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Global Voices: The World is Talking, Are You Listening?

2012 review

My review of the film 2012 for the Trinidad Guardian is posted here...
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BitDepth 694 posted

BitDepth 694, a review of Neil Blomkamp's District 9 is posted here...
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BitDepth 689 posted

BitDepth 689, a conversation with Brett Lewis about a project he made to promote his way out of the economic downturn is posted here...
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BitDepth 680 posted

BitDepth 680 a look at the new Star Trek film, is posted here...
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Who watched Watchmen?

In less than a week, Watchmen slunk off the screens of moviehouses in Trinidad and Tobago. Some thoughts about why a dark brooding superhero film failed to find an audience here and elsewhere. Read More...
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BitDepth 671 posted

BitDepth#671, a review of the Watchmen film, is posted here...
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Kelly's surreal Tales

ST
Richard Kelly's Southland Tales is one of the most irritatingly intriguing films I've seen in years. Where Donnie Darko was focused on a fairly straightforward, if mind twisting plot seasoned lightly with earnest weirdness, Southland Tales is awash with unfulfilled ideas, heady notions and wild paranoia.

Like Darko, there's an interesting science fiction underpinning to all the goings on, but it's almost irrelevant to the political intrigue of a US Government that has taken homeland security to its logical conclusion and the personal peccadillos of Dwayne Johnson's Boxer Santaros.

The star power that's brought to bear on this story is impressive, inclusive of Sarah Michelle Gellar, John Laroquette, Miranda Richardson, Justin Timberlake and Seann William Scott, but what's lacking is a sense of restraint and service to the story. Kelly's tale wanders off on odd little tangents that ultimately amount to very little and nudge the story forward imperceptibly.

It's not hard to see why the film failed so completely to find an audience. The comedy is so black as to stifle even the most hard earned laugh, the science fiction is almost marginal and the action is so brief that it could qualify as punctuation.
Add to this Mr Timberlake's surreal little song and dance number and you have a cinematic pelau so varied that it's sure to be inedible to all but the most refined of palates.

What Southland Tales is, though, is a very personal piece of work that feels a lot like the work of a post-Matrix Robert Altman-esque director, one whose passions are involving enough to draw intriguing performances from a strong cast but so undiluted that they alienate all but the most committed of audiences.
If you like your movies odd and quirky, then give Southland Tales a look.
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BitDepth 636 posted

BitDepth 636, a look a superhero deconstructions as offered by the new Will Smith movie Hancock is posted here...
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BitDepth 631 posted

BitDepth 631, a look at the magic of the double feature is posted here...
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Cold Comfort

FilmReel
Frances Anne Solomon's A Winter Tale is a keenly seen vision of the struggle to find Caribbean truth in a metropolitan city. Read More...
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A slyph of a star

FilmReel
On Audrey Hepburn. Nothing more need be said, but I go on and on anyway. Read More...
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Contract Killers

FilmReel
G Anthony Joseph, who really wants me to stop calling him Gerard, has produced the best film of his quarter century in the film business with Contract Killers. Read More...
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Might as well jump

FilmReelJumper is a bad movie. Bad, bad, bad. Read More...
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Movies made of vignettes

Films built out of little stories are starting to look a bit too similar. Read Keifel's entry here. Read More...
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The Horror, The Horror

FilmReel
What's scary? Is it being held helpless by unknown abductors, preyed on by unknowable blood drinkers or just dealing with the mania of mad death racers and zombies? Cable Guys two is here. The other half of this instalment is here Read More...
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Willem Dafoe is Gene Hackman

FilmReel
Introducing Cable Guys, a resurrection of one of my favorite writing gigs, a weekly duet of movies I wrote with Keifel Agostini. The plan is to return to that duet with crossposted blog entries, of which this is the first. Keifel's matching Cable Guys entry is here. Read More...
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