With an absolutely brilliant first act–intriguing story, amazing visuals, terrific cast–Sir Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, a kind of prequel to his l978 Alien, promises the world. Setting itself up adroitly, the film is genuinely dazzling.
The Pope has died. Almost all in cardinal red, the 108 electors, one of whom will be selected the new Pontiff after days of balloting, file chanting into the Vatican as tens of thousands of the faithful gather in St.
If you were an alien longing to look up some old friends, you’d probably use the Men in Black franchise like a high school yearbook. Certainly there’s no end to the menagerie of extra-terrestrial mutations, but after MIB and MIB2, they’re feeling their age–like your friends (but not yourself, of course) at high school reunions.
Folks, I’m here to tell you we have it good. So good I can’t just devote this space to one film this week.
Shot in pieces as fleeting as a pre-teen’s attention span, I Wish reveals a culture deeply fissured by modernity through the eyes and actions of a set of children in two schools several hundred miles apart, linked only by a pair of brothers separated by their parents’ divorce. Though it starts from the point of view of its two boy leads, Koichi and Ryu, the film’s humanity and psychological depth of field is deep and wide.
Excruciating is not a word that comes to mind as a recommendation. Yet Sacha Baron Cohen’s first feature, the mockumentary Borat, if not exactly pleasurable, proved capable of producing such intense fight-or-flight responses that it remains one of the weirdest in-theater experiences of my life.
This writer first encountered the truly groundbreaking book The Celluloid Closet, a decade-long-researched tome on the history of gays in American films, in l98l. Written by Vito Russo, it quickly became a surprise bestseller.
Movies adapted from Nicholas Sparks novels require that their audiences suspend disbelief–a lot. Yet most of the time the films work because audiences go in wanting to believe in the power of fate, especially when fate leads to true love.
The train grand vitesse is packed, everybody snug in a reserved seat except for this disruptive young mother standing in the aisle, babe in arms, asking if someone will switch so that she and her family can sit together. No one will, and her stubbly-faced husband says, “It’s only three hours.” She kisses him.
The newish term “dramedy” is meant to describe a film that is part-drama/part-comedy. It’s an ugly term, scarcely English in structure, and, if anything, suggests a movie made by a camel.
Mixing splatter and hilarity, the surprising Cabin in the Woods makes a good case for post-modern horror. Consider first, if you will, the ingenious poster for the long-delayed project: There’s a basemented cabin (not in the woods) suspended in blank white space, whose naked architectonics reveal that the structure can be manipulated like Rubik’s cube, twisted this way and that.
Unless you were a bully yourself, you have probably been bullied in school. The cruelty of children is common doctrine, no?
Like many who read him as an adolescent, my introduction to serious literature was Edgar Allan Poe. So when I heard, some 50 years after Roger Corman’s campy cinematic send-ups, that a truly serious attempt at transposing Poe to the screen had arrived at the multiplex, I was as curious as excited.
First-time filmmakers can glean some very helpful tips from Chuck Mitsui’s debut feature: the Hawaii-based One Kine Day. Neophyte directors often fail because of the self-applied pressure to make Citizen Kane, Breathless, She’s Gotta Have It or Reservoir Dogs on the first outing.
It’s too bad that the word “icon” has become the most overused term in what passes for modern celebrity journalism. But if the word icon doesn’t apply to Bob Marley, who became a kind of quasi-religious figure to millions, a sign of hope, and, as it turns out, financially generous, to whom can it possibly apply?
This writer saw The Three Stooges, the longest-running comedy team in American movies, in person only once–as a late-career stage act at a state fair. And after a more than 30-year career, the three–minus the marvelous Curly Howard (substituted by the mediocre Curly Joe DeRita)–had honed down their best movie sketches, brought along their all-important soundman (Bonk!
What inspired you to start the Found Footage Festival? My friend Joe [Pickett], who I’ve known since sixth grade–he’s the other guy doing the festival–we were just bored in our small hometown of Wisconsin.
Oka! tells tales within tales of primitive, transitional and perhaps sustainable Africa. For her third film, part-time Hawaii writer-director Lavinia Currier (Passion in the Desert, full disclosure: this writer worked as a consultant on this film) has chosen an intricate challenge: a narrative without melodrama, telling several stories: Equatorial Banzele forest pygmies enduring enmity from neighboring Bantus; incursion by timber companies and illegal hunters (some from China) chasing after the magnificent elephants within the forest; a quest by a terminally ill American ethnomusicologist trying, before shades fall, to complete his musical-instrument collection by finding the befabled Molimo, an extremely rare instrument said to be able to call elephants.
Karen, a sophisticated 40-something poetry and dance teacher almost exclusively referred to as “Ma’am,” gazes around the classroom before zooming in on her prey. “When you stare at a woman, do you undress her with your eyes or cover her up?” she asks Marlon (Paolo Avelino), a struggling student utterly enamored by the enigmatic poetess, played by Jean Garcia in this film, the lineup in this weekʻs Third Annual Filipino Film Festival.
Franchise comedy movies–meaning a stable of at least three or four films with related casts and plots–are rare, the most lucrative of the lot belonging to the American Pie collective, six and counting (two of these on direct-to-DVD). The newest, if not the freshest, is the current American Reunion, replete with scatology, cunnilingus, fellatio, infidelity, sex-with-food, major drunkenness and old jokes.
Listening to Science Friday on NPR last week, I heard the author Ian Tattersall opine on the question as to whether Homo sapiens had any more evolution left in them. Based on the population pool of 7 billion and counting, he said, the answer was no.
The comedies of director Lasse Hallström (Chocolat, My Life as a Dog come to mind) are like no one else’s: deft, “humanistic,” character-driven and funnier as they go along. They often begin gently, with here and there a few chuckles, and then rope audiences in, ending up far more eccentric than they first appear.
Dinner and a movie was a weekend standard until the tab for two crept past $40. An evening better spent would be to pair up rented Netflixed or streamed movies with complementary edibles.
Yes, it’s all true, Disney spent $250 million on the budget for John Carter, which only reinforces what Dolly Parton said about her enhancements: “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.” Well, not cheap exactly in the case of Carter–just maybe uninspired. Your humble reviewer could spend the rest of this page listing the titles of the movies from which Carter borrowed.
Due to his striking good looks and youthful appearance, Officer Tom Hanson (a breakthrough role for Johnny Depp) is approached with an undercover sting assignment where he would play a high school student and report on the scenes and happenings of . .
For as long as we can remember, Chinatown has been notorious for drugs, homelessness and filthy streets. Some claim nothing has changed–and that it never will.
Bicyclists have long been overlooked by four-wheel riders on Honolulu’s congested streets. In the gleaming, armored pecking order of the road, cyclists are too often dismissed as lane hogs, hand-signaling nuisances and unfortunates who can’t afford cars.
The fate of some 1,525 acres of land at Hoopili in ‘Ewa may have been decided last Wednesday in Hawaii’s First Circuit Court. The decision might have gone differently, but the appellant attorneys’ strategy seemed to collapse as Judge Rhonda Nishimura picked it apart based on technical errors.
Last Thursday, May 9, the Caldwell administration revealed its action plan for solving Honolulu’s homeless problem. But at the City Council’s budget meeting the same day, Budget chair Ann Kobayashi wanted to know where the money for “Housing First” (see Cover Story, pg.
The Mayor Wright Housing project has been slated for major redevelopment by the Hawaii State Housing Authority (HSHA); requests for qualifications will be going out to developers in three to six months. Nonprofit group Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE) wants to make sure the project’s tenants have a say in the redevelopment process, which could include major renovations or a total rebuild.
The Honolulu City Council held a special Committee on Transportation meeting on Tuesday, May 7, to go over its Complete Streets initiative with input from the department directors of Design and Construction (DDC), Planning and Permitting (DPP) and Transportation Services (DTS). At prior meetings, including the Moiliili workshop, community members pressed the idea of combining Complete Streets with Caldwell’s repaving projects, which Dan Burden of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute and some councilmembers have said makes sense.
Not much to agree with my friend Doc Berry (“Limits of Growth,” April 17). None of the scenarios he posits will ever materialize.
In your Diary of May 8 (“End of the 27th)” you reported on SB 1214, passed by the Legislature. In their nimble way, the Legislature tacked the wheel boot prohibition on a bill that was intended to abolish the Commission on Transportation.
On Friday, May 3, at 3:45 p.m., I was driving town bound through the Wilson tunnel on the Likelike. I was parallel to another car, and there were several other cars following closely behind me.
Congratulations Honolulu Weekly on the recent Pai award for investigative reporting (“Boss GMO,” Jan. 4, 2012).
When the biofuel guys say that costs are “confidential” (“Big-foot Biofuel,” May 8), I reply that since I am the one who is going to end up paying the cost, I have a right to know. Frankly, when everybody tries to hide the costs, I smell rat …
The Foster Botanical Garden never ceases to inspire for an urban setting it is like a step back in time (“See the Flora,” May 8). If Koko Crater Botanical Garden contains the world’s largest plumeria collection as suggested, it may be thanks in part to the Prussian born Dr.
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