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David S.E. Zapanta Oct 2, 2017

Fear The Walking Dead delivers a strong episode that gives The Walking Dead a serious run for its money...

This review contains spoilers.

See related Denis Villeneuve interview: Sicario, Kurosawa, sci-fi, ugly poetry Dune reboot: Denis Villeneuve confirmed to direct

3.13 This Land Is Your Land

Well, it was only a matter of time before the ranch fell, but did anyone expect it to happen quite in this fashion, or so soon before the end of the season? Still, Jeremiah Otto’s legacy doesn’t go out with a whimper—resulting in one of the strongest episodes of the season, if not the entire show itself. A couple of minor points bog things down here or there, but overall, This Land Is Your Land vaults Fear The Walking Dead onto the same level as The Walking Dead. And a lot of the credit for this goes...

But… but we hadn’t even gotten to say, “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here” yet. Nonetheless, Sunday’s Fear the Walking Dead found another member of our long-splintered group bailing on the reunion that showrunner Dave Erickson promised was coming. Can’t say we blamed the character in question for pulling an Ofelia and striking out on their own. But it was still kind of a bummer. Read on, and we’ll go over how we got from here to… well, not here anymore.

‘You’LL Be In Heaven Before Ya Get There’ | Picking up where “Brother’s Keeper” left off — R.

The boxes of toy princess products and the bedrooms of children across this nation are covered in resplendent, striding unicorns.

Well, according to real history, when it comes to unicorns, the fantasy world got the horn right and that’s about it.

New research published in the American Journal of Applied Science by at team at Tomsk State University claims that unicorns were real and once trotting across our Earth alongside humans. They just looked a bit different than fairy tales have let on.

Meet the Elasmotheriu, sibiricum also known as the Siberian unicorn.

This land mammal was first discovered decades ago,...

Open City Documentary Festival has announced the full programme of its seventh edition, which will open with Taste Of Cement on September 5 and close with Purge This Land on September 10.

The line-up includes 36 UK premieres (21 features and 15 shorts) and events will span 13 London venues.

Michael Stewart, Founder of Open City Docs, said: "We’re excited to reveal the details of this year’s eclectic programme. We are living through a time when a cloud of unknowing seems to have enveloped us.

"The role of documentary cinema is not, in our view, to provide answers, rather, to hold an eye askance at the shape of the world and to show us things we do not normally see. Pick a film from each day of the festival and I trust you will find six diverse visions of what it means to be a human today."

In...

Sergei Eisenstein. Leni Riefenstahl. Michael Moore. Steve Bannon? At an event entitled “Alternative Facts: The Steve Bannon Reality Show” on the opening weekend of the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival (Cph:dox), writer and host Lars Trier Mogensen argued that Trump’s chief strategist might just be the most influential filmmaker among these titans of polemical documentary. A year ago, that claim might have seemed far-fetched.

Back then, the young crowd now packed into the “Social Cinema,” a performance hall in festival’s new center Kunsthal Charlottenborg, had likely never heard of this alt-right auteur. Lounging on stylish sofas, they were willing to sit through nine tedious Bannon trailers and a two-hour analysis of populism and propaganda with a Princeton professor, political scientist Jan-Werner Müller, and artist Christian von Borries. Given Bannon’s disdain for factual integrity, it would be hard to claim that his 90-minute political screeds could even be called documentaries.

The documentary festival is also launching a fifth competition strand at its 2017 edition.

Scandi documentary festival Cph:dox (Mar 16-26) has unveiled the films in its usual four competitions as well as introducing a new competition section.

World premieres announced across the competitions include Bridgend director Jeppe Rønde’s The John Dalli Mystery [pictured], a Kafkaesque story with Mikael Bertelsen and Mads Brügger; Do Donkeys Act?, a film about unruly donkeys narrated by Willem Dafoe; Accidental Anarchist, about the British former diplomat Carne Ross who has transformed into an anarchist; Sigrid Dyekjær’s A Modern Man, about violinist and model Charlie Siem; and Ben Rivers’ Urth, about the failed ecosystem Biosphere 2.0 in Arizona.

Read Screen’s festival preview here.

Other high profile documentaries to screen at the event include Matthew Heineman’s Cartel Land follow up City Of Ghosts.

New competition Next:wave is launched to highlight international emerging talents “who have the courage to take chances and stand out.”

The...

It is a pet peeve of mine when people argue that a work of artistic cinema or literature cannot be placed in the horror genre. Horror is a spectrum—on one end we have cheesy, exploitative entertainment; on the other, tales that evoke harrowing combinations of repulsion, disgust, and despair. Though some may disagree, I believe Cormac McCarthy’s mind-meltingly disturbing Blood Meridian belongs on the latter end of the horror scale, and for insidious reasons.

The plot for Blood Meridian could easily have been turned into an action-Western had another author taken it on. We start with The Kid as he travels across the American Southwest, eventually joining a band of mercenaries who set out to destroy an Apache tribe for money. But this is no simple odyssey. It is a vision of sun-bleached, blood-stained hell. McCarthy uses the fundamentals of Western tropes to create a bleak and honest vision of American conquest.

To quote American statesman Ron Swanson, "Awards are stupid, but they'd be less stupid if they went to the right person." The Oscars are far from a referendum on a movie's worth, and are much more reflective of the climate of Hollywood opinion than the actual quality of the nominees. But in that respect, we can still learn a lot about how the people making movies see themselves by looking at the big picture of Best Picture.

Anyone who's been playing armchair industry-insider over the past few weeks got a...

At the moment Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States on the Capitol steps on Friday, protesters along on the National Mall let loose with boos, others screamed, “Not my president!”

And the clouds opened, rain poured down and those Trump supporters and Washington dignitaries sitting in witness to Trump’s oath of office grabbed for their plastic ponchos.

Even as Trump spoke in his inaugural address of “one nation,” a woman carrying a large pink sign ran up to the massive inaugural podium on the Capitol steps and yelled, “Donald Trump is an illegitimate president!

I used to play the guitar. I never had any really talent for it, and soon put it away. But there was one song that I did learn. I did a pretty good job with it, too.

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York Island,

From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf stream waters,

This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking that ribbon of highway

And saw above me that endless skyway,

And saw below me the golden valley, I said:

This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and rambled and followed my footsteps

To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts,

And all around me, a voice was sounding:

This land was made for you and me.

Legendary folk artist and social commentator Woody Guthrie wrote This Land Is Your Land in...

There’s one thing you can always count on from Queen Sugar…that the impact will be surprising, emotional, or make you see things from a different perspective.

On Queen Sugar Season 1 Episode 10, we got all of the above, and I’m still feeling the impact of the final revelation.

I expected the mill to try and gauge Charley. The farm is desperate for a mill contract and Charley is completely new to this business. Then there was Jacob Boudreaux who always stood just a little too close and looked at her with just enough of a leer to make my skin crawl.

Every moment that Charley spent with Jacob had me waiting for the other shoe to drop…and then it did.

When he offered $4 million for the farm, I thought Charley would jump at the chance, but this woman isn’t stupid and the generous offer sent off alarm bells.

Clearly unaware that there’s no surer way to jinx yourself than to announce that you are invincible, the devil declared in Salem’s Season 3 premiere Wednesday that, with Mary pushing up daisies, no one could stop the “great terror” that he planned to unleash. So, of course, the next thing we knew, Tituba and the Essex witches were doing their damnedest to resurrect the late Mrs. Sibley. Did they succeed? You can probably guess. But read on, anyway, and we’ll go over the developments that stirred the cauldron, then you can grade the hour in the poll below.

"Steady as a preacher, free as a weed," goes the Lady Antebellum tune that gives filmmaker Andrea Arnold's teenage-island-of-misfit-toys road movie its title. You can see why those two things might be aspirations for Star (newcomer Sasha Lane), the teenager we first meet digging through the trash for food, grubby kid siblings in tow. Stability and liberation aren't things she comes across a lot. Her life is a wreck, her residence is a parody of Southern trashiness (ants on the counter, handsy stepdad in the living room, Dixie flag...

This was the best installment of the season yet.

American Horror Story Season 6 Episode 3 was a great, suspenseful hour of the series. It also managed to introduce a delightful new character – betting Cricket will go down in Ahs history as a fan favorite – and clarified a huge amount of backstory regarding the "principal" ghost, the Butcher.

One criticism to address right off the bat: "Chapter 3" was a major info dump. Like, it was so noticeably obvious that a character just went ahead and called it as it was.

The spirits downloaded to me like a paranormal zip drive.

Cricket Permalink: The spirits downloaded to me like a paranormal zip drive. Added: September 28, 2016

Zip file, indeed.

Cricket was literally traipsing through the woods when the ghosts took it upon themselves to telepathically transpose the 411 about their history, motives, and plans? Uh-huh. Right. Gotcha.

Despite how unimaginatively the exposition was laid out,...

The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature where I talk about books I got over the last week–old or new, bought or received for review consideration (usually unsolicited). Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, and places where you can find more information on the book are included.

Both of this week’s books sound amazing, but first, here’s what happened last week in case you missed it!

Julie Czerneda stopped by as part of the Futures Past Tour celebrating the upcoming release of the second Reunification book, The Gate to Futures Past. She shared the story of her recent move while in the midst of book deadlines, and there’s also a giveaway—I’m giving away two...

[caption id="attachment_47952" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Photo Credit: Charles Sykes/AP. (L to R) John C. McGinley, Hank Azaria, and Seth Meyers./caption]

At the Upfront presentation, IFC announced it has eight new comedies in development. The projects hail from talent including Bryan Cranston, Steven Weber, Allison Anders, Above Average, and Sharon Horgan. These projects join previously announced development series Jon Benjamin’s 100 Erotic Nights and The Jim Norton Project (working title).

The new comedy TV shows in development at IFC are: Todd Barth Can Help You, Canterbury Tales, Detective Lady, How to Rig an Election, Grand Lake, Laughs in Translation, Living With Yourself, and This Land Is Ours.

Read More…...

An Outpost of Progress“Shadow,” said he,“Where can it be –This land of Eldorado?” —Edgar Allan Poe, “Eldorado”, 1849While critics mine film festivals for hidden or sometimes unattainable gems, a parallel quest for an El Dorado can be seen as a thematic undercurrent within the larger focus of the Berlin International Film Festival’s Forum section on migration. This quest is especially apparent in the gold mines of the Peruvian Andes in Salomé Lamas’ Eldorado Xxi and the jade mines of northern Myanmar in Midi Z’s City of Jade. Set in the same war-torn region as the latter film, Wang Bing’s Ta'ang follows people from the eponymous minority group seeking safer shelter across the Chinese border. In An Outpost of Progress and competition film Letters from War, the Portuguese filmmakers Hugo Vieira da Silva and Ivo M. Ferreira deal explicitly with the colonial connotations of the notion of El Dorado.

"Ixcanul" is Guatemala's Official Submission in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 88th Academy Awards. Isa: Film Factory Entertainment. U.S. Distributor: Kino Lorber

Ingrained millenary practices and forbidding modern concerns unfold simultaneously against the backdrop of dark volcanic stone, colorful attires, rural duties, and perpetual mysticism, in a film that’s as aesthetically exquisite as it’s gruelingly bold in its quest to be fueled by unrestrained reality. Jayro Bustamante’s “Ixcanul” is an ethereal masterpiece whose breathtaking beauty is layered with sociopolitical undertones while always honoring the indigenous people at its center and, more specifically, its women's unwavering and restrained strength waiting to be unleashed.

This profoundly affecting story follows Maria (María Mercedes Coroy), a Kaqchikel Mayan young woman, who lives with her parents near in the outskirts of a volcano near a coffee plantation. This land, its scent, its colors, and its people are all she’s ever known and all she’s ever wanted until now. When an arranged marriage threatens to put an end to her apparent freedom, Maria considers the possibility of venturing far from home and seeing what’s beyond the mountains, but her naïve eagerness to escape will place her in the crossfire between romantic betrayal, dangerous rituals, and the unwelcoming urban world.

Bustamante juxtaposes Maria’s unnerving coming of age story with her mother Juana’s (María Telón) efforts to salvage the family’s future by abiding by tradition. Within these two parallel experiences there is an urgency to bring attention to the vulnerability of Guatemala’s Mayan population who are rarely given a voice.“Ixcanul” is a fierce artistic triumph coated with complexity, subtle poetry, and a delicate ability for capturing its characters’ introspective dilemmas through its imagery. Such showcase of attuned sensibilities is expected from a seasoned auteur at the peak of his creative powers, but Jayro Bustamante has accomplished just that with his astonishing debut feature. No wonder “Ixcanul” is Guatemala’s most acclaimed film ever and the winner of numerous international awards including the Alfred Bauer Award at the Berlin International Film festival.

We talked to Bustamante about the his relationship to the Mayan community where the film was shot, the male chauvinist societies that hinder women’s growth, his homeland’s institutionalize discrimination against indigenous people, and the incomparable visual allure of “Ixcanul.”

Kino Lorber will release "Ixcanul" in early 2016.

Carlos Aguilar: The film focuses on these two women who are every strong in distinct ways; however, they are faced with extraordinary circumstances that test that strength. How did the idea to write a story about these two connected characters come about?

Jayro Bustamante: The idea was born from a real story, the story of a real Maria. What’s really inspired in her life is the third act, the problematic situation with the baby. Based on that I started to create this fictional screenplay but always grounded on real things that I had seen in Guatemala. I grew up in that region and I asked myself, “How does one become the perfect victim?” just as Maria is in the film. That’s how I started building this story. I had two very clear themes I wanted to work on: one was loss and the other maternity. In order for the loss and that sort of prohibition to become a mother that is imposed on Maria to feel as powerful as they do in the movie, I needed to construct a kind of maternity that was beautiful, without idealizing it but highlighting it. That’s why I created the relationship between these two women. Throughout the process I always worked with the actresses as if the two characters were one. We always thought that Maria, if she had been given the chance, would have become Juana. She would have been just as strong as her. That’s how we worked on these two characters.

While Juana is the matriarch and often appears to be charge, she still lives in a male-driven society where her needs and desires are secondary to those of the men around. Was it important for you to depict the internal strength of these Mayan women while also being honest about the world they live in?

Jayro Bustamante: From the beginning my intention was to adhere to reality, except for the magical realist touches that I also wanted the film to have because they were very important. Magical realism doesn’t work if the real reality doesn’t exist. There is a great contradiction in male chauvinist societies, and that is that they are usually composed of matriarchal groups. A woman reigns but she always reigns in a small space that the man left for her. She reigns when the man needs someone to be in charge of things that he doesn’t want to take care of. For me that matriarchy is till is part of this male chauvinism or "machismo" and that matriarchy continues to feed it. If I’m against male chauvinism, I should also be against matriarchy because both extremes are bad and one is derived from the other.

What I really wanted to demonstrate was that there is a waste of feminine energy that happens in male chauvinist societies.To get from point A to point B, a woman has to embark on an incredible journey through everything that’s in between these two points and have a great strategy to be able to get there. This journey would be so much easier if we would let her take those steps and then with her own strength she can get wherever she wants to go. I wanted to talk about that strength and that’s why there is that parallel relationship between Maria and the volcano. There is something symbolic about it. For me, Mayan women in Guatemala today are like that volcano that rumbles and resounds but hasn’t yet erupted. Real change will happen when these women erupt and release what they have inside. That’s the metaphor we wanted to convey, the connection between these women and the volcano.

One of the greatest achievements of the film is that it refrains from observing the characters from an ethnographic perspective or with an air of exoticism. These are people. Yes, people with different traditions and experiences from what many consider normal, but they are still as human as anybody else.

Jayro Bustamante: Definitely. I never had that temptation or that perspective because I grew up there, so for me there is no difference between us. I wouldn’t do it with any other culture. That’s something I can’t understand, to think there are people that one can observe like if they were in a zoo. I don’t think that’s right. Rich cultural differences show us the diversity that exists in the world, but if you explore any of these differences you’ll see that we all have the same human feelings. That’s what allowed me to make a story that was very local but that at the same time could have certain international repercussion. I wrote a film about a woman whose problems take us into the problems of a family and that in turn takes us into the larger social problems. That’s what we wanted to do from the beginnings. That can’t be done if the feelings that belong to the universal language are not present.

Indigenous languages are rarely used in modern cinema and because of this indigenous people have in a sense become both faceless and voiceless. How crucial was it for you to make the film in the Mayan language?

Jayro Bustamante: It was very important. Perhaps there is a bit of melancholy because as I said I grew up there. I had a nanny that taught me a lot of things, a lot of traditional stories, and who also taught me that language when I was a young child. Maybe this melancholy is there, but above all this, language is the clearest example to demonstrate how a large portion of the country lives without the tools to grow and evolve in its own country. They are foreigners in their own country, but they are the majority. Today statistics say that these people represent only 40% of the Guatemalan population, but that’s a lie. Discrimination is so strong that if you are Mayan and during the census or on a survey they ask you, “Are you Mayan?” you prefer to say that you are mestizo or mixed because you are ashamed to say who you really are. The social fracture is so big that in Guatemala the worse insult you can tell somebody is calling him or her an “Indian.”

Something similar happens in Mexico, where I'm from. People tend to associate indigenous languages, features, or traditions with negative ideas or as something that's less sophisticated or worthy, which is terrible.

Jayro Bustamante: When you think about it, if the worse insult is to be who you are, even if you are the majority in a country, it means that the majority of the country has a terrible complex regarding their identity. If you are trying to improve yourself or overcome this circumstances, these ideas make very complicated emotionally. There are many themes that we touch on in the film that are derived from discrimination. When I travel abroad I get asked a lot, “Why does Pepe want to go to the Us?” Maybe you and I can understand why this young man wants to leave. The reason why he wants to leave is obvious to those of us who are from countries like Mexico and Guatemala. He earns one dollar a day in Guatemala and in the U.S. he could earn, let’s say, $15 an hour. It’s true that in the U.S. he could be discriminated for being Latino, but he is already being discriminated in Guatemala, his own country, because his Mayan. He has a lot more to win than to lose by leaving. That’s very sad.

Tell me about the process of finding your actors and how challenging this was. You evidently needed people who were Mayan and who spoke the language, but also that could pull off the intricate performances the film required.

Jayro Bustamante: That was the most beautiful part of the process, to work with the actors. I started hosting workshops, more regarding social issues, in the place were I grew up. I grew up in the outskirts of the Atitlán Lake in the highlands, which is a volcanic lake. It’s about two hours away from the location where we were going to shoot. I was accompanied by a social worker. The idea was to open spaces to discuss the problems facing the Mayan community so that the social worker could hear their concerns and follow up. This would help me enrich the screenplay and find the actresses there.

In a way this also reflected the reality of the country, although there were many women that were interested in working with me, there were also many of them that didn’t want to be part of the project. I thought all of them would want to, but I was wrong, a lot of them didn’t. Those that I wanted to work with and that wanted to work with me had another problem. Their husbands, their brother, their sons, or any other male in charge wouldn’t give them permissions to participate. They couldn’t come be part of the project because they had to stay home to serve them.

While this was happening and we were trying to figure things out, I met Maria Telón, who plays Juana. She is part of a street theater group. It’s a militant theater group that advocates for indigenous rights and women rights. They were putting on a play at that time, and I started following her performances from town to town. When we finally got to her community, I discovered that this community is very prosperous and very curious about the arts. I decided to stay there to do the casting. We held auditions at the local market. We set up our own stand among fruits and vegetable stands and we put up a sign that said, “Casting.” We had a camera and a notepad. Nobody came.

The next day we change the sign to, “Help Wanted,” and the entire town came. Thanks to that we were able to meet everyone in town and that’s where we cast the actors. We worked with them for threes months before filming the first scene. It was a very enriching process because besides the fact that they were Kaqchikel Mayans they had nothing in common with the characters. They live in a very prosperous society with all the basic services. Maria Mercedes is a student and Maria Telón is an actress and a saleswoman. She has a very different life form the character of the mother. Manuel Antún, the man who played Maria’s father, is a dentist, and Marvin Coroy, the guy who plays El Pepe, is a poet. We really did a lot of work to characterize this family so they could really look like a family and like they live in this very different situation.

Once you had cast them, what was your approach to eliciting the emotions you wanted from the actors. María Mercedes Coroy's performance in particular is very quiet but marvelously moving.

Jayro Bustamante: We didn’t have a particular technique. We worked a lot on trusting one another. With Maria Mercedes we worked on her confidence as a woman. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a confident woman, but we talked a lot about the strength that she had within herself. She was worried about playing a character that might falsely seem passive. It’s not that the character is passive, but on paper it might seem that way because everything is internalized. I believe this is one of the hardest types of characters to bring to life. We also worked on the power of her gaze. She allowed me to explore her personal life and her past in order to find in her own experiences emotions she could use while we were shooting. One week we decided to kiss tress. We went to a forest and we decided to kiss trees. She started kissing tress on one side of the forest and I did it in the other. In the end we ended up kissing the same one [Laughs]. It was about earning each other trust and losing all shame.

Visually the film is absolutely breathtaking. There is the natural beauty of the locations and a very evocative atmosphere throughout the entire film. How did you and your Dp, Luis Armando Arteaga, approach to the cinematography and minimalist aesthetic of the story, which is definitely a fantastic element of "Ixcanul"?

Jayro Bustamante: We’ve known each other for along time. We worked together on my last short film and we have developed other projects together. He is someone who has a vision of cinema that goes beyond that of a Dp. We did something very interesting, which was to go to a festival that’s sort of like the Cannes Film Festival for short films. It’s called Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival. We were there for a week watching all the short films. Our interest was to watch as many as possible because filmmakers are more daring when making short films. There are new technologies that they are willing to try on short films and there is less financial risk. You can watch a lot of them in a short period of time. A big part of our job was watching these short films.

After that we talked a lot about the trap that this location could be because it’s a really beautiful location. You can drop your camera by accident and the photo that’s taken is already a postcard. Of course, I’m exaggerating but it’s really that beautiful. We talked about finding that postcard-like image and getting as far away from it as possible. We wanted to stay within the characters’ intimacy. We both really wanted to shoot it on 16mm, and we couldn’t because of financial constraints, so we shot it on a digital camera. Since we shot on digital, we did a lot of work to create that grainy quality that film gives you. We used the volcano’s dust and a lot of smoke. We had someone who would create smoke for every scene. Every single scene you see in the film had smoke, in varying densities, but they all had smoke. Then we were able to do the post-production in France in one of the best studios, which was amazing.

There is a certain mysticism to the story that we see through several rituals and this community's connection to nature, and the volcano in particular. Tell me about including these otherworldly beliefs and spiritual offerings in the narrative. Why did you feel they were an important characteristic of this society?

Jayro Bustamante: All of these elements are things that I’ve seen myself or that still exist. In terms of the mysticism, for me, instead of trying to tell a spiritual story I wanted to tell a purely religious story. There is a Mayan religion today that’s a mix between Catholicism and the Mayan beliefs that remained after the Spanish empire fell. My characters live in a grave situation, one in which the only thing they do is try resolve their multiple problems. That’s why whenever a new problem arrives they act in such a tolerant manner, because they can’t add fuel to the fire. What they have to do is put it out. When you are in situations like these, normally human beings have the tendency to seek answers and hope in something bigger than them. If they were a Catholic family I would have focused on the Catholic religion. I wanted to also talk about the problem with religions. Religions are dogmas and rules represented by a leader that could lead you into the wrong path. This was the message. It was more of a religious message than a spiritual or Mayan message.

Regarding the rituals you see in the film, they are all based on rituals that are still being practiced today. Even us, before shooting we would lit a sacred fire to ask the volcano for permission. When we shot in the coffee plantation we also had a sacred fire there. It’s a very nice thing because you lit a fire and the ceremony lasts till the fire extinguishes by itself. It’s the fire that tells you when the ceremony is over. In the meantime you are sharing energy with the people around you. You tell the earth what you are going to be doing there. It’s about communicating and about the energy flow. When the fire is out you end up way too relaxed, so we started substituting the sacred fires for the yoga exercises. [Laughs]. It’s very interesting and it’s something that’s still done all the time.

In the final act you take your characters out of their community and expose them to urban Guatemala. In that moment these two worlds seem to clash and how little their know about each other.

Jayro Bustamante: The film was constructed in crescendo from the beginning. I was lucky enough to conceive the ending very early on in the process and because of this I started working backwards towards the beginning of the story. Instead of wanting to say, “Oh poor indigenous people” or “Wow these westerners are terrible,” what I wanted to talk about was the lack of social tools they have and how in this country a large segment of the population is left without basic services. Well, in Guatemala today even people who have all the tools and resources can still be left without the basic services because politicians stole all the money and nothing is working. But for indigenous people things are even worse. They are even lower in the list of the government’s priorities. That was the intention behind taking the characters out of their environment and into the city.

Has the film started a conversation or a dialogue regarding about discrimination and other issues currently affecting this segment of the population and Guatemala in general?

Jayro Bustamante: Yes, I’m really amazed about it. When I started speaking to the press in Guatemala about the film, I said that Guatemalans needed to learn how to watch films because it appeared to me that people were unable to analyze films. When “Ixcanul” opened in movie theaters it became a small success considering that it’s an art house film. We were in theaters for 7 weeks, which was great. After that, I found a lot reviews and articles about the film written by Guatemalans. These were profound analyzes and very well written.

Some were very self-critical regarding the country’s situation. I realized that I was wrong, Guatemalans are able to do these analyzes, but they get to see very few films that warrant it. You are not going to write a profound analysis about “Fast and Furious,” there is not much to analyze there. You watch it and you talk about it candidly, but you don’t spend much time thinking about an American blockbuster. That was very surprising and very gratifying for me, to see that people in Guatemala wrote criticism and self-analyze the country through the film. Soon after the film’s premier one of the most important newspapers in Guatemala published an article entitled, Ixcanul is a Slap on Guatemala’s Face. The journalist wrote about the country’s current social situation in relation to the film.

When you are in another country does it surprise you that perhaps your film is the first contact people abroad have with Guatemala as a country and even more so with its cinema? "Ixcanul" is by far the most talked about and the most internationally acclaimed Guatemalan film ever.

Jayro Bustamante: No, it doesn’t surprise me that we are not a very well known country or that we are country only known because of the difficult political situations we are going through. It doesn’t surprise me because we as a country haven’t done anything for this to be different. Everything we’ve done prompted people outside to see us just the way they see us. It’s what we deserve in a sense. We are also a very small country. When it comes to tourism we are very interesting country, but we are very small country that has been in an arm conflict for so long that obviously tourists don’t come. Then there are all the problems with the gangs, cartels, kidnappings, and all the other bad things you can think of.

It’s understandable that we are not well known. At first I believed that the point of entry could be the Mayan civilization because I thought that would be well known abroad, and I’ve realized that not so much. There is still a lot to teach and share about Guatemala with the world, which is good. Something that I still find especially surprising is this idea that the Mayans disappeared or vanished. It’s crazy to me that people still believe that, but I can understand why. It’s very interesting to me that people around world, even in places as far as Japan, connect with the emotions that the film exudes. That’s the nicest compliment. I’ve also had people in other countries tell me, “You are the firs Guatemalan I’ve ever seen.” I tell them, “Touch me! I’m real” [Laughs].

Kino Lorber will release "Ixcanul" in early 2016.

Was it just us, or was this a really sad year for Super Bowl commercials? Children died, "Cat's in the Cradle" was played, and it was a real bummer of a night, generally. How sad was it? "Stay with Me" on repeat and red wine sad. Liking your ex's old vacation pictures alone on a Friday night sad. Requiem for a Dream scored to Bright Eyes sad. And because we're nothing if not sad-pletists (that's sadness completists), here's all of the saddest Super Bowl commercials in one place. Ready your hankies. (And look, some of the commercials addressed serious issues.

Was it just us, or was this a really sad year for Super Bowl commercials? Children died, "Cat's in the Cradle" was played, and it was a real bummer of a night, generally. How sad was it? "Stay with Me" on repeat and red wine sad. Liking your ex's old vacation pictures alone on a Friday night sad. Requiem for a Dream scored to Bright Eyes sad. And because we're nothing if not sad-pletists (that's sadness completists), here's all of the saddest Super Bowl commercials in one place. Ready your hankies. (And look, some of the commercials addressed serious issues.

Say what you will about Americans, but we have a lot of pride for our own country. But then you also have to say that some Americans hate when stuff associated with the country we love so much is combined with non-American stuff. And that is why some people on Twitter are very angry at Jeep.  Jeep's beautiful Super Bowl ad featured the patriotic folk hit "This Land Is Our Land," and at first the footage that played during the song was American scenery, like our beaches and our forests. It was glorious. And then we started seeing gorgeous imagery from around the world, like the Great Wall of China and Brazil's Christ the Redeemer, still while the song played. The tagline? "The World...

Titles include the world premiere of thriller I’m Dead and the new feature from Egyptian director Daoud Abdel Sayed.

The Dubai International Film Festival (Dec 10-17) has unveiled the competition line-up for the Muhr Feature Awards.

The awards, first launched in 2006, aims to recognise artistic excellence from within the Arab world.

Titles include:

Dolphins, Waleed Al ShehhiI’m Dead, Yacine Mohamed BenelhadjI am Nujoom, Aged 10 and Divorced, Khadija Al-SalamiThe Sea is Behind, Hicham LasriIn This Land Lay Graves of Mine, Reine MitriA Letter to the King, Hisham ZamanThe Narrow Frame of Midnight, Tala HadidThe Council,Yahya AlabdallahOut of the Ordinary, Daoud Abdel Sayed

Dolphins is directed by Waleed Al Shehhi, who secured funding from Diff’s post-production fund Enjaaz in cooperation with Watani and Filmi before going on to win the Iwc Filmmaker Award during the 2013 edition of the Festival.

In its world premiere, Dolphins follows the intertwined stories of three people within a 24 hour period...

Chances are if you’ve seen a movie in the last 10 years, you’ve heard a Hans Zimmer score. Zimmer, a German composer and music producer, is responsible for over 100 scores since the mid-1980s. He’s one of the most popular composers today, scoring for major directors like Ron Howard, Christopher Nolan, and Guy Ritchie. Most recently, Zimmer garnered major attention for his work on the 12 Years a Slave score. With the depth and breadth of his work over the last 30 or so years, it’s easy to feel a little overwhelmed. If you’re looking for a grand overview, however, of Zimmer’s best work in the last 10 years or so, here are a handful of scores you’re going to want to check out.

****

Inception

The Inception soundtrack was one of the most talked-about scores in 2010. Its “Bwaaaah” theme became the running joke of several internet videos...

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-ca), Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, will present the Top Ten List on the Late Show With David Letterman on Election Day, Tuesday, November 5, CBS announced this morning. This will be Pelosi’s second visit to the late night program. She last visited the broadcast seven years ago on August 22, 2006, ahead of the fall elections that made her the first female Speaker of the House. That same night, Kathy Griffin is booked to be on the show, as is Bruce McCall, who co-authored with Letterman the book This Land Was Made For You And Me (But Mostly Me): Billionaires In The Wild, which will be released Tuesday; and a performance from musical guest J. Cole. Pelosi is known, among other things, as being game to make the rounds on daytime and nighttime talk shows including The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Rachael Ray, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,...

The second part of our set visit report from The Conjuring is now live (or should we say returned from the dead?) and waiting for you to ingest! In case you missed it, check out Part 1 here!

Warning: There Are Mild Spoilers Ahead

As written previously, Lili Taylor’s character, Caroline, seems to endure some hands-on experiences with Bathsheba, the witch spirit. Taylor expands on the film’s story and her character’s place in it. “She’s really scared for a lot of it, and then she’s like ferocious for the last part of it.” We’d been tipped off there is a bit of possession in the mix as well. Taylor explains her process for these scenes: “You know, that’s other worldly, is what it is. I mean, and if you’ve ever seen people who are possessed, really, really possessed, it’s almost like they...

Blu-ray Review

Jack the Giant Slayer

Directed by: Bryan Singer

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Eleanor Tomlinson, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci

Running Time: 1 hr 52 mins

Rating: PG-13

Due Out: June 11, 2013

Own Jack the Giant Slayer on Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD and Digital Download 6/11

Plot: Yes, it’s that Jack, the one with a beanstalk. Jack (Hoult) finds himself in the middle of the war between humans and giants. He’s trying to save the princess (Tomlinson), while the giants are trying to take over the world.

Who’S It For? If you like big adventure films, with good looking special effects, this fast-paced film will provide just enough entertainment.

Movie:

The pieces of this movie puzzle don’t exactly fit together, which makes it so odd that I had a pretty good time watching Jack the Giant Slayer. While I never fell in love with Jack, or the object of his affection,...

Jack the Giant Slayer

Directed by: Bryan Singer

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Eleanor Tomlinson, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci

Running Time: 1 hr 52 mins

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: March 1, 2013

Plot: Yes, it’s that Jack, the one with a beanstalk. Jack (Hoult) finds himself in the middle of the war between humans and giants. He’s trying to save the princess (Tomlinson), while the giants are trying to take over the world.

Who’S It For? If you like big adventure films, with good looking special effects, this fast-paced film will provide just enough entertainment.

Overall

The pieces of this movie puzzle don’t exactly fit together, which makes it so odd that I had a pretty good time watching Jack the Giant Slayer. While I never fell in love with Jack, or the object of his affection, Isabelle, there’s still enough to like. I never had a pulse on which villain I should care about,...

Google is celebrating July 4th and American independence with a new animated Doodle, viewable only in the United States. The search engine replaced its official logo on its homepage with a star-spangled logo formed from an acoustic guitar and the words “This Land Was made for You and Me.” The words come from lyrics in the popular Woody Guthrie folk song, “This Land Is My Land.” Under the patriotic Doodle, which is in America’s national red, white and blue colors, Google users will see the search engine’s own declaration of digital independence. The declaration reads “Celebrate freedom. Support a free and open Internet.” When users click on the declaration’s hyperlink, [ Read More ]...

One of the brilliant moves that Stan Lee made in the early issues of The Avengers was to bring Captain America from the 40s into what was then the modern day. He had Cap frozen in ice from the end of WWII until he was thawed out. Cap hadn’t aged, Stan didn’t bring a new guy into the costume, this was the same Steve Rogers and he became a man out of time. A hero of one era moved to a time when just about everyone he knew was dead. And the world as he knew it was gone.

They repeated that idea in the Captain America movie and picked up on it in this year’s Avengers movie blockbuster. I think that it’s Nick Fury who notes that, for Cap, World War II was not decades ago – it was just a few weeks. The society, for good and bad,...

Austin -- For a man with so many famous friends, it's a wonder that Bruce Springsteen hasn't taken advantage of the talent saturation at the South By Southwest Music Conference before. The Boss not only delivered the festival's keynote address Thursday day, but performed for just shy of two-and-a-half hours with his E Street Band at night, along with a few pals from his collection. Arcade Fire, Alejandro Escovedo, Jimmy Cliff, Tom Morello, Joe Ely, Eric Burdon and more all took the stage at Acl Live, most notably and abundantly on the Boss' frequent cover and closer "This Land Is Your...

There are probably only a handful of film composers that can be listed as legends – composers who have in some way changed the sound of cinema through innovation and creativity, and in their wake influenced up and coming composers, and have at some point been imitated or blatantly ripped off. I would go so far as to place Hans Zimmer very high on that list. For the last few decades, Zimmer has made a name for himself by “coloring outside of the lines”, as it were. From his humble beginnings of sharing writing duties for television and film, to the turning point in his career when he won his first Academy Award nomination for Rain Man, Academy Award, Golden Globe and two Grammy wins for The Lion King, and numerous other nominations and wins, including another Golden Globe win for Gladiator and two additional Grammys. His unique blend of electronic...

There has been some discussion on our Forums regarding Terra Nova’s actual, physical location: the earliest descriptions put out by the network said that Terra Nova’s colony would be located on Pangaea (which means, in Greek, “whole earth” or “entire earth”), a “super continent” that once comprised all the landmasses on our planet.

That Pangaea reference, however, has been revised, in the interest of retaining some semblance of scientific validity and credibility. A super continent has more than one “continental core,” or craton. Before you dismiss this as something only relevant to ancient prehistory, did you know that Eurasia technically qualifies as a super continent?

One other interesting fact that most people don’t know is that Pangaea wasn’t the first super continent—before it came at least five super-continents, with exotic names such as Vaabara, Rodinia, and Kenorland. Apparently, the drift and clustering of land on our planet is cyclic,...

Many a brand, whether personal or business, would die a happy death to have a video go viral with over 500,000 views. Even better would be to speak with the creator of a video sensation that did just that in only 12 days since it was uploaded to YouTube.

Jim Meskimen is an actor, comedian and impersonator with a tight and loyal fan base. Yet, the mainstream public would likely look you in the eye with the look of a deer about to be run over if you asked, "Who is Jim Meskimen?"I've had the pleasure of knowing Jim as a friend for almost three decades, so Jim agreed to share with Fast Company how he became one of those creators of a killer viral video--and how you can do the same. Jim also happens to be the guy behind all the voices of the viral Jibjab hit, This Land, and...

Yesterday, the Canadian Academy released its list of nominees for the 26th Gemini Awards, the Canadian equivalent of the Emmy Awards.

Best Animated Program or Series

* Glenn Martin Dds

* Hot Wheels - Battle Force Five

* Jimmy Two Shoes

* Kids vs. Kat

* March of the Dinosaurs

Best Children's or Youth Fiction Program or Series

* Anash and the Legacy of the Sun-Rock

* Degrassi: The Next Generation

* How to be Indie

* That's So Weird

* Vacation with Derek

Best Children's or Youth Non-Fiction Program Series

* Artzooka!

* In Real Life

* Spelling Night in Canada: Canspell 2011

* Survive This

* TVOKids - Mark's Moments

Best Comedy Program or Series

* This Hour Has 22 Minutes

* Call Me Fitz

* Good Dog

* Halifax Comedy Fest 2010

* Living in Your Car

* Rick Mercer Report

Best Dramatic Mini-Series or TV Movie

* Fakers

* The Kennedys

* My Babysitter's a Vampire.

* The Pillars of the Earth

* Sleepyhead

Best Dramatic Series

* The Borgias

* Endgame

* Flashpoint

* Skins

* The Tudors...

Welcome to round 2 of Setup Squad, Logo’s dating docu-reality show, which is like a cross between Intervention for hopeless singles and Fight Club for the staff.

As the funky bunch sits at the firm’s conference table, Renee introduces the next two clients. First is Toy, a 34-year-old woman with "a lot of personality." This isn’t the type of toy found in the teddy bear section of F.A.O. Schwartz; this is the type of toy you find in the Rockstar Games section of Gamestop, the section where you find video games where you roam the streets with an Uzi and mow people down at will.

Toy’s idea of snagging an eligible bachelor is peppering the poor bastard with questions about his dating history, willingness to get hitched, personality flaws, criminal history, medical records, oral hygiene, tax returns, willingness to be a whipping boy on a...

This land was our land... While already on VOD, iTunes, Playstations, and Xbox, Magnet continues to release cool new imagery leading up to the October 29 theatrical run of Gareth Edwards' $15k (really ???) indie love-thriller "Monsters". Inside you'll find two super cool new posters from the flick that follows a reporter who escorts a terrified American tourist back home through a Mexico filled with scary space aliens. "The breakout hit of this year's SXSW, Gareth Edwards' groundbreaking new film (also a selection at the 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival) is as much a poignant contemporary romance as it is an epic science fiction adventure. Shot with just a five person crew and a cast of two, Gareth Edwards' team traveled through Guatemala, Belize and Mexico, finding and utilizing their...

The latest poster for the film Monsters says "This Land is Our Land," from the famous Woody Guthrie folk song of the same name. The disease spreading nature of an invading, yet slightly passive force is shown in the poster's gas mask, with tentacles added for effect. This is a fantasy world created by director and writer Gareth Edwards, where the aliens rule much of Mexico and parts of Central America in a so-called infected zone.

This title has been made available by Magnet Releasing on various video-on-demand platforms including iTunes, Xbox Live and others. The film will release in theatres October 29th and this promo' piece is meant to shock you into movie seats. More info' is available on this film below, with a full list of video-on-demand platforms.

The synopsis for Monsters is here:

"Six years ago Nasa discovered the possibility of alien life within our solar system.

It is not a common thing for a festival to give an entire slot over to just a single half hour film. And it is not a common thing for a festival to bring in cast and crew and give that film the full on gala treatment. And yet that is exactly what Fantastic Fest has done with Zombie Roadkill. And they've done it for a very simple reason. Because David Green's Sam Raimi produced, Thomas Haden Church starring film - actually an edited together version of a web series due to premiere on FEARnet October 4th - is a hysterically funny tour through everything that makes splatter comedy fun distilled down into its simplest, most direct form without any of that boring stuff that people load into these things to pad the running time.

The setup is familiar. A quartet of college kids - plus one geeky younger...

When Domino signs a band it's time to listen up, because there is a real good chance they're incredible. The label recently signed Chief, a 4-piece from Santa Monica, CA, consisting of Evan Koga, Mike Moonves and brothers Danny and Michael Fujikawa. I haven't yet heard all of their debut record "Modern Rituals," due out next week, but the little I have left me with mixed impressions.

Paste says they're "for fans of" Coldplay and Phosphorescent. I'd never even use those two words in the same sentence, let alone group the two bands in the same anything (Phosphorescent is lovely and soothes my inner man anger, but I'd rather drink turpentine and piss on a brush fire than listen to Coldplay).

It may be, like this seemingly incongruous comparison, that there is sometimes a dichotomy between the band's intentions and what gets finally produced. I couldn't reconcile two of the songs I heard,...

To celebrate the 30th Anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, the JibJabbers and LucasFilms have collaborated to offer fans a chance to create your own personalizedStar Wars. starring You® Movie! JibJab was founded in 1999 by brothers Evan and Gregg Spiridellis. In 2004, the pair created the online hit "This Land" featuring a singing George Bush and John Kerry. Since then, the brothers have built JibJab into pioneering digital media company powering innovative online entertainment experiences like OfficeMax's ElfYourself campaign. Available today for the first time ever, people everywhere can cast themselves, family and friends in the classic adventures from .a galaxy far, far away. with playful and irreverent two-minute re-tellings of the original Star Wars films by...

The greatest movie, uh, ever?

Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana in .Avatar.

Photo: 20th Century Fox

James Cameron's "Avatar" is the most amazing ... no, wait: the most staggeringly amazing, jaw-droppingly triple-awesome unbelievable movie ever made. That's the feeling among the reviewers aggregated at Rotten Tomatoes, anyway. I quote:

"An overwhelming feast of visual artistry unlike anything you have ever seen before."

"Much more than a film. It's a prescribed cinematic experience."

"An entertainment to be not just seen but absorbed on a molecular level."

"Cameron has achieved no less than a rebirth of cinema."

"Make sure you can say you were there when the future of cinema began."

What, are we all techno-fanboys now? Or just unpaid studio publicists? "Avatar" without question represents a new high point in motion-capture technology — the digital technique whereby the movements of human actors are used as the armature for animating fanciful characters. (Peter Jackson...

Family Demons: The Ghost as Domestic Inheritance by Donna McRae

Low cinematic genres – (as Clover, Williams and Robin Wood and others) have often pointed out – often handle explosive social material that mainstream cinema is reluctant to touch. — Joan Hawkins (1)

Can you make a film about the aftermath of incest and child abuse and its effect on three generations of women in the same family? Would this film contain an inherited ghost running through the narrative that could represent repressed feelings of colonial guilt on another level? Could this film prick the conscience of a nation that might be shuddering in silence for all its past sins? Would you get funding for this film from an Australian funding agency if you didn't have a track record? Would this very serious film fill cinemas, especially Australian ones? Could you get international profile actors to star in your film? Or would Australian film actors like Gracie Otto,...

The 28th annual Vancouver International Film Festival (Viff) will be held October 1-16, 2009. Founded in 1982, Viff's mandate is "...to encourage the understanding of other nations through the art of cinema, to foster the art of cinema, to facilitate the meeting in British Columbia of cinema professionals from around the world and to stimulate the motion picture industry in British Columbia and Canada..." Over 150,000 people are expected to attend 640 screenings of 360 films from 80 countries. Here is an up-to-date list of directors, confirmed to attend Viff 2009, along with their films : "1428" Du Haibin "1999" Lenin Sivam "65_RedRoses" Philip Lyall & Nimisha Mukerji "Adelaide" Liliana Greenfield-Sanders "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector" Vikram Jayanti "Ana & Arthur" Larry Young "The Anchorage" Anders Edström & Curtis Winter "Antoine" Laura Bari "Argippo Resurrected" Dan Krames "The Art of Drowning" Diego Maclean "At Home By Myself... With You" Kris Booth "At The Edge Of The World" Dan Stone...

For Equity contract information, refer to our complete listings online at www.backstage.com/spotlight. If your company is not listed but you would like to be included in next year's list, contact Laura A. Butler, Research Editor, at Back Stage, at [email protected] La Jolla Playhouse P.O. Box 12039 La Jolla, CA 92039 (858) 550-1070, fax (858) 550-1075 www.lajollaplayhouse.org Christopher Ashley, artistic director Casting: Casts productions in-house and through independent casting directors by invitation only. Send pix & resumes to above address, Attn: Casting. See website for more information. Internships available. Season: Mandell Weiss Forum Theatre: Continuous City (March 19 - 22). Future schedule Tba. Marin Shakespeare Company P.O. Box 4053 San Rafael, CA 94913 (415) 499-4485, fax (415) 499-1492 [email protected] www.marinshakespeare.org Robert S. Currier, artistic director Casting: Casts productions in-house. Send pix & resumes to: Robert Currier. Please see website for specific audition dates and information. Internships and/or apprenticeships available.