— by BEV QUESTAD — From time to time, I see art and I am blown away — Louise Bourgeois, Frida Kahlo, Mindy Weisel, William Thompson — my mesmerized subconscious overflows. Other times I just don’t get it and I contact my artist friends and demand, “How does this constitut[...]
Author Archive
Under Review: ‘Crazy Wisdom’
— by BEV QUESTAD — Forty-one years ago, a friend of mine said that a true IQ test would be on how well we can hide our insanity. For Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, whom this film is all about, the potential paradox of crazy wisdom and his embrace of it may cause the viewer[...]
Under Review: ‘Film Socialisme’
— by BEV QUESTAD — Foaming surf as a cruise ship glides through gray seas – a lithe bikini-clad young woman swimming underwater in the ship’s pool – a white-dressed woman slamming repeatedly into a window, ignored by the patrons chatting in the warm interior, inexplicably c[...]
Under Review: ‘The Rules of the Game’ (aka ‘La Regle du Jeu’)
— by BEV QUESTAD — There is not just an Arab discontent swirling in the winds. There is also a pervasive International Spring going on with the Occupy Wall Street movement. So it is altogether appropriate that on the Park Blocks of a make-shift tent city of protest in Portland, Ore., the[...]
Under Review: ‘Zanzibar Musical Club’
— by BEV QUESTAD — I watched this film the first time without knowing anything about it. Big Mistake. Before you are able to appreciate it fully, you must know three bits of crucial information. “Zanzibar Music Club” is one of the last films in the Northwest Film Center’s Reel [...]
Under Review: ‘Sing Your Song’
— by BEV QUESTAD — Harry Belafonte became an icon while at the same time a victim of rampant, incomprehensible American racism. Whether it was in Las Vegas or in the south, Belafonte, like other Black entertainers, didn’t have access to the front door of the theater he headlined. As he[...]
Under Review: ‘George Harrison: Living in the Material World’
— by BEV QUESTAD — “Material World” invades your conscious and subconscious, your memory and your present, and your mind and heart. It is an intimate encounter with a plucky, quiet guy who, through his music, took the world on a journey searching for alternative forms of musical[...]
Under Review: ‘The River Why’
— by BEV QUESTAD — “I understand the way fish think,” is what Gus says as he describes his life story, a convoluted fable about life and its analogy to fishing. Gus’s father, William Hurt, is an affected published author and his mother, Kathleen Quinlan, is the rough feminist fishe[...]
Under Review: ‘Where Soldiers Come From’
— by BEV QUESTAD — The landscape of northern Michigan is bleak and cold. Jobs are scarce and people are just scraping by in wooden houses that long ago needed repainting. This is ripe ground for enlistment. A boy cynically remarks, “What else is there to do?” Led by Cole, three frien[...]
Under Review: ‘Guzaarish’
— by BEV QUESTAD — I loved this film. Presented with lush colors and textures with an ancient mansion on verdant grounds in Goa, India, I was captivated. The accompanying story, deep and moving, evokes great respect and a lot of questions. This is my last film review written from Banglad[...]
Under Review: ‘No One Killed Jessica’
— by BEV QUESTAD — Bargaining is the way of life, the centerpiece of business, in the traditional cultures all over the world, but most famously in the Middle Eastern-Subcontinent regions. Depending on what’s said and what the bargaining is over (an extended Visa, perhaps?), the Wester[...]
Under Review: ‘The Interrupters’
— by BEV QUESTAD — In the first six months of 2010, Chicago had 217 murders, mostly of youth by youth. At a town hall, the mayor announced the National Guard was available to intervene. The audience members passionately spoke about wanting to solve their own neighbor problems with gang v[...]
Under Review: ‘Buddha Mountain’
— by BEV QUESTAD — A bewigged, heavily made-up, scantily clad, 20-something girl in a nondescript northern Chinese town charges into a bar for her nightly performance at the microphone. While singing to the small raucous bar crowd the mic flings out of her hand, hitting the most belliger[...]
Under Review: ‘Hi, Fidelity’
— by BEV QUESTAD — My second on-the-road film review, written from Hong Kong, is set in this financially successful city squeezed against Chinese hills that rise into the mists. And that, metaphorically, could describe the plot of this movie. Four HK wives of successful HK husbands find [...]