Tribeca 2022: "Land of Dreams" Gives Sheila Vand The Star Turn She Has Been Deserving

by Jason Adams

A splendidly surreal spin on the immigrant experience, Land of Dreams stars the always-great Sheila Vand, best known as the burqa-rocking vampire in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. In the new film she plays Simin, an Iranian-American artist turned census worker in the near-ish future.

She's been tasked with recording the dreams of the people the government’s keeping track of. Not dream as in “The American Dream,” not dream like, “One day I hope I will become a doctor.” But the actual literal dreams that these people dream as they sleep at night...

Click to read more ...

Horror Actressing: Sheila Vand in "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night"

by Jason Adams

Watching A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night one's immediate thought might be of a shark, of a Jaws fin splitting the surface, as The Girl (Sheila Vand) skateboards down the inky Iranian streets of Bad Town, her chador trailing behind her like a nighttime tidal-wave no one can escape. A bit of Mephisto in Murnau's Faust too, whose sky-wide wings blot out the sun above that small smoky German village, rooftops only ankle-high, cartoonish and akimbo. There's Caligari brushed over this Bad Town -- the smokestacks and power stations, train cars, flat as a painted flap of cardboard. Sin City Expressionism against which our ageless hunter swerves, preys on all manner of beast, man, fat cat alike. 

But there's so much more to The Girl and how Vand brilliantly paints her -- she might be an Instant Icon of Neo-Western Horror but she's also kind of just a girl, standing in front of a boy...

Click to read more ...

Sundance Short Film Winners - clues to *next" year's Oscar list?

by Nathaniel R

Sheila Vand at SundanceWe hope you've been enjoying our coverage of Sundance this year. Our two men on the ground (Murtada and Abe) have already reviewed 10 films. Sundance wraps up next Sunday, February 3rd but we've already got our first bit of award news. A three person jury comprised of Iranian-American actress Sheila Vand (We the Animals, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night), Obie award-winning playwright/filmmaker Young Jean Lee, and filmmaker Carter Smith (who won at Sundance 12 years ago for his gay short Bugcrush), have picked the winning shorts of the festival. Six of the seven films honored were by people of color, five were from women, and two from filmmakers who identify as LGBTQ. (Yes, Sundance has made huge diversity efforts these past few years... and they've put their money where their mouth is, both in their film selections and in press badges, even subsidizing minority journalists to combat the inequities in entertainment journalism).

Sundance is an Oscar-qualifying festival which means you might hear about a few of these shorts next year about this time if they're very lucky...

Click to read more ...

"We the Animals" coming in August

by Murtada

It’s hard to describe what We the Animals is about. It’s easier to tell you how I felt after seeing it. It’s akin to a recalling a hazy memory, one that you don’t quite recall but sharply and clearly remember how it made you feel. I felt elated, moved, joyful, sad and knowing I saw a fantastic film that I won’t soon forget.

We the Animals is a coming of age tale about three brothers. It is also about the summer (or year or years --time is an unclear element) that changed one boy’s life and his relationships with his two older brothers and their parents forever. The story flirts with magical realism while staying grounded in the economic desperation of industrial upstate New York. It’s a queer story about the secrets we hold so close that they are bound to either destroy us or set us free... 

Click to read more ...

Jack, Finn, Gugu, and More are All Starred Up

Year in Review: The Breakthroughs & Debuts

Though pop culture could probably stand a little less emphasis on the NEW in that endless meat grinder of fame, it happens for a reason: new stars are intoxicatingly shiny things, fresh of face, full of spirit, vivid with hunger for work, and free of the emotional baggage that comes with our longterm pop culture love affairs. They can even surprise you onscreen since they haven't used up all their tricks and haven't been over-worked just yet.

It's impossible to predict anyone's showbiz future -- it's a tough and very weird industry full of lucky and unlucky breaks -- and some new stars each year become quickly forgotten flings. The luckier ones inspire love affairs with the public of varying degrees of passion and the very luckiest of them all settle down with the public for good, till death do us part.

We're still in the dating phase with these actors. So let's have a Beauty Break after the jump. How many of these actors and actresses are you eager to keep seeing? 

BREAKTHROUGHS
Some of these performers aren't completely "new" -- some already made a name on TV or in foreign film -- but they had big years overall (I required them to be in a key movie to qualify). Their careers aren't likely to be the same from here. 

Click to read more ...