Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with another mega-report from Toronto from Anton Sirius. One of these days I'm gonna attend that festival, but I'll be damned if I ever try to cover this big bitch. I see how exhausted Sirius is just through his writing, which it top notch, of course, but I can see how tired he is. Maybe it's the odd tangents and almost hallucinatory imagry he describes. I will go to the Toronto fest one day, but I'll leave the bulk to Sirius for 2 reasons... Reason 1, I'm lazy. Reason 2, Anton is so damn good at it. Enjoy his latest run of flicks!!!
Day Whatever
I should be exhausted by now. As I type this, it's the second-last day of the festival, and normally by now I am dead on my feet, a shambling geek zombie with eyes as big as saucer-shaped UFOs, mumbling, "Brains! Brains! Feed my brains!"
Instead I am, dare I say, chipper. I've had multiple people comment on how non-bad I look (trust me, on the ninth day of a festival, 'non-bad' is a huge compliment.) I don't get it. I feel like once Toronto drops the curtains I should just hop on a plane and zip down to New York to keep going. Bizarre. Clearly I'm gaining energy from all the damn fine movies (and, perhaps more importantly, the amazingly few number of duds) I'm seeing.
Anyway, news and gossip and stuff:
- Takashi Miike met Quentin Tarantino in Venice last week.
The world trembled.
I mention it in the Zebraman review, but it looks like Miike and QT are gonna collaborate on something, and by 'something' I mean 'a stage play about Go-go Yubari's twin sister based on pages from Kill Bill that QT had to drop from the shooting script'.
Holy sweet motherfucking Jesus.
- in unrelated news, Michelle Trachtenberg hates you all.
Well, not really, but the only slightly unprintable diatribe about fanboy posters and sandwiches she launched at me was AMAZING. Absolute top-grade bitching. She was taking the piss of course (at least, I hope she was...) but she did have me going for a couple of seconds, which scored her bonus points.
To those of you who seem to care so much about her health: for the record, she does eat. Once in a while.
* * * * *
Old Boy (2004, directed by Park Chan-wook)
A nasty, evil, sadistic tale of revenge, Old Boy doesn't just kick ass and take names, it dynamites ass and erects monuments to the assless. This is not a film for the faint of heart.
The movie opens with Oh Dae-su in a police station, having gotten drunk and disorderly on his daughter's birthday. He's bailed out by a friend, but when that friend uses a payphone to call home Oh vanishes into thin air.
What happens next (the long slow torture inflicted on Oh, and the revelation of childhood transgression that set everything in motion) I won't spoil, but suffice it to say that no matter how black your soul is, you won't be disappointed by where the story takes you, and the final hammer-to-the-balls plot kink will leave you wincing. The true power in Old Boy lies not with the story though, but the way that story is told. Park's direction is masterful and relevatory, the soon-to-be classic hallway battle sequence being a perfect example. While there are certainly echoes of other films in it (most obviously Godard's '60s landmark Week End), it's genius is pretty uniquely Park's. He's got a vision all his own, a propulsive style that is equally at home in the pop culture and arthouse worlds. For instance, you can see all kinds of metaphors in Oh's desire to eat a live squid... or you can simply appreciate the site of tentacles frantically trying to cling to his nose as he chomp! s down.
Old Boy is a must, must, must see. This is Park's audition piece for a spot on the 'must see his work no matter what' list, and he easily makes the cut. Park's got to be mentioned in the same breath as Kim Ki-duk and Takeshi Kitano after this one.
* * * * *
Zebraman (2004, directed by Takashi Miike)
The year is 2010. Lime jello aliens are running amuck, possessing people and sending them on violent sprees. In Earth's darkest hour only one man ahs the power to save us, a striped avenger leaping from the annals of an obscure late '70s TV show straight into our hearts.
He is... ZEBURAMAN!
This is hands-down the best Miike film I've seen since Audition (since he makes 83 or so a year, I might have missed a couple). In fact, in a lot of ways Zebraman reminds me of Kung Fu Hustle. Both films raucously spoofi and affectionately embrace their inspirations, but while Stephen Chow's film used the Shaw Brothers era as its touchstone, Miike's source material is Ultraman, the Power Rangers and their ilk, with all the cheesy trappings intact.
It's also one of Miike's most accessible films. His characteristic strangeness, instead of being given full rein as in Gozu or Ichi the Killer, pops up at odd moments to great effect. Plus the whole enterprise is just so infectiously silly. I mean... a zebra??? What the hell kind of superhero is that? Who's his sidekick going to be in the sequel, Meerkat Lad?
Miike lovers will love Zebraman. Heck, there's an excellent chance Miike haters will love it. And given the subject matter and Miike's increasing profile in the West (side note: after a chance meeting at the Venice fest last week, Miike apparently has something cooking with QT involving Go-go Yubari's twin sister...), there's even a possibility Zebraman could get distribution stateside.
Easily the best Midnight film so far this year.
* * * * *
I (Heart) Huckabees (2004, directed by David O. Russell)
I have been wracking my brains trying to think of a cool-yet-sophisticated way to open this review, something that indicates my level of erudition to prove that I got all the jokes.
But screw it. I've had two hours sleep and the honest truth is that I didn't get all the damn jokes. Naomi Watts tossed off some line about a cave and I was all, "Duh, that's, uhh, Plato, right?" Not that the movie feels like a quiz... more like some sick French game show's lightning round, with Ben Stein and the Jeopardy Guy doing commentary.
No, actually, it's nothing like that. I'm going to start again.
I (Heart) Huckabees... wait, how do I get a little heart symbol? Am I betraying the film if I misrepresent the title with '(Heart)' instead? The map may not be the menu (or the meal the territory, for that matter) but if I misstate the title, how do I even know I've got the right menu? Maybe they printed a new one that I just didn't get to my mailbox, and now the prices have all changed and they've stopped making the General Tao chicken.
(I seem to have gotten sidetracked. I'll start again.)
David O. Russell's latest is a return to the full-out comedy stylings of Flirting With Disaster, only this time the humor comes not from geneology but from philosophy. Lily Tomlin is back for another round, as is Richard Jenkins in a small supporting role. Joining them are Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoffman, Mark Wahlberg, Jude Law, Naomi Watts and Isabelle Huppert. Odd that Huppert is in it. Her career resurgence (8 Women, and the Haneke double feature Le temps du loup and La pianiste) comes just as Heaven's Gate gets thrown back into the pop culture consciousness. Is this a coincidence? Are there coincidences? Shania Twain's in the film too, and she's been holistically stalking me ever since I saw it. I pass a storefront... their radio is playing Shania. I walk down the street... two women going the other way are talking about Shania, and not in the context of the movie either. LEAVE ME ALONE, DEVIL WOMAN! Your songs are banal, and not real country anyway, just pop music wi! th hints of Nashville. Leave me be!
Sigh.
You see what I'm up against trying to write this thing? I'm a Bob Wilson groupie, for pity's sake, I should be used to this shite. Normally when a review doesn't want to be written I just write about writing it, but it's fighting me on even that! Clearly the film is exerting some sort of evil influence on me. Maybe it's pissed off that I got the joke in the fact that both the Jaffes (Hoffman and Tomlin) and their nemesis Caterine Vauban (Huppert) don't actually live by the philosophy they claim to espouse (whatever the Jaffes are spouting ain't existentialism, and Vauban's dark natterings ain't nihilism). Maybe I'm being punished for seeing through Tommy Corn (Wahlberg)'s petroleum paranoia, and thinking that the science behind 'fossil fuels' is just one more scare tactic by Them to keep Us down (I mean come on... dead dinosaurs? Are you kidding me? Why not just tell us the Oil Ostrich visits good sheiks in their sleep, and leaves new deposits under their wells?) Maybe I was! supposed to feel ashamed for think Naomi Watts looked damn hot in her Amish bonnet, stuffing her mouth with brownies.
This is one of those movies I'm probably never going to figure out exactly why I like it. I suspect most critics are going to feel the same way, which will be box office death times two for the poor thing. I mean, I appreciate the meta-irony in the fact that the stereotypical 'middle American' would probably hate it for making them feel stupid, when one of the messages of the film is that even a model or firefighter can grasp essential philosophical truths without too much effort, but unless I go and see it 80,000 during its theatrical release that isn't going to make a damn bit of difference.
Or will it? Perhaps the positive vibes I'm radiating out regarding Huckabees will be enough to make it a minor hit. Perhaps my not being able to express why it's good externally will lead to an internal expression of praise that taps straight into the collective unconscious, and bumps the film up a few spots on the Zeitgeist Index.
Or maybe me saying that just queered the whole deal.
Dammit, now my head hurts. If you'll excuse me, I have to go do something less mentally taxing, like read Plato's Republic.
* * * * *
The Overture (2004, directed by Itthisoontorn Vichailak)
Thai cinema has been evolving in leaps and bounds the last few years, giving voice to a unique blend of Eastern and Western sensibilities. That mixture has never been more in evidence than in the Overture, which is... look, you're not going to believe me when I say this, but...
The Overture is kinda the Thai historical drama version of 8 Mile, only with wooden xylophones instead of rap.
The film, inspired by (as opposed to based on) a true story, takes place in two distinct time periods. Sorn, the last living xylophone master, is on his deathbed as the Japanese attack Thailand during World War Two, and reflects back on his youth at the tail end of of the 'King and I' era we're all familiar with. As a young man, Sorn was a true prodigy and the bad boy of his village, even getting busted down to gong player by his teacher/father on the eve of the big competition against the regional governor's ensemble. As the old master, Sorn has grown wiser but not less rebellious. When the government, in an attempt to Westernize and 'civilize' the country to help strengthen it against the Japanese, starts banning all forms of traditional Thai culture, it is Sorn who leads the resistance.
The plot is formula, but the execution is solid. This being Thailand, the scenery and young lead actors are all gorgeous. The humor has just the right touch, and there are some moments of quiet beauty (as when Sorn's son has a piano delivered, and after just a few seconds of hearing the new instrument father and son slide into a piano/xylophone duet.)
Really, it's the music that sets the film apart. Young Sorn's development as an artist gives ears unfamiliar with Thai music a chance to grow with him, so that by the time the climactic xylophone showdown at the imperial palace occurs, the audience can appreciate how great the playing truly is.
Oh yeah, did I mention there was a climactic xylophone showdown at the palace? And that it rocked something fierce? The great thing about Thai xylophone playing is that it is visually, as well as musically, beautiful, with mallets flying around almost faster than the eye can follow. Watching two titans of the rack going head to head, sweat flying off their brows, notes gathering in the air like a swarm of fireflies on a summer night... it's a trip and a half.
* * * * *
9 Songs (2004, directed by Michael Winterbottom)
An experiment that doesn't quite work, 9 Songs is (much as he might deny it)Winterbottom's attempt to create an artistically acceptable form of porn.
The premise is simple: a relationship is recalled in flashback, and traced exclusively (more or less) through music and sex. The music is good (Primal Scream, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, even live Michael Nyman) and the sex blisteringly hot, so at least to that extent Winterbottom gets it right. He even works in a money shot, appropriately enough at the climax of the film.
Where the film struggles is with its pretentions. The framing sequences, for instance, don't really work. Like most narration it's superfluous, and the real purpose of it all seems to be to have an excuse to open the movie with a shot of a fire-engine red airplane set against the white expanse of Antarctica. It's a wonderful shot, but not worth all the droning reminiscence.
Even with the framing device to mudge it along though, the story is stagnant. Since the only plot events are sexual encounters and concerts, there's almost no forward momentum. The state of the relationship can be judged through the couple's pillow talk, but that's a pretty thin reed with which to support a film.
I also have one major complaint about the film's politics. Contrary to what Winterbottom seems to think, women (especially randy 21-year-old women) masturbate even when they are satisfied with their sex lives. Implying that a vibrator is just a substitute for a cock is an insult to both vibrators and cocks, not to mention naive and a tad chauvanistic. This is a couple who experiment with bondage and role playing. You're telling me she's not going to introduce some hardware into that equation as well?
If all you want is porn you can justify to your partner as art, then 9 Songs is the movie for you. If you're looking for something more (or less, for that matter), then this is probably going to be a disappointment.
