• Losing Ground: On the Nature of Relationships and Aesthetics

    Losing Ground: On the Nature of Relationships and Aesthetics
    Kathleen Collins, a black American director who passed away in 1988, made in 1982 a profound film/narrative/essay on the nature of relationships and aesthetics. At the center of the film is a brilliant philosophy professor (Seret Scott), whose husband (Bill Gunn) is a struggling (if not second-rate) painter. The two are middle class and cosmopolitan. The professor’s mother is a retired actress. The professor also has a growing thing for an actor/theologian (Duane Jones) she met in a libra
  • Madame Bovary: Light Gradually Giving Way to Shadow

    Madame Bovary: Light Gradually Giving Way to Shadow
    Sophie Barthes begins her elegant, restrained adaptation of Gustave Flaubert’s 1856 novel Madame Bovary at the sad end before rewinding to the happy beginning. Emma (the period-perfect Mia Wasikowska), a French farmer’s daughter, beams with happiness as she prepares to marry Charles Bovary (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), a country doctor. Barthes shoots every scene as if it were a Vermeer, with natural light neatly illuminating the tidy interiors. That light will gradually give way to shadow.

Follow @Seattle_news_ on Twitter!