Late review - London Film Fest 2010 Day 4 - CARLOS

CARLOS is a sprawling, intense five hour cine-spectacular biography of the cack-handed, vainglorious terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez aka Carlos aka Carlos The Jackal. Written and directed by Olivier Assayas and originally broadcast as a three part mini-series on French TV, the film was shown in its original length, back to back at this year's London film fest.It is also being released in some countries as a three hour edited down movie. It features a charismatic central performance from Edgar Ramirez who, as Carlos, isn't just IN every frame, but dominates the film.

As the opens we see Carlos as a good-looking, womanising, politically motivated young man living in Paris, hiding weapons in the bedrooms of compliant girls. He moves into the big leagues when he persuades a Lebanese terrorist organisation (the PFLP) to bypass his immediate superior and make him their point-man. Flush with pride and power, he organises a raid on OPEC headquarters in Vienna. The first part of the film ends with the terrorists and their hostages on a plane desperately trying to find an Arab country that will give them permission to land. Carlos thought they would be feted as heroes, but turns out no-one wants to alienate the international community. He is embarrassed and angry, but shows his true colours - when the ultimate sacrifice is called for - he wants life, fame, girls, money - rather than a martyr's death. And so the pattern is set. He isn't a revolutionary. He's a bank robber - self-interested, petty, vain, eager for cash and respect. He hides out in Hungary, festering, brooding, drinking, fucking. He hides out in Sudan. He causes a few more ructions but never really pulls anything off. Basically, he's just a massive pain in the ass. And then, when the Berlin Wall came down, he was a flabby irrelevance, of interest only to Interpol and the vengeful French prison system.

The ironic truth of Carlos' life is established: as a terrorist he's both a failure and a success. In pure terms, he causes little damage - his missions are failures. But in terms of causing terror with his notoriety - he is a roaring success. And this is irony is perfectly portrayed by Edgar Ramirez - in one of the stand out performances of the year - he is everything Carlos is - charismatic, pitiable - good-looking, a physical mess - radical, bourgeois. It's a multi-faceted performance, enabled by the long run-time of the movie - a long run-time, by the way, that simply skips by. The movie is also beautifully directed by Assayas, and while it was financed by TV it really does look tremendous on the big screen. One can only assume that cinematographer Denis Lenoir (PARIS JE T'AIME, RIGHTEOUS KILL) shot the action sequences and that Yorick le Sau shot (I AM LOVE, JULIA) the beautiful vistas of Lebanon. At any rate, however, they sliced up the credits, the film looks beautiful.

There is a rule that states that if a movie is shown on TV anywhere before it's released at the cinema, it can't be eligible for the Oscars. This is a desperate shame because CARLOS would certainly be in the mix for Best Director and Best Actor. It's definitely worth checking out, and ideally in the long form.

CARLOS was shown on French TV in May 2010 and played Vancouver, Cannes and London 2010. It will be released in the UK as two feature films. It is also airing on the Sundance channel as a 3 part mini-series.

Guest Review - ENTER THE VOID (Extended version)

The following is a guest review by Alex, fellow cineaste, and proponent of the Flat White:

If you can leave Gaspar Noé’s excellent Enter the Void (the full extended version clocks in at 2 hours and 37 minutes) without feeling a little tripped out, you may have a pretty serious drug problem. Noé himself has said of the film: “The best and worst response I got from the movie is that when you come out, you feel stoned”.

The frenetic, almost three minute-long opening credit sequence primes the viewer, Pranayama-breathing style, for the coming meditation on life, death, sex, family ties, trauma, and the division between reality and perception.

Brother, Oscar, and sister, Linda, (played by relative unknowns Nathaniel Brown and Paz De La Huerta respectively) live together in downtown Tokyo – he’s a drug-dealer and she’s a go-go dancer who is casually sleeping with her boss. He’s also casually sleeping with his friend’s mother. After Oscar gets high on MBT, a psychotropic drug which, it is hinted, like Peyote, can recreate for the user a near-death experience, his friend betrays him when he finds out about his mother’s liaison with Oscar, leading to a confrontation with the police in which Oscar is shot. At this point reality smudges, and we are unsure whether our man is dead or merely tripping out.

The film, shot up to this point from a first-person perspective, switches to Brian De Palma-like astral shots as we voyeuristically float around Tokyo observing the characters from above. If the psychedelically colourful and geometrical sequences immediately after Oscar takes MBT haven’t put you off or given you a headache by now, you’ll have surrendered fully to Noé and will be enjoying the cinematic device. Switching from a painful first hand point of view to an almost deistic removal from the characters is a powerful tool. We are at once removed from and then put close to the plot.

Expect nothing less than an epic, emotionally raw tale. In particular a car crash sequence which is pivotal to the plot of the film and the relationship between the brother and sister who are the main two protagonists is scouring, but efficiently so. By lingering on its aftermath, placing the viewer in the back seat of the car itself, one is forced to experience the blood-spattered, helpless infants’ trauma first hand. It is effective and feels necessary to the development of the plot and not overly self-indulgent, unlike the aforementioned scene in Irreversible. It’s also key to understanding the sister’s incestuous love for her brother, and the dreamy climactic scene, which is made more credible by the bond they’ve formed out of this shared trauma.

Atmospheric and visceral, in particular the abortion and conception scenes, ETV doesn’t disappoint, toying with ideas of death and life and entertaining us in one fell swoop.

I would hate to think that ETV falls between the cracks of controversy and hippy notoriety. For despite the inevitable comparisons with “2001: A Space Odyssey” (not undeserving and not entirely a bad thing in my view) the film deserves to become far more than a druggie favourite, a sophisticate’s Cheech and Chong. By toeing the line between reality and the trip, I was put in mind of the excellent Shutter Island more than any other film.

Noé is clearly intent on recreating a hallucinogenic experience, and the repetition of certain scenes (watch out for the subtle differences; writing on walls, the colours of Linda’s dresses) and his non-linear style certainly do help, as well as making the film more involving and enjoyable. Ultimately though it is at best the first derivative of a bad trip.

A good movie which also lasts over ninety minutes is one in which I am not tempted to look at my watch until the credits roll. By this measure, ETV succeeds. We want to know if Oscar is indeed dead or just spacing out. Noé ensures that we care enough about the sibling protagonists by investing us in them, inuring us with their childhood experiences and pain.

Many people consider Irreversible his seminal movie, however he has comfortably surpassed it with ETV. His trade-mark fascination with the gritty underworld, drugs and sex (without or without love and often sharply contrasted), everything else which sits outside of society’s norms and his willingness to reel the audience in and out are even more in evidence in the sequitur. Redemptive and intense, ETV is arguably a moral tale, if not cathartic and beautiful to watch.

Cinema-goers who treat films as indulgent escapism, like myself, will not be disappointed. From the very start it is gripping and visually engaging - sit close to the screen, low in your seat, and wallow in its sybaritic splendour.

ENTER THE VOID played Cannes, Toronto and London 2009 in versions of varying length and played Sundance 2010. It went on release in France, Japan, Belgium, Estonia, Germany and Finland earlier this year, and is still on release in the UK, the US and the Netherlands.

Yokohama Art Navi (ヨコハマ・アートナビ)

Yokohama Art Navi’s Youtube Channel contains a mini-treasure trove of short alternative animation by young Japanese artists. The films were selected by renowned animator Koji Yamamura (see my reviews of Kafuka Inaka Isha, Atama Yama, and Man and Whale) and were all made within the last ten years. It’s an exciting video gallery of the best of rising animation talent in Japan. Many of these films have also been featured on the NHK program Digital Stadium.

Atsushi Wada’s Day of Nose (鼻の日/Hana no hi, 2005)

• Read my review of Day of Nose.

Ayaka Nakata’s Cornelis (コルネリス, 2008)

• read my review of Cornelis

Saori Shiroki’s Evening Light (夜の灯/Yoru no Hi, 2005)



Ryo Ookawara’s Animal Dance (アニマルダンス, 2009)

• Read my review of Animal Dance.

Masaki Okuda, Ryo Ookawara, and Yutaro Ogawa’s Orchestra (2008)



Wataru Uekusa’s Chisato Stared (向ヶ丘千里はただ見つめていたのだった, 2009)



Masashi Yokota’s Ikuemi no Zanrou ( いくえみの残像, 2007)



Takeo Shinkai’s Mountain and Man (山と人/Yama to Hito, 2007)



Takashi Kurihara’s Happy Bogeys (2000)



Takahiro Hayakawa’s Kashikokimono (2004)



Hiroco Ichinose’s The Last Breakfast (かなしい朝ごはん/Kanashii Asa-gohan, 2006)



Shiho Hirayama’s Swimming (2008)

• Read my review of Shiho Hirayama's first works.

Atamayama - Koji yamamura Sakuhinshu

Animation

Whisper of the Heart (耳をすませば, 1995)

Most coming-of-age stories about young teenage girls tend to revolve around the themes of popularity, overcoming self-confidence issues regarding physical appearance, and crushes on boys who tend to have only their charm and good looks to recommend them. Whisper of the Heart (耳をすませば /Mimi wo Sumaseba, 1995) refreshingly presents a young female protagonist with other things on her mind than such superficial concerns.

Shizuku Tsukishima gets along well with her fellow classmates and shows a talent for writing which she demonstrates through writing new Japanese lyrics for John Denver’s 1971 hit song Take me Home, Country Roads for her junior high school graduation. Shizuku is also an avid reader. The library is in the process of switching from the old card system to a new computer system, which saddens Shizuku because she likes to read the names of the people who have taken books out before her. She begins to notice that many of the books that she reads have been previously been checked out by a boy called Seiji Amasawa.

Whisper Of The Heart (Mimi wo Sumaseba) - Soundtrack

Animation Soundtrack

The Art of the Cat Returns

Studio Ghibli

One day, while taking the train to the library, Shizuku notices a lone cat sitting next to her. Fascinated by the cat’s boldness as he disembarks the train at the same station as her, she decides to follow him. Climbing up the hills of Tama New Town, the cat leads her to an antique shop. She befriends the shop’s elderly owner Nishi-san and is fascinated by an unusual statue of a cat known as the The Baron. Shizuku eventually discovers that Nishi-san is the uncle of Seiji Amasawa – the boy who has been reading the same books as her. Shizuku had already had some chance encounters with Seiji, and thought him arrogant, but she soon learns of his passion for making violins and his plans to go to Cremona to become an apprentice violin craftsman.

At this point, the story could have turned into a sappy tale about long-distance, unrequited love, but it does not. Shizuku tells her best friend Yuko that she is worried that she is not good enough for Seiji because she doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life. Seiji’s dedication to his craft inspires Shizuku to become a writer and she decides to write the story of the cat statue The Baron. Shizuku’s imaginative story is shown to us in a series of beautiful dream sequences which were so popular with audiences that Studio Ghibli eventually made a film based upon them called The Cat Returns (猫の恩返し/ Neko no Ongaeshi, 2002) which was directed by Hiroyuki Morita (森田宏幸, 1964).

The rural-urban mix of landscape in Tama.

The main focus of Whisper of the Heart is not really whether or not Shizuku will get the guy in the end, rather it is about Shizuku finding out what she want to do with her life professionally. The secondary level of the film is about the location and the times. Tama New Town is a suburb of Tokyo that was developed on rural land which had once been as idyllic as the Sayama countryside in My Neighbour Totoro. In fact, the destruction of the Tama Hills habitat was at the heart of the plot in the Studio Ghibli film preceding Whisper of the Heart, Isao Takahata’s Pom Poko (平成狸合戦ぽんぽこ/ Heisei Tanuki Gassen Ponpoko, 1994). Shizuku’s new lyrics for Take Me Home, Country Roads expresses not only the personal journey that she is on, but it also a nostalgia for Japan’s fast-disappearing rural landscapes. The most poignant moments in the film occur when Shizuku is up on the hill looking out at the mixed rural-urban landscape of the Tama Hills.

Each frame of the film is beautifully crafted with the complexity of image and attention to detail that one has come to expect from a Studio Ghibli film. This was the first and sadly only film directed by Yoshifumi Kondō (近藤 喜文, 1950 - 1998), a long-time collaborator of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata whose untimely death brought to an end their goal of grooming him to take over directorial responsibilities at the studio. The film is jam-packed with references to earlier Ghibli works – not only in terms of characters and plots, but also visual references for the keen of eye.

Some that I spotted  include:

The international title of Hayao Miyazaki's 1992 film Porco Rosso (紅の豚/ Kurenai no Buta) inscribed in the grandfather clock that fascinates Shizuku in the antiques shop.

If you click on the above picture and then enlarge it, you can see that the blue book on the shelf in front of Shizuku's face is titled "Totoro".

In the bedroom Shizuku shares with her older sister, there is a little witch on a broom hanging from the bookshelf - an obvious reference to Kiki's Delivery Service (魔女の宅急便, Majo no Takkyūbin).

I would not be surprised if there were even more.  Whisper of the Heart is a delightful film for young and old alike.  

Japanese edition:

Whisper Of The Heart (Mimi wo Sumaseba)

U.S. edition:

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

London Film Fest 2010 - Day 16 - Closing Night Gala - 127 HOURS

I don't do extreme sport. I don't really do common or garden sport. In the words of George Burns, 'I never go jogging: it makes me spill my martini.' If some fuckwit decides to go up a mountain or into a canyon on his own, without telling anyone about it, and then gets his arm trapped under a boulder, I basically have no sympathy. I mean, I'm glad said fuckwit survived, but do I really want to watch a dreary, dismal, against-all-odds movie where we basically spend 90 minutes watching a bloke drinking his own urine and then hacking off his arm with a blunt knife? No.

The triumph of writer-director Danny Boyle is that 127 HOURS is NOT that movie. He brings all the energy, visual style and bravura editing of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and TRAINSPOTTING to a story that could've been claustrophobic and grim. Better still, he had the faith to cast James Franco in the central role of real-life canyoneer Aron Ralston - an actor who is pretty, no doubt, but also very gifted and only now starting to get roles that show his potential.

The movie begins with a hi-energy, thumping sound-track from A.R.Rahman, and split screen footage of urban life - crowds of people and noise - trading floors and sports stadia. We see Franco's Ralston grab a map, some supplies, his cam-corder, jump in a car, music blaring, and head for the Canyon. This is clearly a guy full of energy, personable, but basically too busy to bother checking in. He's on the move - looking for that perfect outdoor sports high. And Boyle tells us all this without any dialogue - just some bravura editing and a really original approach to the material.

When we get to the Blue John Canyon, we see Aron charm the pants off two lost hikers, showing them the joy of dropping into an underground pool. Again, it's a brief episode but sketches in his character - good fun, witty, and a dare-devil. Tellingly, just as Aron ran out of the store not even turning to wave goodbye but impatient to move on to the next thing, he runs off from the girls, waving without turning. It's all about the next adventure.

Before we've even paused for breathe, Aron's dropped into a canyon, the boulder has crushed his arm, and he's realised, mid-swigging from his water-bottle, that he's "in deep doo-doo." And for the first time, the camera pans out from the ravine, out of the canyon, and there isn't any rock music on the sound-track. It's a great contrast to the first half hour of the flick.

What then follows is some superb acting from James Franco, as he portrays a man who veers from pragmatic, ingenious engineer to delusional, dehydrated hysteria. And Franco is matched point for point by Boyle's inventive use of the camera. From inside-the-water-bottle POV shots, to quick edits of Aron's delusional visions - the movie never loses pace or interest despite the constraints of basically shooting a guy in a ravine. (Admittedly, Boyle is helped by the fact that the real-life Ralston really did cam-cord himself, giving the screenwriters a neat device to break the silence and alter the POV.) In fact, far from being grim, 127 HOURS is often very funny indeed. And, most importantly, by making us enjoy Aron's company, and by making us see what he has to go home to, the movie makes us completely invest in his survival. As a result, when Aron finally has to break his arm and then cut through it to free himself, the audience gasped in horror at his pain, and cheered with joy when he finally escaped the trap. And when he finally saw a family in the distance, and the helicopter came for him, the feeling of relief and catharsis was palpable. I practically bounced out of the cinema on a natural high.

So, whether or not you typically like extreme-sport-survivor movies, you should definitely check out 127 HOURS. To use that most hackneyed of phrases, it really is a feel-good film of the best kind - a movie that earns its warm fuzzy glow by making you identify with its protagonist and taking you through what feels like authentic pain. The resulting film is full of energy, emotionally engaging, brilliantly acted, and technically imaginative. I think it's Danny Boyle's finest film to date, and certainly James Franco's best performance - combining the talent for comedy shown in PINEAPPLE EXPRESS with the ability to show real emotion seen in HOWL and MILK.

127 HOURS played Telluride and Toronto 2010. It opens in the US on November 5th 2010 and in the UK on January 7th 2011.

London Film Fest 2010 - Day 16 - KABOOM

KABOOM is a bizarre little movie set in a surreal day-glo version of a So-Cal college campus. Said campus is populated by horny, promiscuous teens who spend all their time fucking, SMS-ing and...er...getting sucked into the machinations of an evil cult that's trying to bring about the end of the world.

Writer-director Gregg Araki's is exploring similar territory as in his previous work - teenage sexual shenanigans, gay, straight and everything in-between. But instead of the gritty, raw emotion of MYSTERIOUS SKIN, we get day-glo colour, 1980s kitsch stylings and a plot that seems like the spoof love-child of ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE. The resulting movie is basically a colourful, inconsequential mess. I didn't care about any of the characters, I didn't find the trying-too-hard-to-be-witty dialogue funny, I wasn't impressed by the sexual candour, and I didn't buy into the spoof-horror plot. This movie just isn't as well-written or as finely balanced as, say, DONNIE DARKO, and it certainly isn't as funny as it needs to be. Pretty much the only person who comes out of it with their reputation in tact is actress Juno Temple. Still, I guess, in the age of banal mainstream movies, you at least have to give Araki props for trying.

KABOOM played Cannes, Berlin and Toronto 2010. It was released earlier this year in the USA and France.

London Film Fest 2010 - Day 15 - COLD FISH / TSUMETAI NETTAIGYO

COLD FISH is basically insane. It's an insanely conceived movie about insane people. It's hilarious, sexually explicit, ultra-violent, horrifying and ridiculous. It's the sort of movie that you sit through, alternately laughing and nauseous, and when the lights come up you think, 'what the hell just happened here?!'

J-horror director Shion Sono based the movie on a true case of a serial murderer in 1980s Japan, but this is very much just a nod to past history rather than a straight re-telling. In the movie, Sono transposes the action to modern Japan, and turns the serial killer into a Fred and Rosemary West-style couple who get high on sexual power-games and butchering people with an attention to detail that is pretty impressive in a fucked up way. They lure in unsuspecting idiots with their over-the-top courtesy and generosity, find their weakness and then exploit it for kicks. In this case, the killers, Aiko and Murata, alight upon the weedy, emasculated middle-aged man, Shamoto and his dissatisfied wife Taeko, offering to give their teenage daughter a job and a place to stay. Pretty soon, the mischievous old Murata (Japanese comedian Denden) is porking Taeko and forcing Shamoto to be help dispose of corpses. 

There's something brilliantly, finely-balanced in how we are often grossed out and laughing our asses off at the same time in this movie. I loved the gore, the chavvy outfits, the lo-fi gonzo look of the film, the day-glo colours, and the screetching sound-track. This is angry, funny film that sticks it in the eye of bourgeois sensibility, with its social satire of repressed domesticity and inter-generational misunderstanding. I loved it. Even when it made me want to vomit. But at its heart, there is something much more profound going on - a sort of demonic argument for repressed people to act on their impulses and, crudely put, "man the fuck up". What else can we make of a scene where Murata literally forces Shamato to have sex with Aiko, or the fact that Shamato's journey in the film is ultimately one of forced self-empowerment. In order to get to the point where he can physically and psychologically save his wife and daughter he has to become, for a moment, as evil but also as powerful as Murata. Shamato is the cold fish, and he is freezing his wife in suburban hell as the movie opens. Is it better to live, frozen, or die, alive?  Unpalatable truth, maybe.

COLD FISH was released in Japan earlier this year and played Venice and Toronto 2010.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 14 - HOWL

HOWL is a beautifully made film about Allen Ginsberg's iconic Beat poem, published in 1955. Honest, raw, sexually explicit, Ginsberg described the reality of life on the road in the counter-culture - how young urban hipsters were really living and feeling. That rawness and authenticity - the proud joy at enjoying sex, drugs, literature, music and good company - and the anger at the establishment, the bourgeoisie, still translates. I guess a lot of us can remember a time in our teenage life when we first read Howl, and then maybe Kerouac's On The Road or Burrough's Naked Lunch.

Acclaimed documentarians, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK) have produced a film that has the authenticity and immediacy of a documentary, recreating iconic photographs of Ginsberg; using a script that is almost entirely based on interviews and transcripts of the court-case wherein publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti was charged with obscenity for having published the poem. This is, however, no court thriller - especially as we know the outcome! Rather, Epstein and Friendman use the court-case as a door through which to explore contemporary reactions to the poem - from prudish shock and patronising contempt through to bewildered admiration and excitement. And that's the genius of HOWL. It's a movie that dares to give us what is, essentially, literary criticism rather than a prurient examination of The Beats' sex lives or a conventional biopic. In other words, the film-makers want us to understand why Howl was important, artistically and socially. And in doing so - in showing us Ginsberg talking about how he wrote, and why he wrote, we get as much of a picture of the man as any straight-ahead biopic would've given us.

Stylistically, one has to give Epstein and Friedman credit for the sterling recreation of the 1950s - from cramped apartments to the costumes. The attention to detail in recreating photos is superb and DP Edward Lachman LIFE DURING WARTIME, FAR FROM HEAVEN) moves with ease from honey-coloured 1950s court-rooms to grungy beat apartments in black-and-white.

We also get an imaginative animated version of the poem that is inter-cut with court-room discussion of the same lines, and then Ginsberg reading them, or explaining them. All this adds up to a rich discussion and understanding of the text, although I personally could've done without the pictures - the words are enough for me. I wish they'd trusted more in the power of the words to carry our interest. The film is also populated with a fine cast of major names even in very slight roles - principally Jon Hamm as the prosecuting lawyer; David Strathairn for the Defence; Bob Balaban as the judge; and Mary-Louise Parker as a particularly amusing defence witness. These actors are all great, but in such small roles I found them to be more of a distraction, and wished that the film-makers had used character actors instead.

However, for all that, I still loved this film. It was an hour and a half of pure literary indulgence. And what really sets this film a cut above is the performance of James Franco as the young Ginsberg, with his perfect reproduction of that bizarre lilting way in which Ginsberg spoke and the physicality of how he carried himself. It was marvellous to see Ginsberg young and striving, rather than as the old balding man, established, that we often remember. Here he was - here the the Beats were - at the creation. It's exhilarating to watch. But a more interesting question is perhaps how far this film will translate to people who aren't as familiar with the poem. Will they be won over to its importance and artistry?  And will they find Ginsberg's speech patterns bizarre and off-putting rather than charming and particular? Evidence from my Gentleman Secretary suggests the latter.

HOWL played Berlin and Sundance 2010. It was released in Italy in August and in the the US in September. It opens in Denmark on November 25th. It opens in Germany on January 6th, in the UK on February 25th and in Finland on March 25th.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 14 - SUBMARINO

Nick and Martin are brothers living in contemporary Copenhagen, struggling to deal with the childhood trauma of their little brother dying of neglect as the result of their mother's alcoholism. Nick has served time, and now passes the day at the gym or drinking and the evenings with a hooker. Martin is a junkie who turns to pushing to support his little boy. Both of them, in their own fucked-up way, try to protect the kids in their lives, as a sort of penance for having failed their little brother.

The movie is austere, closely observed and unrelentingly grim. It is a return, if not in form, but in content, to the Dogme style of film-making that Thomas Vinterberg (DEAR WENDY) originated in. The lead performances are strong, and the stories of the two brothers - who are estranged for much of the film - are deftly inter-twined. However, I am not sure why, but I just couldn't get into the film. Something about the unrelenting self-annihilation kept me at a distance, just as the brothers try to distance themselves from their emotions, with alcohol and smack respectively. As a result, SUBMARINO is a film that I admired rather than enjoyed.

SUBMARINO played Berlin 2010 and was released in September in France, Finland and the Netherlands. It opens in Belgium on November 17th.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 14 - SURVIVING LIFE (THEORY AND PRACTICE) / PREZIT SVUK ZIVOT (TEORIE A PRAXE)

SURVIVING LIFE is a classic Svan Jankmajer film: animation interspersed with live footage to create a surreal vision of life - at once a Kafka-esque nightmare, and very, very, funny! In this particular flick, Eugene is a middle-aged, happily married man, who has a surreal dream about a young, beautiful, sexy woman in red (Klára Issová). In his waking life he tries all manner of old-wives tales to recreate that dream, and even resorts to psychotherapy to find herself again. The problem is that the psychotherapist is basically using techniques that answer what the dream is really about and so eliminate it. All under the mocking gaze of portraits of Jung and Freud who alternatively laugh, roll their eyes and applaud.

SURVIVING LIFE is witty, funny, imaginative, surreal but also somehow authentic in how it portrays the way in which we can still be bowled over by a crush way past our teenage years. I really believed that Eugene was captivated by his lady in red, but also that he was a decent guy. And even though Czech art-house animation might not leap out at you, I would encourage anyone who wants a more sophisticated version of a rom-com, with a light touch of the Terry Gilliams, to check this out.

SURVIVING LIFE played Venice and will be released in the Czech Republic on November 4th 2010.

London Film Fest Day 2010 Day 13 - LEMMY

LEMMY is an infuriating documentary. The directors have an all access pass to Lemmy Klimister - legendary Motorhead front-man/bassist; obsessive fruit-machine player; drinker; womaniser; and general all-round bad-ass - and they squander it by producing an unfocused, over-long, indulgent documentary. You can tell this is a bad film because you leave the theatre wanting to know more about Lemmy - about his childhood, his style of playing, how influential he was on other musicians, how far he regrets not knowing his adopted son - and you KNOW that the documentarians could've asked Lemmy about all this stuff - but they didn't. Nope - they were too busy hanging out, filming concert footage and being so co-opted by the icon that they didn't dare make him really delve into his past or his rather disturbing fetish for Nazi memorabilia.

I came out of this flick with as much respect for Lemmy as I went into it with - which is a lot - but no real extra knowledge. We all know how he started off in the Rockin Vickers with a pudding bowl haircut - how he roadied and dealt for Hendrix - how he played space-rock with Hawkwind - got kicked out for being busted by narcs - and then founded Motorhead, wrote Ace of Spades and became a rock legend. And even if we didn't think he was a rock legend, the film-makers give us a parade of contemporary greats - from Dave Grohl to Slash, to tell us that he is. What they don't do, with the exception of Slash, is really talk about his singing style or his playing style, and the mechanics of why he's so good. In other words, no one really gets under the skin of the music.

The result is a documentary that advertises itself as getting behind the iconography and controversy to the truth of Lemmy, but that in reality just glories in that iconography. In other words, this isn't a documentary at all, but hagiography. And superficial hagiography, at that. No one really cares, technically, why Lemmy is great. They're more interested in the legend.

LEMMY played a bunch of festivals and will be released in the UK on December 7th.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 13 - OCTOBER / OCTUBRE

OCTOBER is yet another film in this year's Festival that features a lonely man living an emotionally impoverished life, using whores for release, and finding an unlikely salvation. Frankly, by this point, I'm getting tired of seeing alienating commercial sex, no matter how stylised the framing and how good the acting. Anyways, for what it's worth, in this film, the iteration sees a Peruvian money-lender called Clemente using whores for release and apparently knocking them up fairly often. One day, he finds himself landed with a baby, and while he tries to track down the mother, he hires a middle-aged woman as a child-minder. This sets up an Odd Couple relationship between the quietly subversive child-minder and the emotionally stunted Clemente. In many ways, OCTOBER is an impressive film. The production design, cinematography and performances are all strong and the tone is deadpan and bleak. But I just didn't engage with the characters - the humour wasn't dark enough for me - and frankly, I am pretty tired of the set-up of a soul-less man using whores getting redeemed by meet-cute x. I'd love to see director Diego Vega Vidal addressing another subject.

OCTOBER played Cannes 2010 and is currently on release in Peru and Germany. It opens in France on December 29th.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 13 - THE SLEEPING BEAUTY

Following her previous film, BLUEBEARD, Catherine Breillat revisits the fairy-tale world with her latest film, THE SLEEPING BEAUTY. She twists strands of various fairy-tales into a whimsical, go-where-it-may story of a little girl fearlessly discovering love, becoming a teenager, and exploring her sexuality.

We start in an eighteenth century middle-European castle, with Princess Anastasia cursed in the cradle by a cackling witch to prick her finger and die. So far, so conventional. But the three good witches give her a new escape from her fate - Anastasia will fall asleep for a hundred years but she will do so at age 6 and awaken at 16, and while asleep she will dream marvellous adventures, because "nothing happens when you're a child". The movie thus sets up childhood as a period of latency and boredom until puberty awakens us to our sexuality. The first act of the film introduces us to Anastasia as six-year old fearsome child, who dreams of being a knight, hates frou-frou ballerina dresses, and brooks no opposition. Carla Besainou is absolutely charming in this role. As Anastasia falls asleep we move into Act Two. She journeys through a peasant world that takes on aspects of the story of the Ice Queen and of Alice in Wonderland and falls in love with a little boy called Peter. Once again, it is Carla Besainou's personality that captivates. In Act Three, Anastasia wakes up as a sixteen-year old girl, wearing a Victorian frock, but in present day France. She is courted by a teenage boy and emerges as a liberated young French girl with short hair and a short dress.

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY isn't as good as it should be. Sure, Catherine Breillat has imagination, and a willingness to put female emotion at the centre of the film, but where's the visual wonder of PAN'S LABRYNTH or the fluidity and surreality of Sally Potter's ORLANDO? And, most of all, where is the willingness to truly explore the danger and subversion at the heart of all fairy tales that we find in Neil Jordan's THE COMPANY OF WOLVES. Catherine Breillat's film simply isn't up to their high level in terms of the intellectual content or the visual style. It's fun as far as it goes, but essentially just a bit of low-budget whimsical fluff. There is, after all, a fine line between go-where-you-will whimsy and plain lack of discipline.

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY played Venice and Toronto 2010. It has no commercial release date.

VCinema Satoshi Kon/Kihachiro Kawamoto Memorial Episode

At Shinsedai in July, I had the pleasure of meeting Coffin Jon of VCinema.  As I have been doing research into the career of Kichachiro Kawamoto, he invited me to join the conversation for  Podcast 15: a memorial episode to Kawamoto and Satoshi Kon.  In addition to our conversation, the podcast includes insightful interviews with Mark Schilling of The Japan Times, Jasper Sharp of Midnight Eye (where I am also an occasional contributor), and Jason Gray of Screen International.  Make sure you have a listen.

As both Kon and Kawamoto had quite extensive careers, the VCinema guys made the wise decision to focus on just two films: The Book of the Dead (2006) and Paprika (2006).  We had a great time recording the podcast and I particularly enjoyed hearing their interpretations of the Buddhist aspects of The Book of the Dead. It is not an easy film to understand.  It took Kawamoto himself 30 years to make the film, so it is not surprising that it is a film that requires multiple viewings in order to take in all the fine details.

Kawamoto's journey to make The Book of the Dead began during the production of  Dojoji Temple (1976), when he was given the complete works of Shinobu Orikuchi (折口信夫, 1887-1953) by Teizo Matsumura  (松村禎三, 1929-2007), the composer for the film.  Orikuchi's The Book of the Dead made a strong impression on Kawamoto, creating very clear images in his head as he read it.  Every time he re-read the story, he understood more aspects of it.  It wasn't until 1989 that he completed a storyboard for the film, and it took even longer to arrange for funding.  Fortunately the Sakura Eiga-sha producer Junko Fukuma (福間順子) stepped in to support and organize the project.

The more I read about Kawamoto, the more I realize what a complex, sophisticated artist he was.  His entire lifetime was dedicated to the betterment of his craft and the broadening of his knowledge through the study of the arts, literature, and religion.  In addition to being a unique puppet and animation artist, Kawamoto was also a great collaborator reaching out to animators and artists the world over in order to both learn from them and to share his own knowledge.  Although I have acquired a great deal of information about Kawamoto in the past few years, I feel that my journey of understanding his works has only just begun.  I am grateful to this great puppet master to opening up new pathways to understanding through the legacy of his animated films.

Paprika is an equally challenging film as The Book of the Dead.  I don't know if anyone has done it yet, but it seems to me that there is a lot of symbolism (especially in the parade sequences) and film references to unpack in the film (we talk about this a bit in the podcast).  Like The Book of the Dead, it is a film that I notice new things in each time I re-watch it.  I have a greater sense of sadness when I think about Satoshi Kon.  Whereas Kawamoto was in the twilight of his career having achieved his ambitions in seeing his greatest life's work made, Satoshi Kon was in the middle phase of his career and leaves behind an unfinished work The Dream Machine (夢みる機械/Yume Miru Kikai).  He has gone too soon, but left us with a treasure trove of films to remember his genius by.

My thanks to Coffin Jon, Rufus, and Josh for having me as their guest.

Historical Information Source: Animation Meister, Vol 5

Recommended viewing:

Shisha no Sho  Region Two: with English subtitles on the film (not on the extras though)

Region One:

Kinema Junpo Top 10 Animated Films (キネマ旬報ベストテン, 2010)

Celebrated Japanese movie magazine Kinema Junpo has made lists of what they consider the top 10 Japanese Animated Films and the Top 10 Non-Japanese Animated Films. The pre-2003 films all appeared in Laputa’s Top 150 Japanese and World Animation Films, but with a very different ranking order. The list seems to be limited to feature and short films (ie no TV series). Here they are, followed by my comments:

Top 10 Japanese Animated Films

1. Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro

(ルパン三世 カリオストロの城, Hayao Miyazaki, 1979)

2. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

(風の谷のナウシカ, Hayao Miyazaki. 1984)

3. My Neighbour Totoro

(となりのトトロ, Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)

4. Crayon Shin-chan: The Storm Called: 
The Adult Empire Strikes Back

(クレヨンしんちゃん 嵐を呼ぶ モーレツ！オトナ帝国の逆襲, Keiichi Hara, 2001)

5. Akira

(アキラ, Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988)

6. Puss in Boots

(長靴をはいた猫, Kimio Yabuki, 1969)

7. Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer

(うる星やつら2 ビューティフルドリーマー, Mamoru Oshii, 1984)

Horus: Prince of the Sun

(太陽の王子 ホルスの大冒険, Isao Takahata, 1968)

The Tale of the White Serpent

(白蛇伝, Taiji Yabushita and Kazuhiko Okabe, 1958)

10. Summer Days with Coo

(河童のクゥと夏休み,Keiichi Hara, 2007)

Summer Wars

(サマーウォーズ, Mamoru Hosoda, 2009)

Laputa: Castle in the Sky

(天空の城ラピュタ, Hayao Miyazaki, 1986)

Grave of the Fireflies

(火垂るの墓, Isao Takahata, 1988)

Top 10 Non-Japanese Animated Films 

1. Fantasia

(ファンタジア, 9 Disney Directors, USA, 1940)

2. The Nightmare Before Christmas

(ナイトメアー・ビフォア・クリスマス, Henry Selick, 1993)

3. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

(白雪姫, David Hand (Disney), USA, 1937)

4. The King and the Mockingbird (Le Roi et l’Oiseau)

(やぶにらみの暴君, Paul Grimault, 1980)

5. Hedgehog in the Fog (Ёжик в тумане)

(霧の中のハリネズミ, Yuri Norstein, Russia, 1975)

Mr. Bug Goes to Town (aka Hoppity Goes to Town)

(バッタ君町に行く, Dave Fleischer, USA, 1941)

7. Toy Story

(トイ・ストーリー, John Lasseter, 1995)

8 . Up

(カールじいさんの空飛ぶ家, Pete Docter, USA, 2009)

The Man Who Planted Trees (L’Homme qui plantait des arbres)

(木を植えた男, Frédéric Back, CANADA, 1987)

10. The Iron Giant

(アイアン・ジャイアント, Brad Bird, USA, 1999)

Wallace and Gromit in The Wrong Trousers

(ウォレスとグルミット　ペンギンに気をつけろ！, Nick Park, UK, 1993)

Sources: Wildgrounds, Asahi Shimbun, Kinema Junpo

It is fascinating that Cagliostro is rated higher than Totoro and Nausicaä – especially as Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away do not appear on the list at all. I like Cagliostro, but it wouldn’t make my top ten anime of all time. I am not sure why they limited themselves to a “10 Best” as they clearly had to squeeze in a few more titles by awarding ties. Unless you are doing a list that excludes Studio Ghibli fare, you need to make a longer list than just 10 in order to fit in all of the amazing non-Ghibli animators who deserve equal recognition.

I am surprised to see two films by Keiichi Hara and nothing by Satoshi Kon. I can understand Summer Days with Coo making the list, but one of the Shin-chan movies? Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Crayon Shin-chan and I enjoy commercial animation just as much as alternative fare, but I wouldn’t put a Shin-chan movie in a top ten anime of all time. 

If I was just rating anime (as opposed to independent animation), I would definitely include films by Rintaro (either Galaxy Express 999 or Metropolis), Satoshi Kon (my favourite is Tokyo Godfathers), and I would probably put Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell on the list instead of Beautiful Dreamer. Eiichi Yamamoto would definitely be on any list of mine as well – of course if I were to make an all time list it would list much more than 10 films just to be able to fit everything in.

It also interesting that the non-Japanese list includes artistic short films like Hedgehog in the Fog and The Man That Planted Trees, but the Japanese list omits independent animators like Kihachiro Kawamoto and Koji Yamamura – and even no sign of commercial/experimental crossover Osamu Tezuka! I would be curious to know if a lot of deep thought went into these two lists, or if they just did a straw poll in the office. Considering the randomness of it all, I suspect the latter.

Related Posts:
Laputa's Top 150 Japanese and World Animation
My Neighbour Totoro
Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro

London Film Fest 2010 Day 12 - UPSIDE DOWN: THE CREATION RECORDS STORY

UPSIDE DOWN: THE CREATION RECORDS STORY is a deeply dull piece of pop hagiography created by fanboys and insiders for nostalgic middle-aged former floppy-fringed Brit-pop hacks. It is basically an homage to Alan McGee, ginger-haired rock impresario who came to London in the early eighties, started putting gigs together, and eventually formed a record label that put out acts that were typically acclaimed in the pages of the NME but sold precious few records. The Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream and My Bloody Valentine are the most recognisable of the bands, and even there, you don't get the idea that McGee's haphazard, drug-fuelled, indulgent mentorship did them any real good. Yes he signed them but often as not he let them drift along before imploding.  The Scream put out one genuinely great album and then disappeared in a whirlwind of their own hype. That's something though. Most of McGee's acts barely got a hit single. 

Creation - ramshackle, do-it-yourself, rude-and-loud - stumbled through the eighties and nineties until something truly amazing happened - and that thing, ladies and gentlemen, was Oasis. Oasis was a rare thing for a Creation Records band: they put out records chock-full of Good Songs. Strong hooks, catchy choruses, stadium-fillers, snarling frontmen. Sure, it might've been good luck to have come onto the scene just at the moment when Britart was causing a sensation. London was swinging again, and the kids from Madchester benefited from the inflated war with Blur. But underneath it all, there were some damn fine songs. And what did Alan McGee have to do with this? Bugger all. He was in rehab, and by the time he got out, the label was wound up. Managing a major pop act needs people who actually turn up to work, sober, and know about the money. You can't both be anarchic and rebellious AND be a mainstream record label making serious cash. Oasis is the best thing Creation ever discovered, but they were the beginning of the end.

Somewhere in all of this is an interesting story about the impossibility of harnessing raw indie energy in a mainstream record label. Somewhere, there is a story about a band who became successful despite the shambolic label they were signed to. Somewhere, there is an honest assessment about how bloody indulgent and forgettable most of these bands were. Because, let's face it, when it comes to seminal acts of the eighties and nineties, Factory kills Creation every time. But we never get that. This documentary badly needs opening out. It needs more context. Director Danny O'Connor doesn't have to agree with me that Factory was more important than Creation, but he needs to talk more about the wider musical context of Creation, as opposed to just showing McGee remembering getting high in the Hacienda. O'Connor needs to remember that he is a documentarian not a hagiographer - he needs distance, cool assessment and to attract an audience beyond the nostalgic core.

As it is, this film is basically not edifying to those of us who were there, and not interesting, I suspect, to anyone who wasn't. If you really want to know what happened, you'd be better off reading John Harris' superb book, "The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the demise of English Rock."

UPSIDE DOWN: THE CREATION RECORDS STORY has no commercial release date.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 12 - CARANCHO

I found watching CARANCHO to be a rather alienating experience. It's all very well acted, and beautifully filmed. The movie drips with social realist integrity. The central romance feels authentic and the finale builds to a point of genuine tension. But for all that, and I'm not sure why, it somehow just didn't work for me. Maybe it was the unrelentingly dour environment or the lingering sense that writer-director, Pablo Trapero, was more interested in the message than the emotional life of his characters. Maybe I just felt that the two lead characters just didn't "click" on screen. Either way, I found CARANCHO to be a far less satisfying film than his previous London Film Fest entry, LION'S DEN.

The movie is basically a story of redemption set in the grimy urban squalor of contemporary Buenos Aires, much as in LION'S DEN. Ricardo Darin (so wonderful in THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES) plays Sosa, a lawyer who lost his license, now working as an ambulance chaser for a ruthless firm, and not above fabricating claims. He is trying to rebuild his self-esteem and his integrity partly to deserve the woman he has fallen in love with - a paramedic called Lujan, played by Trapero regular, Martina Gusman. She is another vulnerable, compromised character. On the surface, she is straight medic, but underneath she's self-medicating to get through her stressful schedule. Somehow, the complex emotional relationship between these two characters, and the xposé of the ambulance chasing industry should be more compelling than it is.

CARANCHO played Cannes and Toronto 2010 and opened in Argentina and Spain earlier this year.

Akino Kondoh Selected for the Guggenheim's You Tube Play

The digest version of Akino Kondoh’s Ladybirds’ Requiem (てんとう虫のおとむらい/Tenshō Mushi no Otomurai) was chosen earlier this week as one of twenty-five short videos for the Guggenheim Museum’s first biennial You Tube Play celebration of creative video. With this project, the Guggenheim aims to harness the power of video-streaming sites like You Tube to promote contemporary art. Their goal was to “attract innovative, original, and surprising videos from around the world, regardless of genre, technique, background, or budget. This global online initiative is not a search for what’s “now,” but a search for what’s next.”

Here the Jury explains the selection process:

The Guggenheim’s call for entries attracted over 23,000 videos from 91 countries. In September, the Guggenheim curators drew up a short list of 125 videos. Akino Kondoh was one of only two Japanese artists to make the short list. The other was Hiroshi Takahashi with his ikebana inspired piece Wow Tenspace (2007). Takahashi is the president and founder of WOW, a design studio based in Tokyo, Sendai and Florence. Designers who worked on Wow Tenspace included Shingo Abe, Tomoyo Kimpara, Yoko Ishii, Hiroshi Ouchi, Shigeru Makino, Takuma Nakazi, Daihei Shibata, and Shi Lin. The artwork used in the animation was designed by Shun Kawakami of Artless Inc.

 

An international jury was selected to narrow down the short list to just twenty-five works. The jury included Nancy Spector as the chairperson, Laurie Anderson, Animal Collective, Darren Aronofsky, Douglas Gordon, Ryan McGinley, Marilyn Minter, Takashi Murakami, Shirin Neshat, Stefan Sagmeister, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Here Takashi Murakami explains what he looks for in video art:

At the core of Murakami’s expectations for the Guggenheim project is this statement: “I expect the video submissions to showcase the unique nature of video and You Tube. I hope to see the kind of work which is recognizable as art with just a single glance.” 

Akino Kondoh, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Shinsedai in July (read about our chat here), does indeed fulfill this brief. As much as I love watching animation on 16mm film it is an expensive and inconsistent medium. Computer technology has freed artists like Kondoh to be able to work affordably and efficiently as independent animators.  Kondoh draws each of the individual frames of her animations by hand with careful attention paid to every detail. These details are preserved during the scanning and editing process and the result is a mesmerizing animation experience. Each frame of Kondoh’s Ladybirds’ Requiem stands on its own as an individual piece of art. 

Kondoh embraced the digital medium early on it her career and her very first film The Evening Traveling (電車かもしれない/Densha kamoshirenai, 2002) NHK program Digital Stadium which also promotes artists via web streaming.  The Guggenheim selection will undoubtedly widen Kondoh’s international fan base even further. My congratulations to Kondoh for this great achievement and I can’t wait to see what she produces next!

The work of Akino Kondoh will be featured in a number of upcoming events:

Tokyo Designers Week 2010, October 29 – November 3 at Jingu-Gaien Kaigakanmae
PISAF, November 5-9 in Puchon Korea
Domani・明日展2010, December 11 – January 23, at The National Art Center, Tokyo