Mother / Audiences here in Hawaiʻi have a long history with movies from South Korea, and now the rest of the country is catching up. In fact, movies from that cinema powerhouse have become positively trendy, with Mother, the newest genre-buster from Bong Joon-ho (Memories of Murder, The Host) opening to rhapsodic reviews in New York.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid / If Diary of a Wimpy Kid deserves credit for anything, it’s bringing back childhood memories. Middle school is hardly a magical place.
Film Review / Repo Men is not a sequel to Repo Man, the 1984 classic, and although similar in plot, it is not connected to Repo! The Genetic Opera.
Adult, adroit and truthfully dark, Roman Polanski’s latest, and perhaps last, suspense film–suspense, mind you, not shock–begins deceptively light and masterfully darkens into a film of great menace, designed for a knowing, worldly audience. Co-written by Polanski and Robert Harris (Enigma), adapted from Harris’ novel, the superbly-cast movie stars Ewan McGregor (in his best role), Pierce Brosnan (his best since Matador), the wonderful Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton), a spot-on Olivia Williams, Kim Cattrall (on her best behavior) and a surprise appearance by Jim Belushi (yes, Jim Belushi) as a bullish publisher whose machinations set the roman à clef story into motion.
In his own heavily edited, hand-held, shaky-cam way, Paul Greengrass continues to analyze and lightly criticize America’s war on terror with Green Zone. The British director of the last two Jason Bourne movies seems to have devoted his career to observing our country’s contemporary military operations and more obviously with United 93, its relations in the Middle East.
Tapped / Hot on the heels of the Oscar-nominated Food, Inc. comes another documentary meant to show how something considered innocuous is actually packaged, marketed and consumed with little to no regard for public safety, land rights or impact to the environment. The bottled water industry had more $3.6 billion in sales in 2008, and that number is surely expected to rise.
Alice in Wonderland / At this point in his adaptations, it’s pretty much a given Tim Burton doesn’t give a goth-hoot about the main character. It’s the Headless Horseman who tickles his claymation brain matter, not Ichabod Crane; Willy Wonka who sweetens his dark, shadowy cavities, not Charlie.
Shinjuku Incident / Jackie Chan, the clown prince of kicking ass, is now 55. Critics have observed that many of his heavily choreographed fight scenes have begun to lose their intensity, which leaves us with the family-friendly Hollywood fare–mostly dreck like the recent The Spy Next Door.
The Crazies / George Romero is often deemed the grandfather of the zombie. Responsible for the pentalogy of genre films beginning with Night of the Living Dead, he’s also the inspiration for endless imitations, some good (Shaun of the Dead, 28 Days Later), most not (Zombie Strippers,Redneck Zombies).
82nd Academy Awards / “I don’t go to the Oscars anymore. I stay home and watch them on television.
The White Ribbon / The White Ribbon is the front-runner for the Best Foreign Film Oscar this year, and for good reason. It’s cold, calculating and completely unlikable, yet, totally devastating in its absolute unmerciful execution.
Temple Emanu-El Kirk Cashmere Jewish Film Festival / Early March again brings island cinema lovers a unique opportunity: the eighth annual Temple Emanu-El Kirk Cashmere Jewish Film Festival at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. All films are premieres for Hawaiʻi and each of the seven illuminates Jewish culture in careful, poignant ways.
Shutter Island / After finally winning the Best Picture Academy Award for The Departed, if anyone deserves to cut loose and have some fun, it’s director extraordinaire Martin Scorsese. If you gave the world Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas, and still didn’t win Best Picture Oscar for any of them, finally getting the golden statue merits the right to do whatever the hell you want.
Percy Jackson / Since the introduction of the first Harry Potter franchise, movie studios have been scrambling to find the next tween phenomenon based on a beloved children’s series, mostly with lackluster results (anyone remember A Series of Unfortunate Events?). Now, with only one Potter film remaining, the newest attempt to steal some thunder arrives from the Rick Riordan series Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Thunder’s not all that’s stolen.
Kāhala 8 / Even if the Academy Awards hadn’t bumped its Best Picture nominees up to 10 this year, many critics agree that Pixar’s Up would have made the list. It’s only the second time that an Oscar nod went to an animated film (the first being Disney’s Beauty and the Beast in 1991), but it’s a sign of things to come.
The Wolfman / Ruled by the dictates of a pluperfect moon, poor Lawrence Talbot–played by Lon Chaney Jr, in 1941, Benicio del Toro in this year’s The Wolfman–transforms into a slavering werewolf, ravages and kills savagely, then wakes up human again. There is no greater monster-as-victim figure in American B-movie horror lore.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief / The quest for an heir to the Harry Potter franchise continues and amid the corpses of The Golden Compass and The Seeker: The Dark is Rising comes Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, based on the young adult series written by Rick Riordan. It’s an unoriginal and rather lame children’s flick with a title that sounds like a Motown group, but shockingly, it’s also an entertaining dummies guide through Greek mythology.
Dear John / We are in the movie doldrums. During this period, roughly three weeks before the Oscar ceremonies are held on March 7, the industry dumps all its iffy movies practically at once.
When in Rome / Guggenheim museum curator Beth (Kristen Bell from Veronica Mars) finds herself in Rome for her sister’s wedding. After a flirtation with Nick (Josh Duhamel) doesn’t work out, she drunkenly splashes around the Trevi Fountain, bitterly stealing coins from the water.
Edge of Darkness / Edge of Darkness is Mel Gibson’s first lead role since Signs and also since–for lack of a better euphemism–losing his damned fool mind. Heck, the actor’s behavior was beginning to make one think he was a Shyamalan extra-terrestrial.
Crazy Heart / “That’s when you know you’ve written a good one, when you’re positive you’ve heard it before.” That’s what country singer Bad Blake tells his new girlfriend Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal) as he creates a new song for the first time in three years. And, like a country song, Crazy Heart has a lot of themes that we’ve heard many times before, right down to the themes of the lonesome cowboy losing his family, his job, girlfriends and even his truck.
The Yes Men Fix the World / We’ve all heard the story of the fish that got away, and if you hear the tale enough times, you may notice how the lie seems to get bigger every time, which begs a question: When does the lie become implausible? The easiest answer is that it depends on your audience.
Legion / So far this winter, we’ve seen the world end by Mayan prophecy, a man and his son struggle to keep the fire burning amidst cannibals in a post-apocalyptic dust-scape and Denzel Washington protect the Bible from Gary Oldman after a nuclear war. Thus, it’s fitting and not entirely surprising that we end the cinematic cycle with, what ghostbuster Raymond Stantz referred to as, “real wrath of God type stuff.” As Legion opens, Michael, an angel played by Paul Bettany (A Beautiful Mind, Master and Commander), drops from the sky and cuts off his wings.
Taylor Camp / It lasted less than a decade, only eight years, but the Taylor Camp experience on Kauai’s North Shore remains a cultural touchstone in the minds of many. It began in l969, when l3 hippies were arrested, sent to a dilapidated jail and sentenced to 90 days of community service.
The Book of Eli / It’s the end of the world as we know it. Of course, hot on the heels of The Road and 2012, there’s not much we don’t know about Armageddon, so it’s all about the story of the survivors and a savior.
There’s a swell on the horizon. Listen closely and you’ll hear it…AUDIO INVASION 2012.
It’s been a while, but a man donning dresses and surgical gowns, spouting rap-rock assaults over a bed of crunchy guitars, has drifted back into the sunbeam of MTV like a forgotten fleck of light. With the spastic delivery of a fallen patient from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Matt Shultz, lead singer of Cage The Elephant, is channeling the preeminent poster-child of grunge–Kurt Cobain.
Boys, beaches, bags of weed. In 2010, Best Coast blazed onto the music scene with a sealed Zip-lock of 7” singles that led the indie pop duo to roll out a fatty debut record called Crazy For You.
So what do you do if you’re a band who made it big in the L.A. hardcore-punk scene with several critically acclaimed self-titled albums under your belt?
Last Thursday, Foster the People sent news through their publicist that they won’t be performing at Audio Invasion 2012 due to “unforeseen circumstances.” (They’ll return to Hawaii on March 18.) Rumors are their two Grammy noms for Best Alternative Album and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance led to their cancellation. What a let down.
On Jan. 26, members of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit (HART) Finance Committee mostly sat in silence while listening to an earful from Wynnie Joy-Hee of Mililani, who said that she had taken the bus all the way into town at 7am to address the issue of how her tax money is being spent.
HART intends to hire an executive director as early as March 1, 2012. The semi-autonomous agency is currently headed by interim executive director Toru Hamayasu, who is also a candidate for the permanent position The ED’s salary has been estimated to be within the range of $150,000 to $350,000, and HART has allotted $300,000 for the position thus far, Vice Chair Ivan Lui Kwan told the City Council Committee on Transportation on Jan.
Poor communication between the union and the teachers themselves, on top of a general sense of mistrust, were blamed for the overwhelming rejection of the Hawaii State Teacher’s Association (HSTA) contract last week–an unprecedented two-thirds voted against the union-backed contract. The president of the teachers’ union, Will Okabe, quickly took the blame, stating in a Jan.
The “war on terror” has taken a bite out of beach access on Kauai, where the Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) has kept five miles of westside shoreline off-limits since Sept. 11, 2001.
A bill that would require bags of roasted coffee sold in Hawaii to list the place where each type of coffee it contains was grown, and its percentage by weight in descending order, was introduced to the state legislature by Sen. Josh Green.
In September of 2011, the Weekly ran a piece highlighting one of Hawaii’s most dangerous invasive threats: the dreaded brown tree snake. Following up on Gov.
HART Board: The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit will meet and take public testimony before convening an executive session. For more info, contact the project hotline at 566-2299 or e-mail [email: info].
[Jan. 18: “Cheap Advice”] Robert Kiyosaki did not talk, or attend.
[Dec. 21: “Underground Railroad”] The anti-rail pundits are right of course.
I propose that President Obama devote the remainder of his presidency to doing something useful, which would be to seek out all the crooks on Wall Street and Washington who have contributed to the sorry state of the economy in this country. Obviously he has not lived up to the expectations of a president and continues to perform as if Saul Alinksy was a member of his cabinet and the United Nations was his political platform.
[Dec. 21: “Underground Railroad”] Traffic follows commercial development.
[Dec. 21: “Underground Railroad”] To all those opposed to the “rail.” You are the very people who will be in gridlock on the freeway, not able to move.
I was delighted to read the new USDA guidelines requiring schools to serve meals with twice as many fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, less sodium and fat and no meat for breakfast. The guidelines were mandated by the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act signed by President Obama in December of 2010 and will go into effect within the next school year.
[Jan. 25: “Kyo-Ya-Ya”] Making an exception on zoning sets a dangerous precedence that will undoubtedly be followed by other properties.
The protests last year of Turtle Bay’s expansion plans highlight the challenge facing us in Hawaii. We need to find a way to balance the need for new, upgraded hotel and timeshare offerings that visitors are increasingly seeking with the desire by nearly all residents to protect the remaining undeveloped areas of the island.
[Jan. 25: “Gridlock”] If the plan is to create a second city in West Oahu, I would consider that to be an urban center.
Check out the latest Honolulu Weekly email newsletters:
Arts & Entertainment
Food & Drink
Honolulu Green
Signup now to receive these newsletters in your inbox!
Save money and reach a loyal audience of upscale readers. Advertise to reach passionate, active consumers. Our readers outpace the average consumer in purchases of big-ticket items, travel, and recreation.
Weekly readers are premium consumers: educated, affluent, socially active people who work hard, play hard and spend hard. Buy an ad in the Weekly and you’ll be speaking directly to the best audience in Honolulu. For more information check out our advertisers' kit.
