Review: Sherad Sanchez's JUNGLE LOVE Is An Erotic Ride To The Pleasurable Unknown

Review: Sherad Sanchez's JUNGLE LOVE Is An Erotic Ride To The Pleasurable Unknown
Blu-ray Review: THE OPENING OF MISTY BEETHOVEN, The Porno Pygmalion, Is A Revelation In HD
Berlinale 2013: Romanian Film CHILD'S POSE Takes Top Festival Prize
China Beat: Re-Tooling Hollywood For The Mainland

Review: Sherad Sanchez's JUNGLE LOVE Is An Erotic Ride To The Pleasurable Unknown

Posted: 17 Feb 2013 02:00 PM PST

At first glance, Sherad Sanchez's Jungle Love seems needlessly indulgent. Rebelling against traditional concepts of what is deemed to be acceptable and tasteful in cinema, the film is littered with exposed flesh, dark, wrinkled, blonzed or tattooed, interacting with each other in wild abandon. Its loose narrative deflects any easy reading that could defend the abundant sexuality. If it weren't for the deliciously ambiguous atmosphere so efficiently conjured by the images framed and lighted by cinematographers Malay Javier and Gym Lumbera and the mystical sounds inflicted by scorer Teresa Barrozo, Sanchez's film could have been something more akin to exotic erotica than art. Jungle Love, of course, is far from being plainly titillating. It is draped in irreverence, starting with its repetitious use of a...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

Blu-ray Review: THE OPENING OF MISTY BEETHOVEN, The Porno Pygmalion, Is A Revelation In HD

Posted: 17 Feb 2013 01:00 PM PST

The 1970's were probably the most revolutionary decade of the modern era of cinema. Those ten years saw the invention of the blockbuster (Jaws), the introduction of the fan-friendly space opera (Star Wars), the emergence of the men who are, today, the grand old lads of the new Hollywood like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and others, but that's only scratching the very bare surface of what was happening cinematically. Much of the real work to enlighten America and the world was being done just below the surface.The seventies also saw the emergence of serious revolutionary art from the four corners of the world. More and more of this art was designed not only to push back against conservative values imposed by governments,...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

Berlinale 2013: Romanian Film CHILD'S POSE Takes Top Festival Prize

Posted: 17 Feb 2013 06:00 AM PST

Berlinale 2013 Jury president Wong Kar-wai and jurors Susanne Bier, Ellen Kuras, Tim Robbins, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Shirin Neshat and Andreas Dresen have awarded the Romanian drama Child's Pose with the Golden Bear for best film. The film is an engrossing, well-acted and solid overall realist portrait of one bourgeoise woman's crusade to get her son's name cleared for accidentally hitting and killing a child while driving recklessly. There's little to fault about it, but personally, I thought that Gloria and Camille Claudel 1915 both aimed a little higher and succeeded even more admirably. But besides the jury awards, there are several dozen additional special mentions and prizes doled out by audiences and independent juries. Take a look at all of them below, and feel...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

China Beat: Re-Tooling Hollywood For The Mainland

Posted: 17 Feb 2013 05:00 AM PST

Kung Hei Fat Choi. As we welcome in the Year of the Snake, it seems the perfect opportunity to kick start China Beat and bring back my regular reports on the industry and box office in Mainland China. Last time I filed one of these, Rian Johnson's Looper was at the centre of some box office confusion, with some poor sap putting the decimal point in the wrong place and declaring the film a monumental triumph in China. While it turned out the film only did modest business, the film does prove relevant once again, as the version released in Chinese theatres was substantially different to the version of Looper seen by the rest of the world.Earlier in the week, the Los Angeles Times reported...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]