Hanging on for dear life in Philipp Stölz’s mountaineering thriller. By CALEB STARRENBURG.

NOT SINCE Touching the Void has such an edge-of-your-seat and nerve-shattering mountaineering film been committed to celluloid. And like that feature, director Philipp Stölz’s North Face is based (rather loosely I imagine) on a true story. It’s 1936 Germany and with the Olympic Games close at hand the Nazi party is lusting after new Aryan idols. Climbers from all over Europe head for the unconqured north face of the Eiger, in Switzerland’s Bernese Alps. The first to the top will be presented with gold medals.

Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

THE CANNES International Film Festival is undoubtedly the Queen of it all. Anybody who is somebody in the world of cinema loves to be there. To unspool on May 14, the Festival has had no Indian movie in Competition since 1994, the year Malayalam director Shaji N. Karun’s Swaham (My Own) was included. What is worse, there has been no Indian entry in A Certain Regard since Murali Nair’s Arimpara (The Mole) screened in 2003.

“The glittering range of free imported drinks waylaid any bother over ticket prices for the opening night of the 12th Cathay Pacific Italian Film Festival in Wellington this week. Coincided with the launch of an inaugural Italian Film Photography exhibition – this year the illuminating works of Philippe Antonello are on display in the Paramount’s foyer – the festival opener provided a satisfying range of treats. The second winner of the annual festival scholarship was announced, and Canterbury raised Pericles Dailianis will follow in the fresh footsteps of Paolo Rotondo to internships in Italy’s Due A and the National Museum of Cinema. Sadly there was no screening of the short film that won Dailianis the scholarship – an addition to the evening which was well received last year.” MELODY NIXON reports from the Gala Opening Night, where the import beverages flowed, followed by celebratory screening of My Best Enemy, another generous, if foreseeable Italian romantic comedy.

Following Auckland, the festival continues in Wellington until October 31. Further dates follow in Christchurch (Oct 24-Nov 7), Dunedin (Oct 31-Nov 14), Nelson (Nov 7-21), Napier (Nov 14-28) and Hamilton (Nov 21-Dec 5). Full programme details online at italianfilmfestival.co.nz.

Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

IT’S AN Indian summer at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, which screened five Indian movies. Among them, Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Four Women (Naalu Pennungal) in Malayalam and Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s The Voyeurs (Ami, Yasin Arr Amar Madhubala) in Bengali were part of the prestigious Masters Programme. Shivajee Chandrabhushan’s first feature in Ladakhi and Hindi, Frozen, played in the Discovery Section. Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear with the Lear himself (why Mr Bachchan, of course) and Santosh Sivan’s Before The Rains (with Nandita Das and Rahul Bose) formed the rest of the Indian celluloid brigade.

While Werner Herzog guided New Zealand International Film Festival goers through the jungles of Laos, frequenters of the 2007 Melbourne International Film Festival could find the director extraordinaire as an Anglican priest in Harmonie Korine’s (Gummo, Julien Donkey Boy) latest freakshow, Mister Lonely, a film our correspondent felt “had really just tossed scraps of Peter Greenaway, Disney and Michel Gondry in a blender and served us up a thick shake of awkward, contrived and phantasmagorical slop.” Reporting for The Lumičre Reader across the Tasman, JESSIE BORRELLE discovered this, and other gorge-worthy films at a festival that admittedly steals a little of the NZIFF’s thunder every year (it straddles July and August), but also provides plenty of crossover and a chance to compare notes.

Set into motion by MIFF’s gala presentation (“Dogged by accusations of megalomania, manipulation and selective editing, Moore’s decision to edit down his quite dominating voice was highly regarded by the opening-night audience, those who were at the screening objecting only to the length and not the breadth of Sicko”), JESSICA’s festival sortie included Tom Kalin’s Savage Grace (“Kalin’s pet topics – decadence and depravity – were lightly surveyed, the film relying heavily on the telegenic Julianne Moore’s consummate acting”), Kim Ki-duk’s Time (“the dialogue... often surrenders to a kind of soap-operality that is a little distracting from the plot (completely cuckoo – yet not improbable) and though it is self-effacing and plucky it does hamper the Freudian hilarity of the plastic surgery love battle that occurs between a young modern moneyed Asian couple in pursuit of ul-jjang (a perfect face)”), and also seen by NZIFF attenders, You, the Living (“[Roy] Andersson’s wry, gloomy humour is consistent – with more emphasis on the fatalistic, tentatively hopeful despair of his players than the capitalist critique present in Songs”) and Radiant City (“Surburbia’s voracious consumption of the American landscape with its ‘zombie monoculture’ is magnified through this intimate yet calculated representation... swish and informative; a repository of good celluloid.”)

You’ll find more Notes from the Melbourne International Film Festival on The Festival Reader, as you will dispatches from our roaming associate abroad, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN, who’s filed his thoughts from the 75th Venice Film Festival; commentary that surveys Atonement, controversy in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution and Brian De Palma’s Redacted, In the Valley of Elah, The Secret of the Grain, George Clooney in Michael Clayton, and new British material in Ken Loach’s It’s a Free World and Kenneth Branagh’s Sleuth.

In our final dispatch of the year, we close the book on Telecom 2007 New Zealand International Film Festivals with two constrasting post-festival reports. TIM WONG wonders whether it is “a sign of a benign programme when Paul Verhoeven rocks your boat?”, while JACOB POWELL notes that “[for] fear of being underwhelmed at every turn redundant, I was consistently impressed by the quality of films that, in all honesty, I was expecting to be a little average.” And whereas his fortnight in Auckland consisted of “a whole swag of highlights with only two minor disappointments,” enthusiasm was harder to come by in Wellington: “for all the decorative fixtures at the TNZIFF 2007, movies to marvel at were in shorter supply.”

TIM WONG’s festival favourites included Black Book (“Verhoeven, never one to make concessions or ply the middle ground, insisted we all sit up and take notice: if not for his compulsive flesh and bloodletting, or the sexual artillery of leading lady Carice van Houten, then for the single, revitalising statement that war can be fun”), Inland Empire (“[David] Lynch may be losing his marbles, but there’s such vitality – and indeed, truth – to his filmmaking that he can never be accused of being arbitrary”) and Still Life (“the best in show, and a beacon above what was a significantly weakened Asian selection this year”), while JACOB POWELL’s highlights ranged from Deep Water (“lodged itself inside my brain and wouldn’t shift”), Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness (“a creative watershed turning humour, guilt, lo-fi production, and quasi-doco styling into a tragic and moving piece of cinema”) and The Edge of Heaven (“Fatih Akin takes his various plot strands and orchestrates a beautifully unfolding narrative ballet which unquestionably satisfies whilst subverting the traditional cinematic ‘need’ for tidy closure.”)

Their respective festival reports, Black & Blue and Redeeming Features, conclude The Lumičre Reader’s TNZIFF coverage for 2007. An overview via our TNZIFF 2007 Debrief collates all features, interviews, reviews and festival commentaries published over the past three months. With the festival still touring smaller centres in reduced form until November, coverage can also be summarized by month (June/July/August), browsed via the Form Guide, or recapped by way of these TNZIFF Dispatches.

Odds and ends from the Telecom 2007 New Zealand International Film Festivals (now finished in all four main centres, and on road throughout the rest of the country) as we wind down our year’s coverage: JOE SHEPPARD talks to Cowboys and Communists documentarian Jess Feast about how “the differences between sauerkraut and a sloppy joe symbolises many of the struggles facing Berliners after the wall fell”; roaming the festival, LYNDON BARROIS and ADDOLEY DZEGEDE present New Illustration for You, the Living, Drama/Mex, A Few Days in September, I Served the Kind of England, Priceless, and Eagle vs Shark; JOE SHEPPARD (again) turns his attention to the fraudulence of Michael Moore and Japanese host boys in Manufacturing Dissent and The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief respectively; and KATE BLACKHURST clashes with Julien Temple’s documentary on a punk legend, Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten.

Coverage to date can be overviewed by month (June/July/August), browsed via the Form Guide, or recapped by way of these TNZIFF Dispatches. Also look out for our annual Post-Festival Wrap at the end of the month.

“By turns infuriating and exhilarating, Inland Empire is David Lynch gone senile: whereas cinema’s dream curator struck gold with the relatively logical narrative capsizing of Mulholland Drive, his latest plunges deeper in search of Hollywood’s back entrances and dark portals, and rarely if ever resurfaces for air. While bewilderment is synonymous with Lynch movies, Inland Empire is so far removed neurologically from anything else in the director’s oeuvre that Lost Highway comes across as unfurnished and comparatively sane; thus, in achieving singularity, it approaches the very edge of insanity. Grasping a long overdue lead role with two hands, Laura Dern (magnificent, playing her most fucked-up character since Citizen Ruth) stars as an actress cast in a promising melodrama – a Polack folktale which just happens to be a remake of a cursed screenplay. There are also phantom prostitutes, musical numbers, sitcom rabbits, copious cameos, and ever-present signs of lurking evil to contend with.” TIM WONG’s tango with Lynch’s latest continues....[Read More]

KATE BLACKHURST on Half Nelson’s dynamic duo, Ryan Gosling and Shareeka Epps: “It does seem an insubstantial basis for a friendship, but the acting is so good that it works; Gosling is perfectly understated and Epps is the best child actor I’ve seen in a long time without a hint of cutesy precociousness.” She also considers Anton Corbijn’s Control: “The fact that it’s not all doom and gloom is due to fantastic scriptwriting and a stellar supporting cast… [it] ends, as of course you would expect, with ‘Walk in Silence’, and the welling up of emotion induced by that song is an incredible thing to take away from a cinema.”

And in the penultimate weekday report from our Wellington Film Festival correspondent, JOE SHEPPARD calls the shots on The Comics Show (“Shitty stereotypes have always plagued the funnybooks, but [Shirley] Horrocks never falls for all that and quickly gets past the emo/teenage years of marginalised navel-gazing and onto the social commentary”), A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (“Mistakes of the past flash quickly from all directions, like knives; the dual narratives overlap and blur; the voiceovers and title remain obscure: Guide is not an easy film but perfects the art of menace at the heart of a nuclear family about to explode”), and The Unpolished (“With a dual life in Portugal and a life on the run, it might look on paper like The State I Am In, but in exposing the selfishness and hypocrisy that lies behind free love and moral creativity, The Unpolished shares more in common with The Edukators”).

“La vie en rose is a stunning, dramatic and at times brutal film. Marion Cottilard plays Piaf like a confused, wounded bird – her wide blue eyes are what stay with you. The film is not so much interested with the details of Piaf’s professional life, although her rise to fame is charted, but with her personal life – a stream of tragedies that lead to her drug abuse and early death. Although she emerges a triumphant French heroine, her background and coarse private persona are thoroughly (and at some points scathingly) exposed. This is what makes this biopic rise above the rest – it truly interrogates its subject. This ethic, coupled with Cottilard’s dedicated performance and Piaf’s amazing songs makes La vie en rose an excellent centrepiece for the Festival and illuminating viewing for anyone interested in Piaf and her music,” enthuses HELEN SIMS.

“Is Gad Elmaleh (The Valet) trying to typecast himself as the bozo with a heart of gold?” asks JOE SHEPPARD of Pierre Salvadori’s Priceless. He also has questions for György Pálfi’s follow-up to Hukkle: “I got the feeling that the story for Taxidermia was written backwards: we have a taxidermist, now what are some truly appalling things he can stuff, and why?” Anticipating Lady Chatterley, MELODY NIXON finds that “This French/Belgium adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s seminal novel fails to capture much the essence of discovery and release that the book so powerfully conveys,” while BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM is charmed by Irish musical Once: “a wee crowd-pleaser, and [Markéta] Irglová’s performance was one of the most engaging and sweetest I’ve seen in years.” KATE BLACKHURST also offers a second thoughts on Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man.

Festivities draw to a close in Wellington this weekend, however continue in Christchurch and Dunedin this August, followed by a tour of duty through the country’s smaller centres. Meantime, our coverage continues, winding down towards the end of the month. Festival details are available online at nzff.telecom.co.nz.

“Dogs, dreams and all things brass crop up around every pallid corner in You, the Living, a surreal twist on human life in all its depressing glory from Swedish writer and director Roy Andersson. A series of nutty vignettes – all of which may or may not have something to do with the bass drummer and tuba player of the Louisiana Brass Band – uncovers the lighter side of neuroses and finds anxieties in everyday communication. The long, artfully composed shots and the spare dialogue mean You, the Living feels a little like a chain of comic sketches, but the catastrophic weather, fascist imagery, unwavering irony and impossibly wan faces ensure that the greasy, filthy core beneath never remains hidden for too long.” JOE SHEPPARD’s reportage continues....[Read More]

Recapping another bumper series of commentaries out of Wellington, JOE SHEPPARD is thrilled in equal parts with Paprika (“the latest love-letter to cinema from writer/director Satoshi Kon... cements his reputation as the most versatile and intelligent auteur in anime today”) and Exiled (“There’s a lot of humour... but for the most part To ratchets up the tension before releasing it in a preposterously beautiful volley of bullets that John Woo or Quentin Tarantino would be envious of”), while finds positive things in A Few Days in September (“What seems like a rather coy title for a spy film begins to look like a pompous gesture... but ultimately contributes to an interesting reflection on the different attitudes either side of the Atlantic”) and My Best Friend (“this comedy of manners meditates on the problems with the tightest social bond – friendship... [the film] finds the sophisticated and profound in the simple”).

JACOB POWELL moves onto the Festival’s omnibus of local digital shorts, commenting that “2007’s Homegrown: Works on Video programme presents somewhat of a mixed bag, replete with shorts that take you from contemplative musing to shock and anger, heart-warming smiles to several minutes of cringefest. Themes and genres are also widespread, covering comedy, horror-western, shockumentary, experimental and stylised drama-cum-mystery. Overall, the standard was reasonably high – complementing the trend in the Works on Film section of the Homegrown programme.” And in the Festival’s one mildly controversial hotpoint, BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM joins the trenchcoats for Destricted, which includes films by Mathew Barney (“a clash between primordial nature and modern machinery, and was as visually interesting as you’d expect from Barney”), Larry Clark (“whose films rarely display the maturity expressed in Impaled”) and Gaspar Noé (“not usually noted for his philosophical subtlety, but this was a reactionary piece of rubbish”).

“There’s a lot about Stephanie Daley that’s uncomfortable – the subject matter (teen pregnancy), the cinematography (a prevalence of close-up, hand-held shots that force the viewer into the characters’ proximity), and the fact that one must subject oneself to a cinema full of overly sympathetic, middle-aged women in order to watch it. But that is perhaps what makes this film so effective. It’s a tense drama that doesn’t try to shield the audience from its characters’ experiences just for the sake of making it more digestible... It’s not an easy film to watch, but writer/director Hilary Brougher has crafted such a compelling story that it’s impossible not to let yourself be drawn into this darker side of suburban America.” KIM CHOE’s review continues....[Read More]

“In a thoughtfully developed story you can sense some hot and sinuous structure flexing in between the lines delivered, behind the scenes depicted. But Four Minutes lacked that. It felt like everything that the scriptwriter knew about this story, was told – baldly... Without the scaffolding a strong backstory provides, this movie’s marvellous embellishments, the cast, the production, the camerawork and so on, exist as merely that. Embellishments. It seems the thing I thought I missed wasn’t really there in the first place.” MYTHILY MEHER considers a German prison drama, while continuing the torrent of festival coverage, JACOB POWELL flitters between a documentary on Factory teamster Danny Williams (“Highlighting the imperfect mechanism of human memory A Walk into the Sea simultaneously showcases the enigmatic cinematic work of a man ahead of his time”), and a throwaway Audrey Tautou vehicle (“if it wasn’t for the fact that Priceless is a French language film, I couldn’t see any reason for it being included in a film festival programme”).

“[Kiyoshi] Kurosawa,” writes JOE SHEPPARD on Retribution, “never flinches from Yoshioka’s desperate spiral into doubt and confusion, wisely ratcheting up the tension with slow psychological traps rather than cutting straight to the freaky fx.” He also finds compelling viewing in the grifter confessions of Con Man Confidential: “these affable and charming swindlers are capable of speaking so effortlessly and improvising such engaging and astonishing stories, they always own the camera.” And in a late festival confirmation, SIMON SWEETMAN turns his attention to the elusive genius on display in Scott Walker: 30 Century Man: “This is one music documentary where you won’t even need an appreciation of the artist’s music before hand... Just take your open mind – and a friend – and discover the magic of one of the most unique and innovative musicians, an under-sung hero who sits somewhere between Warhol, Eno, Bowie and Laurie Anderson.”

“Basically Army of Shadows with tits and ass, Verhoeven’s film trades regularly in nudity and sex. For the Dutchman, neither is complete without the titillation of violence, and there’s something reckless, if not dangerously arousing about his penchant for flesh and blood while dealing in the historical gravity of WWII. But it’s through such a treacherous minefield of moral ambiguities and the blurring of friend and foe... that Verhoeven manages to deliver more truths about the war than the self-righteousness of Schindler’s List, or the numbing combat realism of Saving Private Ryan. More than a Darryl F. Zanuck throwback, Black Book is in fact the kind of movie Steven Spielberg used to make: loud, pulpy, wildly inflated, and utterly gripping. It also understands the decadence of war by simply allowing itself to entertain. Guilt is part of its pleasure, and Verhoeven wrote the book on spectacular bad movies. I wouldn’t write off Black Book though; so ballsy and unadulterated in execution, you’ll struggle to put it down.” TIM WONG’s praise continues....[Read More]

Rarely is there middle ground with Paul Verhoeven, and in contrast KATE BLACKHURST determines Black Book as “one-dimensional” and “The well-lit scenes appear staged and with dramatic music underscoring fight scenes, it felt like watching West Side Story.” In further head-to-heads, TIM WONG describes I Served the King of England as “A two-hour Stella Artois commercial,” while JOE SHEPPARD adds “The whimsical humour has a charming and timeless appeal to it... Served celebrates life’s pleasures, and the appreciation of food, women, money and Pilsner is realised gorgeously.” Also on Tekkonkinkreet: “The imagination and effort behind the detail, colour and shape of this epic behemoth is stunning.” KIM CHOE chimes in with: “Aesthetically, Tekkonkinkreet is proof that you don’t have to be Japanese to make good anime.” She concludes: “The film’s story and its message could have been delivered far more effectively without half an hour’s worth of fire and monsters. It’s a shame, because it’s so textured with symbolism and allegory that it would easily stand up to multiple viewings otherwise.”

SIMON SWEETMAN casts his eye over another music documentary: “I’m Your Man is essentially a live concert show with some talking-head interview slots fleshing it out just enough to justify it as a documentary. Nonetheless it’s a great glimpse in to the world of Leonard Cohen. As a confessional writer, Cohen has always allowed plenty of his psyche in to his work, but only measured amounts of his actual life, so anyone disappointed at the fact that this music doco doesn’t quite dish the dirt is missing the point... to celebrate the man’s work, something Cohen seems incapable of doing himself, hardly touring, recording only sporadically and never, as he basically says himself, looking back.” “Wow. Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness was all that I hoped it might be,” echoes JACOB POWELL in more enthusiasm for the Scottish gem.

“In a film like Killer of Sheep, and reportedly in [Charles Burnett’s] other films too, it is possible to see the influence of filmmakers like Jean Renoir, and his line “everybody has their reasons.” “It was one of the films that he did, The Southerner, that really affected me a lot. It was about two itinerant farmers, a black family and a white family, and it was first time both of them were treated humanely and equally. If it was made by an American, it would have been focused on the white family and told through their eyes. The film was criticised for that [approach]. But in later years I realised that it was because he didn’t fit the mould, he didn’t perpetuate the racist mould that you find in a lot of directors of that time.” BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM’s interview with Charles Burnett continues....[Read More]

More dailies from JOE SHEPPARD in Wellington: on Homegrown: Works on Film (“For all the films, the post-production was beautiful and sophisticated, but it did jar a little with the idealised view of provincial New Zealand on offer. I know there’s still plenty of VHS tapes and kitsch wallpaper out there, but haven’t we moved on from milkmen and glass bottles?”) Manufactured Landscapes (“Burtynsky divines deep beauty even among the dusty Yangtze cities, dismantled brick-by-brick to make way for the Great Dam of China: urgent questions of enormous social and economic change have never been posed so prettily”) and The Bothersome Man (“The script is as sharp as a switchblade, the humour brutally deadpan, and the scores from Ginge and Grieg achingly beautiful”).

DAVID LEVINSON on TV Junkie: “What ultimately saves [Rick] Kirkham’s story from the glossy endzone of a million other wreck stories like it, is his chronic self-chronicling, having captured on home video the before, during and after of years’ worth of highs; totalling 3000 hours worth of footage, filmmakers Michael Cain and Matt Radecki, in an endurance test of editing, have streamlined this mountain of avowal down into the hellish-but-laboured 90 minutes.” And DARREN BEVAN on a vampire epic: “Given how Night Watch ended with the central character losing his son after he allied himself with the forces of darkness, I had half expected to sit through a sequel in the vein of a supernatural Kramer vs Kramer – but I needn’t have worried. Day Watch is by turns brilliant and completely bonkers.”

“On their own, [Edward] Burtynsky’s photographs are both pleasing to the eye and terrifying. But his wide scope has a tendency to dehumanize. A disappointed labourer comments on not being able to make himself out in a photo: “It’s very broad. It’s hard to see the detail.” Seen alongside Mettler and Powis’s footage, we see how Burtynsky can cut through industrial smog, sharpen edges and colours. It is though the stylish combination of these three men’s work and the associated interviews that we are confronted. While it largely avoids “we have to take responsibility” soundbytes, Manufactured Landscapes amounts to a trenchant criticism of galloping global consumption. China got legs, who can stop it?” CATHERINE BISLEY’s review continues....[Read More]

Surmising our most recent torrent of festival columns and reviews, JACOB POWELL (“Free from documentary restraint, the master director occasionally overindulges his melodramatic tendencies with the odd scene which could have leapt straight out of An Officer and a Gentleman, or even worse, a Steven Seagal film”) and TIM WONG (“In the weathered hands of Herzog... such concessions are almost entirely forgivable, and while amiably servicing the film’s commercial needs, he also circumvents any pressure to mythologize Dieter Dengler’s capture and escape”) offer a head-to-head on Rescue Dawn. Also from TIM WONG: The Boss of it All (“jarring, consistently hilarious, and ridiculous beyond belief – indeed, there’s only so clowning around a film can take before its backlog of absurdity starts to cancel itself out”) and Venus (“A geriatric male fantasy... Harold and Maude with a sexual understanding”).

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM: “You have to wonder what would compel a director to make a sequel to a film forty years later, particularly given that the original, Belle de Jour, is one of the most iconic films of the 1960s, and its director, Luis Buńuel, one of the greatest of all-time... But this distance from the original adds a new dimension to the tale, and Oliveira’s own background infuses Belle toujours with a tinge of nostalgia and age-old wisdom.” And additional thoughts on Explorations of Folded Time: Leighton Pierce (“does highlight the intellectual and artistic explorations that film can indeed facilitate”) and Freedom’s Fury (“An ultimately solid, if unspectacular film that reiterates no matter how much we try and pretend otherwise, sport and politics do indeed mix”).

“[Chris] Sivertson’s invitation to the Kiwi festival screenings of The Lost could not have been better timed. While his adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s novel is yet to see mainstream release in the United States, Sivertson’s follow-up movie I Know Who Killed Me releases on 1500 screens across his homeland, a few days after The Lost’s Wellington showings. “If I was in LA this week, all I would be thinking is “what’s the release going to be like,” Sivertson told me... Having only just got off the plane from a rushed visit to Auckland, Sivertson handled my questions in a spirit of both openness and calm, even after my opening gambit of spinning the tape recorder onto the concrete and losing a battery down the storm-drain.” IAN PRYOR’s interview with Chris Sivertson continues....[Read More]

“It’s with hard-to-contain fondness that I can report, following last night’s pre-festival Gala, on the irresistible geekery of Taika Waititi’s lionhearted comedy... Though Waititi appears to be grafting the skin of a Michel Gondry concoction onto Once Upon a Time in the Midlands, the film’s soft-spoken modesty – a shy thing hiding behind the curtain, as introduced by its director – underlines it culturally. As for anyone seeking an antidote to the buffoonery of Sione’s Wedding, its appeal will be immense.” TIM WONG forwards early impressions on Eagle vs Shark from Wellington’s Russell McVeagh Gala event.

Also in Wellington, JOE SHEPPARD kicked proceedings off with Hand Painted Under Camera, “an auspicious opener to 2007’s celebration of all things film, with enough ideas, styles and voices in 69 minutes to sustain a whole festival,” and followed it up with Bamako (“a trial drama where the defendants are no less than Capitalism and Globalisation themselves, but the most vehement excoriation is reserved for the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the G8”) and Tales From Earthsea (“Another stunningly designed and magical milieu has sprung perfectly formed from the fertile and original minds at Studio Ghibli”).

Meantime, JACOB POWELL takes a second bite at Tales From Earthsea (“Probably the thing I appreciated most... is Goro Miyazaki’s easy combination of distinctly Japanese and Western components/character traits into a seamless whole. The heart of Le Guin’s stories remain intact inside a very Japanese flavoured retelling”) and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Climates (“With an obvious eye for setting gorgeously beguiling shots, the director and his cinematographer, Gökhan Tiryaki, at turns impress and frustrate. Five minutes in, I was ready to praise this as possibly one of the most beautifully shot pieces I had seen; five minutes further along I was wringing my hands in annoyance”); DARREN BEVAN observes the reaction to Death of a President (“A clever mix of digitally edited footage gets Mr Bush in the thick of the action to start with, but as the opening shot explains, there was no co-operation from the White House or the Secret Service – something which raised a titter from the audience”); BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM checks out a selection of Sundance talent from the festival’s World of Shorts compilation.

“A Civilised Society charts the reversal of values in New Zealand’s education system driven by the free market reforms of successive Labour and National governments from 1984. In the documentary filmmaker Alister Barry demonstrates and laments the erosion of the right to free education in order to realise one’s fullest potential, and the resulting loss of the values of equal opportunity and community. It is also a film of protest and peaceful, but by no means passive, resistance to the policies of successive governments by teachers and their unions. Barry’s belief that “A high quality universal public education system is a fundamental requirement of an egalitarian society” pervades the film” writes HELEN SIMS in her dialogue with Alister Barry....[Read More]

In first impressions out of Auckland, JACOB POWELL in won over by this year’s Homegrown: Works on Film programme; is similarly impressed with The Secret Life of Words (“A slow-burn, bittersweet story with an aesthetic depth to easily immerse oneself in... one of my sleeper picks for Festival 2007”); and reports back from Day One via Death at a Funeral, Red Road, Cocaine Cowboys and A Mighty Heart. Also out of Auckland, DAVID LEVINSON offers a third take on Red Road: “In camoflauging the basis of the relationship between Jackie, a CCTV operator, and the mystery man she stakes out though, the film is piloted less by moral ambition, and more by a lust for atmospherics.”

Further previews come from BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM on Half Moon (“Reportedly based on Mozart’s Requiem, the film manages to wrest the desolation and supposed despair of the Kurdistan landscape and infuse it with a celebration of art, a tribute to the human spirit and a simple joy of being”), and TIM WONG on The Matsugane Potshot Affair (“Unlike previous outings, [Nobuhiro] Yamashita’s deadpan manoeuvrings don’t quite achieve the same comic abruptness, but the situations are just as awkward, the mood as always unpredictable, and the spare and observant humour resoundingly unconventional”) and Syndromes and a Century (“Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s most breathtaking film to date... a singular, spellbinding duplex of urban and tropical harmonies”). And in related coverage, Lumičre’s ALEXANDER BISLEY (also film critic for the Sunday Star Times) talks the Festival with Mark Broatch online at stuff.co.nz.

“Alexander Greenhough and Elric Kane are enthusiastic about talking about film, but get them talking about their own work, and the words flow out like hyperactive children who’ve just found out they’re going to Disneyland for the first time. They love film, not only watching and analysing it... but they’re also starting to make a name for themselves as fine filmmakers in their own right in New Zealand. Kissy Kissy is the duo’s third film in the Telecom New Zealand International Film Festivals, and is arguably their finest achievement so far in their rather young career. BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM talked to Greenhough and Kane in a barely populated bar, and coupled with the dulcet tones of Rod Stewart swooping around the room, made for a highly energetic and lively interview.”...[Read More]

In further impressions from BRANNAVAN: “With an oddball title, and a premise that plays between fiction and reality, How is Your Fish Today? might be seen as a Chinese riff on Charlie Kaufmann, or could just as easily be tarred with that reductive label ‘quirky’. However, this would be to ignore the film’s thematic concerns and meditative mood, and ultimately its rather subversive streak.” And on his cemetery fetish: “I love going to cemeteries. There’s something majestic, something foolhardy, something particular vain about the human condition that gets represented in them. It’s an attempt to reverse the mutability of life with an ever-lasting monument. Dutch documentary maker Heddy Honigmann seems to share similar views... and wanders Pčre-Lachaise capturing moments of life and transcendence. It’s [Forever] a beautiful work that aims to show that by looking at death, we can also find traces of life.”

First thoughts from our Auckland Festival correspondent, DAVID LEVINSON: “In a bid to outdo the turbo-hormones and beersoaked euphoria of most male bonding, Falkenberg Farewell opts for a hippy forlornness that’s equally contrived (and a whole lot more cloying) than its more American counterpart.” And on Audience of One: “Herzogian song of thwarted ambition this is not... Nor, however, is it an hysterical left-wing grenade ŕ la Jesus Camp or Deliver Us from Evil.” Having recently completed another tour-of-duty of Cannes, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN offers an appraisal of the cultural divide – and reconciliation – in Fatih Akin’s follow-up to Head-On: “The Edge of Heaven is often a string of sparse frames, shot with a refreshing economy of words. The picture’s near flawless performances add to its overall appeal.”

“With The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, Kunuk and Cohn have done away with almost all traces of the primary storytelling structure of Atanarjuat, liberating the film to explore the ebbs and flows, moods and rhythms of these intermittent encounters, which have been distilled to fascinating conversations within the cramped spaces of Avva’s warmly-lit sod-hut, interrupted only when the camera ventures outside in the snow-covered landscape to observe daily life in the colony, usually accompanied by Avva’s fantastic narrations of his experiences as a shaman, a position which now nears extinction due to encroaching Christianity” writes MUBARAK ALI...[Read More]

Meanwhile, TIM WONG on Jia Zhang-ke’s latest: “Six years on from the extraordinary Platform, Still Life retains a cogency in national commentary, remains eye opening and occasionally amusing in its social illustrations, and continues to show compassion for those caught in the maelstrom – all the while forging onwards as a potential departure point in its director’s ourvre.” Fresh from Cannes, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN offers impressions on Gus Van Sant and Paranoid Park: “Van Sant’s latest film... does not disturb as much as Elephant did with its questions of why seemingly harmless, dull and uninspiring youngsters suddenly turn hostile and brutal... [but] still makes one a trifle uneasy.” And continuing the trend of new films by established festival favourites, SIMON WOOD considers Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s first foray into digital video: “Although flawed, Climates wallows in its own anxiety and there’s a certain thrill in seeing cynicism portrayed with such enthusiastic accuracy and ironic beauty.”

Of lesser artistic, but greater thrill value, JOE SHEPPARD concedes to the “puerile logic and cult factor” of Death Note + Death Note: The Last Note, a back-to-back screening we’re quietly claiming as a replacement for Grindhouse’s currently dismantled distribution form. Sheppard assures us of the Death Notes that “you’re guaranteed a good time one way or another, but you might want to check any adulthood you’re carrying at the door on the way into the theatre.”

These, along with the 25+ films we’ve covered to date, and the complete 160+ festival programme, open for business this Friday at the Auckland leg of the Telecom 2007 New Zealand International Film Festivals. Wellington’ turn begins the following Friday. Our daily coverage continues uninterrupted throughout.

“Quietly announcing its intended pace and tone in the very first image – an extended shot of a withered pine forest penetrated by waning light and the slow-dancing colours of dusk, an opening that vaguely recalls Aleksandr Sokurov’s unforgettable entry into his Spiritual Voices – Nanouk Leopold’s Wolfsbergen (the Dutch filmmaker’s third feature film) slowly begins to set up a series of moments and micro-events involving a quadri-generational family in the midst of a crisis – a process that would continue until the very last image,” writes MUBARAK ALI...[Read More]

In other newly added festival reviews and commentary: TIM WONG samples a brace of tough-as-nails Korean gangster pictures in No Mercy for the Rude (“occasionally straddles an artful line between humour and seriousness”) and A Dirty Carnival (“Propelled by one extraordinarily brutal scene of turf war... that can only be described as Braveheart with baseball bats meets (Alan Clarke’s) The Firm”), plus a neighbouring documentary in The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief, about a new class of Japanese ‘host boy’ (“[a film that] gets under the skin of what on the surface appears to be just another throwaway leisure pursuit of the rich and emotionally needy”).

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM latest viewings include Falkenberg Farewell (“this quietly beautiful film captures that limbo between youth and adulthood, a time of no direction, promise, confusion, loss, dreams... a highly emotional, moving and haunting film that captures this crucial moment of life so well”) and Brazilian broadside Manda Bala (“[Jason] Kohn takes a sweeping look at the corruption and inequality rife in Brazil, and makes a cogent and powerful documentary in the process”). SIMON SWEETMAN also offers second thoughts on Jesus Camp (“frequently hilarious and often downright frightening... another winner from the people who made the acclaimed film The Boys Of Baraka”).

“Broadly drawn but intimate in scope, Killer of Sheep is populated by miniature moments – eye movements, bursts of happiness, small crushing failures (e.g. the memorable picnic scene). It also feels authentic – documentary-like with its muted black and white imagery, yet tightly scripted and structured. Consequently, some of the non-actors’ work is a little wooden, but that also allows for a story that doesn’t exploit its characters or its setting. It’s consequently highly political in its effect and tone. But even more, it’s a rare privilege to see such a piece of filmmaking that shows real-life as bleak, funny, high-spirited, crushing, happy and angry. In essence, as life really is.”...[Read More]

Also from BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM: Scottish surprise Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness, “a beautiful, moving and hilarious work” on one man’s earnest attempts to introduce a mobile disco to the people of the Scottish Highlands. SIMON SWEETMAN on the late Arthur Lee’s cult psychedelic band: “Love Story is not quite as personal as The Devil And Daniel Johnston or the splendid Roky Erikson film from last year – but it’s a similar story; one of a musical act falling apart at the seams. Kerry and Hall, British filmmakers, do not really get at the dissipation of the band – the drug issue is raised – and though this never falls in to total hagiography it is intended to be a loving portrait of an important, but overlooked band.”

Plus, TIM WONG with further short ends: documentaries Con Man Confidential (on Germany’s equivalent of Nigerian fraudsters), Comrades in Dreams (on cinema’s mobilization of audiences and exhibitors alike) and Jia Zhang-ke’s Still Life companion piece, Dong (on painter Liu Ziao-dong and the extraterrestrial Three Gorges Dam); plus a trio in feature film debutants in Andrea Arnold’s CCTV stalker movie Red Road, Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo’s consumate Spanish thriller The Night of the Sunflowers, and under auspices of Johnnie To’s Milkyway productions, Yau Nai-hoi’s more genre-oriented surveillance policier Eye in the Sky.

“In this slow moving indie flick each line that goes unsaid is worth the weight of a hundred lines in any other, more verbose film. Old Joy is a minimalist study in spirit-filled, natural imagery, and emotion; its moments of detached discontent contain both exuberant and mournful glimpses into the darker side of peace. That is, peace how Fellini’s La Dolce Vita character Steiner describes it; “a thin cover, stretched across an abyss”. Old Joy is joy gone stale, and joy that is afraid of the spark it has lost.”...[Read More]

Complementing her estatic review, MELODY NIXON offers parallel insight into one half of Old Joy’s journeymen – folk singing, sometimes-acting poet and musician, Will Oldham – with a personal and praise-filled Appreciation (filed on The Arts Reader).

In further festival previews in the lead-up to Auckland’s Opening Night (A Might Heart) on July 13, SIMON SWEETMAN listens to a punk serenade in Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, The Clash frontman who he describes as “A spiritual man, a musical magpie, a quintessential punk who, by virtue of his literal lust for life, transcended the punk subculture”. And on the film itself: “[Julien] Temple, having documented the odyssey of The Sex Pistols... is the perfect person to collect and collate these views on Strummer... Temple is both a filmmaker and a scenester, a hip player with an eye for the detail of how it should be but a head already full of the awareness of the way it was.”

Further still, TIM WONG gets reacquainted with a festival staple, Isabelle Huppert, in Private Property, while BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM checks out two idiosyncratic oddities: raw Mexican talent in The Violin, and Brand upon the Brain!, the latest from an unclassifiable favourite, Guy Maddin. Lumičre’s critics also list their Ticklish Tens, or: their ten most anticipated festival films.

“While [Jesus Camp] isn’t without moments of absurdist humour – namely, the worshipping of George W. Bush, God’s 2IC who graces the camp in spirit as a cardboard cutout – it remains a candidate for the most terrifying film of the year. The children, however, cannot be labeled helpless victims in all of this: impressionable as they may be, some are clearly strong-minded enough to one day gain back their personal autonomy. As for the kid who admits to his peers that he still watches Harry Potter movies despite the boy wizard’s blacklisting as the devil? He’s already halfway there.”...[Read More]

Also from TIM WONG: programme launch revelations, plus thoughts on Deep Water (“not another tall tale of survival, but a quiet revelation of human fallibility, fraudulence, and compelling oceanic adventure”) and Old Joy (“economical, gloriously sparse, and ever so closely observed”). And from SIMON SWEETMAN, reviewing a reasoned and well-considered Michael Moore retort: “Manufacturing Dissent is a quiet marvel of even-handed filmmaking. Finally the Michael Moore backlash really has some grunt, for here are two fans of his work doing their best to understand his motives.”

In association with The Lumičre Reader, The Zone, a bright new local show hosted by The Silkworm Girl, curating the best in art, music, film and theatre reviews, as well as interviews, special guests and the a cache of giveaways, presents a fortnightly film reviewed by the talking heads at Lumičre. The Zone broadcasts every Monday from 5.30-6pm. Tune in to Access Radio on 783AM, stream live, or congregate at The Zone’s MySpace page.

COMING MONDAYS (25/6, 8+23/4): TIM WONG extends Lumičre’s Telecom New Zealand International Film Festivals coverage to the airwaves, previewing Old Joy, Red Road, Still Life and The Great Happiness Space. Podcasts of these and previous reviews can be downloaded at accessradio.org.nz.

“Never mind the frigid climate and inane rugby obsession that comes with the following months: this July and August, winter plays host again to the Telecom New Zealand International Film Festivals, a savior from the cold in its annual torrent of world and experimental cinema, documentaries, animation and retrospective offerings. The much-anticipated programme hits streets officially this week, although scouts will have already discovered the majority of titles announced online. Privy to the confirmed lineup, it’s with equal parts excitement and curiosity that we can reveal some of its potential highlights.”...[Read More]

And so begins The Lumičre Reader’s festival coverage, continuing uninhabited through until the end of August. TIM WONG offers his Opening Thoughts on the colossal programme – launched tonight in Auckland, and Wellington on Thursday – spying several early event movies, including David Lynch’s Inland Empire, a rather outrageous subtitute for the now-defunct Grindhouse double-bill in Death Note + Death Note: The Last Name back-to-back, and the festival’s annual retrospective element, this year a tantalizing revival of American seventies cinema; Electra Glide in Blue, The Hired Hand, and The Last Picture Show his essentials from the ten film programme.

The festival begins in Auckland (July 13-29), followed by Wellington (July 20-August 5), Dunedin (July 27-August 12), Christchurch (August 2-19), and remainder of the country thereafter. Full details online at nzff.telecom.co.nz.

“Do people only to go the cinema for entertainment or to view things that affect them personally? Must an ‘issue’ have big budget celebrity endorsement (think Al Gore, Bob Geldof, George Clooney) before we care? Is it just my cynicism or is this a sad indictment of the fact that we really only care about ourselves and aren’t interested in other people’s problems?”....[Read More]

In post-Human Rights Film Festival coverage, KATE BLACKHURST looks back on the third edition of this annual event, the problems it explored – and on occasion encountered – in bringing urgent and pertinent issues to attention. She also reviews several documentary films: Goal Dreams, on the Palestinian football team; Outlawed, a short but hard-hitting story of two men who survive secret detention and torture by the United States government; Race is a Four Letter Word, an unmasking of the racial divide; and Sign of the Times, documenting sign language’s struggle for official recognition in New Zealand.

GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN’s final dispatch from Cannes rounds up the prize winners following the festival-ending awards ceremony: Romanian Palme d’Or triumph Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days, and close relative California Dreamin’, another Romanian success in A Certain Regard; Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park, recipient of the festival’s 60th Anniversary Award; a surprise Grand Prix for Naomi Kawase’s The Mourning Forest; acting honours for The Banishment and Secret Sunshine; a Jury Prize for outré Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas’ Silent Night; Best Screenplay and Best Directing acknowledgements for Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven and Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly respectively.

NEW THIS WEEK: the Outtakes Film Festival, now in Wellington (by way of Auckland) through until June 10, followed by Christchurch from June 7-13. Filled out with the usual under-the-radar queer fare, there are also notable oddities and some heftier instances: a trio of Asian imports (Spider Lilies, Taiwan; Hatsukoi, Japan (World Premiere); and The King and the Clown, returning from the Korean Film Festival), a trashy lesbian sexploitation compliation (Lezploitation) that’s a something of a throwback to the bygone Incredible Film Festival era, and for big screen fun, two retrospective screenings of Calamity Jane. The Lumičre Reader’s Doris Day scholar, TIM WONG relays his thoughts on the camp classic....[Read More]

Reflecting on the second half of the Cannes Film Festival, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN encountered Faith Akin’s new movie, The Edge of Heaven (“impressive without being overtly glossy, and he [Akin] travels from Turkey to German with consummate ease”); Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart, about the intense hunt for a Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, kidnapped by Islamic terrorists in 2002; Competition entry The Diving Bell and The Butterfly; and Andrei Nekrasov’s Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case, a powerful documentary on the murder of a former Russian spy, and an unscheduled addition to the Festival’s official sections.

Courtesy of gautamanbhaskaran.com, The Lumičre Reader continues to dispatch Gautaman Bhaskaran’s ‘Out of Cannes’ column over the remainder of the festival.

In more reportage out of the French Riviera, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the newsmakers, among them Sicko megaphone Michael Moore; more Competition entries in David Fincher’s Zodiac and Kim Ki-duk’s Breath; the Festival’s 60th Anniversary omnibus, To Each His Own Cinema; and speculating on the Palm d’Or winner, among them My Blueberry Nights, Paranoid Park, Love Song and No Country for Old Men.

Courtesy of gautamanbhaskaran.com, The Lumičre Reader continues to dispatch Gautaman Bhaskaran’s ‘Out of Cannes’ column over the remainder of the festival.

Seminal movie moments may be crafted on the page, but it’s on screen where they come to life. But it’s not just the actors and directors who inspire us and breathe life into the words – it’s often the composers responsible for the music who do more to evoke memories long after we’ve left the theatre. Consider, if you will, where the opening of all of the Star Wars films – yes, even the dire Phantom Menace – would be without John Williams’ music? Any version of Mission: Impossible without Lalo Schifrin’s pulsating and urgent theme? Or ponder the immortality of Psycho’s shower scene without the strings of Bernard Herrmann’s score? If you’re salivating already, add the following ingredients to the mix – a full symphony orchestra in the form of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, sprinkle a bit of Mezzo Soprano Helen Medlyn back for her fifteenth year with the APO, and season with the likes of Bond, Potter, Skywalker, Meridius, Parker and more. These are just a few of the reasons to head to Aotea Centre in Auckland on June 2 for A Night at the Movies. Tickets range from $20-$80 (booking fee applies), and are available from Ticketek. Those of you who are willing to grumble that it’s a dumbing down of the arts: pull your snobby heads in and go along and enjoy it.—Darren Bevan

“Love Songs (Les Chansons d’Amour) may at first glance appear dissimilar to the director’s earlier Dan Paris, but on closer inspection one can easily see how alike the two films really are. Honore’s breeziness reflects abundantly in Love Songs as well, and made as a tribute to a dead friend, the movie has the power to tug at the heartstrings. When Ismael sings, “Every minute is like a sob”, walking down a lonely Paris street, the gravity of loss is conveyed in an utterly poignant way. In Competition, Love Songs may not walk away with a prize, but it is a film that moves you,” writes GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN....[Read More]

Courtesy of gautamanbhaskaran.com, The Lumičre Reader will dispatch Gautaman Bhaskaran’s ‘Out of Cannes’ column over the course of the festival. Also from the French Riviera: Russia’s The Banishment; Audrey Tautou as Coco Chanel; Old Europe ignored; New Asian cinema thrives.

“Wong Kar-wai’s flair for visuals and colourful characters grip one, and My Blueberry Nights is by far his most powerful work to date, though there were some moments when I felt that the movie let go my attention. However, My Blueberry Nights has that element of rhapsody and rumination that highlight time, and more specifically lost time,” writes GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN....[Read More]

Courtesy of gautamanbhaskaran.com, The Lumičre Reader will dispatch Gautaman Bhaskaran’s ‘Out of Cannes’ column over the course of the festival. Also from the French Riviera: at 60, A Brief History, looking back on magic and mirth of Festival de Cannes.

In association with The Lumičre Reader, The Zone, a bright new local show hosted by The Silkworm Girl, curating the best in art, music, film and theatre reviews, as well as interviews, special guests and the a cache of giveaways, presents a fortnightly film reviewed by the talking heads at Lumičre. The Zone broadcasts every Monday from 5.30-6pm. Tune in to Access Radio on 783AM, stream live, or congregate at The Zone’s MySpace page.

THIS/NEXT MONDAY (14+21/4): TIM WONG recommends four DVDs from the month’s releases, including Once in a Lifetime, a juicy chronicle of soccer at its peak in America; John Cameron Mitchell’s sex comedy Shortbus; Robert Altman’s parting gift, A Prairie Home Companion; and last year’s most authentic American indie, Mutual Appreciation. Podcasts of this and previous reviews can be downloaded at accessradio.org.nz.

Screening at this year’s edition of the Human Rights Film Festival (Wellington May 9-16; Christchurch May 16-20), Rosita documents the aftermath of a nine-year-old Nicaraguan girl’s rape, her subsequent pregnancy, and the fight by her Costa Rican parents to gain approval for a “therapeutic” abortion in a country where termination is illegal. HELEN SIMS asked co-director Janet Goldwater to shed further light on Rosita’s plight via email....[Read More]

ALSO SCREENING: Belated recognised as an Official Language of New Zealand last year, Sign of the Times documents the deaf and sign language community’s constant forge for that recognition. BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM looked at its significance....[Read More]

Currently making its way through a wintery Hamilton (May 3-9) before concluding in Christchurch (10-16), the Latin American Film Festival will at the very least make those attending green with envy at the sunbaked South American climate on display. Out of Wellington, KATE BLACKHURST sized up Possible Loves, a Brazilian romantic-comedy that conceptually riffs Sliding Doors; “It is refreshingly non-Hollywood and as such is able to handle straight and homosexual relationships with equal sensitivity, sexuality and humour.” Other films on her schedule: Posthumous Memoirs, an adaptation of a late 19th century novel by Machado de Assis, where “its excellence lies in the fact that it is almost impossible to explain”, and Enlightened by Fire, an ANZAC-timely, alternative Argentinean perspective on the Falklands War. Meanwhile in Auckland, KIM CHOE reviewed the rather far-fetched 7 Days, where a one Claudio Caballero attempts to gamble an exorbitant amount of money in the hope of raising enough funds to lure U2 to Mexico.

Also of considerable interest: Korean Cinema champion Adam Hartzell recently toured our country, posting a lengthy New Zealand Dispatch on the blog of film blogs (and all other film media), GreenCine Daily. In it, he discusses the Latin American Film Festival, Black Sheep, and the many books added to his collection while down under.

In association with The Lumičre Reader, The Zone, a bright new local show hosted by The Silkworm Girl, curating the best in art, music, film and theatre reviews, as well as interviews, special guests and the a cache of giveaways, presents a fortnightly film reviewed by the talking heads at Lumičre. The Zone broadcasts every Monday from 5.30-6pm. Tune in to Access Radio on 783AM, stream live, or congregate at The Zone’s MySpace page.

THIS MONDAY (30/4): TIM WONG reviews Bong Joon-ho’s blockbuster The Host – a terrific, genre-elastic monster movie coming by way of South Korea. Podcasts of this and previous reviews can be downloaded at accessradio.org.nz.

“As a study of the human psyche facing certain termination, Time to Leave belongs to the same universe as 5x2. But whereas that film found something specific and hurtful in its study of a relationship lost in time’s blender, the new one fails to leech the humanity from its symbolic corpse,” writes DAVID LEVINSON....[Read More]

And concluding our World Cinema Showcase dispatch, DIANE SPODAREK covers her first Tony Gatlif in the director’s latest, Transylvania. The festival, currently in Christchurch, continues through until April 25, while in Dunedin, it opens this Thursday and concludes on May 5.

In association with The Lumičre Reader, The Zone, a bright new local show hosted by The Silkworm Girl, curating the best in art, music, film and theatre reviews, as well as interviews, special guests and the a cache of giveaways, presents a fortnightly film reviewed by the talking heads at Lumičre. The Zone broadcasts every Monday from 5.30-6pm. Tune in to Access Radio on 783AM, stream live, or congregate at The Zone’s MySpace page.

THIS MONDAY (16/4): TIM WONG reviews Jonathan King’s horror comedy Black Sheep – part homage, part imitation, part rural New Zealand self-deprecation. Podcasts of this and previous reviews can be downloaded at accessradio.org.nz.

“If anything, The African Queen stands as testament to the poverty of having a budget: When Powell and Pressburger wanted the Himalayas, they retreated to their London studio, turning lurid backdrop shooting into the approximation of a fever dream. Huston meanwhile, with the facility to fly a cast to Africa, trails the heart of darkness, and returns with a video-diarist’s program of interests: So that what you get are turgid shots a-plenty of wildlife dopily standing around, the light a flat, unchanging, democratic blue. Nevertheless, the area’s elements, in all their scintillating dullness, prove enough to transform Hepburn from tight-buttoned choirgirl into rope-gnashin’ first mate, as she charts the titular vessel on its course to blow up German ship, the Louisa,” writes DAVID LEVINSON....[Read More]

Alternate views on American Classics aside, DIANE SPODAREK considers the steamy Black Snake Moan, awash with Southern Blues, a sound she describes as, “the essence of this movie, the longing for what can never be, because the South is full of misery, and this is another Hollywood version of our insatiable desire to see poor white-trash folks getting drunk and puking their lives down the toilet.” Left-of-field, she also follows two Swedish galpals into the sunset in Heartbreak Hotel, and the Apartheid horror Catch a Fire.

“As closer inspection will confirm, there are crevices in the world in which extraordinary people do extraordinary things while the rest of us carelessly, obliviously, carry on unaware. Wordplay dives into one such crevice – the world of Crossword puzzles – and in flitting between conversations with crossword creators, modest fans, ardent decipherers, Tournament champions, and Tournament contenders, and in its gripping, elegantly paced build-up to the 2005 American Crossword Puzzle face-off, it delivers an unabashedly glee-inducing 94 minutes,” writes MYTHILY MEHER....[Read More]

Also reviewed: BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM sizes up the oxymoronic curiosity of ‘German Jewish comedy’ Go For Zucker. Coverage continues under The Festival Reader with forthcoming impressions on The African Queen, Time to Leave and more.

“A family-friendly and uniquely Japanese take on The Full Monty story, Hula Girls is a film teeming with odds defying heroism, mine accident tearjerkers and ass-shaking enthusiasm. Sure, it’s as cheesy as a Hello Kitty doll, and as predictable as an episode of Pokémon, but it’s undeniably fun.” writes CALEB STARRENBURG....[Read More]

Also reviewed: ELISA GASPERINI gorges on another rich Italian drama, Cristina Comencini’s adaptation of her own best-selling novel, The Beast in the Heart. The World Cinema Showcase continues in Auckland through to April 4, moving to Wellington on March 29. More reviews under The Festival Reader.