In this scathing and subversive social comedy, life in post riot Los Angeles is dissected under the sardonic eye of John Boyz, an unemployed thirty nothing flounderer on Venice Beach who is trying to figure out what to do with his life. John can’t be bothered with apathy, but no matter how much he wants to help people, he is too immobilized to do anything useful. Haunted by chronic insomnia and impending sense of doom, all he can do is watch, and John is an avid observer.
Tag: 1990s
This short film is only thirteen minutes long, but it is a razor-sharp depiction of civilization pushing out Europe’s last wilderness in Northern Sweden. The white man is hunting ptarmigan, enormous exer-tions are being expended, watercourses are running dry and forests are being devastated. Thirteen minutes about a world in change. But un-fortunately not for the better.
Documentary about the influential pop composer and record producer Joe Meek, who died in dramatic circumstances in 1967 after a bizarre childhood and a career, often controversial, which spanned the period from the mid-50s to the rise of the Beatles in the 60s. At the end of his life he was suffering from paranoid delusions that people were watching him through walls. Alan Lewens’ film charts an Ortonesque tale of post-war Britain.
Frac, a mime who is suffering from a severe bout of depression, happens to meet a troupe of circus entertainers and immediately falls in love with one of the stars, Giulietta. But while his affection for Giulietta and admiration for the performers gives him a new lease on life, Giulietta’s father, the leader of the troupe, opposes the relationship and is determined to keep them apart. Meanwhile, Frac and Giulietta discover a gang of children who are held prisoner by a criminal leader who forces them to do his bidding, and they devise a plan to win the kids their freedom.
Yuu Kamiya is an up-and-coming talent in Japanese show business. She is killed in a traffic accident. On the way to heaven, she gets a chance to transiently restore her body (to which mirrors and photos are insensitive) and comes back to this world. She starts new life as an average girl.
Evening. Two contemporary teenage girls, Blanca and Pauline, living in an old manor house, are watching a television programme about the sexual life of people and of animals. Surprised by Bianca’s father who returns late at night they quickly change channels. The film they then see is composed of old archive material and forms the start of their journey into the past.
Broadcast on A&E on January 12, 1995, this special is a recording of the presentation of the Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts presented by Southern Methodist University in 1994. The performance, by students at the school and guest artists Bernadette Peters, Chip Zien and Debra Monk, is intercut with interviews with Sondheim, Hal Prince, James Lapine and videotaped testimonials from Angela Lansbury and Jason Alexander. The less said about the student performances, the better, but the professional Sondheim veterans more than deliver, and the whole evening is worth seeing Sondheim himself at the piano accompanying Peters on “Send in the Clowns.”
This animated film paints a vivid portrait of two strangers intimately linked by the shared ceilings, floors and plumbing of their apartments. When an unexpected problem arises, these comfortable connections are compromised. Wendy Tilby uses a painstaking animation process involving painting on glass and stop-action filming.