Hey folks, Harry here... Sorry I haven't been at my post during the last 3 days, but I was up in Palo Duro Canyon in the Panhandle of Texas attending one of the most perfect nights of entertainment ever to grace this slimey mudball we know as Earth. RIDERS IN THE SKY were playing a concert in that ol Palo Duro Canyon, in the shadow of the spirit of Quanah Parker... Singing the ol Cowboy Tunes as well as Woody's Toon Tunes too. Sigh... Bliss. Anyway, yes, that's right, I took a weekend off of selfish reasons. So sue me. I'm human, singing cowboys just rule all. Speaking of ruling all, it sounds like TORONTO is kicking many an ass this year. I'm dying to see DOLLS at this point. BUBBA HO-TEP kicks more ass than even Anton let's on. I'm DYING to see BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE! Anyway, here's Anton...
Day Three
I'm striking out big-time on the interviews. No Gilliam, no Miyazaki, no Bruce Campbell (but he wasn't really in town that long anyway.) I'm waiting to hear back from Miramax on one with Fernando Meirelles, though, director of City of God. No guarantees, but shoot me any questions you might have at AntonSirius@HotMail.Com, and I'll keep you posted on any others that come up.
I'm having an incredible run so far otherwise though. I've seen exactly one film I'd call a dud, and everything else has been AT WORST entertaining. Spun is probably my second least fave film so far, and you can see from my review how much I hated it (as in, not at all). The quality has just been unbelievable, with plenty more should-be-great ones on the horizon.
Both Midnight Madness flicks have had one great thing going for them so far- charismatic stars. Jason Schwartzman last night was a hoot, but Bruce Campbell had the entire Uptown (900+ people) just in hysterics. It's just too bad he can't bring some of that charisma to his performances, huh?
(Kidding! I'm kidding! Really! Look at me, I'm a kidder!)
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Spirited Away (2002, directed by Hayao Miyazaki)
This is Miyazaki's best film.
Now that can't be considered a definitive statement- I haven't seen an unbutchered Nausicaa, for instance- but if any of his previous work compares to this then I think I'd just have to cede to him the title of 'Greatest Living Storyteller' and get it over with (not that he mightn't be anyway, but right now there could be some debate).
Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (aka Miyazaki's Spirited Away if you listen to Disney, who better not screw up the marketing for this one or there will be karmic hell to pay I can assure you) is an utterly transporting work of sheer genius. Chihiro, a ten-year-old girl, and her parents are moving; while on the way to their new house they find an old tunnel, which leads them inadvertently into the spirit realm. There Chihiro's parents are turned into pigs, and she must remain out of the clutches of the witch Yubaba in order to rescue them.
I don't want to say too much about Spirited Away, because one of the great joys of watching the film is the way the universe Miyazaki has created gradually reveals itself. When I say 'genius' I mean it- the sheer level of imagination on display, even in the background characters, rivals and possibly even surpasses the visions of George Lucas (that's what you call 'throwing down the gauntlet to the Talkback crowd'.) This is a wholly realized, wholly unique world Chihiro finds herself in. Even better, Chihiro is a worthy protagonist. The rules may not make sense, but she plays by them anyway and still comes out on top.
All the usual staples of a Miyazaki film- the stunning animation, the beautiful Joe Hisaishi score- are there as well. Beginning to end, back to front, Spirited Away is maybe as close to perfect as a movie can get.
I imagine there's going to be some 'which is better, Mononoke or Spirited Away' debates once this comes out, so let me just get it started. Mononoke is brilliant. I adore the film with all my heart. But Spirited Away involved me in a way Mononoke can't quite match. There you're an observer in a fantastic new world. Here, thanks to Chihiro, you're a participant. And that inches it just that little bit ahead in my books.
If I can think of any recent film to compare to Spirited Away it's the Iron Giant. The same love and pure joy radiates out from Miyazaki's masterwork as from Brad Bird's, and I think long-term, even on this side of the Pacific, the two will be recognized as the landmarks they are.
The short-term for Spirited Away- that's now up to Disney.
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Laurel Canyon (2002, directed by Lisa Chodolenko)
From the writer/director of High Art, and starring Frances McDormand, Christian Bale and Kate Beckinsale, comes... a trite clichéd piece of poo? How did this happen?
I've tried looking for an excuse for this one, but there are none. While I liked High Art, I hardly came into this one with ridiculous expectations. And while the cast is great, it's not like none of them have ever taken a turn in a stinker before (Newsies, anyone? The Golden Bowl? Beyond Rangoon?)
Ah well. Stop me if you've heard this one before- anal doctor returns home with new, introverted wife in tow to meet his bohemian neo-hippie record producer mother in the kind of LA neighborhood the Eagles used to sing about. Mother and son explore the roots of his resentment while mother's stud-ish young rock star boyfriend makes the moves on wifey, who's yearning to escape her stifling upbringing and overprotective, kinda-thinking-about-cheating hubby, and maybe get a little girl-on-girl action with mom too.
Ick. Frances and Christian try hard but are for the most part completely straight-jacketed by their roles, while poor Kate is forced to reel from plot point to plot point with no hope of finding any emotional logic in her character. They even *stress* that her actions are hollow at their core as though it's some sort of big epiphany.
The surprises are telegraphed. The supporting characters are cardboard-thin. The dialogue clanks. The big song mom and rock star boyfriend are working on sucks. Even the photos of Frances with her famous rock 'n' roll friends are badly faked, to the point of drawing laughter from the crowd. From the big moments to the little details this film just misses everything.
If you ever want to develop a theory of the sophomore jinx in film, Laurel Canyon should be exhibit A.
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Dolls (2002, directed by Takeshi Kitano)
If this sounds familiar, well, it can't be helped. This is Takeshi Kitano's best film.
Those of you used/expecting Beat himself will be disappointed- he stays firmly behind the camera on this one. Those of you expecting his usual (to North Americans, anyway) tale of Yakuza revenge and bloodshed will also wonder what the heck they've stumbled into. This is a story about fate, and memory, and love, and the tangled mess we can make of our lives when we fight against the strings our hearts weave for us.
Off the top this is an unbelievably gorgeous movie. Kitano's visual sense is on full display here, the colors bleeding off the screen at times they're so intense, and Japanese landscape has never looked more ravishing than it does here. But more than that the stories (I could reference something like Magnolia here, or Greenaway, but really Dolls is its own entity), told in Kitano's meditative style, find ways to draw you in. There are three main arcs- the old Yakuza boss dealing with his sense of regret as he nears the end of his life, the pop star disfigured in a car accident and the fan who still adores her, and above all Sawako and Matsumoto, young lovers split apart by an arranged marriage then reunited after Sawako goes mad and Matsumoto leaves his bride-to-be at the altar to look after her. Traveling the countryside, bound together by a red cord, their story intersects and links the others until they find their own conclusion.
Kitano proved with Kikujiro that he could make a comedy. Here, as far as I'm concerned, he proves he can do pretty much anything he sets his mind to. Just an incredible, incredible movie, and dueling it out with Spirited Away right now (in my heart more than my head) for my favorite film of the fest so far.
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Bowling for Columbine (2002, directed by Michael Moore)
Moore's most ambitious film to date, Bowling for Columbine tackles nothing less than America's gun culture, its seeming addiction to violence, and the body count left in the wake of the intersection of the two.
While Bowling for Columbine is as funny as any of Moore's previous work- Matt and Trey supply a three minute history of the USA that is just hysterical, and should be required viewing in every classroom- you should be warned that when it gets going it is far, far darker than anything he's done before. While the subject matter certainly plays a part in that (any film that features both 09/11 footage and Columbine security camera footage can't help but be wrenching at times) there's something more at work. Moore's final theory- that the climate of fear perpetuated by the news media, corporations and politicians has created a nation of near paranoids and borderline psychotics, and adding guns to that witches brew is, or at least probably should be, criminal- is more than a little self-recriminatory given his profession and lifelong status as an NRA member, and that seems to add some venom to his filmmaking. Some of the stunts, particularly at the end of the movie, go way beyond Moore's normal schtick. But then again, one of those stunts works spectacularly well, so that's in no way a bad thing.
If there's a problem with the film it's that Moore is desperately searching for some kind of catharsis that cannot possibly arrive, especially with the vicious beady-eyed homunculus scumfuck currently sitting in the White House (and you can address all your fan mail from that statement to AntonSirius@HotMail.com, but I am quite frankly tired of dancing around the truth when it comes to Dubya just because he happened to be on the throne a little less than a year ago). The victories at the end all seem pyrrhic in light of what prompted the battles in the first place, and while Moore's central premise can certainly hold its own, the 'Corporate Cops' segment clearly illustrates that there are no easy answers. And its answers that Moore seems driven to find in Bowling, not theories, and not more rhetoric. But while that might leave you feeling a bit empty when the credits roll in a way that Roger & Me or especially the Big One never did, it in no way diminishes the impact of the film.
Personally I think MGM have a bigger property on their hands here than they might realize. While controversy is never a sure-fire recipe for box office success Moore's stints atop the New York Times bestseller lists prove that there's an audience for what he has to say, and after Ann Coulter's head explodes live on-air as she tries to contain her rage and coherently discuss the movie, even the fence-sitters are going to want to see what all the fuss is about.
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Bubba Ho-tep (2002, directed by Don Coscarelli)
Based on a Joe R. Lansdale novella Bubba Ho-tep tells the story of the last days of Elvis Aron Presley. Not the story as you know it (tub o' lard on the toilet etc.) but the story as it should have been (battling a mummy in an East Texas old folks home).
Funny, a bit wistful, and daft as all hell, Bubba Ho-tep stars Bruce "Every Geek Wishes They Were Me" Campbell as the King himself, and Ossie Davis (???) as... well, I'm not going to spoil that one. Let's just call him Jack. The two crotchety old-timers team up to investigate some mysterious deaths at the rest home where they live, and do battle with the undead horror once it reveals itself. One stuck behind a walker, the other in a wheelchair they are as fearsome a duo as... well, actually, I can't think of an onscreen pair as pathetic as these two. Maybe Rubin and Ed (that would be an oblique reference to Gerry, Gus Van Sant's film here, if you're scoring at home).
There's really not much more I can say without giving away things best revealed onscreen, except to say that Ossie Davis gets an amazing number of the best lines, or maybe they are the best lines because it's Ossie Davis saying words like 'asshole' in that fantastic distinguished voice of his. That and 'cancer on your dick' will be THE in catch-phrase of 2003.
If you're 1) a Bruce Campbell fan, 2) a Phantasm fan, 3) a Joe Lansdale fan, 4) an Elvis fan, 5) have an old farts fetish, or 6) have any taste in movies at all, you have to see Bubba Ho-tep. And if you don't fit any of those criteria, what the hell are you doing reading AICN?
