Horror Actressing: Kim Ok-bin in "Thirst" (2009)

by Jason Adams

What's funny looking back on Kim Ok-bin's work in Park Chan-wook's 2009 vampire film Thirst for the first time in a decade is just how brief her character Tae-ju's time as a bloodsucker actually is in the movie. Over the past ten years my memory had turned Thirst into the "Tae-ju Supernatural Vampire Olympics" -- she had opened her maw and swallowed the whole movie whole. And yet in actuality Tae-ju doesn't get turned into a vampire until the last half hour of an over-two-hour film -- her character is there, very much there, but Song Kang-ho's conflicted priest Sang-hyun is the main course. Until he isn't.

Kim is just so damn good that I think any of us would be excused for having handed her the stage. Even before she's turned, as the saying goes, she's already nibbled down the film's edges until it's become Her Shaped...

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The New Classics: Frances Ha

By Michael Cusumano  

Scene: Paris
Frances is a dancer by trade, but I think it’s fair to say that throughout Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha her real art is poor decision making. In that regard, her impromptu trip to Paris is her masterpiece. 

The spontaneous journey to France is the quintessential youthful indulgence. “Oh to be so young and free that I could drop everything and jet off to Europe.” Unfortunately for Frances, Baumbach’s films delight in subverting such self-consciously grand gestures. In Kicking and Screaming a character engages in the classic end-of-movie race to the airport only to find he can’t get a last minute ticket. When the cashier offers him a ticket for the following day he deflates and declines. The moment will have passed by then. Frances doesn’t merely run to the airport, she flies to the other side of the Atlantic. As such, her antics earn her an even more brutal dismantling...

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Review: Sarandon and company in "Blackbird"

by Juan Carlos Ojano

After premiering last year in the Roger Michell’s Blackbird starring Oscar winners Susan Sarandon and Kate Winslet alongside Sam Neill, Mia Wasikowska, and Lindsay Duncan, has arrived on VOD. The film tells the story of a family coming together to celebrate its dying matriarch Lily (Sarandon) before she ends her life. That is not a spoiler; the entire film unfolds from that premise...

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Beauty Break: International Coffee Day

Happy International Coffee Day! How do you take yours? If you need inspiration, here's a gallery after the jump of beautiful stars having a cup of joe...

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Showbiz History: Hamlet's Wins, Natalie's Child, and Judy's Premiere x 3

12 random things that happened on this day, September 29th, in showbiz history...

Natalie Wood gave birth to her first child on this day in 1970

1940 Strike Up the Band starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland is a hit in its opening weekend. One of my favorite old review blurbs ever is for Judy Garland calling her "oomphy". Hee.

1948 Hamlet has its american premiere in New York City. 176 days later it wins 4 Oscars: Picture, Actor, Art Direction... and Costume Design...

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