REVIEW: Bizarre: A Circus Story [2016]

“You can’t do anything ‘half’ in the circus” It’s tough to remember that Cirque du Soleil isn’t “new” (1984?!) when you’re an American like me whose idea of the circus growing up was watching goofy clowns in ten-sizes-too-large costumes pile into a tiny car while animals roared and jumped through hoops. I think the main reason I enjoyed going was the fact I’d probably come home with something that glowed. Acrobatics were therefore a very tiny portion of my excitement and yet that’s pretty much the part requiring the most…

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REVIEW: Dear Phone [1976]

“Hirous claimed he could make ten calls for the price of a beer” During his avant-garde experimental phase—as if you wouldn’t call the two feature films I’ve seen from later on in his career avant-garde or experimental—Peter Greenaway took it upon himself to play a high-brow telephone game with his short film Dear Phone, an elegy to the since forgotten British red telephone box. The entire piece consists of static-framed shots of different booths across England along with random aural examples of the myriad rings cut between pages of text…

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