Likewise, Ensieh Shah-Hosseini’s GOODBYE LIFE (2006; November 24 at 6 pm), though hampered by budget and soap opera, revisits the Iraq-Iran war from the point of view of a young woman who, dressed as a soldier, attempts to traverse the war-torn landscape without getting raped or left in a mass grave. It sounds a smidgen more riveting than it actually is. Maziar Miri’s GRADUALLY (2005; November 18 at 6:30 pm), however, is a pulsing little nightmare that sounds thin only on the surface. A railway worker in the outlands learns that his unstable wife has vanished; returning to Tehran, he searches for her (with great difficulty — he can’t even view female corpses at the morgue), and the hunt itself becomes subject to social prejudice and stigma. Eventually it becomes clear that the search and the sense of lostness signify larger things, and at 74 flinty minutes Miri’s film acquires the grounded resonance of a Kafka tale.
Related:
Sin city, Persian gulf, No fooling, More 
- Sin city
Sex and drugs rock the Boston Festival of Films from Iran
- Persian gulf
Another “Festival of Films from Iran” opens at the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Bush Administration still hasn’t started bombing Tehran.
- No fooling
Congratulations, Robert Altman.
- The Arab street
Watching the news lately, you can’t help thinking that nobody has an idea what’s going on in the Arab and Islamic world.
- Review: Goodbye Solo
So far in his brief career, North Carolina native Ramin Bahrani has tapped into the greatest naturalist filmmakers and come back the richer.
- Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge|The Flight of the Red Balloon
Such a multiple remove from a concrete object to various levels of simulation would probably be dizzying or even annoying as posed by any filmmaker other than the great Iranian auteur.
- Portuguese man of war
Manoel de Oliveira occupies a unique seat on the global film culture’s board of directors.
- Last man standing
Here’s my favorite movie trivia question: what living film director can claim the earliest extant film? The answer: Portugal’s Manoel de Oliveira, born in 1908 and still directing.
- Syd Barrett
Without meaning to, Barrett invented one of rock’s enduring archetypes: the visionary who burns brightly just long enough to become a bona fide star before plummeting into introversion and, in this case, a silence lasting more than 30 years.
- Hollywood bribes us with thongs
Aside from the bag of Burger King Kids Meals toys I got at the Superman Returns junket (disappointing, to say the least), it’s been ages since I’ve gotten promo items from a movie studio.
- Get heavy with it
It’s a late weeknight and I’m washing dishes in the kitchen when I hear my wife’s voice from down the hall: “Come look at this!” Wicked Wisdom perform "Something Inside of Me" on The Late Show with David Letterman (YouTube)
- Less
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Features
, Entertainment, Movies, The Taliban, More
, Entertainment, Movies, The Taliban, Abbas Kiarostami, Andy Warhol, Michael Snow, Steven Spielberg, Yasujiro Ozu, Harvey Weinstein, Majid Majidi, Less
