post

Out in Theaters: THE FOREST

The Aokigahara forest is a place of living nightmares. The Forest is its own kind of living nightmare. Long known to be unholy grounds for those at the end of their proverbial rope come to see themselves off, the mere existence of Japan’s inland Suicide Forest, a densely populated Sea of Trees at the northwestern base of Mount Fuji, is a haunting reminder of human desperation come home to roost. For decades, Japan’s denizens have chartered a grim pilgrimage to Aokigahara to commit suicide, leaving the forest littered with human remains. The annual amount of pseudo-seppuku that occurs here is so staggering that the park rangers have taken measures to curb the corpses piling up, including affixing the park with suicide prevention information and installing security cameras to monitor for suspected attemptees. Still yet, at least a hundred people will die here every year. Read More

post

Out in Theaters: ‘THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY – PART 2’

Katniss Everdeen, the Girl on Fire, the Mother of Rebellion, the Mockingjay, admits in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 that she is but a slave to the dictatorial President of Panem (played to chilly perfection by Donald Sutherland). Pitted against those she has no desire to fight in what has brewed up into an all-out civil war, she with more nicknames than Daenerys Targaryen is but still a pawn in the battle between warring factions. Her burden as torch bearer of a revolution was as predetermined as Prim’s name being reaped from a turnstile. So too is The Hunger Games (the films) enslaved to Suzanne Collins‘ cheaper narrative instincts and predestined by the closing chapters of her best-selling novels. But just as Collins’ books have their hero, the Lionsgate franchise have their own saving graces in the frankly splendid set design, a remarkably top-shelf cast, a vivid, wonderfully realized sense of imagination and the series finest action set pieces to date. Read More