Careful

Oedipal values. Strict discipline. Polished refinement. Unyielding dedication.

The Alpine village of Tolzbad is stricken with alimentary sentiments whose counterproductive yearnings threaten its cohesive fortitude. Silence and obedience are resolutely inculcated as objective reminders of embryonic resuscitations remain cast off and docile. Dreams serve to lacerate adhesions, while palpating intoxicating allegiances, whose nostalgic loyalties resist ethereal pressures and condemn those seeking both forbidden and propitious pleasures, arduously seek satisfaction.

In the flesh.

The vocal chords of animals must be cut. Hearts punctured after death ensure eternal sleep.

I will do anything for you.

Relinquished yet stilted rebirth.

A comedic sense of terror is dramatically worked into a stifling set of immutable characteristics which maintain a supple lighthearted generosity in Guy Maddin's imaginative Careful.

Multilayered scene after dynamic scene segregates its narrative from the realm of conscious production while providing a template for the remodelling of the expected whose boutique would most likely remain concealed.

Purposefully frustrating or frustrated with a purpose, Careful introduces a disengaged sense of disingenuous perplexity whose recalcitrant creative ethos should be heuristically taken seriously.

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

Good God. What the hell happened to Christmas?

It seems as if the traditional Christmas special has been warped and welded into a devious pot smoking lingerie modelling gangster frolicking schism, just in time to usher in the 2011 holiday season. A special crafted for those who have grown weary of the predictable patterns worked into the yearly festive Frostyesque line-up and are hungrily seeking a palpable harbinger of mainstream subversion, of decadent diversions, of subterranean incursions.

Fully endorsed by Santa.

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas provides such content and insouciantly precipitates a brazen comical maelstrom into which the politically correct is unwittingly thrust.

As Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Hal Penn) frantically search for a new Christmas tree.

Trying to make sense of the ways in which this film confronts stereotyping is challenging. It's as if representatives of two minority groups are saying that due to the institutional barriers firmly established by the Anglo-Saxon majority it's impossible for us to successfully integrate into the mainstream, but we'll still give it a shot, and playfully present you with exactly what you would expect, based upon your own preconceptions, while opening up a resultant critical space in your public sphere, and affectively plunging within full throttle.

You see, the mainstream often prevents minorities from successfully integrating into its culture. It does so in order to horde the prominent signs of achievement and associated luxuries for itself. As minorities still seek to earn a living and take care of their families, they must find a way to do so in the underground, using the only resources they have available to their general advantage (selling narcotics etc.). If racist institutional representatives and policies promote these stereotypes and they are upheld by their ethnic non-professional counterparts, and progressive legislation such as affirmative action is suppressed, you directly stifle an enormous degree of potential, and keep generations of prominent public role models from ever being able to productively apply themselves.

Therefore the underground becomes their outlet and they carve out an existence within while demonstrating that some of the 'demonized' resources they control (marijuana) aren't really that bad and would legitimize their 'unlawful' pursuits if legalized.

There's some of this in A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas and they definitely take things to new levels as they nurture a tormented frustrated blockaded aesthetic while working within a form that has been culturally stabilized.

All the while applying new meanings to concepts like marriage, family, and friendship.

And smoking that reefer.

The Yacoubian Building

Eygptian filmmaker Marwan Hamed's The Yacoubian Building insightfully examines the vibrant culture of Cairo. Yacoubian smoothly intertwines several narrative threads, creating a realist mosaic which seductively highlights the hardships confronting the haves and have-nots within Cairo. Everyone has their price, and Yacoubian's chilling conclusions soberly elucidate the complicated consequences of either living or contradicting some version of a pious life. A coming of age tale that challenges the nature of coming of age itself, The Yacoubian Building houses poignant characters and sinister resolutions, its stories packed with controversial ideas which challenge the foundations of modern Cairo.