Day: October 6, 2015

REVIEW: Tangerine [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“Los Angeles is a beautifully wrapped lie” ‘Twas the night before Christmas and Tinseltown’s intersection of Santa Monica and Highland is bustling. A hotbed of sex work and drug use, Sean Baker‘s unfiltered Tangerine takes us into a world we haven’t quite seen on the big screen—especially not from a major distributor like Magnolia Pictures—by following three characters on a mission towards personal joy they know Santa won’t be bringing this year. For Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) this means the satisfaction of retribution against the boyfriend she learned cheated on…

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REVIEW: The Walk [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“The carrots are cooked” I’ve yet to watch the Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire, but it’s hard not to get swept up in its daredevil intrigue. Depicting the “artistic crime of the century,” Frenchman Philippe Petit illegally hung a wire between the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and walked across multiple times to the dismay of New York City police officers on either side begging him to stop. Nik Wallenda may be the latest wire-walker to make international headlines—a man whose family has seen tragedy befall those taking up the…

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INTERVIEW: Sebastian Schipper, director/cowriter of Victoria

Jared Mobarak

The word on the street about Victoria is that it’s a must-see for one reason: its entire two-plus hour runtime was captured in a single, pulse-pounding continuous take. While that aspect is definitely paramount, don’t think the film has nothing else to offer. This thing gets your blood pumping as much from the authentic performances of regular people in over their heads as it does the technical artistry. And the man leading the way to orchestrate both these halves is Sebastian Schipper. We talked with the co-writer/director about his trust…

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DESIGN: Impossible Truth

Jared Mobarak

Impossible Truth is a Buffalo, NY-based hip-hop duo consisting of Dan Martin and Mega. They’ve decided to get back in the studio and record a new album for Spring 2016 and came to me to design them a new logo to mark the occasion. It began with Dan asking for city skyline and some reference to “716”. From there I looked at old hip-hop outfit iconography and came up with the above.

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