Zapatiela is a Bollywood, romcom, musical, horror, comedy. The main character is named Laksha. Picture Jerry Lewis as a lovable (not actually lovable but intended to be lovable) goofball/village-idiot, ventriloquist with a giant Elvis pompadour, and a pair of bright yellow suspenders that he wears with every outfit. Laksha is in love with a young lady named Avade, but surprise, she has been promised, via an arranged marriage, to the town constable who she despises. Avade is in love with Laksha and they express their feelings in a colorful musical number featuring the two of them and Ardhavatrao, Laksha’s puppet…

A few months ago I wrote about my travels deep into the rabbit hole of Darna, the Philippine version of Wonder Woman. Now I have stumbled upon a Turkish rabbit hole in the form of Tarkan. He, like Darna, is a superhero but he is more along the lines of Tarzan or Conan.

Tarkan was a popular Turkish comic strip in the 1960s that appeared in the daily Hürriyet. Popular enough to spawn 8 successful live-action films about Tarkan’s historic exploits. Each film used a real civilization from history as a backdrop for his adventures.

According to Tarkan lore, he…

The Wolf House has a look and feel like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It uses stop motion animation but exploits the technique in innovative and profoundly creative ways. By its nature all art is creative but Wolf House is driven by the ability to continually rethink the film’s purpose and presentation.

Creativity, in general, can be seen as being able to resist the inertia of a single good idea. Instead of following the momentum of one good idea, the creative person can change directions and rethink the premise or intention of a gesture or image. It’s an ability to…

On the surface Mustang: The House That Joe Built and Chicken Ranch are two remarkably similar documentaries. Both take the viewer behind the curtain to see how a successful, legal brothel is run in Nevada. Part of the similarity between the two films is due to the similarity between the two brothels. The systems they use, how they are run, the way money is handled are all very similar.

Mustang: The House That Joe Built was made in 1977. The Chicken Ranch was made six years later in 1983, so even the fashion and feel of the films are similar…

You have to be in the right frame of mind to face down the movie Crazy Love. Its overall attitude is best summed up as “Fuck you.” It’s a sort of queer, Dada-style protest against everything. There is no plot, no dialogue, and the soundtrack is a collage of what have to be unlicensed snippets from the big hits of the ’60s including numerous Beatles songs which I’m sure were too expensive for such a film production to buy.

The wild nature of Crazy Love might have it associated with a number of movements like the surrealists, or the hippies…

I’m sure that the title The Northerners has some kind of special resonance in Dutch, but for me, a foreigner, the title might as well apply to the whole Nordic region. The dark humor and absurd plot of the film are typical of what I have come to expect from all those chili islands up north.

The good people up there have a distinct way of expressing themselves especially when it comes to comedy. The nordic sense of humor expresses a special affection for folly. They see our relentless struggle to find meaning in a meaningless universes as cute. Our…

Meet Marge and her husband Clark two crazy kids stuck in a loveless marriage. It seems that Clark is set to inherit 5 million dollars and Marge is plotting to kill him, grab the dough and run away with her secret boyfriend Dr. Dicks.

The Demon of Mount Oe (Oe-Yama Shuten Doji) is many things. It’s gorgeous but some of the staging and effects look like low-budget pulp. It is dramatic but often veers into overwrought melodrama. The story has too many characters, too many vendettas, too many plot twists, but even if you can’t follow it you can’t look away.