Sad news. Thanks to the, ehm, online film-sharing community I was able to get acquainted with his work some years ago and really enjoyed it. Actually just last week I was watching a recent film about EP Thompson's work as a teacher for the Workers' Education Association in which he collaborated. The upside is that he…

Yes. This is basically why I've kept watching Portlandia through all these years. It was never that funny to begin with, and it has its ups and downs, but I just have a lot of affection for the show and its characters. It's like spending a pleasant weekly half-hour with friends. This episode was probably the weakest…

The more I think about the name of this show, the more I dislike it. A vacation usually involves tourists going to some far-away place for a short amount of time to relax, have a good time and check out the sights, without necessarily interacting much with the local people or worrying about their well-being or…

I actually think you're in the majority, at least on this site. Week after week most commenters have been complaining about this season (at least the ones that actually watch the show).

Yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and disagree with this review. While Ignatiy makes some good points, he makes it sound like the film is something of an academic exercise weighed down by its overuse of metaphors and symbolism, but that was not my experience at all. I found Embrace of the Serpent to be a sometimes…

Yeah, I agree. I've been enjoying Humans, but when compared to the original, I've found it lacking. Leaving aside the characters that have been changed or omitted, I miss the way Akta Manniskor, while not perfect, expanded the scope of the series to explore the political and social implications of a society so heavily…

"So why is he trying so hard? It’s hard to tell what’s driving Martin. Is he an ideologue, in it for the good of the cause? That doesn’t seem quite right, especially with that capitalist work ethic."

I saw this film at the local film festival last year and enjoyed it a lot. I was particularly transfixed with the backgroud of the 1999 UNAM strike. The humorous but sympathetic look at radical university politics in Latin America hit pretty close to home (for a more cynical look I recommend the Argentinian film El…

Is it that centralized? I'm not really an expert on contemporary Mexican cinema (though I try to see everything I can) but it seems to me that films tend to be relatively varied in their settings, I could be wrong, though, but that's been my impression.

I'm guessing Orphan Black's third season was not eligible. They announced these nominations quite a few weeks earlier this year (last year they announced them in late May).

There are probably many other examples, but it also reminds me of how the House of Saud used the Ikhwan (a fundamentalist Wahhabi religious militia) to consolidate their power over the Arabian peninsula in the first decades of the 20th century. The Ikhwan eventually revolted against Ibn Saud because of his kingdom's…

Even though this show is absolutely ridiculous by now, I'm okay with this if it means we get more Nina Hoss (who played Quinn's German former lover last season and is a legitimately phenomenal actress).

I love how Force Majeure and The Loneliest Planet are very different treatments about, essentially, the same thing. Somebody probably already wrote a long essay about masculinity, gender roles and all that stuff based on these two movies. I hope Julia Loktev gets to make more stuff (her IMDB page is eerily quiet). And…

I saw this a few months ago at the local film festival. Loved it. The movie felt a lot like a dream while I was watching it, so even the out-of-nowhere ending made some weird kind of sense to me. I hope films like this one help to bring more attention to contemporary Latin American cinema, which I feel is mostly…

The soundtrack of the series was done by Ben Frost (yeah, appropriate), who's rather well-known in the ambient scene for his menacing, spacey music. You can listen to his work in Bandcamp. This is my favorite record of his: http://benfrost.bandcamp.co…

Anonymous started using the Guy Fawkes mask for their offline protests because it was cheap and easy to find, so it was very practical for identifying themselves in public. Then it just sort of became a meme and started being used in protests all around the world. But, I mean, you can protest against austerity or bank…

The thing about Figueres, and this probably explains why he's not that well-known compared to other Latin American leaders from the Cold War (aside from the fact that Costa Rica, my country, is geopolitically meaningless) is that he was too leftist for the right and too rightist for the left. He was a friend of the…

The characters actually speak in the Neapolitan language, which apparently 90% of Italy doesn't understand so they had to show the series with subtitles there.

Another great foreign-language show that hasn't yet aired in America is Gomorra from Italy, based on Roberto Saviano's book about the Camorra and its reign of crime in Naples. It's not perfect, but it's a tremendously compelling, ambitious and even heartbreaking show. It's sort of like an Italian The Wire, in the…

I know it's going to be filmed in Colombia, but isn't Univision behind this? I'm sure they have SOME money. The fact that it's made in Latin America is no excuse for it to look like some direct-to-video narco movie. I hope the finished product will look better. I mean, HBO Latino develops original series in Latin…