My second day of L.A. Film Festival coverage seems to continue the template of seeing one comedy and one “serious” movie, this time with Michael Cera drug movie “Crystal Fairy” and Jordanian movie “When I Saw You,” respectively. I’d never heard of the latter, so that was my risky pick of the day, and it […]
Author Archives: Tony Huang
LA Film Festival Review: ‘In a World…’ and ‘The Act of Killing’
The Los Angeles Film Festival, set near Hollywood, is a 10-day festival featuring independent film from all over the world. Daily Bruin A&E columist Tony Huang will review movies from the festival throughout the week. “In a World…” Director: Lake Bell Studio: Roadside Attractions Release Date: Aug. 9, 2013 Unambitious but pleasant, “In a World…,” […]
Students breaks limits with feature-length film ‘Hozon’
Dallas King’s home office overflows with cinema.
Album Review: ‘Monomania’ by Deerhunter
Deerhunter is doomed to pop music. It tried to escape. Every album, its effects acted as a defense mechanism: gauze for “Cryptograms,” glimmer for “Microcastle,” falsetto for “Halycon Digest.” But there’s no escaping the great escapism. With “Monomania,” Deerhunter’s latest, greatest and most accessible album, it’s ever more evident that for frontman Bradford Cox, pop […]
Movie Review: ‘Something in the Air’
France, around 1971: bohemian kickback, heroin flowing, bonfires blazing; nude or half-nude, the Marxists-maybe-Maoists dance, music booming, politics looming. Embers flicker in the air, romance, youth and ennui and smoke, tasseled together inseparable, floating ethereal into nevermore.
Movie Review: ‘Spring Breakers’
Spring break is a spiritual thing, mostly. Or at least it is in “Spring Breakers,” Harmony Korine’s latest art film wrapped in provocation. Gathering up the opposite of a ragtag crew with erstwhile Disney innocents Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez, “Pretty Little Liars” star Ashley Benson, his wife Rachel Korine and a freshly cornrowed James […]
Album review: ‘The Next Day’ by David Bowie
When LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy sampled “Heroes” in 2010, the ecstasy of hearing David Bowie revamped for the 21st century couldn’t escape a question of nostalgia: Where did he go? It was mostly asked out of resignation; after a decade of nothing and three decades of nothing great, there was no reason to expect […]