Director: Christopher Makoto Yogi
Premiere: Jan. 29th 1:00 p.m.
Life, no matter how solitary the path we choose, is inevitably a grand catastrophe of collaboration. I Was a Simple Man follows Masao (
Steve Iwamoto and, in his younger years,
Tim Chiou) as he nears death in his lifelong home of Hawai‘i. As he hurdles toward his inevitable close, Masao’s life of exile (both self- and community-imposed) opens up into a florid portrait of his complicated personhood. Everything he could’ve known has changed beyond recognition, and the proceeding film balls up nearly a century’s worth of gratitude, regret, resentment and wonder into a visual poem that makes one man’s death the nexus for an exploration about what it means to be a father, a husband and a man in a land whose definition slips through your fingers day by day.
Premiere: 01.28, 10:00 p.m.
One of film’s sharpest double-edged swords is that of immersment and escapism. Within the promise of respite from our daily troubles, there always lies the fear that we’ll slip too far in and lose focus of the blurry line between fiction and reality.
Censor follows Enid, a quiet, thoughtful woman who serves on the British government’s board of censorship. She’s the first line of defense between gory snuff films and the innocent public (and of the children, especially), a job she approaches with a calculated lack of emotion and precision.
The film’s 1980s setting serves as the basis for its throwback style (color! schlock! nameless paranoia!), but it also provides a potent political backing for Enid’s journey through the complex web of video violence. Set at the the height of Britain’s “video nasty” scare (a nation-wide moral panic about excessive gore in independent movies), Enid’s role stands a signifier for the country’s belief
Gift Ideas from Indie Utah Businesses: Wave Coffee – SLUG Magazine slugmag.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from slugmag.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
SONIALOXO = Dua Lipa x Lady Gaga
Belladonna, or as some call it, deadly nightshade, is a drug disguised in the shape of a delicious berry. It’s so potent that it can kill children. It’s toxic, and in Italy, women used it to enlarge their pupils and make them more beautiful. All this context is needed to understand SONIALOXO’s new single, “BELLADONNA,” a maddening, near-three-minute, electric-dipped pop song. Upon first listen, it seems the lyrics don’t make any sense, as if the narrator is changing perspectives from verse to verse. That’s the effect of belladonna personified accordingly, both the muse and narrator of this single. Simply put, this song is a trip, “and SONIALOXO uses “BELLADONNA” to capture listeners under her terrifying, but exhilarating, spell.
Art
While our holiday experience this year might look like a chapter out of a dystopian novel, we can all fi nd common ground in our venture to make this year’s holiday season as normal as possible. Still, our heart’s genuine desire to practice the love language of gift-giving remains unaffected by these tumultuous times. As we search for the perfect item for that perfect someone, we want to do so safely and invest our precious coin into people not corporations. Here are seven local creatives and their products that say “I didn’t forget you amid the chaos” in a perfectly handmade way.