the girly who shall end all girls

i unintentionally did a Canadian film double-feature last night. i'm not sure the range could be more extreme - The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, followed by Fido.

The Journals of Knud Rasmussen is a quiet, meditative story about the slow weight of european culture smothering Inuit culture. it was filmed on location in Nunavut. most of the film is in Inuktitut, and while i could tell faces and characters apart, it took me way too long to realize that some of the people in the scenes were actually shaman Aua's helper spirits. armed with that knowledge, it would be good to rent and rewatch. i loved reading Jack London and Farley Mowat as a kid, so seeing things like the dogsleds with the fan-shaped traces on film was more exciting for me than the storytelling. (as one of the other passholders said afterwards - i loved seeing them build an igloo, but then they cut away before they did the top, which was always the part i wanted to see...) i don't mind a slow pace, but i do mind that i had a hard time understanding key plot points until long after the moment had passed.

three out of five, a rental. (i would like to learn more about Knud Rasmussen now. he's only a minor character in the story. it's all from the Inuit POV.)

Fido is hysterical, and not-to-be missed. eastside folks can catch it this weekend at Lincoln Square. the world is a bright and cheerful 1950s. years ago, the world pulled together to fight the zombies raised by a radioactive cloud. since then, technology has tamed zombies for domestic service. so instead of a boy-and-his-dog story, we have a boy-and-his-zombie story. it's smart and hysterically funny, with a relatively low level of gore and horror used to comic effect. the child actors are top-notch, and Carrie-Anne Moss is brilliant as our boy's mother. Billy Connolly (as Fido) uses his palette of grunts and shuffling to great effect. much of the joy of the film is in the worldbuilding, but the real payoff is in the playing of '50s tropes and what a zombie threat does to gun culture. silly good times, and a great picture-postcard of British Columbia.
light and delightful, with mild flesh eating and plenty of casual shooting. five shambling revenants out of five.

Sakuran is based on the manga of the same name, and seems to be aimed squarely at that audience. (trivia: the author is married to the director of Neon Genesis Evangelion.)

our heroine is bought as a child and grows up to become an oiran (a precursor to geisha, which developed later and ultimately put oiran out of the market). the shape of the story is familiar to anyone who has read Memoirs of a Geisha. it has all the character depth one would expect of a comic book film, but the visuals are captivating and i was fond of the minor characters. Anna Tsuchiya as Kiyoha is absolutely stunning, and eerily resembles the manga drawing (it's probably the round eyes).

it's bright, it's soapy, the soundtrack is completely anachronistic, and i saw the end from miles away. it's rather sweet for a story about prostitution. you can roll your eyes at the repeating fish in a bowl meme and the nipple montage (yes, nipple montage), or you can lie back and enjoy it. i had a blast watching it.

this one is full of naked asian ladies, which may or may not add to the experience.

four floating cherry blossoms out of five.

my last preview of last week was Severance. it's not The Office meets Deliverance - it's The Office meets Friday the 13th. the meeting is uneven and lumpen. the defense-contractor ensemble are a charming group and neatly sketched. the plot is slasher-movie stupid, and there's plenty of gore. the use of music for misdirection is strong, and there are some nice surprises.

it's too much of a horror film to share with C, even though the severed limb humor is excellent.

i laughed a great deal, but it's no Shaun of the Dead. 3.5 out of five, good for a midnight movie.

i'm waiting for Black Sheep.

Crazy Love

no transcription; i settled into my seat, pulled out a sandwich, and varina8 hailed me. we caught up until the movie started, and hopefully we will cross paths again.

(i went to this one because i decided to save Paprika to watch with C during the festival. i'm guessing that the story will be incomprehensible, but i want to see that animation on a big screen.)

the film follows the true story of Burt Pugach and Linda Riss, from the 1950s to the present. being too young and not a resident of the NY metro area for any of the significant dates in the story, it was all news to me and sometimes had me on the edge of my seat. the film cuts talking heads with photos, home movies, and news archives. there is no narrator, and we are often allowed to read the newspaper clippings for ourselves.

i delighted in the sounds of voices from the Bronx. i reveled in the glorious trashiness of elderly women with salon tans, frosted makeup, rhinestones, and looooong cigarettes. (much like my college friends' grandmothers. or my aunts.) all the black and white snapshots reminded me of hours spent sitting with my grandparents telling stories as we went through the "photo drawer". it's a window into a time and place. (even today, with the unironic clown figurine in an apartment and a trip to a real East Coast diner *snif*.)

the documentary documents, and rarely makes obvious judgments. we listen to people tell their story, and we make our own decisions. it's slow to get rolling, but the front-loading of information lets the second half clip along without having to backfill details. it's compelling watching- at turns sad, repulsive, and funny.

4 out of 5, recommended as long as you enjoy a little schadenfreude.

been consumed with chorus stuff the past few days. transcribing while i can...

Battle of Wits
i have cheezits and a coke. i'm wondering if it's safe to open the coke afer carrying it over here from the office. the checkin guy now knows both my name and my viewing habits. he's good. sometimes i want to cultivate such skills, the rest of the time i'm kind of glad to not have them.

the forecast said 60s today. they were dead wrong.

* * *
it was much warmer, probably high 70s.

the film is set in warring-states era China. it's about a great strategist who helps a small city in a siege. Ge Li (Andy Lau, the *spoiler redacted* in House of Flying Daggers) is a follower of Mohism and his command of the little city's forces is aimed at reducing suffering for all, which goes about as well as can be expected in a monarchy. rather than featuring showy wirework and swordfighting, the battle sequences are mostly infantry actions featuring shields and polearms. (i only detected one Massive-type scene; there really did seem to be a cast of hundreds if not thousands, and the credits thank the Chinese military.)
the dialogue is a bit stilted, but i can't tell if that's translation, being a manga adaptation, or genuine lameness.
i really enjoyed this one once it got rolling, especially because (with one late exception) the battles felt plausible and the underdogs held their own by being clever. i'm looking forward to taking C to this one during the festival and talking about the fighting afterward.

4 out of 5, not for people who are bored by battle sequences.

i can't believe eljay spellchecker doesn't know manga.

Death at a Funeral makes the baby Jesus cry.

imagine, if you will, a community theater that chooses a farce for their season. the farce has very low rights fees, a unit set, and everyone in the cast can wear their own clothes. there are some good actors and a solid director, so it doesn't entirely suck, but it's doomed by its very nature. at least it's doomed for me...

( mild spoilers that explain why )

( what i did like... )

skip it. two stars, one each for Alan Tudyk and Peter Dinklage.

edited to add: there was more love for this on the Fool Serious list. perception is a funny thing: other people thought there was a lot of laughter around them, and i thought the audience wasn't enjoying it enough. personal taste made this a non-starter...i didn't like Little Miss Sunshine either.

first of May, first of May, SIFF press previews start today...

all full series passholders are admitted to press previews (unless there's a serious security concern). this means that i can start watching movies almost a month before the festival begins and have extra opportunities to see films while the festival is running. assuming that i keep producing, work is cool with me bending my schedule around to get to them. my goal is to see three or so a week.

like last year, i'm carrying a notebook and my pen, writing my impressions as i go and transcribing. it makes for odd tense structure sometimes:

i am so happy to be here. i've met the membership folks from SIFF and several other passholders. lots of retired folk here today (surprise) and there are three ladies near me discussing linguistics. (about the relationship between Turkish and Japanese. awesome.)
it's like old home week around me. it's sweet. best quote so far: "Bella Bottega is showing films occasionally."

today's film is In the Shadow of the Moon. the blurb says it's a documentary about the 12 astronauts who have been to the moon. it was the most exciting thing for me on the film list for the week. here comes the intro...

the film is lovely. it intercuts interviews with the living astronauts with period footage, both from NASA and various news outlets. i'm a big space goob, so some of the exposition felt like it was talking down to me, but it's a great introduction for students studying this material, and i'm pretty sure it's intended to be broadcast on television. what it offers for the space goob is the very personal and sweet anecdotes and observations of the astronauts. it also uses longer cuts and unfamiliar angles of NASA footage, if you've been watching clips of this stuff all your life. apparently it's won audience awards at other festivals, and i completely understand. even now, the Apollo program fills us with wonder. i scribbled down a few quotes as i watched.

in a discussion about Vietnam, and guilt over being a soldier who was kept safe from the war, one of the men says his friends in southeast asia said the space program was "...the only thing we had to hold our head high and be proud of."

about the speed of the program, and decisions made to change mission objectives: "it was a time when we made bold moves."

there are several images that still linger. (like the backwash from Eagle as it left the moon surface causing the flag to flutter, probably for the only time.) i'm not sure that this is uncovered ground, that there's an important new statement being made about this chunk of history. i do think that it was very important to talk to these men, who were in their late thirties and early forties more than thirty years ago, and create a record before they start dying. i carried away a sadness at the thought that it could be so long until the next moon flight that there may be no one left alive from the Apollo program to see it.

it's beautifully made, and it offers a little dose of pride for jaded Americans. (it's not flag wave - y. there's not even much discussion of the space race.) but as Michael Collins said about touring after they got home, it was the first time that people around the world said "we did it" as in, humanity did it. the world aspired together, the world watched together, and the world shared in the achievement.

five out of five, recommended, pretty much for all ages.

(i think this is worth buying a ticket for in the main festival, but it's digital and includes a lot of sixties television footage, so it will also play well on a television.)