NoYank. Remove All American Media And Culture From Your Life

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/15134323

Salvadoran-Mexican director Tatiana Huezo is a documentary film-maker who received great acclaim for her non-fiction work before pivoting triumphantly to drama in 2021 with Prayers for the Stolen – a heart-wrenching film, with something docu-realist in its gentleness and urgency, about children caught up in Mexican cartel violence. Now Huezo has returned to documentary with a film set in the remote village of El Eco in the central Mexican highlands. While Prayers for the Stolen was fiction with the texture of documentary, this – fascinatingly – is documentary with the look of fiction.

After a shooting period of a year and a half, Huezo and co-editor Lucrecia Gutierrez have shaped a family story so that it looks like exactly like realist drama, perhaps even drama adapted from a novel. In fact, if I didn’t know that it was a documentary, I would assume that it was a drama, devised through improvisation.

https://invidious.materialio.us/watch?v=0WY3tuOZsGc&listen=1 / https://invidious.perennialte.ch/watch?v=0WY3tuOZsGc&listen=1 / https://invidious.flokinet.to/watch?v=0WY3tuOZsGc&listen=1

https://telefis.bandcamp.com/

http://www.telefis.ie/

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/15112797

While many American directors drew inspiration from Kurosawa’s vision of cinematic poetry as well as his unique choreography of action, the Japanese director was himself influenced by American cinema when he was starting out in the industry. On multiple occasions, Kurosawa cited John Ford as a source of constant amazement, alongside some of Ford’s compatriots.

It was Ford who helped Kurosawa properly understand the concept of the cinematic image, learning from the way in which the Stagecoach director composed his signature panoramas. Unfortunately, Kurosawa did not hold the same opinion when it came to Ford’s successors who tried to fit into a different mould as times changed along with the sensibilities of modern audiences.

During a conversation from the 1990s with Maani Petgar that was published on Cinephilia & Beyond, Kurosawa revealed the heavy disappointment he felt when he watched contemporary American movies that failed to do anything meaningful with the genre frameworks of action and sci-fi.

Kurosawa explained: “Regarding American cinema, I could say that much better films were made in the past. Today’s American cinema provides the wrong service to the audience. Violence and car crashes are often seen. What pleasure is there in watching such scenes? Old American films expressed human problems quite well, but these days, the American cinema has problems.”

Drawing a comparison with Hollywood classics that had a different approach, he added: “There is no doubt that a film like Jurassic Park is interesting, but there used to be more impressive films in the past. In contrast, films like those of [Abbas] Kiarostami touch the heart and are very beautiful. These new sci-fi, action films, are good but they are not cinema.”

Hailing from West Africa’s Togo, Arka’n Asrafokor are becoming figureheads for a diverse African metal scene. In the four years since they released their promising debut album, Zã Keli, the band changed their name from Arka’n (Asrafokor means ‘music of warriors’) and beefed up their sound.

Whereas Zã Keli contained frequent detours into traditional folk and soulful Afro-funk, Dzikkuh is a more ambitious blend of groove metal, death metal and nu metal elements, with frenzied Afrobeat polyrhythms from percussionist Mass Aholou, and hypnotic chants.

If there's one thing the horror genre is really good at, it's making remakes that don't live up to the original. There are so many that it's become a running joke across the medium; sure, every now and then there's an amazing, innovative remake like 2013's Evil Dead, but usually, these rehashings of classic plots only serve as weak copies that can't compete with the original. Few are as infamous as the dreaded American remake of a foreign film, copies of legendary movies that reduce the original movie's plot to a much simpler copy, with one of this category's biggest offenders being The Uninvited.

Directed by The Guard Brothers, this film about two sisters trying to uncover the secrets of their evil stepmother was met with a resounding indifference when it premiered in 2009. A decent finale twist keeps it alive in modern conversations, but even this intriguing climax can't shed its reputation as a largely unremarkable film, which is extremely unfortunate — for the original movie it's based on. Because, while The Uninvited is critiqued for its predictable plot and scares, its predecessor is lauded as a classic, a showcase of everything amazing about Korean horror cinema that unnerves anyone who watches it. Unfortunately, The Uninvited couldn't meet these lofty heights (few movies could) but audiences should not let that film's banality stop them from watching the absolute masterpiece that is Kim Jee-woon's A Tale of Two Sisters.

TBF In the TV app I have found codes to be kinda unreliable (I put them in the search box). I used to have better results from the desktop web browser (you modify the URL), but it has been a while.

African Movies  3761
Arabic Movies  107456
Argentinian Movies  100310
Asian Action Movies  77232
Australian Movies  5230
Belgian Movies  262
Bollywood Movies  5480
Brazilian Movies  100373
British Movies  10757
Canadian Movies  107519
Chinese Movies  3960
Classic Foreign Movies  32473
Dutch Movies  10606
Eastern European Movies  5254
Foreign Gay & Lesbian Movies  8243
Foreign Horror Movies  8654
French Movies  58807
German Movies  58886
Greek Movies  61115
Indian Movies  10463
Irish Movies  58750
Italian Movies  8221
Japanese Movies  10398
Korean Movies  5685
Latin American Movies  1613
Middle Eastern Movies  5875
New Zealand Movies  63782
Romantic Foreign Movies  7153
Scandinavian Movies  9292
Southeast Asian Movies  9196
Spanish Movies  58741

Asterix

Lucky Luke

Iznogoud

Le Petit Nicolas

Hopefully the Wild West -themed Lucky Luke does not count as "American Media"?

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/14864440

Fans of Jérémy Clapin’s strange, haunting animated movie I Lost My Body (which is streaming on Netflix) may be surprised at the pivot he took with his second feature film, Meanwhile On Earth. This time, he’s working in live action, with a science fiction premise involving a secretive alien invasion. The first trailer for Meanwhile On Earth has arrived, and for fans of low-budget, character-driven sci-fi, it may look familiar: It feels like a blend of Jonathan Glazer’s striking 2013 Scarlett Johansson thriller Under the Skin and Mike Cahill’s dreamy, shocking 2011 drama Another Earth.

Trailer

IMDb

Band Info

Wikipedia

Corto Maltese is a series of adventure comics named after the character Corto Maltese, an adventurous sailor. It was created by the Italian comic book creator Hugo Pratt in 1967.

Band Info

Website

Wikipedia

Band info

Panx Romana

Stress

Γκρόβερ

Γενιά του Χάους

Ex Humans

Αδιέξοδο

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/14767588

With Caveat, Damian McCarthy layered mystery upon mystery to create a haunting thriller about isolation. The Irish filmmaker’s latest, Oddity, follows a similarly twist-laden blueprint. The plot exudes a pulpy sense of escalation, defined by a collision of convoluted story threads that might, in lesser hands, have devolved into unintentional comedy.

After all, the central image of Oddity verges on the ludicrous: a horrible wooden mannequin planted at the head of a dinner table, mouth frozen in a silent scream.

...

It isn’t tough to figure out where Oddity is going, but McCarthy unveils each detail at a satisfyingly unhurried pace, with some tense interludes involving photos captured by a motion-activated digital camera and the contents of holes drilled into the mannequin’s skull. The storytelling hook here isn’t shock value so much as the clockwork of a complex machine, and the way so many of its pieces work toward a singular purpose is never less than atmospheric.

That approach again serves McCarthy well in crafting a twisted and creepy little potboiler. But it’s also hard not to be skeptical of how long the filmmaker can continue to function in such a mode. Oddity is looser and less disciplined in the end than Caveat, which itself wasn’t immune to stretches of needless explanation. Thanks to its expert staging, the film doesn’t lose much in the way of immediacy, but there’s a sense that if McCarthy isn’t careful, he’s going to spend so long setting up his dominos that no one will stick around to watch him knock them down.

I like the premise of this community and I believe it is a good remedy to US defaultism.

It bugs me in the Internet whenever someone is not from the US has to introduce "a thing" in their culture with a thin veil of shame. We never see Americans having to "explain" what Halloween or Thanksgiving is, even when they are knowingly facing a global audience.

So, very well done for starting this, and I would like to just contribute some brainstormed ideas.

A community like this could host long form 'specials' such as (an example) "Introduce others to a niche topic of your culture."

Now what could that be:

• That could be a band/genre
• Some TV show with a cult following
• An influential pop culture figure that keeps off the spotlight
• A type of slang unique to your culture
• A set of weird or memorable customs

Additionally, people could contribute things like subtitles or translations, so others can discover media from each other's countries that would never be available through mainstream streaming.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/14697456

Trailer

IMDb

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/14199944

Wonderland is an artificial intelligence that allows people to communicate with their departed loved ones through simulated video calls. Jeong-in, a flight attendant, asks to meet her comatose boyfriend Tae-joo, while Bai Li joins the service to be able to talk to her daughter even after being dead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderland_(2024_film)

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/14509580

Kneecap is set in West Belfast in 2019. Fate brings together disillusioned music teacher JJ with self-confessed 'low life scum' Naoise and Liam Og, changing the sound of Irish music forever," the description continues. "Under the name Kneecap, their band begins moulding the language to fit their tough, anarchic, hedonistic lives. A language encumbered with forty words for stone now has one for stoned. But to get their voices heard the trio must overcome police, paramilitaries and politicians as the future of the Irish language erupts into the public arena - with them at the centre. Yet their worst enemies are often themselves, as family and relationship pressures threaten their dreams, and their illegal exploits draw condemnation from all sides.

IMDb

The first Irish-language film to premiere at Sundance.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/14308937

On social media videos, audiences throw packs of tissues around the cinema halls. Tearful TikToks from across Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore show friends leaving the cinema weeping. Thailand’s latest hit film, How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, has reduced audiences across south-east Asia to tears – and broken box office records.

The film, about a university dropout who offers to care for his terminally ill grandma, hoping to inherit her house, has reportedly earned 334m Thai baht ($9.1m) at the Thai box office and become the most successful Thai film ever in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.

It is the latest success story for films made in Thailand and south-east Asia, which, while Hollywood has grappled with strikes and production delays, have captured audiences across the region and boosted the cinema industry.

“Covid, and industry issues that impacted Hollywood product flow, have ushered [in] a period of growth for local and regional films, in some cases with record-breaking results,” said Rance Pow, of Artisan Gateway, a film consultancy.

In Indonesia, the horror film KKN di Desa Penari (KKN in Dancer’s Village) sold more than 10m tickets in 2022, according to local media, becoming the country’s highest-grossing locally made film. The Vietnamese romance Mai, released in February, has become the highest-grossing Vietnam-produced film of all time at home and in North America and Europe, according to Deadline.

While screens are being closed down in the US, Indonesia’s biggest chain, Cinema XXI, listed on the Indonesian stock exchange last year, while in Thailand new cinemas are being opened.