Indeed this movie has become an instant cult classic. Every festival eventually will include it on a midnight program and will be a hit success. It was the sensation at 2013 SXSW Festival and Fant Tastic Fest and have massive fans around the nation that are willing to copy the same or even more gruesome actions depicted in the film. Why? No one could imagine this story in which Craig (Pat Healy) a part time writer and mechanic who also have lost this job will evolve into a weird chain of events that ultimately trigger a great dose of raw moments of the human nature. After reencountering at a bar with Vince (Ethan Embry) a high school friend, they also met a strange couple Colin and Violet who invite them to play a silly money game. The directorial debut of E.L. Katz departs from presenting a naïve situation that could have avoided the misfortunes of the characters and then within a glimpse turns the movie into a bizarre and obscure comedy. A good black comedy flick has to portrait an unmistakable sense of redemption and by delivering through a blend of simple narrative and structure pace,Cheap Thrills clearly achieves this goal. There are some issues have to be explained in order to understand Craig and Vince´s psychologies but at the end all pieces were put together since the beginning and don´t deserve to be judged as merely random coincidences. No more spoilers and enjoy this flick fully charged with madness, at least the kind of madness money can buy.
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Fashion films are not new. Andy Warhol’s experiments in his Factory Studio, lead the way to more contemporary works from world-renowned film directors such Wong Kar-Wai´s Midnight Poison for Dior or Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel ´s Muta for Miu Miu to name a few. So, what is a fashion film? When does it switch from its commercial purposes to an artistic discourse? Who are the new names in Hispanic-American fashion world? These questions were answered after watching The Hispanic-American Fashion Films Now program as part of the Hispanic-American Fashion Culture series held at Instituto Cervantes New York coordinated by Project Manager Marisa Fatás. The projection was followed by a panel with Patricia Yagüe, Curator of the selection, Mexican Journalist Mayra García and Colombian Fashion Designer Jessica Mitrani. The selection was curated around key approaches: the need to avoiding cultural clichés associated with Latin American and Hispanic culture, the aesthetical element of fashion as a narrative device and to include as many countries as possible to get a grasp of the creative names within this geographical area. To this regard, films from Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Venezuela, Chile, Peru and Colombia provided an example of the diversity of themes and visual styles. After taking a closer attention to the films, there are aesthetics and narrative cues that mutate into a different genre or visual concept and take its distance from commercial and marketing purposes. There are films with a great deal of cinematic trademarks such experimental editing, homages to 50 and 80´s movies, minimalist settings and outstanding cinematography. To predict if the fashion film genre is under construction is hard to know, due to global appeal for fashion world and to the fact that narratives where sophisticated models dwell colorful and surrealistic plots may suggest they´re branding new clothing styles among other things. As it was discussed at the end of the panel, conventional catwalks are migrating into the digital world and this is good news for Latin American and Hispanic fashion designers who lack of governmental support. A good online promotion of any fashion film will attract a potential audience and provide greater exposure to this pool of creative talents. Ambiguity (Fashion Short) from Betterdays on Vimeo. Después de asistir a las proyecciones para el lanzamiento de este tradicional festival de cine francés en Nueva York, quedé nuevamente impresionado por la diversidad de las temáticas, estilos y el sello multicultural de sus producciones. Presentada por Unifrance, un organismo dedicado a la promoción mundial del cine francés desde 1949, es la carta de presentación a las audiencias de Estados Unidos y Canadá de las títulos comerciales más destacadas del 2013 y producciones del 2014. El evento se realiza en foros como la Cinemateca de la Academia de Música de Brooklyn (BAM), el IFC Center y el Lincoln Film Center. Esta selección de 24 títulos representa también una oportunidad para apreciar nuevos talentos cinematográficos en la dirección y actuación que comparten créditos al mismo tiempo con nombres ya consolidados en la industria como Bertrand Tavernier, Michel Gondry, Francois Ozon y leyendas histriónicas como Catherine Deneuve e Isabelle Huppert entre otras. Algunas recomendaciones de los títulos que abarque en dicho festival: La muestra abarca historias que abordan distintos temas y tratamientos que dan un reflejo de los imaginarios, las fantasías y preocupaciones de la sociedad francesa contemporánea. Por un lado, La Marche (Ben Yadir) es una revisión históricas a la marcha de 9 personas de Marsella a París para protestar por los derechos de los imigrantes durante la presidencia de Francois Mitterrand y tiene como contraparte una tragicomedia de las élites en Un Château en Italie (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) en donde una acaudalada familia sufre un colapso emocional frente a las nuevas realidades financieras. Las relaciones humanas en su dimensión de amistad y amor también son revisitadas desde diversos ángulos como es el caso del divertido road movie Elles´en va (Emmanuelle Bercot) en donde Catherine Deneuve reflexiona sobre las nuevas oportunidades en la vida de una antigua concursante de la región de Bretaña. Arrête Ou Je Continue (Sophie Filleres) evoca el rompimiento de una pareja con tintes cómicos y en un tono más juvenil, 2 Automnes 3 Hivers (Sébastien Betbeder) da cuenta de una historia de amor con atinadas referencias a la música y al azar. Mood Indigo es una nueva adaptación del libro de Boris Vian a través del peculiar universo de objetos de cartón y experiencias surrealistas de Michel Gondry. El thriller policíaco también está en la selección con títulos como L´Amour Est Un Crimen Parfait (Arnaud y Jean-Marie Larrieu), un thriller con una gran actuación de Mathieu Almaric con un provocativo toque noir y ambientado en los Alpes. La sutil comedia negra Tip Top (Serge Bozon) en donde Isabelle Huppert se lleva la historia al personificar a una agente de asuntos internos investigando la muerte de un informante argelino. Las diferentes facetas con las que la cinematografía francesa explora la sexualidad se abordan en Jeune & Jolie (Francois Ozon), una historia del autoconocimiento hacia el mundo adulto y Mes Séanaces de Lutte (Jacques Doillon), una intensa batalla entre dos amantes en busca del sentido pleno de entendimiento. |
AuthorFilm Critic under construction. Mostly connected with visual narratives and devices as part of my personal search. Archives
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