Day: August 24, 2012

REVIEW: For Ellen [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“She didn’t complain or send the law after me or anything” Looking to reconcile her feelings about being a successful parent, wife, and filmmaker with her child turning two, writer/director So Yong Kim decided to delve into the all too common reality that some only can do so when it is too late. Taking from her own experience growing up fatherless—only having ever seen him once at the age of five—her film For Ellen finds itself attempting to not decipher why someone would leave, but instead show the moment when…

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TIFF12 REVIEW: Far Out Isn’t Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“I’m crushed by my ideas” As easily titled by another of its subject’s mottos—”Expect the Unexpected”—as what documentarian Brad Bernstein chose, Far Out Isn’t Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story re-exposes the world to one of its most influential illustrators/commercial artists. Disappointed by my own ignorance to the name, I looked up his work and discovered nothing but a passing resemblance to other children’s art I had seen before. Only when the late Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak came onscreen to laud his friend and peer’s bravery…

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