Mistress America is Noah Baumbach’s second feature for 2015, and by far the strongest. His first effort, While We’re Young, parlayed an unconvincing generational-gap comedy into a weirdly-shoehorned meditation on authenticity in documentaries; Mistress America, thankfully, proves to be both a funnier comedy and a more insightful analysis of the blurred line between artificiality and…
In 1962, Bronx lawyer and ex-Navy officer James B. Donovan negotiated a tense prisoner transfer between the United States of America, the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic. The negotiation required Donovan to enter East Germany at the behest of his country, but without any official recognition from America. Rather, Donovan was operating on…
If we’re lucky, we begin our lives in a community of warmth and acceptance, a family where our status as loved goes unquestioned. But as we age into adolescence, that haven is inevitably breached by doubt and distrust, as we begin to question our position in the world. Those questions are exacerbated when you’re an…
I’m more of anime consumer than aficionado – or ‘otaku’, if you prefer – so I don’t pay a lot of attention to anime auteurs, the behind-the-scenes movers and shakers that shape the animation I enjoy (give or take a Miyazaki or Anno, naturally). So it wasn’t until about halfway through Michiko & Hatchin that…
Thanks to Madman Entertainment, ccpopculture has 5 DVD copies of the latest (and possibly last) Studio Ghibli film, When Marnie Was There, to give away. “Twelve-year-old Anna believes she sits outside the invisible magic circle to which most people belong, and shuts herself off from everyone around her. Concerned for her health, Anna’s foster mother decides to…
I’ve never been much for antiques. By and large, that’s a reflection of budgetary issues – the furniture I own is nearly all cheap-as-chips or hand-me-downs – but I’ve just never really been invested in the aestheticisation of aging and decay that seems to drive aficionados of antiques. Guillermo del Toro, though, seems like a…
The Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival – or, if you prefer, BAPFF, announced with the vigour of a 1960s Batman sound effect – is fast approaching, with the full program announcement arriving in less than two weeks (on the 28th of October) and the festival proper kicking off on the 19th of November. For those…
Full disclosure: I know essentially nothing about fashion, and literally nothing about haute couture fashion. My knowledge of Christian Dior comes entirely from hip-hop lyrics, and it turns out that puts me squarely outside the target audience for Frédéric Tcheng’s fashion doco Dior and I. If you’re the kind of person who understands words like…
On the surface, Digging For Fire doesn’t diverge significantly from the previous Joe Swanberg flicks I’ve seen. It’s populated by funny, attractive actors (the likes of Brie Larson, Orlando Bloom, Chris Messina, Anna Kendrick and Sam Rockwell) casually the shooting the shit (often in various states of undress). Pretty much everyone is on the boundary…
Last week saw the Australian release of Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth adaptation, which Jonathan awarded 4 stars in his review. As part of my series of “cheat sheets” on films taught in secondary schools, unpacking their themes and detailing related texts, I examined Kurzel’s film for SBS Movies. Check it out via the link below! Read Macbeth: Cheat Sheet at SBSMovies.
ccpopculture 