Everyone has their first time with John Waters. For me, it was the summer of 1976, when I took off from my Grandmother’s house in Provo Utah, after a weird, lonely, freshman year at BYU (don’t ask) and hitchhiked around the West. I ended up–rather crazed after sleeping rough alongside Interstate 5–in Berkeley, crashing with hippie friends. My first night in town they took me to see a midnight showing of…
Movies
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WikiLeaks and the Movies
In a recent “dump” of diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, Putin and Medvedev were compared to Batman and Robin. The Slovenian philosophical rock star Slavoj Žižek has taken the simile further and compared Julian Assange, the spooky mastermind behind WikiLeaks, to the Joker in The Dark Knight. In Christopher Nolan’s twist on the Batman myth, the […]
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John Waters
This Filthy World Friday, April 1 – Englert Theatre John Waters first became famous–or infamous–for a series of movies that plumbed the depths of depravity and bad taste. Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living were about murder, rape, cannibalism, sexual fetishes and an unhealthy affection for eggs. They were also wickedly, deliriously funny. He […]
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Talking Movies: Enter the Void
Gaspar Noé will be known to some for his 2002 film Irreversible in which two men avenge the brutal rape and murder of a woman played by Italian beauty Monica Bellucci. Though its style and substance (particularly the rape scene) are notorious, it’s unfortunate that its infamy has surpassed its praise because I revere Irreversible […]
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Talking Movies: Hausu
Once in a while we come across a piece of art so outlandish that it defies all our categories; something which brings our neat generalizations up short. Hausu is one such work of art for me, and I suspect I am not alone. If you haven’t seen it, it may very well be the most […]
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Talking Movies: Well Spoke’n
I’ve now seen Vittorio De Sica’s masterpiece The Bicycle Thief twice in my life. I’m not sure how many more times I’ll be able to bear it. It’s too real; reality is too heartbreaking; and, as T.S. Eliot drily observes, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
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Reel IC: One more week of Bijou
The Bijou wraps up its semester next week with two films from fantastic Asian directors. South Korea’s Bong Joon-ho brings us Mother and the Bijou resurrects the classic Fallen Angels by Wong Kar-wai out of Hong Kong. But first, a few notes from the IC film world. 1) That’s Rentertainment is having a “Grand Reopening” […]
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Reel IC: The Way We Get By
The Way We Get By Bijou Theatre Saturday, April 24, 7pm Why did buying DVDs become all the rage in the 2000s? Director commentaries. Just as interesting as watching the film (or, often more so) was listening to the people who made the movie talk about the work, the thought process and the people on […]
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Reel IC: ICDOCS keeps it real
I’ll always take a good documentary over a good drama. Any good cinema is like a daydream, but to disappear into a dream that isn’t a dream? That’s a pleasure only found in a great doc–the beautiful offspring of cinema and journalism, with only the best genes of both parents passed on. (of course, there’s […]
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Greatness Unbroken
Talking Movies: March 2010 – If you’re the kind of moviegoer who wishes you’d lived back when X was making movies (where X stands for your favorite great director), if like me you wish you had been there for the fresh projections of Godfather I rather than opening weekend of Godfather III–even if you’re simply […]
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"Copyright Criminals" Premieres Tomorrow Night on PBS
Produced by LV contributor Kembrew Mcleod and University of Iowa Associate Professor, and Benjamin Franzen, U of I graduate. Copyright Criminals explores the issue raised by the collision of Remix Culture with current laws. This will be shown at 8AM, 2PM and 7PM tomorrow, January 19th. **UPDATE: Iowa Public Television will air Copyright Criminals in […]
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Avatar — Savages not just Noble, but Neon
I checked this out last night, and as a cinematic entertainment I really enjoyed it. As a movie it’s much, much better than “Titanic,” which was an immensely successful entertainment, but also mawkish, sentimental and plodding. Avatar is a more rigorously plotted and realized piece of film making, and gets points for advancing the state […]
