WINTER'S BONE

WINTER'S BONE arrived in the UK from Sundance and Berlin covered in praise for its strong central performances and gritty portrayal of middle-American rural poverty. The heroine of the film is seventeen-year old Ree Dolly played with impressive authority and conviction by Jennifer Lawrence. Ree is the daughter of an absent felon father and mentally ill mother, and has been forced to take on the parenting...

Tsuki no Waltz (月のワルツ, 2004)

The NHK’s long-running program Minna no Uta has been a great showcase for musical talent and talented animators and directors since the early 1960s. Some of the most prolific contributors to Minna no Uta include some of the brightest stars of the animation world including Koji Nanke, Tadahiko Horiguchi, Keizo Kira, Sadao Tsukioka, Keiko Tanaka, Taku Furukawa, Yoji Kuri, Fumio Ooi, and Seiichi Hayashi...

Gravitation (引力, 2003)

During her days as a student at Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music, Atsuko Ishizuka (いしづか あつこaka 石塚敦子, b. 1981) made some animated shorts that caught the eye of both the NHK and Madhouse (her employer since graduation). Gravitation (引力 /Inryoku, 2003) was one of them and it was featured that same year by the NHK on their Digista program.  An example of her uses of extremely...

Random DVD Round-Up 5 - THE BOUNTY HUNTER

Andy Tennant (FOOL'S GOLD, HITCH, SWEET HOME ALABAMA) is a seeming one-man factory in churning out romantic-comedies pinned on an implausible central conceit. In this risible flick, the conceit is that Gerard Butler is a bail bonds-man with a gambling habit, charged to bring his ex-wife (Jennifer Aniston) to jail. She's been had up on a fender-bender charge, but was too busy to turn up to court because she's a hard-nosed investigative journalist....

Random DVD Round-Up 4 - LEAP YEAR

LEAP YEAR is a piss-poor, predictable, charmless romantic comedy penned by serial offenders, Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, and directed by Anand Tucker (HILLARY AND JACKIE) who should know better. Amy Adams plays an uptight realtor who is so tired of waiting for her medic boyfriend to propose that she follows him to Ireland to propose to him on Leap Day. This being a romantic "comedy", bad weather and other mishaps conspire to keep her away from...

Random DVD Round-Up 3 - DATE NIGHT

There's something almost impressive about the fact that director Shawn Levy has taken two of the funniest comedians working today - Steve Carell and Tina Fey - and create a romantic comedy so utterly joyless and inauthentic. I honestly would not have believed it possible. This movie misses the mark so badly it's like the PEARL HARBOUR of romantic-comedies. Fey and Carell play a happily married but...

Random DVD Round-Up 2 - PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME

PRINCE OF PERSIA: SANDS OF TIME is a movie that is easy to mock. It's based on a video game; features a bunch of Western actors bronzed up to play medieval Persian warlords; is full of hoky CGI and time-travel; and basically is about as credible as Ed Balls candidature for the Labour leadership. Think ALADDIN on steroids. But I have to say that it's not entirely unwatchable.A newly buff Jake Gyllenhaal...

Random DVD Round Up 1 - EXIT THROUGH THE GIFTSHOP

One-trick pony mockumentary in which notorious street-artist Banksy sends up the modern art world by showcasing nutty video-voyeuer turned artist Thierry Guetta. Guetta starts out behind the camera, documenting the early days of street art in LA, creating a mammoth collection of unedited tapes. He then morphs into an artist, apparently on Banksy's urging, creating works of suspiciously derivative...

Overlooked DVD of the month - DOGTOOTH

George Orwell believed that the first step toward tyranny was to brutalise language. If the prisoner-citizen cannot articulate his needs he will be more docile. DOGTOOTH opens with such a brutalisation. Three teenagers are kept prisoner by their parents in a gated house. They are taught false meanings for words; to fear vicious monsters in the outside world; and to sublimate their desires. There is no reason given for their imprisonment. Just as...

Tochka Works 2001-2010

The collaborative art team Tochka (トーチカ) has had a distinctive online presence for many years now.  Their creative method of animating with light has inspired many artists around the world to make their own lightning doodles from Lichtfaktor here in Germany to the artists behind the 2007 Sprint commercial. Tochka’s short videos have been shared extensively on the internet, but CALF’s second...

Mirai Mizue Works 2003-2010

Last month CALF, a new indie DVD label representing Japanese independent animators, held its official launch at the International Hiroshima Animation Festival. The first two DVDS to be released by CALF feature representative works by abstract animator Mirai Mizue (水江未来) and PIKA PIKA animators Tochka (トーチカ). In October, CALF plans to release DVDs of work by Atsushi Wada (和田淳), whose film In a Pig’s...

TAMARA DREWE - who?

Stephen Frears has an odd body of work. He started off with spiky costume drama (DANGEROUS LIASONS), moved to equally spiky contemporary British drama (DIRTY PRETTY THINGS) but then segued into what can only be described as English heritage drama, with the banal MRS HENDERSON PRESENTS and the over-hyped TV drama THE QUEEN. His latest flick - an adaptation of Posy Simmonds Grauniad strip, continues...

Random DVD Round-Up - WHIP IT

WHIP IT is a pretty conventional, but charming, coming-of-age flick directed by Drew Barrymore and starring JUNO's Ellen Page. It feels old fashioned - in the way the sports movies and coming-of-age dramas used to be, before they got satirised in movies like DODGEBALL. The kitsch feel stems partly from the deliberately down-at-heel suburban production design, and from the fact that the heroine is...

Nagi Noda (野田 凪, 1973-2008)

Today marks the second anniversary of the death of Nagi Noda (野田 凪, 1973-2008), the brilliant pop artist and fashion icon. Not only did she make weird and wonderful videos (short films, music videos, and commercials), but she also had her own line of stuffed animals called HanPanda, designed unusual hair art called Hair Hats, and designed her own fashion line called Broken Label in collaboration...