cinema insights

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – The device of an untrustworthy narrator is often used in cinema, perhaps never more masterfully than Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon. In that film, several characters tell contradicting versions of a story, even from beyond the grave. Who is lying, or can some aspects of the tale be reconciled

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – Based on a novel by British music critic Norman Lebrecht, THE SONG OF NAMES is a bit of a mystery, and a bit of a character study in survivors guilt, and a purposefully reserved story that leaves much of the strong emotional content submerged, which can feel like a

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – I don’t think any of us think that the National Enquirer is really responsible for undermining our faith in the free press, but what surprised me about watching SCANDALOUS was the degree to which it has exercised political influence, and apparently increasingly so. And not just

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – It became clear after I took off my shoes for the TSA, and then noticed on the plane that I had a sharp-bladed hinged tool in the shape of a key in my pocket. This was to make the public FEEL safe, not be safe. I had beaten

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – Believe it or not, we had already booked the return engagement of BECOMING NOBODY for January 15-18 before the passing of Ram Dass. And back in August of last year we had booked the Toni Morrison documentary before she passed away, as well. This has led

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – My high school sweetheart’s father was a taxidermist. The first few times going to pick her up at their house was a bit intimidating, with carcasses in various states of deconstruction in front of the workshop, and the big burly guy who was clearly good with a knife giving

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – The opening scene of the new Chinese animated release White Snake is a stunning work of visual art, setting the tone for an epic mythological adventure. This is not the 2-D anime style from Japan that most of us know, but a very different cultural aesthetic,

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – Perhaps it is simply the accumulation of experience that makes it harder each year for me to find my way into some sort of “holiday spirit,” as if the bright shiny ornament has been encrusted with the inevitable layers of loss and stress that have coincided

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – When a narrative film takes on a difficult subject based in real life, the filmmaker has to walk a fine line between underplaying and overplaying the drama. In BY THE GRACE OF GOD, François Ozon does a masterful job of taking the time to show the

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – Being a professional sound engineer and an amateur musician, I take my hearing for granted most of the time. And music is a daily part of my reality. So it takes a movie like MOONLIGHT SONATA to challenge my assumed reality, which it does, but in the

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – Maybe it was Casper or other benign depictions in media, but I never saw why people thought ghosts were scary. When I was 9 my mother died, and my father was devastated. He told me later that he spent a week of nights awake and trying

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – Absurdist comedy can cut through social conventions like a knife, laying bare the contradictions and shared delusions. Taking the commonplace and making it uncanny and bizarre gives us a distance from which we can observe ourselves, sometimes with comic clarity. That’s how I feel about Greener

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – Even if recent political affairs seem like a circus side-show, it helps when seen from the distance of another country on another continent. The wild spectacle of affluence and power that Berlusconi brought to the forefront of public awareness is so crazy that only Paolo Sorrentino

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – There is definitely some good humor in the movie GIVE ME LIBERTY, but it would be wrong to approach this just as a comedy. The predicaments of the protagonist are easily recognizable to most of us because it is the experience of operating within a broken

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – One way that a Dairy Membership is more than just a collection of discounts is the monthly opportunity in The Boe to add your voice to the curatorial process for the cinema. We invite our members to watch a movie with us (free of charge) and

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – “Rosemary’s Baby” and the novel it is based on have grown into a new relevance. What appeared to be a story about the occult, perhaps with overtones of paranoia and critique of the social elite, now is a classic example of “gaslighting.” This is the abusive

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – This week we have some great movies, but I need to show some love to the Friday Night Weird selection, La Casa Lobo (The Wolf House.) It’s a hybrid form of animation, mixing stop-motion and hand painting, as backgrounds spontaneously morph into new settings, and papier-mâché characters are

Glenn’s Pick – Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – I can’t remember who said it, whether it was Utah Phillips or Woody Guthrie or someone else, but the quote is, “Music is way too important to leave it to the professionals.” Now I have utmost respect for professional musicians, for the hard work and dedication

 – Glenn’s Pick by Glenn Webb, Director of Programs –  In my past life as a touring sound engineer, I unexpectedly found myself traveling to Weimar, Germany with a couple of days to kill between rehearsal and show. So I wandered through the birthplace of Bauhaus architecture and had a transcendent educational experience. Architecture exists

Glenn’s Pick by Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – At first glance, it might look like an anthropological documentary about how the Yakut people live in the Far North, but Ága is actually a family drama told in a strikingly sparse way. Rather than sharp dialogue and plot pyrotechnics, this movie shows an old couple going about their

https://thedairy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/bunel-trim-insta.mp4 Glenn’s Pick by Glenn Webb, Director of Programs – One thing that continues to blow my mind about movies is that there are so many ways to tell a story in this medium. It may seem surprising that a movie about the famous and influential filmmaker Buñuel making a documentary back in 1933 would