Film critic for Boulder Weekly.
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Mandabi 1968
Images articulate where words fall short, and Sembène’s work shows how the French occupation scarred the land and transformed the daily structures of Senegalese life, from tiny indignities to sweeping bureaucratic changes no one asked for. An entire culture has been left behind: Ibrahima’s culture. And if the replacement is anything like the middle-class Sembène offers in Mandabi, Senegal’s future does not look bright.
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Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry 2021
There’s a good doc somewhere inside The World’s a Little Blurry; it just happens to be surrounded by 60ish minutes of excess. And considering that the arc of this story goes from writing songs in a bedroom to winning more Grammys than one can cradle in their arms in roughly 15 months, you’d think it would be easier to find the thread.
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Rome, Open City 1945
Remember those old movies? The ones where a couple drives down the road, only they aren’t driving, they’re sitting in a car on some studio lot. And that’s not a road behind them; it’s a rear projection of road. Looks fake doesn’t it?
Did this fakery bother audiences back then? Not in the slightest. Back in the 1920s, ’30s and even into the ’40s, movies were about beautiful people living in fabulous mid-city apartments, dressing glamorously, saying the right thing…
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The Boxing Cats (Prof. Welton's) 1894
As far back as 1894, they figured out that cat videos were what the people wanted.