May 31, 2013

Charade (1963) , Stanley Donen

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn star in this stylish comedy-thriller directed by Stanley Donen, very much in a Hitchcock vein. Grant plays Peter Joshua, who meets Reggie Lampert (Hepburn) in Paris and later offers to help her when she discovers that her husband has been murdered. After the funeral, Reggie is summoned to the embassy and warned by agent/friend Bartholemew (Walter Matthau) that her late husband helped steal 250,000 dollars during the war and that the rest of the gang is after the money as well.

Bringing Up Baby (1938) , Howard Hawks

Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant star in this inspired comedy about a madcap heiress with a pet leopard who meets an absent-minded paleontologist and unwittingly makes a fiasco of both their lives. David Huxley (Grant) is the stuffy paleontologist who needs to finish an exhibit on dinosaurs and thus land a $1 million grant for his museum. At a golf outing with his potential benefactors, Huxley is spotted by Susan Vance (Hepburn) who decides that she must have the reserved scientist at all costs. She uses her pet leopard, Baby, to trick him into driving to her Connecticut home, where a dog wanders into Huxley's room and steals the vital last bone that he needs to complete his project.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Like its TV-sitcom counterpart of the 1960s, the original film version of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was based on the novel by R.A. Dick. Gene Tierney plays turn-of-the-century widow Lucy Muir, who escapes her impossible in-laws by moving into an old house on the English seacoast. Despite the warnings of realtor Combe (Robert Coote) that the house might be haunted, the tenacious young widow calmly establishes residence with her young daughter Anna (Natalie Wood) and housekeeper Martha (Edna Best) in tow.

Imitation of Life (1959) , Douglas Sirk


May 30, 2013

Dean Blunt - The Redeemer (Hippos In Tanks,2013)




Barbara (Christian Petzold,2012)






















East Germany. Barbara has requested a departure permit. It is the summer of 1978. She is a physician and is transferred, for disciplinary reasons, to a small hospital far away from everything in a provincial backwater. Her lover, a foreign trade employee at Mannesmann that she met on a spring night in East Berlin, is working on her escape. She does not care about anything around her: the patients, her colleagues, the neighbours, the summer and the countryside. There is nothing holding her here anymore. Barbara is cold, within herself, withdrawing from everyone and everything around her. Her apartment, her job, her life here - they are all meaningless. That summer, her existence is disturbed. She meets a physician, André, who was also transferred for disciplinary reasons. Andre confuses Barbara. Did they put him on to her? Or has he fallen in love with her? Barbara loses control - of herself, of love, of her live.

Awards: Berlin Film Festival: Silver Bear - Best Director

After Lucia (2012) Despues de Lucia






















Alejandra and her dad Roberto have just moved to town. She is new at school, he has a new job. Starting over is sometimes complicated when you have left so much behind.
 "Prix un certain regard" Cannes 2012

Marieke, Marieke (2010) Marieke und die Männer






















Marieke wants to live her life. But how can she succeed if love has been taken away from her? She seeks warmth in the arms of much older men to find the strength to face the past and finally be herself. MARIEKE is 20 years old. She lives with her mother, JEANNE, a woman left cold and distant ever since her husband died. During the day, Marieke works in a Brussels chocolate factory. At night, she escapes into the arms of much older men. With them she feels strong, cherished and free. The arrival of JACOBY, a book editor living abroad, searching for her father’s last manuscript, upsets Marieke’s precarious balance. Her mother does everything in her power to keep them apart. She fears that he will reveal the secret that has remained hidden for so many years. Marieke falls in love with Jacoby but devastated by the truth of her father’s death, she sinks despair. Will she find the strength to accept the truth and live anew?

The Invader (2011) L'envahisseur






















Amadou, a strong and charismatic African man, is washed up on a beach in southern Europe. Fate leads him to Brussels where, full of optimism, he tries to make a better life for himself. Exploited by traffickers, his daily life is slowly drained of hope, until he meets Agnès, a beautiful and brilliant businesswoman. She is seduced by his charm and force of character, while he projects all his hopes and dreams onto her. The illusion quickly shatters, and Agnès breaks all contact with Amadou, who little by little sinks into destructive violence, struggling with his inner demons. ~ Venice Film Festival

Bonsai (2011) Bonsái






















Alejandro Zambra's celebrated novella of love and literature comes to the screen in this film adaptation from director Cristian Jimenez. Julio was an aspiring writer attending college in the town of Valdivia, Chile. While Julio had an interest in literature, he was a lackadaisical student, and when asked in class if he'd read Marcel Proust, he said yes even though it wasn't true. Julio told the same lie to his beautiful classmate Emilia, and the two fell into a relationship that was destined to end badly. Years later, Emilia is out of Julio's life, and he's living in Santiago while trying to pursue a career as a novelist. Julio is dating Blanca, a neighbor who shares his interest in the written word, and he's in the running for a job helping well-respected author Gazmuri transcribe his hand-written rough drafts into printed manuscripts on his computer. Julio is passed over for the project, but rather than tell Blanca the truth, he begins writing his own version of Gazmuri's novel as a cover, with the story inspired by his failed romance with Emilia. Bonsái received its world premiere at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Must Have Been Love (2012) En som deg


















 

 

A Finnish-Norwegian love story with an unexpected shape and development. Shot in Oslo, Helsinki, Istanbul and Berlin. The film focuses on showing the actual moments that lead to getting to know one another, building a relationship and to breaking up. The film takes part in Kaisa’s attempt of getting involved with two different men that look almost exactly the same, questioning where the thin line is between someone potentially being the love of your life or not. Shooting the film with the approach of a workshop and closely involving the actors allows the film to take shape as a unique, unpredictable cinematic expression touching the basis and complexity of human behavior. ~ nfi.no

Betrayal (Kirill Serebrennikov,2012)






















A man and a woman, two casual acquaintances, learn that their respective spouses are having an affair with each other. This discovery drives them to do things they didn’t dare to do before. What will prevail - the feeling of jealousy or passion? What to choose - revenge or forgiveness? The protagonists are looking for something to build a new life upon, but it is not easy: their every action is influenced by the fact of infidelity, and this infidelity has its own logic. ~ Venice International Film Festival

Something in the Air (2012) Après mai






















Paris, in the early 1970s. Gilles is a young high school student completely swept up in the political and creative effervescence of the times. Like his schoolmates, he wavers between radical commitment and more personal aspirations. Passing from sexual relations to artistic revelations on a journey through Italy and ending in London, Gilles and his friends have to make crucial choices in order to find themselves in a tumultuous age. ~ labiennale

May 29, 2013

Kurt Vile - Never Run Away


The Black Angels - Don't Play with Guns


Palma Violets - Best of Friends


While the City Sleeps (1956) , Fritz Lang

When media mogul Amos Kyne (Robert Warwick) dies, his business, which includes a major newspaper, a television station, and a wire news service, is turned over to his sole heir, his foppish, ne'er do well son (Vincent Price). The younger Kyne has no knowledge of how to run the company his father built, preferring to spend his time spending the money that it generates, and he decides to let the heads of the three divisions -- newspaper editor John Day Griffith (Thomas Mitchell), wire service chief Mark Loving (George Sanders), and photo chief Harry Kritzer (James Craig) -- fight it out among themselves, winner-take-all. Each one has a key alley: Griffith, in Edward Mobley (Dana Andrews), a top reporter who is lately appearing on television as well; Loving, in resourceful but sluttish columnist Mildred Donner (Ida Lupino), who has her own way of digging up secrets; and Kritzer, who doesn't think he needs to dig up secrets because he's sitting on the biggest one of all, his "friendship" with Kyne's ex-model wife, Dorothy (Rhonda Fleming). Mobley becomes a focal point because the story-of-the-moment concerns the "Lipstick Killer," a serial murderer, burglar, and sex fiend who has been terrorizing the city -- break that case first and the job is won, and Mobley's specialty is crime reporting.

Jozef Van Wissem – Nihil Obstat (2013)

Alex Bleeker and the Freaks – How Far Away (2013)


May 27, 2013

Scout Niblett – It’s Up To Emma (2013)

Cornered (1945), Edward Dmytryk



Canadian WW II pilot Gerard (Dick Powell) intends to track down and kill collaborationist Marcel Jarne, the man responsible for the wartime death of Gerard's French wife. The trouble is, Jarne has never been effectively identified by the authorities -- and in fact could be just about anyone whom Gerard meets. Following the trail of evidence to Buenos Aires, Gerard's strongarm methods run afoul not only of the Argentine authorities, but also of a pro-French underground movement which also wants to bring the villain to justice. Weaselly Incza (Walter Slezak) plays all sides down the middle until he too is ruthlessly rubbed out by the bad guy. From start to finish, Cornered is a superb thriller, directed with graphic ingenuity and economy -- and with a dash of endearingly naïve left-leaning politicizing. (With Edward Dmytryk as director, how could it be otherwise?) Avoid at all costs the computer-colored version of this beautifully photographed black-and-white film.

The October Man (1947) , Roy Ward Baker

Jim Ackland, who suffers from a head injury sustained in a bus crash , is the chief suspect in a murder hunt, when a girl that he has just met is found dead on the local common, and he has no alibi for the time she was killed

May 22, 2013

Primal Scream - More Light (2013)


















Whether new-found sobriety, passionate annoyance at the powers that be, or just the the inevitable ebb and flow of creativity within the dynamics of the band that's to thank for it, More Light stands as one of Primal Scream's finest, most honest records...

May 21, 2013

Anika – Anika EP (2013)

On the heels of her critically acclaimed, Geoff Barrow-produced debut album, Anika returns with this seductive self-titled EP. Anika’s version of The Kinks’ lovelorn classic I Go To Sleep leads the EP, which also features brand new covers of songs by The Crystals (He Hit Me), Chromatics (In The City) and Shocking Blue (Love Buzz) as well as illuminating dub versions of previous singles Yang Yang and No One’s There by Bristol producer Ratman.

May 18, 2013

Betting On The Mouse – Betting On The Mouse (2013)

These New Puritans – Field of Reeds (2013)

Beyond the Clouds (1995) , Michelangelo Antonioni, Wim Wenders

The many ways in which men are fascinated, compelled, and confused by their attraction to women are explored in this four part drama. As a filmmaker (John Malkovich) tries to sort out his plans for his next film, he considers several stories about women and the men who love them. Silvano (Kim Rossi Stuart) meets Carmen (Ines Sastre) and immediately asks her for a date, but despite his attraction, he can't follow through on his feelings for her. The director spies a woman on the streets (Sophie Marceau) and follows her obsessively, but when he finally meets her, he's disappointed, despite their mutual physical attraction. Roberto (Peter Weller) and his wife Patricia (Fanny Ardant) have to deal with their anger about each other's infidelities, as well as their problems with their lovers, Olga (Chiara Caselli) and Carlo (Jean Reno). And Niccolo (Vincent Perez) falls in love at first sight with a young woman (Irene Jacob), unaware that she is studying to become a nun. Par-Dela Les Nuages was Michelangelo Antonioni's first film after a massive stroke derailed his directorial career in 1985; Wim Wenders served as his collaborator on the project.

May 16, 2013

Three Cane Whale – Holts and Hovers (2013)


Mick Harvey – Four (Acts of Love) (2013)

Tom Odell – Long Way Down (2013)

Pure X – Crawling Up The Stairs (2013)


 ... Heavy ...
Pure X will release their second album, Crawling Up The Stairs on May 14 on worldwide on Merok and Acephale Records in North America.
Crawling Up The Stairs is the second LP from Austin, Texas’ Pure X. Made up of principal members Nate Grace, Jesse Jenkins and Austin Youngblood, they stay true to the dense sound they explored on their last album, Pleasure, but add twinkling atmospherics and a new clarity to their carefully cultivated, emotionally heavy songs.Crawling Up The Stairs is an album born from emotional turmoil. For much of 2012, Grace was laid up with a serious leg injury. During the recording period, he had no insurance, no money, and if he ever was going to walk again, he needed to have surgery. Grace had no idea if he’d get the money together, and was consumed with doubt, unable to sleep. After a cathartic but torturous night of insomnia, heavy with world-worry and intermittent nightmares, Grace emerged feeling exhausted and different. Not better or worse, but different. Ready to heal. Crawling is the result of that. Track by track, Grace, Youngblood and Jenkins-who shares vocal and songwriting duties-drag themselves through a bad year.


The National – Trouble Will Find Me (2013)

The National’s dark, brooding tales of suburban strife and existential terror sounds like the audio equivalent of sitting down in a well-worn leather chair in a very dark room with a glass of scotch in your hand. Their sound is rich and menacing, backed by the mumbling growl of lead singer Matt Berninger.
The National broke out onto the scene with their 2007 classic Boxer, an album that received tons of praise upon release (and deserved every bit of it). Boxer spun tales of quiet menace and the hidden evil under the surface of everyone’s lives. The band followed it up with the more psychological High Violet in 2010, an album that saw Beringer’s fears turn more inward and existential, but equally as powerful.
The new album, Trouble Will Find Me, due out May 20th alongside a documentary about the band, Mistaken For Strangers, which debuts at the Tribeca Film Festival the previous month.

Act of Violence (Fred Zinnemann, 1948)

An unusually disturbing noir from a director better known for more mainstream fare like High Noon and From Here to Eternity, Act of Violence focuses on a WWII veteran haunted by his past. A film that was close to the director's heart, he said that it represented "the first time that I felt confident that I knew what I was doing and why I was doing it." Van Heflin stars as Frank Enley, a contractor living a peaceful life in a small California town, when Joe Parkson, a man who served in the army with him, arrives in the area, intent on killing him. He follows Frank to a lake where he's fishing but is unable to kill him.

Confidential Report (Orson Welles, 1955)

Guy Van Stratten, American smuggler, leaves an Italian prison term with one asset, a dying man's words about wealthy, mysterious Gregory Arkadin. Guy finds it most pleasant to investigate Arkadin though his lovely daughter Raina, her father's idol. To get rid of Guy, Arkadin claims amnesia about his own life prior to 1927, sending Guy off to investigate Arkadin's unknown past. Guy's quest spans many countries and eccentric characters who contribute clues. But the real purpose of Guy's mission proves deadly; can Guy himself survive it?

May 13, 2013

Queens – End Times (2013)

... m a s t e r p i e c e...


Sounding more like an album Kranky would release than what you might expect to hear on Dial, will appeal to fans of Jandek, Durutti Column, Panda Bear…
Scott Mou, known as one half of the duo Jane – the folk techno drone duo he had with Panda Bear – as well as part of Manhattan’s famous record store Other Music, debuts with his solo project Queens.
Johan Jacobsen describes the wonderful music of Queens “in oxymorons; “colorful monochrome,” “myopic depth,” “sad joy,” “driven slowness,” “enlightened darkness,” “universal intimacy ‘ , “ethereal earthboundness” … As it should be. Queens is one of those wonderful artists who are hard to catch on the fly, who escapes easy definition. His music is an unexpected and unimagined universe ready to be explored, and it’s a universe that is wonderful to be in.”

May 9, 2013

Brief Encounter (1945) , David Lean

Based on Noël Coward's play "Still Life," Brief Encounter is a romantic, bittersweet drama about two married people who meet by chance in a London railway station and carry on an intense love affair. Sentimental yet down-to-earth and set in pre-World War II England, the film follows British housewife Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson), who is on her way home, but catches a cinder in her eye. By chance, she meets Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard), who removes it for her. The two talk for a few minutes and strike immediate sparks, but they end up catching different trains. However, both return to the station once a week to meet and, as the film progresses, they grow closer, sharing stories, hopes, and fears about their lives, marriages, and children. One day, when Alec's train is late, both become frantic that they will miss each other. When they finally find each other, they realize that they are in love. But what should be a joyous realization is fraught with tragedy, since both care greatly for their families. Howard and Johnson give flawless performances as two practical, married people who find themselves in a situation in which they know they can never be happy.

Julia & the Deep Sea Sirens -- Family Pets (2013)


Separate Tables (1958) , Delbert Mann

Based on Terence Rattigan's play, Separate Tables is about a number of characters and their adventures at a British seaside hotel. Among the guests are an alleged war hero (David Niven), a timid spinster (Deborah Kerr) and her domineering mother (Gladys Cooper), and a divorced couple (Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth) trying to re-ignite their romance despite the presence of his mistress (Wendy Hiller). All of the characters' lives become intertwined in the course of the film as the story examines love affairs and secrets. Separate Tables is a fine, textured drama, filled with terrific performances and was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Deborah Kerr), Best Actor (David Niven), Best Supporting Actress (Wendy Hiller), Best Screenplay From Another Medium, Best Cinematography and Best Music. Niven and Hiller won Oscars for the film.

May 6, 2013

Savages – Silence Yourself (2013)

... Album of the month ...

'Savages is not trying to give you something you didn't have already, it is calling within yourself something you buried ages ago, it is an attempt to reveal and reconnect your physical and emotional self and give you the urge to experience your life differently, your girlfriends, your husbands, your jobs, your erotic life and the place music occupies in your life. because we must teach ourselves new ways of positive manipulations, music and words are aiming to strike like lightning, like a punch in the face, a determination to understand the will and desires of the self. This album is to be played loud in the foreground.' Savages, 2013.

May 3, 2013

The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino, 1953)

Daniel Mainwaring took this story right out of the headlines of the day, penning this true story of a mass murderer who was eventually executed in San Quentin's gas chamber. Released during McCarthy's witch-hunt, Mainwaring was not given credit because Howard R. Hughes, who produced it under RKO, refused to give credit to any "radicals." The story is that of two men on a fishing trip who pick up a hitchhiker. He turns out to be a sadistic psychopath who has committed multiple murders, a sociopath who hates humanity because of his own abuse as a child. 

I Wake Up Screaming (H. Bruce Humberstone, 1941)

Well-known New York sports promoter Frankie Christopher (Victor Mature) is the prime suspect in the murder of Vicky Lynn (Carole Landis), a successful model and would-be actress. Questioned relentlessly by the police, and particularly by hulking detective squad commander Ed Cornell (Laird Cregar), he maintains his innocence. Meanwhile, Vicky's sister Jill (Betty Grable) is also being questioned. Their answers, given in adjoining interrogation rooms, become the basis for brief, neatly constructed interlocking flashbacks at the opening of the movie that explain a ton of plot in very little time. Both are released after admitting nothing, and the police begin working on other suspects, including journalist Larry Evans (Allyn Joslyn), aging actor Robin Ray (Alan Mowbray), and hotel clerk William Harrison (Elisha Cook Jr.) 

May 2, 2013

She & Him – Volume 3 (2013)

David Lang – Death Speaks (2013)

Jimmy LaValle & Mark Kozelek – Perils From The Sea (2013)


Farewell, My Concubine (1993), Chen Kaige

Until Farewell, My Concubine (Ba Wang Bie Ji), not many people were aware that most members of the Peking Opera were originally orphans or illegitimate castaways with nowhere else to turn. Such is the case of the film's protagonists, Duan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) and Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung), two homeless outcasts, trained from childhood in the grueling rigors of the Opera by master Lu Qui. The film traces the 52-year friendship between Xiaolou and Dieyi, a friendship pockmarked with fiery conflicts and tender reconciliations.

Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011), Takashi Miike

Japanese auteur Takashi Miike takes an uncharacteristically serious and somber approach to this moody period tale of honor and revenge. In the 17th century, Japan is enjoying an era of calm and tranquility, which is good news for most people but bad news for the samurai, the class of professional soldiers who now find themselves without jobs or a sense of purpose. Hanshiro (Ebizo Ichikawa) is a samurai who, with no money and no prospects, has arrived at the House of Ii, hoping to use its courtyard as a setting for the suicide ritual known as hara-kiri.

Suspicion (1941) Alfred Hitchcock

May 1, 2013

The Shouting Matches – Grownass Man (2013)

... Srecan 1. maj domacine!...

Justin Vernon has to feel pressure every time he steps into a recording studio. As the leader of , he’s gone 2 for 2, with a classic debut (For Emma, Forever Ago) followed by a lush and fussed-over album (Bon Iver) which won him a pair of Grammys, including one for Best New Artist. No matter his commercial ambitions, however reluctant he is to be viewed as a star, he’s a star — and his career moves will be picked over accordingly.
But Vernon also has capital to burn — not to mention favors he’d like to repay, friends whose careers he’d like to boost, and fun he’d like to have. So, a few years after recording a lovely album with his friends in Milwaukee’s Collections of Colonies of Bees (under the name ), Vernon returns as part of an agreeably ramshackle, -esque blues-rock trio called The Shouting Matches.