Seen Anything Good? Tales from the film festivals ...
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Whining: I missed Coco Avant Chanel because the idiots in the Civic car park kept letting people in when the place was full, causing a giant half-hour-long traffic jam, and by the time we got out the film had already started. To which I say: bah!
You should have rolled in regardless, because there were a lot of people rolling in well after the film had started. And please accept my blushes at the very unkind thoughts I had about every one of them...
Its still well worth seeing though -- partly because its wonderful seeing Audrey Tatou hitting a note other than "toxically cute pixie". Also rather nice seeing a period film set in France that doesn't have a bad case of Jean Luc Picard Syndrome -- English actors playing French people with BBC diction.
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Anyone of a certain age (say, 30s, early 40s), who liked Freaks and Geeks and who has a penchant for good 80s music (of the Replacements and Husker Du variety, although some 70s Nick Lowe and Big Star make appearances too) will probably like Adventureland. Very sweet, very funny.
I'm assuming someone in his 20s who likes all of those things will enjoy it too? :)
Anyway, I'm looking forward to it- as well as the Baader-Meinhoff film, Herzog's new doco, In the Loop, Soul Power and Departures. Thank christ I booked my annual leave to coincide with the Dunedin Film Fest screenings.
God I love the Regent Theatre. -
You should have rolled in regardless, because there were a lot of people rolling in well after the film had started. And please accept my blushes at the very unkind thoughts I had about every one of them...
I am so passive-aggressively psychotic about late entrants myself (oh yes! I will roll my eyes at your back like a pro, I tell you!) that I would never inflict the experience on anyone else. At least that film is virtually guaranteed to come back.
I'm assuming someone in his 20s who likes all of those things will enjoy it too? :)
Erm, I imagine so. :)
Last night was Cleo from 5 to 7: Nouvelle Vague FTW! It was well worth the price of entry for the early 60s Paris street scenes.
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Last night was Cleo from 5 to 7: Nouvelle Vague FTW! It was well worth the price of entry for the early 60s Paris street scenes
And the Auckland Film Society is going to be running some of Varda's short films after the festival -- she's, IMO, sadly under-rated but I have a funny feeling she's going to age a damn sight better than most of her contemporaries. She also deserves enormous kudos for her efforts to bring her husband, Jacques Demy's luscious films back into circulation in newly-restored prints.
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After a very intense funeral for Rosie Jackson in Wellington yesterday (the sort of ceremony I would would want--friends talking of love and friendship, and no religious banalities) , I slipped away to see Yes, Sir, Madam. It was a surprise because I knew nothing about the focus of the film --the first woman police commissioner in India--which could have been dull but was carried by the force of the central character, and the stupidity of those who opposed her throughout her career. A bonus was having the director do a Q&A after the film.
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I saw Moon yesterday, which involved rocking up to the sold-out Paramount and using my powers of awesome to get a ticket (and a really good seat, at that).
It was a really satisfying film, sort of set in on Kubrickian moon of 2001. At first I was expecting it to be a bit spiritual, but the question of that was cleared up and it became a really good space-based sci-fi flick that constantly delighted me with its refusal to turn into a moronic action film (I'm not sure why I was expecting this).
It's coming out on general release in a few months, but I couldn't resist seeing it on the 40th anniversary of there actually being a couple of guys hanging out on the moon.
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'Flame and Citroen' yesterday.
Worth a watch. A lot like Paul Verhoeven's 'Black Book' in tone.
If you do see it, it's worth bearing in mind that for most of the war, the Nazi jackboot was not quite as firmly on the throat of Denmark as it was the rest of occupied Europe (Holland, France, etc) - the Danish government and various branches of the civil service had quite a large degree of autonomy. Also that Sweden was neutral, and that Danes could travel there relatively freely.
Helps explain a couple of things in the film that might otherwise appear a bit odd.
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I saw two last night, really impressed with both of them.
In the Loop
Every bit as good as I was hoping, Armado Innacui's status in the satire pantheon was assured more than a decade ago with his involvement with Chris Morris in "On the Hour", "Brass Eye" and "The Day Today", but this is coruscating stuff even by those standards, with the added sting that it's only loosely- if that- based on the bureaucratic snafu that went down leading up to the David Kelly affair. Mostly, it's down to the mesmerizing performance of Calpiaddi as Malcolm Tucker, quite possibly the scariest (and swearing-est) villain of this year.
Thirst
The perfect antidote (excuse the pun) to the abstinence-promoting Twilight, this latest slice of genius from the creator of Old Boy and Sympathy for Mr Vengeance is everything you'd want a vampire and horror film. Unsettling, hysterical, melodramatic, unhinged and sexy as hell, this pulls in so many directions that at times you wonder whether they have any control over it (and certainly near the end I was wondering how the hell they would tie it all together), but it's so bold and outrageous that you can't help but go with it.
See them both.
At once. -
Mostly, it's down to the mesmerizing performance of Calpiaddi as Malcolm Tucker, quite possibly the scariest (and swearing-est) villain of this year.
Meh... Yes, Fucking Minister You Horse-Cock Cunt is how one friend described it to me, and have to say the prospect is not appealing. I justs suspect relitigating the Iraq War is... well, tired.
Capaldi should be, in a just world, getting some serious award recognition for his turn as a seriously compromised civil servant in Torchwood: Children of Earth. Abso-fraking-loutely brilliant, which means TVNZ will sit on it for a couple of years then dump it at 2am without telling anyone.
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My festival began and ended this weekend. I started out with North Face, which was wretched -- a dumbed-down, Teutonic Touching the Void that cops out badly in its depictions of pre-War Nazi identity. It also pivoted around one of the more ludicrous examples of Mary-Sue-ism I've seen lately. The Joe-Simpson-narrated TV doco The Beckoning Silence is a much better dramatisation of the same events.
Second up, I had Paper Soldier -- the cosmonauts in Kazakhstan movie. A couple of guys behind me were audibly upset after the film ended -- 'Not a lot of space in that movie, not a lot' -- but it was pretty damn good. It was kind of an absurdist, Catch-22 take on the psychological toll of idealism -- a challenging, technically brilliant brew of rain, mud, Chekhov, Tarkovsky, and the occasional rocket.
Third was Examined Life, which was neither more nor less than you might expect from a bunch of academic philosophers haranguing an admiring film-maker. I followed this up with the cheerfully bonkers Mock Up on Mu, which was fun -- postmodern collage with a more-or-less serious point to make about the subversion of utopian thinking since the '60s in the interests of 'security'.
Now I have to hunt down Cleo from 5 to 7 and wait for Moon to come out on general release.
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Oh, and Coraline was charmingly creepy (and a very good adaptation of Neil Gaiman's charmingly creepy novella); and rather nice to see the 3-D was much more subtly worked out than objects being gratuitously thrown at the viewer.
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Two more films.
Humpday is the tale of two former college friends, reunited in their early 30s, who decided to make a gay porn film. Not that they're gay, it's just something thay they decide to do for art. So the film is a really funny look at the tension between the pair, their friendship. All the guys I know who've seen it have liked its honest look at male friendships, and judging by the giggling from the audience, a lot of ladies enjoy the hot man-on-man sexual tension.
Every Little Step is a documentary following the casting of the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line, and it also provides a good overview of the birth of the music itself. I've only seen A Chorus Line one and wouldn't count myself as a fan of it, but I found the music really moving (and I kept crying, WTF). I guess the process that the auditioning dancers go through is identifiable to anyone who has gone after something difficult.
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I didn't much like Humpday, Robyn. Even though I like my humour to be adventurous and challenging, I found it much too tedious and self-regarding. I too was surrounded by people laughing like a drain but I concluded (rather snottily) that they were the kind of folk who would regard a Roger Hall play as great drama.
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Even though I like my humour to be adventurous and challenging, I found it much too tedious and self-regarding. I too was surrounded by people laughing like a drain but I concluded (rather snottily) that they were the kind of folk who would regard a Roger Hall play as great drama.
I for one think that any criticism of PAS as a forum for a self-selecting band of snobbish, liberal, left-wing elitist intellectuals, is totally unfounded.
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(sorry Geoff, couldn't resist) -
Saw Balibo last night @ the Embassy, it reinforces what we've believed all along. Indonesia's then ruler, Suharto, was a Cold War ally of the West at the time, and they didn't want to be seen to be factionalising in front of the Eastern Bloc.
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It's pretty good. First half is a cracker, but it sags a fair bit in the second half (when the main bunch are in jail). The ending seemed a bit weird and abrupt.
Caught this on Monday. Yes it was long, first half was good, second half was meh. The exploration of the move to violence was reasonably well covered, for a movie. I thought the Middle East terrorist links were played up for humour a bit much.
Sound in the Regent theatre was fantastic. Every gunshot and explosion sound was incredibly real. Seats still very uncomfortable however.
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Got talking to a German friend of mine at the weekend, who grew up in Germany around that time, and who had seen it as well. He thought it was pretty true to life.
He actually enjoyed the second half more than I did. Apparently the courthouse/trial stuff was quite realistic, insofar as the authorities didn't really know how to deal with overtly policical terrorism in an effective way. They attempted to treat terrorists merely as criminals, and in doing so allowed the terrorists a large measure of control in setting the agenda and general 'playing to the gallery'.
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They attempted to treat terrorists merely as criminals, and in doing so allowed the terrorists a large measure of control in setting the agenda and general 'playing to the gallery'.
Giving in to their demand that they all be housed together and be allowed all those materials and ability to communicate with each other... insane. Of course, they planned attacks from jail. Nutty.
The court stuff was entertaining but nothing compared to the Chicago trials from the 1968 convention. The judge there made the German judge look like a rocket scientist.
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(sorry Geoff, couldn't resist)
Fair comment--but I hold to my opinion of Roger Hall
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