Hi there. My name is Jon and for the last year, my friend Chris and I have been doing a monthly movie podcast called Cinema Dual, where we talk about a pair of movies around a theme of our choosing. Nice and simple. Well, we watch movies more often than we can talk about movies... Continue Reading →
Take martial arts action, sleazy exploitation and supernatural horror, sprinkle it with a small dose of sex comedy. Give it an almost non-existent budget, populate it with a bunch of terrible but overjoyed actors and combine it with a concept straight out of the head of a nine year old weaned on cross-pollinated action figure mayhem and it STILL doesn’t come close to what ends on the screen, which is a ridiculously enjoyable B movie that gives 100%.
On this episode of Cinema Dual, Jon and Chris talk anime.
Didacticism in art can be tricky to pull off well. You can have a band like Rage Against the Machine, whose politics are notoriously and very obviously left-wing, get co-opted by their political opponents who can’t see the irony in their choices. Even successfully didactic art is subject to taste, because some people don’t find a lecture all that inspiring. While the ideal balance between art and education isn’t always the same for every project, it does need to be considered. This week’s batch of movies finds Agnès Varda, no stranger to directness, pushing that balance in interesting ways.
On this episode of Cinema Dual, Jon and Chris talk about Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. Movies Discussed: The Seventh Seal, Smiles of a Summer Night Recommendations : Wild Strawberries, Summer With Monica (Chris), Shame (Jon) If you like our film thoughts, you can find more of them at http://www.cinemaduel.com. Follow us on Twitter: @jonmichaelnoise @cmvoss042 Follow us... Continue Reading →
For all of the struggles that Agnès Varda would experience with the Hollywood establishment in the context of her career as a filmmaker, she never let those experiences go to waste. Indeed, the majority of her “California” work was produced over a couple of trips, one in 1968 and another in 1979, and was borne out of professional and even personal challenges. The first trip in 1968 saw Varda trying to get a film project off the ground while her husband Jacques Demy similarly was attempting his own Hollywood breakthrough. The second trip in 1979 saw Varda set out by herself (and her son) on a film project that would almost immediately collapse.
If Agnès Varda could be described as an observant person, that focus of perception would strike especially true for the neighborhood where she lived for most of her adult life: the Rue Daguerre in Paris. The early 70s were a relatively fallow period for Varda artistically...Fortunately a German production company reached out with an offer to let her make any kind of movie she wanted. Varda decided to make a movie within that community circle, with her focus on the shopkeepers of Rue Daguerre.
If Agnès Varda could be described as an observant person, that focus of perception would strike especially true for the neighborhood where she lived for most of her adult life: the Rue Daguerre in Paris. The early 70s were a relatively fallow period for Varda artistically...Fortunately a German production company reached out with an offer to let her make any kind of movie she wanted. Varda decided to make a movie within that community circle, with her focus on the shopkeepers of Rue Daguerre.
It's only now, with the year wrapping up and the vague promise of, well...if not better times then at least slightly less poisonous and soul crushing times, that I'm starting to take more of an interest in the films of 2020. Reading through lists and reviews and recaps - even on this site - have... Continue Reading →
On this episode of Cinema Dual, Jon and Chris talk about the filmmaking pair of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Movies Discussed: I Know Where I'm Going, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp Recommendations : A Canterbury Tale, A Matter of Life and Death (Chris), 49th Parralel (Jon) GREAT NEWS: We have a real... Continue Reading →
If Agnès Varda could be described as an observant person, that focus of perception would strike especially true for the neighborhood where she lived for most of her adult life: the Rue Daguerre in Paris. The early 70s were a relatively fallow period for Varda artistically...Fortunately a German production company reached out with an offer to let her make any kind of movie she wanted. Varda decided to make a movie within that community circle, with her focus on the shopkeepers of Rue Daguerre.
