REVIEW: The Voices [2015]

“I know karate” Don’t let the wide-eyed giddiness of Ryan Reynolds‘ Jerry Hickfang fool you. There’s darkness inside him that simply hasn’t yet been coaxed out into the open. It may take a little while to see it in full force so you can truly comprehend what is going on with the Edward Scissorhands-esque bright colors and smiling faces version of warped small town suburbia, but it will be an eye-opening revelation when it does. What this means too is that you need to try and not let Reynolds’ broad…

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Posterized Propaganda August 2012: A Summer Lull

“Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” is a proverb whose simple existence proves the fact impressionable souls will do so without fail. This monthly column focuses on the film industry’s willingness to capitalize on this truth, releasing one-sheets to serve as not representations of what audiences are to expect, but as propaganda to fill seats. Oftentimes they fail miserably. August isn’t fooling around with a ton of releases spanning both big budget and independent productions. I couldn’t even begin to talk about them all here—sorry Sparkle—but there sadly aren’t…

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It’s a comic, not a graphic novel: Babel’s Marjane Satrapi

I’ve finally come to the realization that the people who go to events such as Babel and another artsy affairs generally lean to the left. When tonight’s speaker, the Iranian author/artist Marjane Satrapi, relayed that this was the point where she would usually spend ten minutes bashing Bush, the crowd burst into uproarious laughter and unanimous applause. Well unanimous minus one, although I did laugh … it was funny. However, I think I was just the person Satrapi was hoping to reach when she wrote down her life’s experiences in…

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Babel returns with Chinua Achebe

Welcome to the start of the sold out second season to Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel. Get out there and start roaming the internet and streets for scalpers because it is a series you won’t want to miss. If you thought last year’s inaugural line-up was good, you can’t fathom the heavyweights on this season’s bill. With Chinua Achebe kicking us off—his novel Things Fall Apart being a brilliant piece of literature—the ball got rolling, ushering in much of the same, but some brand new features as well. Chief among…

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REVIEW: Persepolis [2007]

“ABBA is for wimps” Here we have France’s official entry for foreign film at the Oscars, the animated film Persepolis. This intrigues me for many reasons. One, it is a cartoon and almost destined for the nod in that category; two, it is about Iran, by an Iranian who took France as an adopted home in her 20’s, and third, the wonderful film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly had a real shot at winning the award, let alone getting a nomination (but then it was directed by an American,…

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