Tag: Whisper

REVIEW: Heritage [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“Easy thing to bring someone into this wild world” Writer/director Damien Kazan is really honing his visual style these last couple of years with a string of gorgeous looking short films able to mesmerize with the sound off. Not that you should turn it off, his narration arrives with the type of resonating philosophizing we often need to hear in order to kick ourselves in the butt and move forward out of the depressive wastelands of our insecure minds. Scores by Jacob Cadmus don’t hurt either with their sweeping crescendos…

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REVIEW: In Da Street [2014]

Jared Mobarak

“We’re two cops in the hood, man” For a crowdfunded French short shot in two days on only a $1,500 budget, In Da Street looks fantastic. This shouldn’t be surprising coming from writer/director Damien Kazan—a filmmaker whose last work Whisper was nothing if not an attractive visual poem. Building on that film’s stylistic construction, this actioner follows a pair of cops on their beat with plenty of image-based stimulation. His non-descript Spanish-speaking locale (at least to an American like me) provides a hot afternoon of girls in bikinis and cigar-smoking…

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REVIEW: Whisper [2014]

Jared Mobarak

“I wanna be an astronaut” I receive a lot of unsolicited films from artists looking for reviews to help gauge audience acceptance, but Damien Kazan‘s short Whisper has to be the first from a director calling himself an “aspiring filmmaker”. It’s a small thing, but one steeped in modesty and excitement that I can’t stop myself from mentioning. Anyone who creates a film—no matter the scope of its distribution—is a filmmaker to me. Art in general is about the making and oftentimes we’re our own worst enemies as far as…

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