Certified Copy

Certified Copy

Film review by: Witney Seibold

It’s been said that the best films don’t just tell a story, but espouse a philosophy. Abbas Kiarostami‘s “Certified Copy” is more than a tale of a bourgeois French woman and a smug British author wandering through small-town Italy, discussing art and marriage, but explores the function of truth in our lives; it’s central question seems to be that if something is a fake, but we don’t know it’s a fake, and we still derive pleasure from it, does it matter if it’s not real? If the lie is convincing enough, and everyone believes it, is it still a lie? Truth, the film is saying, is mutable.

Potiche

Potiche

Film review by: Witney Seibold

Farce seems to be something that the French can still get away with. In America, there are no farces left (unless you count the recent spate of limp movie spoofs, which I don’t). Broad sex comedies with frothy and lecherous characters, bright colors, and joyous consequences seem to have fallen by the wayside in the U.S. Luckily, we have François Ozon‘s bubbly feminist parable “Potiche” to content with.

Jane Eyre (2011)

Jane Eyre (2011)

Film review by: Witney Seibold

Although there have been, according the The Internet Movie Database, 23 film versions of Charlotte Brontë‘s famed Jane Eyre, I have to admit that Cary Fukunaga‘s 2011 film was my first.

Ten “Gateway” Films

Ten “Gateway” Films

Article by: Witney Seibold

A few weeks ago, I encouraged a friend to get a video store membership, and rent “Zodiac.” I feel like I did a good thing, and not just because “Zodiac” is a woefully under-appreciated classic. It’s because this boy was about 22 years old, and, judging by his conversation, had not yet grown past the adolescent instinct to catalog films in your mind, and assign films to your own identity. I realized that the “geek” lifestyle – a lifestyle marked by voracious consumption of a certain kind of genre film, and an instinct to rank films in a very scientific fashion – has not only pervaded popular thinking (just look at the numbers attached to The San Diego Comic Con if you don’t believe me), but may serve as a detriment to the true love of films.

PODCAST: The Idiot Box, episode #26

Here’s a funny thing. I know little about new television. I watched television pretty regularly, until I went out of state to college in 1996. I never really re-joined the bandwagon, only occasionally watching new shows. Despite this well-known fact about me, I was still considered be the guest co-host of Crave Online’s TV-themed podcast “The Idiot box,” ordinarily hosted by Blair Marnell and Sax Carr.

PODCAST: The B-Movies Podcast, episode #7: “Pissing on Dreams”

In this episode, William Bibbiani and I discuss the horrible remakes and regurgitations in the Hollywood pipeline (including a film based in the Macy’s thanksgiving Day Parade), and talk severed breasts, “Children of Paradise,” and squelching children’s dreams. We also review the film “Black Death,” a medieval action flick that opened in arthouses last week.