Category: Film & TV
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King Kung Fu (1976)
Netflix: In this comedic action movie, a martial arts master teaches his secrets to a gorilla, who is then dispatched to America to show off the best Chinese fighting techniques. The ape, known as King Kung Fu, escapes from his handlers and eventually seeks refuge atop the tallest building in Wichita, Kan., a Holiday Inn.…
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Crouching Tiger, Hidden Agenda
NYT Magazine: A studio visit to an artist in Beijing is often like 10 studio visits in Brooklyn. In China, you don’t find a painter, and a sculptor, and a video artist, but rather one artist who is working on painting, sculpture, photography, video and (why not?) performance all at the same time. When I…
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Lights, Bogeyman, Action
NYT: But the source of his dark-hued lens on life, Mr. Fincher suggested, might be as simple as that original bogeyman. “It was a very interesting and weird time to grow up, and incredibly evocative,” he said. “I have a handful of friends who were from Marin County at the same time, the same age…
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Azamat Clothed
LA Weekly: As we’ve seen from British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, one actor’s deadpan dedication to heavily accented cultural naiveté in the face of unsuspecting victims can do wonders. But actor Ken Davitian, who played Borat’s bearded and oversized film producer, confidant and…
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NoTxt #8
Featuring Corey Smith, Meredith Edlow, Mario Sughi, Bryan Mitchell, Charlie Blackledge, Yana Payusova, Eduadorian children edited by Ashley Franscell, Ross Mantle. Check it out here.
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Invaders' FAQ
Wooster Collective: Along with hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world, we’ve been obsessed by Space Invader’s work for years. This week, Invader updated his website, and for the first time, posted a Q&A which gives some background and explains what his project is all about. We thought we’d pass it along.…
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Sally Mann Portrait in Which She’s the Star
NYT: Ms. Mann’s approach to her subject certainly had precedents in art. In the 1920s the photographers Imogen Cunningham and Nell Dorr took nude pictures of children in the wilds as expressions of their own interest in naturalism. But Ms. Mann’s images arrived just as the country was beginning to fall deeper and deeper under…
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An extra dose of fame
LA Times: Yet such discomfort also provides great fodder for his latest comedy, “Extras,” which has aired in England and returns for its second season in the U.S. on Sunday on HBO. Conceived as a sardonic look at unsuccessful actors trying to make it in the movie business, the series takes a new turn this…
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Jay Leno Reconsiders Retirement After Georgia Woman Sets Boyfriend's Crotch On Fire
The Onion: BURBANK, CA—Despite having announced plans to retire as host of The Tonight Show in 2008, Jay Leno admitted yesterday that he was “having serious doubts” about leaving the TV show after coming across a recent news item in which a Georgia woman doused her philandering husband’s groin in kerosene and set it aflame.…
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Motherload of Andy Kaufman Torrents
WFMU’s Beware the Blog: You may recall, last year that the amazing site Greylodge ran a Andy Kaufman Collection that many of Greylodge’s readers wrote in to say was one of their favorite collections that we’ve run. What better way to start out a new year than to top their previous hit? They proudly present,…
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Where to Shoot an Epic About Afghanistan? China, Where Else?
Filming of The Kite Runner, NYT: In addition to keen eyes Ms. Dowd needed extraordinary patience. She spoke, for example, of having to drink 45 cups of tea with the director of one French-run school in Kabul before the director trusted her enough to let her tour his 25 classrooms. He then granted her all…
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Somalia’s Islamists and Ethiopia Gird for a War
NYT: The stadium was packed, the guns were cocked and even the drenching rain could not douse the jihadist fire. Thousands of Somalis, from fully veiled, machine-gun-toting women to little boys in baggy fatigues, gathered Friday to rally against what they called foreign aggression. As a squall blew in, they punched wet fists into the…
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For Iraq's Sunnis, Conflict Closes In
Washington Post: A few blocks from Ali Farouk’s three-story home, an empty house provides a glimpse of what he fears will be the future. Once owned by a Sunni Muslim, the paint is peeling, the windows are blown out. Two scarlet X’s mark the pale blue front door. To the door’s right are the words:…
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Joysticks (1983)
Netflix: Trouble rears its ugly head at the video arcade in this racy 1980s teen comedy about a group of kids who battle a local businessman with plans to shut down the popular hangout. Concerned parent Joe Rutter (Joe Don Baker) believes that video games will destroy the teens’ minds, and when he tries to…
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The 2007 Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition Finalists
Slamdance: Slamdance, an organization always looking to foster new and innovative ways to assist emerging artists and writers, has established the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition. This contest is a natural extension of Slamdance’s stated mission to nurture, support and showcase truly independent works and will be held concurrently with the Slamdance Film Festival in Park…
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Did Borat Break Up Anderson's Marriage?
SF Gate’s Daily Dish: Sources claim Kid Rock, real name Bob Richie, became enraged by his wife’s role in the spoof film — in which Borat, played by Sacha Baron Cohen, travels across America to get close to the blonde beauty. A close friend of the pair tells Page Six, “(Film producer) Ron Meyer held…
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Villages to sue 'Borat'
LA Times: Spirea Ciorobea, 68, portrayed as the “village mechanic and abortionist” in the film, is being represented by the lawyer’s group. “I was approached in the street and asked whether I could play a welder,” he said. “Like many people here, I can’t find work, so I appreciated the chance to earn some money…
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The Shape-Shifter
NYT Magazine: Christopher Guest’s latest film, “For Your Consideration,” a scathing sendup of award-season hype that opens on Friday, employs his usual repertory of actors — McKean, Shearer, Eugene Levy (who has co-written most of Guest’s films), Parker Posey, Fred Willard and Catherine O’Hara, among them. Guest’s movies take months to write, as he and…
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Crispin Glover’s Underworld Freak Show
NYT: Unsettling and often quite absurd, his labor of love, almost 10 years in the making, is predominantly inhabited by people with Down syndrome, whose dialogue is often indecipherable. There is also a person with cerebral palsy; three naked women with monkey faces (played by pornographic-film stars); a menacing Shirley Temple doll; Mr. Glover himself,…
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A Visual Chronicler of Humanity's Underbelly, Draped in a Pelt of Perversity
NYT: The new film “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus” is a fantasy of a different order. Its marble-white Venus is Nicole Kidman, who here wears a conceit rather than a sable. The film’s core idea is that Diane Arbus, who trained her photographic gaze on nudists, twins, grimacing children and the retarded, liberated…