Doc Corner: 'Mavis!' and 'We Are X' Spotlight the Music

Every year there are so many documentaries about musicians that it sometimes feels as if we will surely run out. We of course all know that will never be the case, and in this landscape of film distribution, documentaries like these are the easiest sells so it’s hard to blame the makers. In 2016 alone we’ve see films about The Beatles, Nick Cave, Oasis, Frank Zappa, and the late Sharon Jones. Jim Jarmusch has released Gimme Danger about Iggy Pop and The Stooges and there has even been yet another Rolling Stones doc called The Rolling Stones Ole Ole Ole!: A Trip Across Latin America that I never knew existed.

This week we’re looking at two more that are on this year’s Oscar eligibility long-list and which focus on polar-opposite worlds of music: rhythm and blues icon Mavis Staple and Japanese hard-rock phenomenon X.

Click to read more ...

27 Films Eligible for Best Animated Feature

[UPDATE: Variety shared a list of 22 a week ago jumping the gun a week ago and we followed suit. Now we've updated on 11/11 with 5 additional titles since the actual list has been revealed]

Twenty-seven films are officially in the mix for Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature. Since the threshold to trigger a five wide shortlist in the category is only sixteen, we'll get five nominees this year. As per usual in this category the US will dominate but one or two of the nominations will surely be nabbed by formidable and lower profile threats from France and/or Japan. The list and a few notes follow...

Click to read more ...

Review: South Korea's Oscar Submission "The Age of Shadows"

Tim here. Age of Shadows is currently making its way around the U.S. art house circuit, giving Americans our change to catch up with one of the biggest hits at the Korean box office this year. It's a historical spy thriller, set during a period of time that I suspect most of us English-speakers haven't thought about much, or at all: the stretch of time from 1910 to the end of World War II when Korea was occupied by Japan.

The film, set in the 1920s, takes as its subject the Korean resistance to Japanese rule, and follows the career of a double agent named Lee Jung-chool (Korean superstar Song Kang-ho), a Korean-born police captain operating under strict Japanese control...

Click to read more ...

Oscar Horrors: Japan's Ghost Story "Kwaidan"

Boo! It's "Oscar Horrors". Each evening we'll look back on a horror-connected nomination until Halloween. Here's Dancin' Dan on a spooky Japanese beauty...

Have any of you ever seen Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan? I wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't. Even among Japanese films, it's not much talked about today, though it deserves to be. Kwaidan is a rarity in so many ways - an omnibus film made by one director, a truly artful horror film, a groundbreaking work of art. It was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film in 1965 (losing to the heartrending The Shop on Main Street from Czechoslovakia), and it's a bit hard to imagine it getting that far today, even with its arthouse bona fides like a Special Jury Prize at Cannes...

Click to read more ...