A story about a young delinquent, who evolves from typical outsider to mafia boss of Belgrade seemed shocking back then; today, it is the cruel reality of our times. With incredible foresight of things to come, Jovanovic’s leading character says: “I am your future”. More poetical than Hollywood movies, much more realistic than “Trainspotting”. An exciting story about crime, drugs and the deadly grip of the secret police in Serbia. The best role of Dragan Nikolic, one of the rare ones he presented himself as a tough guy and the authentic sex symbol from this region. A slap in the face of film and other convention. A must see!Read More »