Tag: food preparation

Categories
Movies Features Live Action

The Gorals
(산양들)

The Gorals (산양들)

Director – Yoo Jae-wook – 2025 – South Korea – Cert. – 107m

****

Four problem high school girls bunk off their special college application class to start a zoo in the woods with the school zoo’s animals – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2026 which runs in cinemas from Monday, November 2nd to Tuesday, November 16th

In danger of failing to secure themselves college places, four high school girl students are put in to a special class to help them get in somewhere. In-hye (indie director “Grace” Park Hye-jin) is busy delivering vaccinations to the ducks, rabbits and chickens in the school zoo. She likes the solitude of the job, but on this occasion, Seo-hee (Lee Seung-yeon) is watching from outside the enclosure, having been sent to find her along with two other girls, Lee Jung-ae (Park Hyo-eun) in class 2 and Kim Soo-min (Choi Soo-in from The House of Us, 2019; The World of Us, 2016, both Yoon Ge-eun) in class 1, by teacher Miss Kim Ah-tae (Kim See-eun from The Handmaiden, Park Chan-wook, 2016).

Teacher Kim wants the four of them to work on their interview skills so they can apply for a college – any college – and get in.… Read the rest

Categories
Movies Features Live Action

I, the Song
(Dzongkha, 
མོ་གི་གསང་བའི་ཞབས་ཁྲ)

I, the Song (Dzongkha, མོ་གི་གསང་བའི་ཞབས་ཁྲ)

Director – Dechen Roder – 2024 – Bhutan, Norway, Italy, France – 112m

*****

A woman fired from her teacher’s job for appearing in an online sex video she claims is of someone else sets out to find her doppelgänger and clear her name – winner of Best Director in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival; plays Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle at 7.30 pm, Tuesday, July 15th 2025 as part of GemArts Masala Festival

This starts off deceptively with singing children’s voices, cutting into accompanying images of a school play with the children costumed as various types of flowers. The camera moves slowly to the back of the school hall where watching teacher Nima (Tandin Bidha) is told she is urgently needed in the office of the principal (Kezang Dorjee aka Kazee), where she finds herself being fired because of the video, now widely seen online, in which she appears. She protests that the person in the video isn’t her, but the principal says he can’t have her seen on school premises with so many parents about today.

She phones her boyfriend Penjor (Dorji Wangdi), who is in the middle of a gig hosting traditional Bhutanese folk plays.… Read the rest

Categories
Movies Live Action Shorts

Afternoon Clouds

Afternoon Clouds

Director – Payal Kapadia – 2017 – India – 13m

*****

An old woman, her home and her cat interact in the former’s coastal flat – Kapadia’s first short evidences a sensibility which will inform her debut feature All We Imagine as Light – on the UK Blu-ray/DVD (Dual Format Edition) of All We Imagine as Light, released Monday, March 3rd

A room with two windows looking out on the sea. The constant sound of its roar, the net curtains stir in the breeze. An elderly woman (Usha Naik) holds a bowl of milk as she calls out for, “Koshu”. Elsewhere in the house, a younger woman (Trimala Adhikari) sits, dozing, on a bench, until she hears the older woman calling her name, “Malti”. She opens her eyes.

The older and younger women stand in a room, staring, the elder explaining to the younger that the plant will last two days. As the ginger cat Koshu feeds contentedly, the younger woman Malti limps back to her room. Preparing food in the kitchen, the younger tells the older that three chillis are too much for her. The older protests.

The conversation turns to the older’s medication, the next life, and why not get a plant that lasts longer, asks the younger.… Read the rest

Categories
Movies Features Live Action

Mrs.

Mrs.

Director – Arati Kadev – 2023 – India – Cert. none – 111m

****

After getting married, a woman is expected to work cheerfully from dawn to dusk, waiting on the menfolk of the house hand and foot – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

This is the Hindi remake of Malaysian film The Great Indian Kitchen (Jeo Baby, 2021).

It starts off cheerfully enough with a big song and dance routine with lots of percussion instruments in which the heroine Richa (Sanya Malhotra), who we later learn is a keen amateur choreographer, shows off various Bollywood dance moves in sync with her fellow dancers. You wouldn’t know it from the cleverly constructed trailer, but there are surprisingly few song and dance routines overall for a Bollywood production – the only two complete numbers take place right at the start and right at the end, with the film’s running length at just under two hours a lot shorter than your average, three hour, Bollywood epic which tends to interrupt the action for a song every five minutes. In that sense, the whole thing feels surprisingly Western.

In another sense, the first hour or so doesn’t feel Western at all.… Read the rest