In the Richmond of 2005, Teddy Blanks was everywhere—playing packed shows with Ross Harman as the pop duo The Gaskets, writing sharp film reviews and interviews for the early issues of RVA Magazine, and even acting in a short film that, for me, still holds personal...
Not exactly a modern-spin on an old fable, The Lure is a stirring, if fragmented coming-of-human tale of two sisters who happen to be carnivorous, singing, vampire-like mermaids. After being lured by a family of intriguing music performers, Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Golden (Michalina Olszanska) two young, beautiful, mermaids find themselves the...
2017 has been the year David Lynch returned to our lives. After a decade-plus absence in making films, his signature series Twin Peaks resumed (after a seemingly foreseen 25-year hiatus), continuing to instill that special sense of enigmatic storytelling that’s often associated with the director and his work on and off the screen. While Lynch is...
Certain Women, director Kelly Reichardt’s modern pioneer-woman film not only explores the temporary trials and tribulations of its three contemporary women, conjured from the short stories of Maile Meloy, it also showcases how the gorgeous, wide-open, the Montana landscape ties into each central character’s own sense of loneliness and longing....
As political as it’s a social statement, writer and director Mike Leigh’s (Secrets and Lies, Happy-Go-Lucky) 1983 tragicomedy, Meantime, centers on the downtrodden poverty stricken Pollock family, amid the jobless working-class placed in the grim societal backdrop of Margaret Thatcher 1980’s Britain. The Pollock family; headed by unemployed grump...
As soon as I walked through the door of Strange Matter Sunday night, I heard the iconic Twin Peaks theme playing over the speakers. Soon after, it was interrupted by the “The Pink Room,” a hard rock jam that plays within the sleaziest of corners in the world of “Twin Peaks”. While I then realized that I had coincidentally walked in the room at...
For the third consecutive year, The Great Southern Festival will celebrate all things "Twin Peaks", this weekend with a uniquely Richmond spin. Die-hard David Lynch fans will recognize the name of the festival as a play on the Great Northern hotel at the heart of the "Twin Peaks" series. Sugar Shack donuts, local bands, and coffee from Rostov's...
They say money is the root to all evil right? Renowned French director Robert Bresson may agree to that. Loosely based on Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Forged Coupon, his final film L’argent (money) follows the downfall of a young-ish fuel truck driver, Yvon Targe (Christian Patey), who is given a forged Franc note that soon leads a series of...
Ever fantasize about being a passing face or an awkward bystander in a college orientation video? Still have no plans this Friday afternoon? (Staying in bed with Netflix and napping don't really count.) By some strange dysfunction-related miracle, you're in luck, because VCU Parking & Transportation is looking for current VCU students and...
Few films are as highly regarded or as revered in Japanese cinema as Kenji Mizoguchi’s haunting, fantasy fable “Ugetsu”; a timeless masterpiece of post-war cinema that not only works as a fatalistic fable but also a critique of class and patriarchy told through a kaidanshu-lensed ghost story. Through themes of greed, karmic retribution,...
