I’ve been to Forks and La Push, where the Twilight book series takes place, but I’ve never been to the actual filming locations from the movies! That’s because while the director wanted to film in Forks, when he came to scout the town he realized there was just not enough infrastructure to support an entire film crew– there were literally not enough places to house and feed all of the people who would be working on the movie, and there was no other large town within driving distance! (Yeah, Forks is really far out there) Enter Halloweento— I mean, St. Helens, Oregon! St. Helens stands in for most of Forks in the movies, and a few places in nearby Portland, Oregon make up most of the rest. I ended up nearby by complete accident, as it was only when I picked up a brochure at Halloweentown that I learned that Bella’s house was just on the other side of town! LUCKY!!!  So, we took a short break to drive over to the locations that were still standing, and made a special detour to Portland because how could we leave the Cullen house behind?! I WANTED TO GO INSIDE SO BADLY! It is a real house with real people that live there, and although they encouraged taking photos from outside (according both to a brochure from City Hall and a sign in front of the house), the inside was off-limits. Honestly, it’s not Bella that I particularly love. I didn’t care for her portrayal by Kristen Stewart (sorry!), or her melancholy, passive attitude in the book. Actually, I didn’t care for Edward, either. It was the idea of a love so strong that forces of  nature were pulling you together. It’s the idea of fitting together so perfectly that you can’t do anything without the other that I am a complete sucker for! I said it on my old Livejournal years ago, but Twilight is just a big Mary Sue anyway, so I like to imagine myself as Bella, with a gorgeous (female) Edward out there waiting for me. ???? Like I said, it’s the love, not the characters themselves. I’ll fight you on this (just kidding). ???? Here is where Edward rescued Bella from some catcallers, complete with the mural that the movie crew painted (!) on the building. And the theater that they drove past, that you can’t really see well in the movie but hey, it was on the map!! This is Jilly’s, which supplied all of the dresses in the shop when Bella went to pick out something with her friends for prom. Oddly enough, they had this sign outside but no actual merchandise inside. Go figure. ???? This place, which is a private house now, was the bookstore where Bella went to find out more information about the Quileute myths. And then, though we only had a little bit of time, we drove over to Portland and checked out Edward’s house. I have to say…. THIS HOUSE WAS GORGEOUS. Whew! I would LOVE to live there. LOVE LOVE LOVE! I would also have loved a tour, but it is a private residence, and therefore we kept our distance. Mmm, but it sure is gorgeous! Twilight brings back a lot of memories for me, and it’s special because I grew up (mostly) in Washington. It’s also not the only book series to claim that there are werewolves living amongst the local residents. The town that I spent most of my childhood in also has a series revolving around it! I’m planning to take a trip over there to see my old friends and photograph all of the wolfy places of interest, so I’ll post about it then! Love ya, and see ya tomorrow!

We were not really sure that the world needed another adaptation of Emma. There are already several, not bad if not spectacular, although none are really the definitive adaptation that fans of the novel hoped for; but all enjoyable in their way. One can nitpick at all of them, but we don’t find any of…

The indie cinema chain is going digital.

The post Studio Coffee Run 5/8/20: Alamo On Demand brings new and old films to your home theater appeared first on The Beat.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today that Workshop FX, a Wellington 3D Computer Animation and Visual FX company, is the first New Zealand customer to implement IBM SONAS, its scalable enterprise-class network attached storage array. SONAS (Scale Out Network Attached Storage) has enabled Workshop FX to significantly increase rendering productivity while preparing the studio for future business growth and emerging industry standards including 3D film production.

Emmy Nominee Leslye Headland to write, produce, and serve as showrunner for new untitled Star Wars series for Disney+.

Thanks to ambyr's rec, we watched Dukhtar ['Daughter'], (2014, directed Afia Nathaniel).

ambyr described this very well: it does include misogyny and violence, but ultimately it's a hopeful film. The film feels almost like a stage play; it is almost entirely about the characters, a mother trying to save her young daughter, and the roadster who reluctantly helps them. The camera doesn't dwell either on the beautiful scenery (there are mountains in the background, but no gorgeous cinematic shots) or on the violence; there are quite a few shootings in the film, but it's never gory because it's not about gun porn, it's about trying to escape from that violent world of gang / tribal violence. Quite a bit of it is filmed in shaky-cam style as if it were just incidental video of people's lives.

The characters are all really vivid, and I cared about them a lot, partly because the film is so careful to avoid piling on the drama. The tribal enforcers who go around shooting almost-random people in order to make people fear them are squalid, not glamorous. The elder who is desperate enough to sell his 10-year-old daughter for protection is basically pathetic rather than evil. The main character, Samiya Mumtaz' Allah Rakhi is beautiful and brave, but not really a heroine, she's desperate and runs away with her daughter with almost no plan for how they're going to survive. In other words she's really plausible for a barely literate woman married at 15 and sent to a remote, very patriarchal village in the mountains.

The romance between Allah Rakhi and Sohail is likewise really understated. He's not a white knight saving the princess, and in fact they even joke about how much he doesn't fit that romantic stereotype. He's a troubled person who has survived and escaped from the Taliban training camps, and he doesn't really want to get involved but can't just abandon a desperate mother and daughter to their fate. They have a certain amount of tenderness, but don't instantly fall in love and it's not clear whether their relationship will last, or whether it will end up being romantic or more friend-based. I also really liked that the dashing, handsome man who is avuncular with the kid and flirts with the mother in a rather aggressive way turns out to be a bad guy, not the love interest.

The ending is really odd. The credits just happen in the middle of a desperate car-ride taking the heroine to hospital bleeding from a gunshot wound. I think we're meant to infer that she survives but it's really not clear.

Next up: Nigeria, our first African country. Any recommendations of Nigerian films? Ideally from the 21^st century, and not primarily about violence or depressing real-world history.

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Nobody had any recs for Nigeria, so we poked around a bunch of internet best of lists and came up with Lionheart, (2018, dir Genevieve Nnaji), which turned out to be a great choice.

Lionheart is about a young business woman, Adaeze, who has to overcome sexism and save her father's struggling transport business. The director, Nnaji, also plays the title role and does a brilliant job. What I particularly loved about this film was that it undermined my genre expectations of feel-good feminist films. Adaeze doesn't have to outsmart and triumph over the sexist men, she has to learn to collaborate with people different from herself. And the company doesn't win by beating its rivals but by conducting a merger that at the start seemed unthinkable, requiring cooperation between her Igbo, Christian family and some Hausa (I think?) Muslims.

In particular, the eccentric uncle who is inexplicably appointed as acting MD when everybody knows it should have been Adaeze turns out to have some key strengths. He is in fact only annoying, and not a jerk. His people skills and intuition perfectly complement Adaeze's business acumen. (And how nice to have a female lead be the excessively competent and rational one!)

Adaeze does experience some sexism, particularly creepy men who expect sexual favours in return for investment in the business. But most of the antagonists are just nasty in a gender neutral way, like they want to sell the business to a conniving rival for quick money.

Anyway that was a really sweet date-night movie and I do feel our film project is back on track

Any recs for Bangladeshi films? We are most excited about 21^st century films not primarily about violence or depressing real-world history.

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We are stalled on Bangladeshi films for our world film project, because whenever we try to search we find films actually from Bangladesh completely swamped by Indian films in the Bengali language. So we fell back to watching Porco Rosso, which jack is fond of and I hadn't seen.

It was a very sweet date night movie, and I don't have a whole lot to say about it. I loved the landscapes, and I really enjoyed the characterization, particularly of Porco Rosso and Fio. The film is interestingly aware that hinting at romance between a middle-aged man and a 17yo girl is creepy, but it's also not not a romance.

The plot doesn't make a great deal of sense; like, the purported flashback to explain why Porco Rosso is under a curse to turn into a pig doesn't really explain what his experience as a fighter pilot has to do with the curse. There is a dramatic showdown between PR and his arch-rival, except that it ends with a weird anti-climax where they both run out of ammo and end up standing the sea punching each other. And there are evil fascists being evil in the background, but it's not a war movie about defeating the Fascists, nor a fatalistic film about how Italy is about to succumb to evil. And even the central romance doesn't really go anywhere; the ending is deliberately ambiguous about whether PR actually gets together with the beautiful woman who is in love with him.

That sounds a bit negative, which it isn't meant to be. It's enjoyable, it has a lot of cute and funny moments, the animation is really lovely. I was very happy to just go with the flow and accept that it didn't follow what I expected from the structure.

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Man die fietspad bezaait met prikkeldraad, spijkers en glas praat zichzelf aan de galg tegen visser die stiekem filmt  Het Laatste Nieuws

Ariel Martin’s “The iMom” explores the future of A.I. and asks who is to blame when technology turns on us.

A psychopathic hairstylist collects scalps and wears them — in an attempt to escape herself.

Our roving reporter on disability issues, Michael McEwan, speaks to Jodie Wilkinson, the Public Engagement Coordinator of Access Film Club which is hosted at Glasgow Film Theatre. She speaks about the purpose and aims of the club and the types of films screened.

Transcript of episode

Music Credit: Something Elated by Broke For Free

"Thor: Love and Thunder" writer/director Taika Waititi has signed on to write and direct a "Star Wars" film.

The series, a prequel to Rogue One, will star Diego Luna and Alan Tudyk reprising their film roles

Fifty percent of production spending in Ireland is now animation.

The post Ireland’s Animation Industry Spending Has Overtaken Live-Action Film And TV Combined appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Joseph Wallace spent almost six years developing "Salvation Has no Name." Weeks into the shoot, he had to shut it down.

The post Coronavirus Stories: How A Filmmaker At Aardman Has Kept His Stop-Motion Project Alive During Lockdown appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

A day after a father and son were charged in the February killing of unarmed jogger Ahmaud Arbery, a Georgia official promised a thorough probe into the case and said the man who filmed the horrific incident is also under investigation. In a news conference Friday morning, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vic Reynolds said “every stone will be turned over" and if the facts lead agents to make another arrest “they will do that.”

A day after a father and son were charged in the February killing of unarmed jogger Ahmaud Arbery, a Georgia official promised a thorough probe into the case and said the man who filmed the horrific incident is also under investigation. In a news conference Friday morning, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vic Reynolds said “every stone will be turned over" and if the facts lead agents to make another arrest “they will do that.”

A new film about street violence in London became a sensation after its release in British theaters a few months ago. Now, Blue Story is available on streaming services for American viewers.

Feature films forced to premier on the small screen because of the coronavirus crisis will not compete with television shows for awards.

Alice Wu's new movie, "The Half of It," is a play on Cyrano de Bergerac with an LGBTQ twist. NPR's Scott Simon speaks to the director.

Justin Chang, chief film critic for Variety, will be joining The Times as a film critic.

Jen Yamato is joining the Calendar staff as a film reporter beginning Jan. 2. 

Geoff Berkshire is joining the Los Angeles Times entertainment team as film editor.

Tekashi69's remarkable “rags to snitches” story took another turn Friday, with the release of a new music video shot while on home confinement.

A day after a father and son were charged in the February killing of unarmed jogger Ahmaud Arbery, a Georgia official promised a thorough probe into the case and said the man who filmed the horrific incident is also under investigation. In a news conference Friday morning, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vic Reynolds said “every stone will be turned over" and if the facts lead agents to make another arrest “they will do that.”

Swedish actor Max von Sydow, the stately import whose theater roots laid the groundwork for a vast onscreen career in nearly a dozen Ingmar Bergman productions, has died.