While Studio Ghibli’s famed director Hayao Miyazaki’s has retired from actively making films, it is worth taking time to admire the quality of work…
Warren Sprouse
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Talking Movies: John Maclean’s ‘Slow West’ offers a fresh take on the Western genre
By now, every Western — at least every American one — is to some degree a satire of itself: so familiar are the settings, conflicts, character-types and themes…
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Talking Movies: ‘Two Days, One Night’ takes a hard look at how financial hardship can shatter group solidarity
Lessons that we can immediately ascertain from Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s intriguing film Two Days, One Night include the following: sometimes the…
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Talking Movies: Best films of 2014 that you might have missed
As Johnny Depp’s drunken tribute at the Hollywood Film Awards reminds us, the winter film awards season is underway. With tons of new releases, now is good time to look back at some of the films that will be recognized and some that might be overlooked in the upcoming slew of awards shows. Ida […]
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Highlights of the documentaries featured in FilmScene’s FLAM series
As a treat to lovers of the arts this holiday season, FilmScene, in partnership with the Bijou and Mission Creek, is presenting the FLAM series, a week-long celebration…
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Talking Movies: Exploring true crime
Americans like to feel that we invented the ‘true crime’ genre. We think that it happened sometime after World War II, was rooted in classic detective fiction and was nurtured by pulp magazines, film noir, excessive smoking and the shock and disillusionment bred from serial killers and post-war ennui. Several movies currently showing in town […]
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2014 Landlocked Film Festival kicks off Thursday with more than 50 films
This month marks the eighth year of Iowa City’s Landlocked Film Festival, an event with over 50 film screenings, including these two notable features: Antboy and…
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Landlocked Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup
Landlocked Film Festival has announced their 2014 film festival lineup, which features 59 films screening over the course of four days, Aug. 21-24. As usual, films will be screened at multiple Iowa City venues including FilmScene …
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Talking Movies: ‘Ida’ offers a fascinating exploration of fluid identity in post-World War II Europe
The 1944 D-Day invasion may continue to impress us largely due to the sheer scope of the project: The most immense and technically advanced seaborn invasion force …
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Documentary featuring The National’s Matt Berninger (and his roadie brother) opens Friday at FilmScene
One of the most well-established ways in which capitalism defeats us is by finding increasingly devious ways to commodify nonconformity and general…
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Talking Movies: The year’s most overlooked foreign films
In a mid-career interview with Swedish television, Ingmar Bergman was asked about how a filmmaker should treat his or her audience. He responds by telling a sort of morality tale about a Chinese wood carver during the Middle Ages who is asked to sculpt a wooden bell stand for a local temple. The carver makes […]
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Talking Movies: Abu-Assad’s ‘Omar’ is a heartrending tale of loyalty under occupation
http://youtu.be/OPcvn4Mtglc Omar opens Friday, Feb. 21 at FilmScene’s Scene 1 theater. Parkour may not be as popular as it once was, but don’t tell that to anybody fleeing the Israeli undercover police in the occupied territories. Adam Bakri does a lot of this in the title role of Hany Abu-Assad’s 2013 film, Omar, though the […]
