Hey folks, Harry here and Toronto is off and firing full-steam ahead. Let's just hop straight in...
So I'm walking down the street when I who should I bump into but Ted Raimi.
"Ted!" sez I. "What are you doing in town? I didn't see you on the talent list."
"Oh, I'm not in town for anything. I'm just here", sez The Man.
He's promised to make some Midnight appearances, so I'll have to see if perhaps, in addition to Copernicus and my own self, we can't get a third opinion on some of these bad boys
One interview has been scheduled: the one and only Johnnie To on Sunday. Fire away with your questions to the usual addy (This One) or, if you happen to stumble across my blog, drop a dime in the comments section.
Now onto those first juicy reviews!
* * * * *
Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence (2004, directed by Mamoru Oshii)
This is the most beautiful anime ever made.
Japan has produced some amazing work recently, don't get me wrong, and Miyazaki was still a god last time I checked, but Ghost in the Shell II leaves them all gasping in terms of pure spectacle. In fact, I'll go one further. Not only is it the most beautiful anime ever, it's the first cyberpunk film whose visuals can match grand-daddy Blade Runner's. It's that sumptuous to look at, from the opening shot to the closing. The CG and hand-drawn still aren't seamless, mind you, but the sense of disconnect between the two dovetails so nicely with the film's themes it can't not be intentional.
And what are those themes? I was afraid you'd ask that. While the look of GITS II makes you try and come up with new synonyms for 'gob-smacked', the plot is barely coherent. Bits of the first film, Phil Dick and William Gibson are tossed in a blender and pureed, essentially. Besides, it's all really just an excuse to muse about humanity and identity, in a very long-winded fashion.
(Bonus points though for the constant barrage of quotes every character pulls out of their... external memory at will. I know some folks in the audience thought it was a stupid conceit, but in a world where everyone has instant access to every classic piece of writing from Milton to Confucius, why would you ever use your own sad little phrases?)
Who really cares though? The fight scenes are sudden, brutal and dazzling. The mind games are trippy. And there's a very real argument to be made that humanity evolved eyesight just so it could eventually watch this movie.
Ghost in the Shell II is an incredible piece of art. It's not to be missed.
* * * * *
Letters to Ali (2004, directed by Clara Law)
How much criticism do you level at someone who fails at an impossible task?
Letters to Ali is Clara Law's (Goddess of '67, Temptation of a Monk) first stab at a documentary, but the story is right up her alley. Australia, her adopted home, has a refugee policy that is beyond reprehensible. Using public safety as a thin mask for racism, asylum seekers are tossed into camps that have far more in common with jails than temporary homes, tossed away and forgotten. The film centers on the plight of Ali (not his real name), who as a young boy fled the Taliban, eventually winding up alone in a camp on Australia's north-west coast. A doctor, Trish, gets his ID number from a protest website and writes him a letter without even knowing his name. What follows is a friendship and a struggle, both for Ali's freedom and for the rights of all those imprisoned.
The problem with Letters to Ali is not the narrative, obviously; Ali's is a tale begging to be told. The problem is the materials available to tell it. The film almost feels like it was Obstructed. Due to the legalities and realities of Ali's situation, Law never shows his face or uses his voice. In fact the only real footage she has to work with are scattered shots from a protest, and a three-week road trip she takes with Trish's family across the continent to visit Ali. This leaves a whole lot of screen time to be filled up with text, voice-overs, and politicians droning on about social policy.
Clara Law has an impeccable sense of the visual, but she can't work miracles. There's just no film here, no matter how well she milks Ali's absence for all its metaphorical power, and no matter how personally she's invested in the subject matter (Law, too, befriended Ali during shooting.)
Ali's story needs to be told, and if this movie gets him his freedom one day sooner it will most definitely have been worth it, but until he is capable of speaking for himself this may not have been the best vehicle for telling it.
