Blake Simons

2 weeks ago | purple-hour.com | Blake Simons

Daniel and Ryan are best friends—actors who hang out together, get high, and have fun. But all good things come to an end: Ryan is moving away and starting a new life in Canada with his fiancé. Determined to create lasting memories before leaving, Ryan thrusts a moviemaking idea upon Daniel, one in which they’ll play themselves making a movie about making a movie. Daniel’s head hurts. Ryan thinks the project is credible, but it needs a hook. “What if I were secretly gay all my life?” suggests Daniel.

3 weeks ago | easternkicks.com | Blake Simons

The world’s largest Japanese film festival reveals its first 2025 offerings…Nippon Connection — Frankfurt’s festival for Japanese cinema and the largest dedicated to Japanese cinema in the world — celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, playing host to around 100 feature and short films and 70 cultural events from 27th May to 1st June. The full programme is still to come, but the festival have revealed the first highlights from this year’s thematic strands to whet our appetites.

3 weeks ago | easternkicks.com | Blake Simons

The Korean actress talks a career grounded in empathy…Truly international actress Doona Bae cares deeply about our differences. As we discuss her recent film Next Sohee and her career at large over Zoom, she repeatedly emphasises human rights and her firm belief in respecting each other. It’s a refreshingly transparent conversation with a performer who prefers to be straightforward and simple, and in doing so manages to embody the nuances and complexities of the human experience.

1 month ago | easternkicks.com | Blake Simons

The transnational co-directors of a daring new documentary examine Aum’s impact past and present…A police radio. Some kind of gas is filling a train compartment on the Tokyo underground, and it’s making people sick. Soundtracking this archive audio, a low rumble gives rise to a Godzilla-like foghorn, but this disaster movie is no fantastical metaphor. Sometimes the raw truth can be as compelling, frightening, and bizarre as fiction.

1 month ago | screenanarchy.com | Blake Simons

We built this algorithm block by block. The IP movie has been on the rise of late -- tent-poles such as Barbie and The Super Mario Bros Movie each raked in over a billion dollars -- and so it is that A Minecraft Movie has spawned into cinemas. The input lag has been severe.