UNCLE KENT - Mumblecore, softcore, borecore

While kicking up a riot at Scoundrels Chicago, I managed to break out and detox for a little over an hour in the mecca for all film reviewers - The Gene Siskel Film Center. I wandered in to the first film showing - which happened to be Joe Swanberg's mumblecore flick, UNCLE KENT. Just as its genre conventions require, UNCLE KENT is a low-budget lo-fi drama basically consisting of a bunch of financially...

World Film Locations: Tokyo

I heard from Chris MaGee of Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow that the book he edited, World Film Locations: Tokyo, is now available for pre-ordering on Amazon.  It is part of a new Intellect Books series called World Film Locations which plans to examine cities from around the world as movie locations. The first wave of releases is set for late summer and in additon to Tokyo will also include Los Angeles,...

Tadanari Okamoto’s Home, My Home (ホーム・マイホーム, 1970)

Home, My Home (1970) was the first work of Tadanari Okamoto’s that I ever encountered. I arrived in Tokyo with my family in late 2004 – a few months too late for the National Film Center exhibition and retrospective of his career. Luckily for me, however, the paper sets and dolls from Home, My Home had been donated to the permanent collection at the NFC and were on display the first time I visited...

Taku Furukawa’s Speed (スピード, 1980)

It is amazing to think that Taku Furukawa’s award-winning animated short Speed (1980) is just over 30 years old because the style and the message seem just as fresh and relevant today as they did then. Our “high speed society,” as the opening title card calls it, has only gotten faster and more frenetic in the intervening years. Using his trademark sketchy, casually rendered illustration style,...

Tokyo Joe (東京ジョー, 1949)

Made at the peak of Humphrey Bogart’s career, Tokyo Joe (Stuart Heisler, 1949) provides some rare glimpses into life in Tokyo under the American Occupation. Bogart plays Joe Barrett, a retired lieutenant colonel who ran a nightclub in Tokyo before the war and was married to the beautiful European singer Trina (Florence Marly). For reasons known only to himself, Joe left his wife and Japan shortly...

RANGO - Wonderful, radical, revolutionary

RANGO is a revelation. It is one of the best films I have seen this year, one of the best animated films since TOY STORY, and must surely raise the bar in terms of what is seen as appropriate material for a children's film, and the level of ambition one can bring to the visuals in an animated film. I wonder if history will judge it as revolutionary as AVATAR in terms of bringing the craft of cinema...

YOUR HIGHNESS - Worst. Spoof. Ever.

YOUR HIGHNESS is an attempt at the kind of broad, slapstick spoof comedy so brilliantly done by Mel Brooks in his classics, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, BLAZING SADDLES and, to my mind, SPACEBALLS. The first problem is that while often as crude, or indeed cruder, than Brooks, it lacks the consistency of good jokes. The second problem is that it lacks a close observation of the material that it's spoofing....

Keiichi Tanaami’s Favourite Animation

Since I was a child, I’ve always loved Disney movies and cartoons in general. Each time I draw a picture regardless of what it’s for I always think about how it would look if animated. That’s why animating my drawings comes quite naturally to me. – Keiichi Tanaami (Tokyo, 3 August 2009) The words that most often are used to describe Keiichi Tanaami's artistic style include “pop art,” “surreal,”...

RED RIDING HOOD - sexless

With her self-consciously naive re-telling of the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale, TWILIGHT director Catherine Hardwicke undoes all the good work of Angela Carter in bringing Charles Perrault's original story up to date with modern sexual mores. For, as she revealed in her brilliant short story, which was itself made into the film, THE COMPANY OF WOLVES, Red Riding Hood is really a story about...