LOVE HAPPENS - undeserved

LOVE HAPPENS is the excruciatingly dull and self-important debut feature from writer-director Brandon Camp. It features Aaron Eckhart as a self-help guru who coaches grieving Americans on how to reclaim their lives. Irony being that he has yet to confront the death of his own wife. He will do this through his nascent romance with an earnest florist (Jennifer Aniston in a beanie hat and pigtails, which is how we know she's earnest and tree-hugging). Their budding romance is egged along by her quirky girlfriend (a typecast Judy Greer). The final act emotional breakthrough is nursed along by the grieving father-in-law (Martin Sheen). In a movie filled with trite one-liners about the grieving process, and written to a quality that is undeserving of its profound subject matter, the only really authentic emotion is expressed by John Carroll Lynch (SHUTTER ISLAND) in his role as a grieving father.

LOVE HAPPENS was released last autumn and is available on DVD.

SHUTTER ISLAND - the auteur's B-movie

SHUTTER ISLAND is a psychological horror film directed by Martin Scorsese and based on the popular 2003 novel by Denis Lehane. This faithful adaptation is a self-consciously old-fashioned sort of an enterprise, set in a maximum security prison for the criminally insane, in 1950s America. It deals very deeply in notions of personal and national guilt – denial and repression. The protagonist is a veteran soldier turned Federal Marshall called Teddy Daniels (Leonardo di Caprio). He has been three two traumas – being present at the liberation of Dachau, and having his wife die in an arson attack on their apartment. Nominally, he has come to Shutter Island to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a female patient/prisoner called Rachel Salondo. His real agenda is to investigate the whereabouts of the man who killed his wife though - he protests – not to take revenge – and to investigate what really happens in Ward C. The central puzzle of the film is what is the agenda of the employees of Shutter Island, not least the lead psychologists (the superbly sinister Sir Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow.)

SHUTTER ISLAND is a profoundly odd film. Just as with THE SHINING it sees an A-list auteur apply his talent to a B-movie genre – the brooding psychological thriller. All the way through the movie, I found myself being brought out of the film by the sheer quality of Martin Scorsese’s framing or Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing. I was also deeply impressed by the sophistication of the intellectual material – the conflation of personal and political guilt. But somehow, the sheer quality of the thematic material and its production mitigated against the hyper-real construction of a sinister atmosphere, through Robbie Robertson’s careful use of Mahler and the fictively sombre grey clouds hanging over the eponymous prison island with its gothic central house and proto-fascist civil war prison fort. It also mitigated against my emotional involvement with the film. Thus scenes that should be downright petrifying or deeply emotionally moving were neutered by their subvention to the tricky plot.

The movie is thus, at times, deliberately bad – especially in its opening sequences – with its self-consciously over-the-top weather effects and ludicrously over-bearing score. It is also at times extremely good – so good that it breaks the B-movie veneer. In particular, I would cite the flashback scenes to Dachau, especially the mass execution, which plays like a sort of demented ballet. At other times, Scorsese seems to be reaching for something darker and more twisted than I have seen him wrestle with before, but basically fail in that task. The way in which he treats the hallucinations and warped memories of his protagonist is beautiful and bizarre. But it brings to mind comparison with BUG and David Lynch’s recent work – not least MULHOLLAND DRIVE. I couldn’t help but wonder what a less faithful and more free-wheeling treatment of the material might have looked like in the hands of someone like Lynch.

And this brings me to my final thought on SHUTTER ISLAND: it is, after all, a beautifully made but rather conventional treatment of the subject matter. Scorsese’s art is well-honed but he is somehow a prisoner of it. He hasn’t allowed himself to truly break free and show us something so unhinged as to utterly disturb us. Neither has he subverted the B-movie horror film in the way that a Quentin Tarantino did with World War Two films in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (a film which, by the way, looks better with each passing day).

SHUTTER ISLAND premiered at Berlin 2010. It was released last weekend in the US, Argentina, Argentina, Denmark, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Russia, Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, Lithuania, Norway, Spain and Sweden. It is released this weekend in Belgium, France, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Israel, New Zealand, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Austria, Estonia, Iceland, Taiwan and Venezuela. It opens on March 5th in Switzerland, Hungary, Brazil and Italy. It opens on March 12th in the UK, Egypt, Mexico and Turkey. It opens on March 18th in South Korea and on March 26th in Poland. It opens in April 9th in Japan and on April 15th in Singapore.

PERCY JACKSON AND THE LIGHTNING THIEF - also not entirely unwatchable

Another movie that’s easy to deride is PERCY JACKSON AND THE LIGHTNING THIEF. The similarity of the source material and the fact that it shares the same director as the first two HARRY POTTER films have led many reviewers to call it “Harry Potter lite” or a Harry Potter rip-off. Certainly, you can see their argument. Percy Jackson is a boy who is “special” and that being “special” relates to his now absent father. His being special leads him to a special school where he will learn to use his secret powers, and to make two friends – a loyal but doltish boy and a much more clued-on girl. They will ultimately have to contend with another student who has conflicting loyalties, and to go on a quest for high stakes. They will be guided by a wise old teacher and their adventures will take place both in a magical realm and in our real world. The only difference is that Harry Potter is a wizard and Percy Jackson is the son of the Greek god Perseus, and is thus a demi-God. And rather than battling Voldemort, he is battling to restore to Zeus his bolt of lightning in order to prevent a war between Zeus and Hades. There are even similarities in the production design, largely because of the journeyman-like-quality of all Chris Columbus movies. He’s the go-to-guy if you want a movie to come in on time, on budget, to have some serviceable special effects and not do anything too crazy.

The resulting film is just fine. It’s not the sort of kids film that adults should go and see unless they are accompanying a small child, but I’m betting good money that any kid, bored in the school holidays, will have a good time watching this film.

PERCY JACKSON & THE LIGHTNING THIEF is on global release.

Fantasy (Kunio Kato, 2003)

While watching this short animation, which Kunio Katō (加藤久仁生) released on the web in 2003 I realized just how romantic Katō is as an artist. I don’t mean romantic in the Jdorama sense of the word, rather in the sense of sentimental and idealistic. While there may be some dark themes running through his films (the strange events of The Apple Incident, or the melancholy of Tsumiki no ie), on the whole his vision is optimistic and open to flights of fancy. He uses soft hues (though darker than pastel), soft, rounded edges, beautifully shaped faces, and heavy use of dissolves and fades.

The ‘fantasy’ in this film is the storybook variety. The film consists of five brief vignettes, which the title cards refer to as stories. Each vignette does not really tell a story so much as suggest one, leaving the audience to fill in the rest of the story themselves. There are several motifs that give direction to these suggestions: a storybook, butterflies, a young girl, and red shoes.

Each title card resembles a page in a storybook, with the animated stories even visually retaining the storybook frame throughout. The first story, ‘ちいさな魂/The Little Spirit’ (Chiisana Tamashii) – the only story with Japanese in its title – opens with a young girl sitting on what appears to be an oversized stool, with oversized floorboards in the background, reading an oversized storybook. Not only does the book indicate the theme of storytelling and fantasy, but the oversized mise-en-scène harkens back to Alice in Wonderland. Adding to this is the fact that the girl is the typical age of a heroine like Alice: the Studio Ghilbi heroines are all usually 12 or 13 years old, and this storybook girl’s red shoes reference Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

The next key motif for reading this short film are the small yellow butterflies that emerge from the pages of the book and flitter up into the sky. The butterfly is a common motif in Japanese literature and film because of its transformative nature. In the fantasy world of storybooks, things are not always what they seem however much they may resemble the world of reality. Sure enough, as the camera follows the butterflies up into the sky, Katō reveals that the girl is not in an oversized room but sitting on the roof of a tall building with his trademark slender buildings in the background.

This element of surprise and movement between fantasy and reality repeats in each of the vignettes. In ‘Story 2: Gypsy’, the girl has her face lifted into an autumn wind as leaves appear to transform from green into autumn colours as they float past her to the ground. In ‘Story 3: Fantasy’ the scene moves from the realm of fantasy (sleeping in a beautiful woodland scene) to reality (sleeping in one’s own bedroom), with an element of fantasy in the shape of a flower makes the leap from one realm to the other. In ‘Story 4: Melody’, we are led to believe that the pattern is repeating itself with the girl now in a dark underwater world with a goldfish, but the scene shifts to reveal that she is looking through a giant aquarium window shaped like a moon.

In the final vignette, the girl is sheltering from heavy rain under the overhang of a tall, slender building. A close up of her ruby red shoes suggests that she does not want to get them wet. However, when the rain clears, the girl forgets the puddles and skips and dances cheerfully through the landscape, her arms outstretched to greet the sunlight.

With Fantasy, Katō captures a feeling of whimsy in his exploration of the fantasy life of his young female protagonist. While on one hand, I like how he keeps it simple and encourages the audience to fill in the ‘story’, on the other hand I was left wanting more. I would enjoy seeing these ‘stories’ expanded. After the carefully crafted narrative of La maison en petits cubes, it would be wonderful to see Katō really indulge himself in his next film with another fantastic vision from the world of his sepia, sea green and teal-hued imagination. According to Gaugins, he is currently working on several animation projects for websites and TV, though there have been no recent status updates on his official website.

Related Posts:
La maison en petits cubes
The Diary of Tortov Roddle

The Apple Incident

Support this independent artist by buying his work on DVD, or viewing it on Crunchyroll.  La maison en petits cubes is also available as an itunes download c/o shorts international.

pieces of love Vol.1 Tsumiki no Ie (La Maison en Petits Cubes)

Animation

Aru Tabibito no Nikki

Animation

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

Japanese Oscar Winners 3: Ryuichi Sakamoto

Ryūichi Sakamoto (坂本 龍一, b.1952)

Sakamoto, Cong Su, and David Byrne won the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1987 for Berardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (a sample of Sakamoto's contribution is here). Sakamoto is a prolific composer and performer whose work has won many awards over the years. My own personal favourite work by Sakamoto is the soundtrack to Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (戦場のメリークリスマス, 1984) which won him the Mainichi Film Concours and the BAFTA for Best Film Score. I found it disturbing while Christmas shopping in Japan to hear it playing in shopping centres. Although it has a Christmas theme, the music does not bring up visions of sugar-plums, if you know what I mean. 

Like Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, Sakamoto also stars in The Last Emperor playing the notorious Masahiko Amakasu (甘粕正彦, 1891-1945). Despite his obvious skills as an actor, these two films were rare occasions. He also had a cameo in Madonna’s music video for Rain playing her video director.

The Last Emperor may have been Sakamoto’s only Oscar win, but he really could have won the award for any number of soundtracks that he composed. Some of his best*  include:

Koneko monogatari (子猫物語, Masanori Hata, 1986 - nominated for a Japanese Academy Award)
The Handmaid’s Tale (Volker Sclöndorff, 1990)
Sheltering Sky (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1990 - won Sakamoto a Golden Globe)
Tacones Iejanos (High Heels, Pedro Almodovar, 1991 - won Sakamoto a Golden Kikito)
Wuthering Heights (Peter Kosminsky,1992)
Little Buddha (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1993 - won Sakamoto a Grammy)
Gohatto (御法度, Nagisa Oshima, 1999)
Alexei and the Spring (アレクセイと泉, Seiichi Motohashi, 2002)
Appleseed (アップルシード, Shinji Aramaki, 2004)

Tony Takitani (トニー滝谷, Jun Ichikawa, 2004)
Silk (François Girard, 2007 - nominated for a Genie Award)

* by best, I am referring to the quality of the soundtrack irregardless of the quality of the film itself. Some of these films are not the greatest (Little Buddha), while others (Tony Takitani) are masterpieces.

VALENTINE'S DAY - not entirely unwatchable

VALENTINE’S DAY is a romantic comedy along the lines of LOVE ACTUALLY – in which we follow a number of characters, all loosely connected, living in contemporary LA on Valentine’s Day. We have everything from a teenager trying to lose her virginity (Emma Roberts); to a serving officer home on leave (Julia Roberts); from a cynical “player” sports journalist (Jamie Foxx) to an old-romantic florist (Ashton Kutcher) and many many more besides.

It is easy to deride VALENTINE’S DAY. It is a movie that has been so carefully constructed in the Excel sheets of Hollywood producers that is feels about as real and alive as a frozen turkey twizzler. Every actor has been chosen for their essentially good looks and winning smile. Every character is broadly delineated as being wholesome and good and thus deserving of True Love or as being superficial and duplicitous and therefore only worthy of being Alone. It’s the sort of movie that pats itself on the back for being so liberal as to have a gay character but doesn’t have the balls to show him making out. There is no plot development that cannot be predicted well in advance and no satire that hasn’t had its rough edges smoothed down. It’s a movie so shiny and brightly coloured in makes LOVE ACTUALLY - with its depiction of at least two “good characters” who end up unloved at the end of it – seem spiky and socially aware.

Nonetheless, I can’t deny that I had a passably good time watching the film, in the same way that a can of coke is predictable, tasty at the time, but offers no nutritional value. In a rising tide of blandness, Queen Latifah delivers one truly superb line, Taylor Swift was surprisingly willing to play dumb, and Anne Hathaway is always good at pulling off vulnerability. As for the rest of the cast, there’s nothing to write home about. The only thing that really pissed me off was the gaff in the writing that had Bradley Cooper’s character flying coach on a fourteen hour flight when he’s rich enough to have a chauffeur-driven limousine. Please. That guy would’ve been safely ensconsed in his personal sleeper seat in Business rather than propping up Julia Robert’s dozing head.

VALENTINE'S DAY is on global release.

Japanese Oscar Winners 2: Takuo Miyagishima

Takuo Miyagishima / 宮城島卓夫

(aka Tak Miyagishima, b. 1928 in Gardena, CA)

In 2005, Miyagishima won the Gordon E. Sawyer Award at the Oscars. This award is given out semi-annually "an individual in the motion picture industry whose technological contributions have brought credit to the industry.” The award is voted upon by the Scientific and Technical Awards Committee of the Academy. It is named after Gordon E. Sawyer (1905-1980) who won 3 Oscars for Best Sound during his long career as Sound Director at Goldwyn Studios. Miyagishima worked at Panavision for over 50 years and was highly influential in the design and implementation of new technologies during his career. Under his leadership, Panavision won an Oscar in 1978 for the Panaflex Motion Picture Camera System, as well as in 1993 for the Auto Panatar anamorphic photographic lens.

 Audrey Hepburn and Sessue Hayakawa in a studio photo for Green Mansions (1959)

Carl Wakamoto wrote up a great account of the event honouring Miyagishima in Asia Pacific Arts, including an informative interview with Miyagishima himself. I particularly enjoyed Miyagishima's reaction to being presented the award by Scarlett Johansson (So [your name] didn’t get lost in translation?) and his experience growing up as a Japanese-American. There are also many terrific anecdotes on how Panavision’s reputation was once saved by Montgomery Cliff having a car crash, meeting Sessue Hayakawa on the set of Green Mansions (Mel Ferrer, 1959), and working with cinematographer Freddie Young on the lenses for Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962). Read it here.

Osamu Tezuka: Self Portrait (1988)

David Ehrlich’s Animated Self Portraits (1989), as I mentioned in the previous post, features 19 artists from 5 countries exploring their identities as artists through the medium of animation. With the entire film reportedly being only 8 minutes in length, one wonders how Ehrlich managed to fit all the artists in when Kihachirō Kawamoto’s contribution comes in at approximately a minute in length – even if you shave off the opening and closing credits. Osamu Tezuka makes space for other artists, in a 10 second film that gives just as strong an impression as Kawamoto’s.

Also in contrast to Kinoshita’s Self Portrait (セルフポートレート, 1988, 1’27”), Tezuka’s Self Portrait (自画像 / Jigazou, 1998, 12 seconds) gives a very different take on the creative process. He divides the screen into three strips. Each strip gives the section of a different section of a face. To the sound of a slot machine, the three strips appear to spin just like the gambling device itself. The fourth time is the charm (three is unlucky in Japanese culture), with three sections of Tezuka’s face lining up. In the caricature of his face he is wearing his trademark glasses and beret. His mouth is agape and gold coloured coins fall out of it.

The different faces used in this short animation strike me as either being famous faces or characters from Tezuka’s prolific career as a manga-ka and anime director. They look familiar, but I can’t quite put names to them all. Obviously, one of them is Frankenstein. One look likes a politician whose name I ought to know. Leave a comment if you recognize them from these screencaps. I particularly like the alien / swamp creature that makes an appearance in the right-hand column.

Now, there are a couple of ways to interpret this film. The first is that all these characters somehow inhabit the imagination of the artist. Or perhaps, they were influential in some way on Tezuka during his career. On the other hand, it may be about the creative process itself. Where Kawamoto depicted the creative process as a struggle, Tezuka suggests that success for him is all as a matter of chance. You pull the handle on the slot machine with your initial project idea and hope that with luck all the pieces will fall into place. Certainly, Tezuka’s career was a series of ups and downs, but when all the elements fell into place for him, the rewards were certainly very great. Something that both Kawamoto’s and Tezuka’s films have in common is their sense of humour. I may have to troll through some archives to get a hold of the original film in its entirety, because it would be interesting to compare how these very different artists (Jan Švankmajer and Tezuka on the same programme together!!) interpret the concept of ‘self portrait’.

Osamu Tezuka Jikken animation sakuhin shu

Kihachiro Kawamoto Sakuhin shu

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

Kihachiro Kawamoto: Self Portrait (1988)

Some background information

In 1987, American animation artist David Ehrlich, an active member of ASIFA (Association Internationale du Film d'Animation), came up with the idea of assembling a collection of very short self portraits by ASIFA members. The resulting 8 minute film opened a window into the minds of the animators and how they view the creative process. In addition to his own contribution, he assembled the work of 18 other animators representing five countries: the United States (Ehrlich, Sally Cruikshank, Candy Kugel, Bill Plympton & Maureen Selwood), Estonia (Mati Kütt, Priit Pärn, Riho Unt & Hardi Volmer) , Yugoslavia (Borivoj Dovnikovik, Nikola Majdak, Joško Marušić & Dušan Vukotić,), Czechoslovakia (Jiří Barta, Pavel Koutský & Jan Švankmajer) and Japan (Renzō Kinoshita, Kihachirō Kawamoto & Osamu Tezuka). Animated Self Portraits premiered at Annecy, the city where ASIFA was born, at their animation festival in 1989.

Renzō Kinoshita’s involvement in this project was quite logical as he and his wife Sayoko founded the Japanese branch of ASIFA in 1981. As Kinoshita’s films are quite scarce in digital format, I have not yet tracked down a copy of his contribution to Self Portraits. Like Kinoshita, Osamu Tezuka was also very involved in the animation community. Up until his death in 1989, Tezuka was the president of the Japan Animation Association (JAA), when Kawamoto took over the presidency. Tezuka’s Self Portrait (自画像 / Jigazou, 1998, 12 seconds), is available on the Geneon DVD of his Experimental Films and the Australian and U.S. versions of this collection. Kawamoto’s Self Portrait (セルフポートレート, 1988, 1’27”) is available on the Geneon DVD of his short films, but sadly did not make it onto the U.S. edition. As far as I am aware, the film in its 8 minute entirety is not yet available on DVD.

Kihachirō Kawamoto’s Self Portrait

Kawamoto’s film begins with music over the opening credits: Eiko Segawa (瀬川瑛子)’s 1986 enka classic Inochi Kurenai (命くれない) about an inseparable couple. A clay figure of Kawamoto sits at a table moulding white clay with his hands. Kawamoto is most famous for his bunraku-style puppet animation, though he has experimented with other techniques in his long career. For the design of the doll of himself, Kawamoto enlisted the help of animator and illustrator Masahiro Katayama (片山雅博). Katayama currently works as a professor at Tamabi. It is a perfect caricature of Kawamoto with his trademark spectacles and goatee.

The camera shifts to a profile view of the artist moulding the clay into the beautiful figure of a woman. Just as the details of her face are realized, the woman becomes animated and struggles angrily with the artist as if to free herself from his artistic will. She then transforms into an oni (demon). The artist squishes down the head of the clay figure, trying to regain control of his creation, but the oni reforms itself and does the same to the clay figure of the artist. When the artist reforms himself, he has acquired the fangs and horns of an oni. He shakes his face back to its natural state. The fight continues between the artist and his creation as the credits run and the screen fades to black, suggesting this is an on-going power struggle.

This film reminded me of Luigi Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Search of an Author, which also played with the notion that works of art or literature take on a life on their own after the artist has created them. In the case of sculpture – part of the process when Kawamoto creates his ningyō dolls (人形) – the materials play as much of a role as the artist’s intentions themselves. Many artists can relate to Kawamoto’s notion of the creative process as a struggle between intention and its realization. The film also demonstrates the fine line between beauty and its opposite, just as tragedy and comedy are inextricably entwined together).   It may only be a minute long but this little film is intriguing in a variety of ways.

For more on Kawamoto’s creative process, Japanese and French speakers should check out this clip from an Arte documentary, or read Jasper Sharp’s interview with him in Midnight Eye.

UPDATE OCT 9, 2010:  I just got ahold of a copy of the original film Animated Self Portraits (1989) and have discovered that Kawamoto's contribution has a different soundtrack in the original version.

Osamu Tezuka Jikken animation sakuhin shu

Kihachiro Kawamoto Sakuhin shu

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

THE LAST STATION - patronising and superficial

THE LAST STATION is a lavishly produced but patronising biopic of Leo Tolstoy's last years - when he was the world's most famous author, but had turned his back on literary fame to pursue a life as a natural philosopher and advocate of interior spirituality and an austere life of renunciation. The movie is written and directed by Michael Hoffman - a director with a somewhat patchy history. In the early 1990s, he directed the scabrous network TV satire SOAPDISH but then settled into much more banal fare such as the Clooney-Pfeiffer rom-com ONE FINE DAY and the warmly photographed but morally equivocal curio THE EMPEROR'S CLUB. THE LAST STATION is also a rather odd film. The warm glow of its lavish photography (Sebastian Edschmid) and the beautiful production design (Patrizia von Brandestein) lend the whole enterprise a Merchant-Ivory glow. Who wouldn't want to be sitting in the real Yasnaya Polyana drinking tea with jam and listening to opera? Everything is wonderfully appointed and nothing more so that the fine cast. There may be grumblings about Anthony Hopkins and Meryl Streep pulling out of their roles as the ageing Lev and his wife Sofya, but their replacements, Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren are no less weighty. And in his typical role as callow naive voyeur we have James McAvoy, fresh from his apparent success in ATONEMENT, as Lev's secretary Valentin. This being a sort of Merchant Ivory world in which weighty literary stuff slips easily down the throat, Valentin has a love interest - an independent young woman called Masha (ROME's Kerry Condon). Naturally, in a world where all intellectual brain-ache has been banished, we shall be led through the story by our charming ingenu Valentin, and have the larger issue of Love versus Rules thought through by Valentin and Masha.

The tragedy of this film is that it had the real locations and a fine cast and production team at its disposal but chose to create nothing more complicated than a soupy melodrama. Sofya is the matriarch who loves her husband and is proud of his fiction but is contemptuous of the men who would turn his Confession into dogma, and steal her children's inheritance into the bargain. This could have been tragic: a woman of genuine nobility and strength forced to flatter and manipulate and throw hysterics in order to be heard. But Helen Mirren's broad performance plays right out of the newspaper reports that Chertkov would've been planting. Plummer's Tolsoy could have been more tragic still - a deperately intelligent man who is forced to hurt the one he loves in order to move forward with what he thinks is his larger plan - or a tragic buffoon manipulated by the ideologues who want to use his name and claim the copyright on his novels. Who knows? Michael Hoffman makes him a jovial old cock, but nothing more. He never acts but is acted upon. It is a curious void at the centre of the film. I have little to say about the character of Valentin other than that this is a rather stereotypical role for McAvoy and rather unworthy of the opposing (and fictional) character Masha. Kerry Condon is impressive - the only actor who seems to be embracing some kind of truth, but she has little to do. And as for Paul Giamatti's Chertkov, wouldn't it have been more interesting to make him sympathetic? To have us believe that he genuinely cares for, and believes in, Tolstoy, rather than being a cartoon-villain puritan and chancer.

What I'm trying to say is that, at the start of this film, we have established the dramatic tension within ten minutes. Sofya loves Tolstoy and wants his attention and his money. Chertkov loves Tolstoy and wants his name and his money. Sofya shouts and schemes. Chertkov wheedles and schemes. Tolstoy hobbles about between the two and then carc's it in a provincial train station. If you want to make a movie on this subject matter that sustains itself for two hours you have to be willing to dig deeper into motives and to play in shades of grey. You have to be willing to roll up your sleeeves and deal in moral ambiguities as well as in moral certainties. You can't just loll about in beautifully photographed countryside bouncing the same argument back and forth like the world's most dull tennis match.

Additional tags: Michael Hoffman, Kerry Condon, Patrick Kennedy, John Sessions, Sergei Yevtushenko, Sebastian Edschmid, Patrizia von Bradenstein

THE LAST STATION played Telluride 2009 and was released in the US, Canada, Germany and Austria earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK and opens next weekend in the Netherlands. It opens in Singapore on March 4th and in Switzerland on April 1st. Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer have been nominated both for Golden Globes and Academy Awards.

Japanese Oscar Winners 1: Best Costume Design

Japan had a great year at the Oscars last year thanks to Yōjirō Takita’s Departures (おくりびと , 2008) and Kunio Katō’s La maison en petits cubes (つみきのいえ, 2008). In fact, compared with other non-English-speaking countries, Japan has actually won many Oscars over the years rivaled only by Italy, France, Germany and Sweden. Although no Japanese films are in the running for the big awards this year, despite another great year for animation in Japan, I thought I’d celebrate past winners in the run up to the Oscars. Today’s focus is costume design.

1954 27th Academy Awards

Sanzo Wada (和田 三造, 1883-1967)

Teinosuke Kunugasa’s Gate of Hell (Jigokumon/地獄門, 1953) is famous for having won the first Palme d’Or (Cannes) and the second Oscar for a Japanese film. In addition to the Special Honorary Award (predecessor to the Best Foreign Film Category) given to Kinugasa, Sanzo Wada received an Oscar for Costume Design. Wada graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts where he specialized in Western-style painting (Yōga/洋画). After studying for many years in Europe, he travelled throughout Asia eventually returning to Japan to teach at his old alma mater in 1927. Read about Wada’s career as an artist with beautiful scans of his woodblock prints at the Ohmi Gallery.

1986 58th Academy Awards

Emi Wada (ワダ・エミ / 和田惠美, b. 1937)

Kyoto-born Wada (no relation to Sanzo Wada) won the 1986 Oscar for Costume Design for Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (乱, 1985). She has also designed costumes for Dreams (Akira Kurosawa, 1990), Prospero’s Books (Peter Greenaway, 1991), Gohatto (Nagisa Oshima, 1999) as well as many Chinese, Hong Kong, and Korean films. In 2006, she designed costumes for the Metropolitan Opera’s 2006 staging of Tai Dun’s The First Emperor starring Placido Domingo. Wada is a graduate of Kyoto City University of Arts, where she majored in Western-style art (Yōga/洋画). Wada’s husband Ben Wada (和田勉, b. 1930) was a producer at the NHK and despite having officially retired in 1987, he still keeps active as a freelance director/producer.  You can visit Eiko Wada's official site here.

1993 65th Academy Awards

Eiko Ishioka (石岡 瑛子, b. 1939)

Ishioka won the Oscar for her costume design in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992). Along with the composer Philip Glass and the cinematographer John Bailey, Isioka was awarded for Best Artistic Contribution at the Cannes Film Festival in 1985 for their work on Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. She has also designed costumes for Broadway shows, opera, and Cirque du Soleil. Ishioka even designed costumes for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Her work is displayed in galleries around the world including MOMA in New York. She has published a book about her design aesthetic.

Ran [Blu-ray]

Japanese Movie

Bram Stoker's Dracula [Priced-down Reissue]

Movie

SOLOMON KANE - a near perfect piece of pulp entertainment

I love the CONAN films, and pretty much all Arnold Schwarzenegger flicks from the eighties in general. But CONAN is special. There's something deliciously disturbing about a woman like me (quasi-feminist, post-modern, intellectual snob) liking something so, well, unreconstructed in its full-on appreciation for strong men swinging swords in a battle for cosmic stakes painted in simplistic terms. Good and evil are tangible in the world of Robert E. Howard. So while I didn't know much about SOLOMON KANE going into the film, I knew enough: for this is another character created by Robert E. Howard, and in true pulp stylee, the resulting film is just astoundingly, unashamedly pure in its intentions. We are going to get a straightforward battle between good and evil fought for the ultimate stakes, and it will be waged by a fit guy with a multitude of weapons.

Solomon Kane is a sixteenth century aristocrat turned rebel warrior. Like St Augustine he has lived a life of pillage and murder upon the high seas, resulting in the Devil laying claim to his soul. Kane being no hippie vegetarian, he escapes the Devil and retreats to a monastery whereupon he repents and disavows violence. With steady purpose he sets off back to the West Country to his ancestral home, but finds that it has become over-run by sorcery and evil with a capital E (good piece of paedophobia involved). His dilemma is whether to forfeit his redeemed soul and take up the sword in order to vanquish evil.

The first thing to say is that this movie looks fantastic. It's all gothic horror - misty moors, muddy fields, craggy castles on clifftops. The cast look like Puritans have turned up in the middle of Mordor, with Solomon Kane looking distinctly like Aragorn and the evil thugs rather orkish. Mackenzie Crook of THE OFFICE looks particularly superb in a frightwig as a mad old priest and James Purefoy (Mark Anthony in HBO's ROME) looks every inch the convincing warrior with a crisis of conscience. They've even wheeled out Max von Sydow as Kane's father and Jason Flemying as the sorcerer Malachai with some very fruity face-grafitti.

The second thing to say is that despite the complete insanity of the plot - witches, sorcerers, pacts with the devil etc - everyone plays it straight. There's never a whiff of pastiche and somehow, the fact the actors all invest into it, means that we do too. I mean, the stakes are absurdly high here, but I never for a minute thought "Hold up! This is RIDONKULOUS!" Rather, I was genuinely fascinated to see how it would all play out, and felt genuinely sorry for this poor bastard who renounces violence and lives in genuine fear for his immortal soul but is caught in the worst of all Catch-22s.

Basically, SOLOMON KANE is just about as perfect as you can get for sword-swinging fantasy epic entertainment. I dock it half a mark for breaking the carefully constructed veil of plausibility by inserting a truly ludicrous CGI monster into the final act. It's even more annoying that writer-director Michael J Bassett did this, because when you look at the narrative, and the choice that has to be made to drive the denouement, you don't actually need the monster at all. The key point is that Kane has to make a choice, and a sacrifice. The struggle is internal, and the struggle against external ravenous beasties is secondary. Still, despite that minor hiccup, SOLOMON KANE remains an impressive and entertaining flick. I could happily watch it again, and I'm really hoping it makes enough phat cash that they greenlight the rest of the planned trilogy.

SOLOMON KANE played Toronto 209 and opened in France, Kazakhstan and Russia last Christmas. It opened earlier this year in Spain and the Philippines and is currently on release in the UK. It opens in the Netherlands on March 18th and in South Korea on March 25th. No US release date yet.

THE WOLFMAN - anaemic

Joe Johnston, hack director of such memorable fare as HIDALGO, JURASSIC PARK III and THE ROCKETEER (oh yes!) creates another cine-clunker with his ill-conceived remake of the Curt Siodomak classic, THE WOLF MAN.

The story is simple. Innocent Lawrence Talbot is bitten by a werewolf on Blackmoor while investigating his brother's savage death. He has to fight to stop the beast, while battling with his own lycophagia, all the time being hounded by the police and the psychiatrists, and with the help of his brother's attractive fiancée, Gwen.

Neither gory enough to be convincing as horror, nor well-acted enough to be convincing as familial drama, the movie occasionally plays as a campy spoof. It's surprising to me that the production design is so hi-rent - with richly textured costumes, and decadent gothic sets. And yet, the make-up design for The Wolfman is distinctly unconvincing, running a close second to Ang Lee's bouncing luminous green HULK as the most implausible filmic creation. You watch the sub-par transformation scenes, and the Teen-Wolf-laughable Wolfman bounding across London and you're taken out of the movie immediately. And as for the acting, despite the high quality cast (Anthony Hopkins, Geraldine Chaplin, Benicio del Toro, Emily Blunt, Antony Sher), the performances seem flat and uninspired. Only Hugo Weaving, as a mis-placed Inspector Abberline, looks like he's having any fun at all.

What a waste of a fine cast. What a waste of the beautifully decorated sets, period costumes, and lush Danny Elfman score. What a waste of my time and money.

Additional tags: Joe Johnston

THE WOLF MAN is on global release in all bar Russia, Australia and Poland where it opens next weekend, Israel where it opens on April 1st and Japan where it opens on April 23rd.

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG - the best of both worlds

Watching THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG is a deeply nostalgic experience. It reminds you of how wonderful the old Disney classics were, and the simple delights and warmth of hand-drawn animation. Just as in the good old days, this movie doesn't depend on post-modern pop-cultural references or 3-D gimmicks. Nope. Here we have a lovely story, charming characters, true love and some sweet songs. A charmingly earnest, hard-working waitress called Tiana kisses a charismatic but lazy Prince turned Frog. As they journey through the Bayou to have the voodoo overturned, the Prince learns that for the woman he loves, he'd be willing to work, or to sacrifice his own happiness. And so, true love blossoms, inspired by a sweet little Cajun firefly called Ray, who is in love with a star in the sky - an absolutely adorable side-plot. The lovers are aided in their journey by a trumpet-playing alligator called Louis - who is clearly inspired by Balou the Bear from THE JUNGLE BOOK, and wants to be human a little bit like King Louie from the same film. There's the aforementioned firefly Ray, who is so wonderful, and the wise old Mama Odie.

If nostalgic in style and feel and look, the movie is also nostalgic for a time when New Orleans was the old Big Easy, associated with beignets, Hot Jazz and A Streetcar Named Desire, rather than being a symbol of Federal incompetence. But at the same time, the movie is rather modern. It's not just that Disney has finally given us a coloured heroine, (though sneakily still sidestepping issues of economic inequality by setting the film in the 1920s). It's that it supplements the traditional wishing on a star with hard graft and shaping your own destiny. I like the new empowering Disney. But I like the old-fashioned hand-drawn Disney even more. Long may it continue!

Additional tags: Randy Newman, Anika Nonie Rose, Bruno Campos, Keith David, Michael Leon Woolley, Ron Clements, John Musker

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG is on global release bar Japan where it is released on March 6th.

Overlooked DVD of the month - PONTYPOOL

Okay. So the first thing you have to do is banish thoughts of a Welsh town. This Pobtypool is a town in Canada. And this film, PONTYPOOL, is a superbly claustrophobic, chilling little lo-budget horror flick from Canadian director Bruce McDonald. Based on the book by Tony Burgess, the movie takes place almost entirely within a small-town radio station, where a grizzled old DJ, Grant Mazzy, is stuck with his producer and studio manager on Valentine's Day, broadcasting his sardonic wit to local listeners. In a reverse of the Orson Welles War of the Worlds scenario, the radio station starts getting calls from listeners seeing savagery on the roads, and before they know it, they're hemmed in by infected zombies, who succumb to the infection by stumbling upon their words.

I love the fact that this is a film subverts the very concept of Talk Radio as quite literally an agent for broadcasting virulence. I love Stephen McHattie's charismatic central performance. (It reminded me of how when we saw Richard Jenkins in THE VISITOR, it was like we were really SEEING him for the first time, even though we'd seen him as a character actor in loads of films before that.) And I love the simplicity of the central conceit.

Definitely worth checking out on DVD.

PONTYPOOL played Toronto 2008 and was released in 2009 in Canada, Turkey, the UK and Austria. It is available on DVD.

INVICTUS - A Sports film by Basil Exposition

INVICTUS is a superficial, schmaltzy, by-the-numbers sports movie in which Clint Eastwood dumbs down the social and political history of South Africa, and completely fails to capture the excitement and brilliance of the 1995 Rugby World Cup. As you can tell, I'm pretty pissed off at having to have sat through two hours and fifteen minutes of this earnest but ham-fisted bilge. I will do my best to structure my anger into something like a meaningful review.

The plot is basic. It is 1995 in South Africa. Nelson Mandela is President of a nation still riven with racial tensions. He decides that he will, against all odds, unite the nation behind the South African rugby team, the Springboks, despite the fact that they are an icon of Apartheid. The Springbok captain, Francois Pienaar, responds to Mandela's faith in him, and through rigourous training, the team triumphs and wins the World Cup, against all odds.

The issues are complex. Mandela wants to unite his nation, but this is no hippie vegetarian love-in. He needs white South Africans to feel invested enough in the new South Africa to make it economically and socially viable. He may portray himself as a wise sage, forgiving all and inspiring all, but he is, after all, a former terrorist (no matter how righteous the cause), addressed by his followers as Comrade. Mandela has an interest in creating the image of the wise harmless old statesman that we see given back to us in this film. A better film would have portrayed a more complicated man.

The simplicity of the screenplay is even more evident in the handling of Chester Williams, the only black South African in the squad. He is a smiling docile sort of chap who ignores politics in the one line he is given. Did he really ignore it or was he forced to? How did he feel about the pressure put upon him? How did he feel to be injured in the opening game? We never know.

And what of the attitude of the white South Africans? In this film, they are portrayed as low-level racists - a bit pissed off - a bit disenfranchised - but basically willing to throw it all up for an inspiring Mandela speech and some free world cup tickets. The Francois Pienaar character barely has to move at all - he seems ripe for conversion to Mandela's rainbow nation cause. At one point, I thought the film might delve into the issue of race in the relationship between Pienaar and his more surly players - the players who refuse to sing the former ANC hymn, Nkosi sikelele Africa. But no, Pienaar asks them to sing the anthem; they refuse; game over. Nowhere do we see actual argument or soul searching or character development. All we get are some speeches from Mandela and a magical transformation into a nation united behind the team. The worst the opposition can muster are some pissed off looks.

In Eastwood's "exploration" of the new South Africa, deep social and racial issues are reduced to a pissed-off stand-off in the playground.

Enough for the conceptual weakness. What of the production? This is, basically piss-poor. Locations in Jo'burg and Cape Town are mixed up. Morgan Freeman can't do a South African accent. Matt Damon makes a better attempt but looks like a midget compared to the real Pienaar. Not trusting the innate tension of the sporting events, Eastwood tries to inject a weak thriller element into his film by having Mandela's security guards worry about an assassination attempt. Not trusting the intelligence of the audience, he has characters explain the significance of every single action three times over. The dialogue is hammy: the security guard literally says "Not on my watch." The style is ham-fisted: we see a little black kid trying to listen to the match on the white copper's car radio. And yes, sure enough, by the end of the match, the copper is holding the kid ahoist. And they all lived happily ever after.

Basically, as a cinema-goer you have to decide what you want the movies you watch to do for you. If you want film to skate over the surface of the difficulties in life, and to tell soothing stories - if you want cinema to be as bland and as obvious and as Mickey Mouse simplistic as a mug of Ovaltine, go ahead and watch INVICTUS. But you do have a choice. If you want to be challenged - if you want to think radical thoughts about the racial issues really present in South Africa, watch DISGRACE instead.

Finally, one last point. There are certain moments that you do not cut away from. You just leave the camera standing and let the power of the shot mesmerise the audience. The nine minute rape scene with Monica Bellucci in IRREVERSIBLE is one. The first solo dance scene with John Travolta in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is another. You do NOT cut away from the Haka. You just let the All Blacks scare the shit out of you. That's the power - that's the thing that tells the audience that the Bokke are really up against it. Unless of course you are Clint Eastwood and you have no appreciation of rugby history and are merely shoe-horning a famous match into a schmaltzy sports flick genre picture.

INVICTUS is on global release.

Justifiably overlooked DVD of the month - I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER

Truly execrable vehicle for HEROES' Hayden Panettiere in which High School nerd Denis confesses his love for hottie Beth Cooper in his valedictorian speech. As a direct result, Beth Cooper turns up at his house that night and the polar opposites end up spending time together. This movie is meant to be like THE BREAKFAST CLUB or CAN'T HARDLY WAIT - where disparate schoolkids ends up realising that there is more to each other than they thought before returning to life as normal. Problem is that the dialogue seems forced, the situation is by necessity contrived, there is very little humour beyond jokes about being nude, or getting an erection. There's none of the depiction of genuine insecurity and vulnerability that characterised the masterful works of John Hughes, and that leavened the crass humour in AMERICAN PIE. Avoid at all costs.

Additional tags: Hayden Panettiere, Paul Rust, Jack T Carpenter,

I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER was released in summer 2009 and is available on DVD, though why you'd want to watch it, I don't know.

DVD Release - ONG BAK 2 - THE BEGINNING

ONG BAK 2 is the much anticipated follow-up to the 2003 break-out film for Thai martial arts actor Tony Jaa, who went on to star in the ridonkulous flick THE WARRIOR, memorable principally for the fact that what inspired all the craziness was a stolen elephant.

The original ONG BAK film followed rural teen Ting on his quest to modern Bangkok to recover a stolen bust of Buddha. The narrative was pretty weak but there was awesome Muay Thai kickboxing fight scenes, and it was a all a nice change of pace from those CGI filled movies. ONG BAK 2 feels very different indeed. For a start, it's a very slick, high budget, lavish epic set in Ancient Thailand, and works less like a prequel as a primer for Western audiences as to what Muay Thai is all about. Tony Jaa plays a Tien. When he was a kid, bandits killed his family and threw him to the crocodiles. Tien's ability to survive impresses the local warlord so much that he adopted Tien and taught him how to fight. As an adult, Tien (Jaa) goes on the predictable revenge mission, which takes him through various fight scenes and sets up the inevitable ONG BAK 3.

Tony Jaa has clearly taken a lot of pains over the costumes, sets, photography and fight choreography. But a medieval forest is no match for the back-streets of Bangkok as a high-octane setting, and fans of the original flick might feel mis-sold. But, while the film seems less exciting than the original, it is certainly more technically impressive. The fight scenes - incorporating the best of Thai, Chinese, Japanese and European martial arts - are simply amazing. There's a scene where Tony Jaa is fighting while skipping over elephants and IT'S NOT CGI. What Jaa needs is to harness his slick moves to proper plots. And then we'd be in business.

Additional tags: Tony Jaa, Panna Rittikrai, Sorapong Chatree, Saruny Wongkrachang, Nirut Sirihanya, Nattawut Kittikhun,

ONG BAK 2 was released in 2009 and will be released on DVD on February 15th 2010.

ASTRO BOY - clever but lacking wit

I can't say I'd ever heard of ASTROBOY before watching this film but apparently he is an insanely famous Manga character created by Tezuka Osamu in the 1950s. Apparently the original stories have already inspired a 1960s TV series. In that series, Astroboy started life as the young son of a famous scientist, Dr Tenma. When young Toby is killed in a car accident, Dr Tenma resurrects his memory in a robot, CAPRICA stylee. But tragically, Tenma is revolted by his creation and sells him to a vicious circus-owner called Hamegg (shades of ELEPHANT MAN) whence he is rescued by Tenma's kind-hearted boss, Ochanomizu. Tenma may occasionally help Astroboy, but he never truly accepts him.

In this new film, ASTROBOY has been yanked into our contemporary political tensions. The whole narrative takes place in a world that has been ruined by litter-bug exploitative humans (shades of WALL-E) and the elite of the world have relocated to a shiny Metro City in the clouds. Metro City is being run by a politician who wants to start a war to win an election. Rather than being killed in a car crash, Astroboy is killed when the evil politician tries to put evil red energy into a military robot. His father still rejects him, but in order to make Tenma more palatable to modern audiences, he doesn't actually sell him to the circus owner. Rather, Toby runs away, and ends up with Hamegg by chance. And Hamegg is a more equivocal character - he truly loves robots, but at the end of the day, doesn't think AI makes you worthy of human rights. (A good debate for BSG fans!)

The resulting film is pretty complex for a kids film, and like Miyazaki films, is concerned with environmental degradation and consumption run amok. It also has shades of the best science fiction, making explicit reference to Asimov. The CGI animation is interesting in its design and the voice work is particularly good. I especially liked Freddie Highmore as Astroboy, Nic Cage as Tenma, and a modulated Bill Nighy as the heart-breakingly kind Elefun. But somehow, the diffuse plotting made for a rather plodding film, especially in the middle portion where Astroboy falls to Earth and side-steps into a film that seems to be half Oliver Twist and half Gladiator. I rather missed the wit, charm and old-fashioned simplicity of David Bowers previous directorial effort, FLUSHED AWAY.

ASTRO BOY played London 2009 was released last year in the US, Canada and Asia, It is now on global release.

My Neighbours the Yamadas (ホーホケキョとなりの山田くん, 1999)

Joyful laughter
breaks the silence
of an autumn eve
– Bashō

It is a rare film that interweaves classical poetry with tales of modern life, but Isao Takahata (高畑 勲, b. 1935) manages it successfully in his 1999 feature length animation My Neighbours the Yamadas (ホーホケキョとなりの山田くん / Hōhokekyo Tonari no Yamada-kun). The haiku poems that punctuate the narrative vignettes work surprisingly well on a number of levels. The poets featured – Bashō (1644-1699), Buson (1716-1783), and Santōka (1882-1940) – represent very different epochs in Japanese culture and the film demonstrates the timelessness of this minimalistic verse form. Usually adding a flourish to the end of a scene, the haiku reminds us of the constancy of life’s little poetic ironies. The world, in all its splendor and glory, has both delighted and disappointed human beings throughout the ages. The minimalism of haiku also complements the spareness of Takahata’s animation.

My Neighbours the Yamadas is an adaptation of a yonkoma manga of the same name by Hisaishi Ishii (いしい ひさいち, b.1951) about a family of five: the easy-going young daughter Nonoko (aka Nono-chan), her older brother Noboru, her absent-minded homemaker mother Matsuko, her salaryman father Takashi, and her cranky maternal grandmother Shige. The family also has a pet dog Pochi, who has a somewhat sullen temperament. Young Nonoko was so popular as a character that the manga eventually changed its name to Nono-chan. It ran regularly in the Asahi Shimbun between 1991 and 1997.

In a nod to the manga, which is mainly told through the eyes of the daughter, Takahata’s film adaptation begins with Nonoko as the narrator introducing us to her family life. As the film progresses, all members of the family are given equal time and the narrator is replace by title cards introducing new themes or occasionally a male narrator reading aloud the interspersed haiku.

Although My Neighbours the Yamadas was critically acclaimed upon its release (it won an Excellence Award at the 1999 Japan Media Arts Festival), it was not a big box office success like most Studio Ghibli productions. There are likely several reasons for this. It is not a showy production visually like its Ghibli predecessor Princess Mononoke (Mononoke-hime, Hayao Miyazaki, 1997). Although the film does feature children, its situational humour is likely more appreciated by an older audience - not the young women (& men too, but women make up the bulk of the cinema-going audiences in Japan) who would pack the theatres for a heroine driven spectacular like Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, 2001)

The story is also not plot driven, like Takahata’s previous film Pom Poko (Heisei Tanuki Gassen Pom Poko, 1994)). Instead, the film mimics the episodic nature of the yonkoma manga: a four panel layout that follows a kishōtenketsu (introduction/development/twist/resolution) plot structure. Nausicaa.net has an amusing example of a Nono-chan yonkoma from July 21, 2007 with translation which you can read here. Like the haiku, the art of the yonkoma is in its simplicity. It is not a long, and rambling manga series, rather, each episode has whittled down a typical family scene to its essence.

I can see the average cinema-going audience, lulled into certain expectations by traditional flashy anime fare, become restless halfway into the film by the lack of a driving Aristotelian narrative. The plot does not build and build to a climax like say a Disney film would. Instead, it is a series of episodes with each indivisual episode following the Asian kishōtenketsu development structure. There is a kind of a climax at the end of the film with a colourful dream sequence to the strains of Matsuko and Takashi singing a karaoke version of Que Sera Sera, but this is less of a plot climax and more like the grand finale of a Hollywood musical. In fact, this scene gives a nod to two Hollywood legends: Doris Day in the choice of song (Que Sera Sera) and Gene Kelly's infamous dance sequence in Singing in the Rain for creative use of umbrellas (see photo above this paragraph).

For the patient spectator, My Neighbours the Yamadas is a true cinematic delight. I found myself laughing several times during each vignette. Some of the stories are very Japanese: such as the references to Japanese fairy tales (see photo above paragraph for Taketori Monogatari reference) and a sequence dedicated to an old wives tale about ginger in miso soup making people sleepy.

Digression: I was surprised to learn that an English dubbed version was made in that States because I can’t imagine how they would translate some very Japanese situations. The German subtitled version I was watching made some rather strange translation choices, such as translating nabe as fondue. I think Eintopf would have made more sense if they really felt viewers would be perplexed by Japanese names for dishes. (German readers, what are your feelings on this?) Translators should never underestimate the intelligence of their viewers. With the popularity of Japanese restaurants throughout Germany (if not most cities in Europe), using the Japanese names for dishes would actually be more informative for viewers. They could always put the definition in a pop-up extra on the DVD. . . or somewhere else on the screen as enterprising fansubbers do quite successfully. (End of Digression)

Watching a Takahata film is a bit like watching an Ozu film for me. Although there are many elements that seem inextricably Japanese, the story and characters have a universal appeal to them. We can all identify with the family bickering that arises between parents and children, husbands and wives, and siblings. The themes of laziness, forgetfulness, generational divides, the frustrations of sharing a family home, the pressures of life’s expectations all hit home for me as well. This film is a particularly good to watch post-Christmas / New Year’s holidays as an an
tidote to any unwelcome family squabbles.

Studio Ghibli no Uta Music Box

Music Box

Mini Soundtrack [yoshi ZIBURI to issyoni tukuruzo!

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

Werner Herzog Retrospective 3 - AGUIRRE WRATH OF GOD (1972)

After his gonzo film-making expeditions to the Sahara and Lanzarate in FATA MORGANA and EVEN DWARVES STARTED SMALL, Werner Herzog put together a tiny crew of eight people and headed to Peru to film his hastily written feature, AGUIRRE WRATH OF GOD. Starring German actor Klaus Kinski, in the first of a five-film collaboration, this movie is arguably Herzog's most admired and most famous. Viewers have responded to its rough and ready look and the delicious post-modern irony of watching a film about losing your mind in the jungle in the midst of an overly ambitious project being made by film-makers losing their mind in the jungle in the midst of an overly ambitious project. AGUIRRE is arthouse cinema's APOCALYPSE NOW, with an industry of mythic tales about its insane production almost more fascinating than the film itself.

The film opens in sixteenth century Latin America, with a group of Spanish conquistadors looking to claim El Dorado for the Spanish crown. They do so in heavy armour, with canons on rafts, bringing along their women and caged chickens. Don Aguirre (Kinski) leads the scouting party in a mutiny and takes them further into the jungle, into desperation and insanity. As the movie unfolds, Aguirre's pychopathic ambitions become clear: he is murderous and harbours a fantasy of founding a new pure race with his symbolically blonde daughter.

I guess if you were being fairly simplistic about it, you could take AGUIRRE as being a political film about how self-serving and basically dumb the conquistadors were - "Isn't that cannon going to rust?" etc. But I think this isn't really a movie about colonial oppression at all. Rather, it's about a charismatic man who has become untethered from reality in an environment where violence is sudden and anonymous. (Notably, we never see the face of the Indians.) So untethered that he even refuses his own death as a reality. Aguirre is the ultimate exemplar of the Will to Power. And, on an even more profound level, AGUIRRE is the story of Herzog making the film. It is a movie that depicts the folly of making an epic film in a jungle. Who is more crazy: the conquistador taking a cannon on a raft; or Dino de Laurentis taking a crew out to Chihuahua to film DUNE? There are many great films about the film-making process - not least 8 1/2. But typically these pit the artist against the commercial studio bosses, with the added pressures of a wife and a mistress. In AGUIRRE, the line between Kinski and Aguirre and Herzog is blurred. Herzog is pitting the film-maker against nature and the chaos of the void itself.

That may all sound a bit pretentious, but I think it's the only way to approach this film. If you go for a straight reading of the film, you're going to find it insubstantial and poorly made. The visuals, the sound, the hasty framing - it all looks pretty shabby by modern standards - and too many actions taken by the characters seem against character and rather random. But taken as a whole - as an immersive endeavour - the movie just works. And it works not just because you feel that Herzog is going to take it wherever it leads - but because of the charisma of Kinski himself. You watch this German guy which his chiseled features hunkering down in his helmet, looking daggers, scheming and plotting and you can almost feel the febrile insanity of it all. In SUNSET BOULEVARD, Norma Desmond says, "We didn't need dialogue, we had faces." She would have loved AGUIRRE.

AGUIRRE WRATH OF GOD played Cannes 1973.