“King of the Hill” and “Looking for Miracles”: 5/5 You probably won’t be eating today, it’s close to supper and there is nothing in the cupboard. Several days of this and you’ll resort to paging through your mother’s magazines, tearing out a photo of a steak dinner, folding and placing it into your mouth like a communion wafer, savoring the flavors of gravy and potatoes, swallowing.
“Just a Couple of Days” is a 2001 self-published novel and the winner of the Independent Publishers Book Award for “Best Visionary Fiction.” It has just been reissued in a vaguely ascribed “newly updated” edition. Written by Tony Vigorito, “Days” imitates the witty folk style of Tom Robbins.
At one point during Michael Davis’ nonstop, ballistic extravaganza “Shoot ‘Em Up,” Paul Giamatti’s character (Mr. Hertz) explains that he doesn’t allow himself to get angry, as anger biochemically induces a temporary reduction in intelligence.
Even when the villain remains calm, you can only feel doubly cursed watching this over-the-top, juvenile film that plays like “Fire Down Below” with a larger budget.
The screen is black and your ears pick up a dim rumble emanating from the speakers that slowly builds to a thunderous base, cackling the speakers and oscillating your bones. It will leave you in a state of unease long after the sound waves dissipate.
An ominous, dark-gray title appears: “Inland Empire”.
In 1945, Little Boy and Fat Man killed over 200,000 Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over fifty years ago, a Japanese ship sailed too close to an American nuclear weapon test and became contaminated. These disasters gave birth to an iconic character of Japanese cinema: Gojira, perhaps better known to us as Godzilla.
The African Film Festival begins on Thursday evening in Brown Hall featuring “Daughter of Keltoum,” a powerful Algerian film by Mehdi Charef. The traveling festival continues through the weekend, showing one short film followed by one feature each night beginning at 7 p.m.
Is there anyone out there who doesn’t know the Ninja Turtles? Details varied slightly between their incarnations in comics, on the TV and onscreen, but the basic story has stuck true. Four turtles, mutated into speaking bipeds, become ninjas under the tutelage of a similarly mutated rat named Splinter.
Until Friday, the Tivoli Theater is showing a digitally restored 35-mm print of Jean Renoir’s 1939 masterpiece, “La RÅ gle du Jeu” (“The Rules of the Game”), released by Janus Films.
Now considered essential viewing as one of the greatest films made, the French public of its day reacted to its release with hostility, forcing large edits and outright bans on its public display.
A unique film titled “Black Snake Moan” by Craig Brewer (director of “Hustle & Flow”) opened this past weekend, staring Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci and Justin Timberlake. Before the film’s release, Internet chatter ran from topics involving Jackson’s repeated projects involving “snakes,” Ricci’s sex scenes, Timberlake’s acting ability and the apparent absurdity of the film’s premise.
With “El Laberinto del Fauno” (“Pan’s Labyrinth”), the themes and tone of Guillermo del Toro’s cinema have culminated in an intricate masterpiece of magic realism that tops my list as the best film released in 2006.
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