| |
|
 |
Mood:
SICK and SNEEZY
Outlook:
Opportunistic |
| Listening
to: Club 8
Last TV watched: Carnivale
Last film watched:"Evil"
Last book read:"American
Gods" by Neil Gaiman
Last magazine read:New Scientist
Last comic read: The Filth
Currently playing: Knights of
the Old Republic
I want to see: Zatoichi
Forums I visit:
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Up
one level
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
| |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
Film festival Monday
 |
The mid-21st century
isn't all dark |
ALL
TOMORROW'S PARTIES - In the mid-21st
century, a catastrophic event has destroyed social order
in China, creating fertile ground for an apocalyptic
sect called the Gui Dao. Two political dissidents are
caught and sent to a reeducation camp in the Mongolian
region (similar to those seen during the Cultural Revolution)
where one of them falls in love with a female prisoner
who has a young boy. When, for unexplained reasons,
the Gui Dao flee the area, the freed prisoners now have
an uncertain existence to look forward to in a shattered,
bleak landscape of abandoned factories, mud, junk and
statelessness. The arrival of Korean 'liberators' is
only another factor contributing to their feeling of
insecurity.
Yu Lik Wai's film is one of the few true social science
fiction films to come out in the past twenty years
(can you even remember one besides Solaris and Gattaca).
Taking elements from recent history (it begins with
the destruction of Buddhas) and from China's tortured
past, All Tomorrow's Parties is a near future glimpse
at what could happen in northern Asia (and what is
experienced by people in wartime today in Iraq, Afghanistan
and Liberia).
Director Yu Lik Wai trades special effects for a
gritty reality emphasized by the Mongolian environment
which he pointed out in the question and answer session
after the film hardly needed dressing at all. The
relationship between the two former prisoners and
the pressures of survival provide an insight into
life that you won't see in The Matrix or whatever
passes for 'science fiction' in Hollywood. More than
just prediction, this film reminds us that stories
have to be about people, not just events.
All Tomorrow's Parties is the most vividly
photographed film I've seen thus far at the film festival.
The stark, brooding landscape is a spectacular backdrop
for the dystopia, filmed in Sony High Definition to
ease the extensive post-production (color grading
and the addition of wartime cues). It looks great
in the film transfer (though Yu Lik Wai would rather
have had shown it on high def projection).
BRIGHT
FUTURE - The title of Kiyoshi
Kurosawa's gangling conjecture on the future of Japanese
youth should actually read with a question mark ("Bright
Future?"). Its young men are rootless, impulsive,
angry or just mischievous, faced with a future without
prospects or without an idea of goals. Two men in
their mid-20s, Mimura and Mamoru (played respectively
by Joh Odigiri and Tadanobu Asano) toil in a factory
that mass produces the steaming hand towels you get
in Japanese restaurants. Of the two, Mamoru (Asano)
appears to have some kind of plan to get ahead. Mimura
is more impulsive and follows Mamoru's lead. 
When the older factory owner offers them full-time
jobs and tries to become buddies with them the generational
differences are striking. Instead of taking the jobs,
they react violently. Both separately decide to attack
the factory owner but Mamoru thinks of it first and
after murdering the man's family is sentenced to death.
Mimura is shocked, believing that Mamoru was the more
forward thinking. Mamoru's end leaves only hints of
direction. Mimura has been enjoined to take care of
Mamoru's deadly red jellyfish and continue with a
program to convert it to a freshwater life. Meanwhile,
Mamoru's estranged father's inability to connect with
Mamoru in his final days (before he commits suicide)
leads him to take Mimura under his wing.
The rest of the film sees Mimura ping pong between
his impulsive behaviour and rage at his lack of direction
and his developing father-son relationship with his
dead friend's father (Tatsuya Fuji). This film will
probably be known as "the jellyfish movie",
as the one visual effect in this digitally shot movie,
is the many appearances of Mamoru's pet as it progresses
to becoming a freshwater animal (and later as the
progenitor to an infestation of jellyfish throughout
Tokyo's canal system that the authorities seek to
eradicate).
The jellyfish serves in one aspect as an ethereal
made up project of the young that is at once crazy
but also ambitious. Mimura's often funny struggle
to realize a purpose leads him to throw his lot with
an even younger group of anarchists while avoiding
committing to his surrogate father's profession as
a recycler of abandoned junk. (An important fact that
may be missed by non-Japanese is that Japan has been
overtaken as a producer of consumer goods by other
Asian countries. Hence the reference to the recycled
junk is a metaphor for the thrown aside older Japanese,
the same generation as the junk dealer). The tone
of Bright Future, nevertheless is hopeful. One character
at least finds a purpose and the jellyfish who brighten
up the canals will return with a new generation.
|
|
 |
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
Even more reviews
 |
Another shocking
incident caught on TV |
BUS
174 ("Onibus 174") - A
gripping documentary feature about an infamous bus hijacking
in the center of Rio which ends in tragedy. In the summer
of 2000 a 21 year old man who grew up amid the squalor
and danger of the streets and favelas of the Brazilian
capital city attempted to rob a downtown bus but was
cornered by police before he could escape. This begins
a day long seige with the bus surrounded by police,
SWAT teams, press and an angry mob. The documentary
intersperses the events (taken from the multitude of
cameras pointed at the bus during the incident) with
a methodical examination of the life of the hijacker,
what lead him to stick up the bus, as well as interviews
with the survivors, police and media. As the day wears
on, mistakes made by passengers, the hijacker and the
police seem to drive the situation to a foredoomed conclusion.
You know that something terrible is going to happen
and watching it unfold, even knowing the history of
the event, is akin to watching a slow motion accident.
The story even has a built in deadline as the hostage
taker tells police that he will begin executing passengers
at 6pm. Since every camera has a time date counter somewhere
on the screen, you can feel the appointed time ticking
closer and closer. The climax, told from multiple angles
in slow motion, is shocking.
GOODBYE
DRAGON INN - Either one of the
longest jokes ever put to film, an obsessive elegy
to an era of huge theatres, or an 80 minute borefest
that feels like it's three hours. I can't really call
it a bad film as it is so obviously director Ming-Lai
Tsai's pet concept that is made specifically for him
and damn anyone who can't sit through it. I was decidedly
in the camp of people astounded at this film filled
with five minute shots of people doing as little as
possible while the King Hu wuxia film "Dragon
Inn" plays in 'real time' in the background.
The director was in the audience and before the film
played he warned that he would be counting to see
how many people left their seats. I was way too polite
and honestly wanted to see the punch line for this
ultimate slow paced movie. What is the story really?
It is about a huge movie theatre in Taiwan that is
showing "Dragon Inn" while, at various times,
a handful of patrons sit. And sit. And sit. And then
someone will turn their head and watch someone else.
And then they will get up. And go to the bathroom.
And someone will start walking down a long hallway.
And the camera will stay on them until they have actually
traversed the hallway. The punchline reveals why these
people are sitting in the nearly abandoned theatre
doing nothing. If you email me I will tell you what
I understand.
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
MUTT
BOY ("Dong Gae") - A Korean comedy
about a dull-witted layabout everyone calls 'Mutt Boy'
and his battle against corrupt officials and gangsters
in a town about to be transformed by a crooked land
deal. This is a crowd pleaser, as the title character
channels sort of a Korean version of Adam Sandler (without
being annoying like Adam Sandler). Raised by his tolerant
detective father, Mutt Boy grows up with few friends
except his dog, also called Mutt Boy. His easy come
easy go existence is interrupted when local thugs eat
his dog and unleash his considerable temper, which is
only reined in by his father. A few years later, Mutt
Boy is now a bigger, adult version of his layabout self,
still living with his father and without a purpose.
Meanwhile the thugs who ate his dog are now junior members
in a corrupt establishment who are trying to oust local
people from land that contains valuable minerals. Mutt
Boy suddenly now has a cause and after joining a group
of punks decides to take on The Powers That Be, but
must contend with his father's constant intercessions.
This is a very funny film built around the central 'dog
like' performance of the lead, Jeong Woo-Seong, (a real
turnabout from the brooding fighter from the epic battle
film Musa). His physical comedy is hilarious. Nothing
more typifies the comedy of this film than the final
battle royale between Mutt Boy and the chief thug in
a local jail which is one of the most exhausting fights
put on screen. A real crowd pleaser.
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
More reviews from the film festival
 |
Don't get him worked
up |
EVIL
("Ondskan") - The first really
really good film of this year's festival that I've seen.
It's a Swedish film about a delinquent, a thug actually,
who is kicked out of his last public school for brutally
beating another student. At his last review, Erik's
teachers are at a loss. He is academically a stellar
performer but refuses to cease with his brutish behaviour.
The headmaster cannot explain the incongruity except
to call him evil.
At home, there is some indication of the causes of
his behaviour. His stepfather himself is a brute,
thinking nothing of slapping him in front of his mother
at the dinner table for dropping a spoon, and later
taking a strap to him as punishment for speaking back.
As a last resort, his mother sends him to a prestigious
boarding school Stjarnberg, so that he can finish
the school year to gain entrance to 'form 6', which
I presume is Swedish high school.
Determined not to be expelled, Erik at first fits
in well, making friends with his fellow lower classmen
and joining the swim team. However, he soon finds
that there are rules within the student body that
formalize the kind of thuggish behaviour he knows
well, although this time he is at the bottom of the
order. Although he wants to be left alone, by his
refusal to engage with the others he sticks out and
earns the emnity of the upper classmen.
With each infraction, the punishments alloted to
him grow with cruelty and barbarism. Worse, he chooses
to retaliate and earns consequences for his friends.
The contest between Erik and the upperclassmen builds
and builds until you just know something must explode.
And when it does release, boy you've never seen so
many liberals in the audience applaud so hard at an
ass kicking.
Not just an excellent attack on the fascism inherent
in such environments; it is an exploration of how
some people embrace their humanity while rejecting
the reins of brute authority. I was hesitant to see
this movie at first, expecting something extremely
dour, but it is surprisingly full of humour - which
of course is one of the elements of humanity. Highly
recommended.
THE
LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE - At the beginning
of the film Tadanobu Asano ("Ichi the Killer"),
a withdrawn clerk in a Japanese language library in
Thailand, is trying to kill himself. What the issue
is exactly isn't made clear except that he has lost
his passion for living. His world is overly regimented,
he wears the same sets of clothing, over-organizes
his space and avoids other people. Only chance events
throw his downward spiral into a whole new direction.
First, the arrival of his brother, a Yakuza fleeing
his boss' ire, disrupts his life but not for long.
An assassin (Riki Takeuchi) soon catches up with his
brother and Asano's ordered existence is forever closed.
Deciding to throw himself off a bridge, he is again
interrupted by a beautiful Thai exotic hostess who,
in another chance event, is run over by a car who
has just come from an argument with her sister (Laila
Boonyasak). The two survivors are drawn together through
a shared numbness. What follows is a slow-paced odd
couple sort of film where most of the humour comes
from their limited grasp of each other's language
(they make do with English some of the time). As the
relationship between the two moves glacially, all
that's left to do is watch the ever glowing photography
of Christopher Doyle, through who's lens you see a
portrait of a decaying Thailand of abandoned houses,
ramshackle restaurants and flotsam ebbing to and fro
on the beaches. Plot complicates arise later when
the Yakuza boss (played by director Takashi Miike)
shows up; and Asano must fend off Laila's jerk boyfriend.
Pleasant.
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
Seen yesterday at the Film Festival
 |
A Tale of Two Sisters
and a lot of cheap shocks |
A TALE OF TWO
SISTERS - A Korean psychothriller about
two sisters who return to the house ruled by a stepmother
and their distant, unconnected father, a house that
has ... haunting things going on. This is a film that
never allows the audience to be centered. Seemingly
right from the start we are thrown into a previous conflict
between the sisters and the neurotic stepmother without
reference. None of the characters are allowed to build
any sympathy as they throw themselves into the conflict
right away. Although meant to be a film where we pick
together the clues and the fragments of background throughout,
the perspective is thrown about so wildly (interspersed
with cliched shocker bits you will recognize from Ringu,
The Others, and others in the psychothriller genre)
it is too disorienting by half. By the midway point
the 'revelations' and twists and turns of reality (who
is dreaming or imagining what?) are churned out. I no
longer cared about anything beyond my bladder.
PLAN
COLOMBIA: CASHING IN ON THE DRUG WAR FAILURE
- A 60 minute documentary that is a whirlwind debunking
of America's war on drugs in Colombia that coincides
with a brutal civil war by the makers of Hidden Wars
of Desert Storm. Too pat for anyone who has read about
U.S. involvement in Colombia but probably an eye-opener
for those who occasionally hear about the odd massacre
or bombing in the region. The makers take aim at the
defoliation project (U.S. 'contractors' spraying Monsanto
Roundup Ultra over coca leaf crops with hints of Agent
Orange-like effects for those being sprayed), the
economics of the drug war (none of the drug war efforts
coming out ahead in cost-benefit compared to treating
drug addiction as a disease), how international agro
business easily puts farmers out of business so they
have no alternative than to grow coca, to the collusion
of U.S. 'School of the Americas' training for both
the Colombian military and the paramilitary groups,
and the corruption of officials. In only 60 minutes
you can't expect anything really deep here. There
was also nothing critical said against the FARC who
themselves cultivate coca and have been implicated
in atrocities. It was basically Frontline.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
