Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with Ms. Moon Yun Choi and her adventures at the Hawaii International Film Festival. We've got two interviews and a bunch of reviews below, so I'm going to take up any more time up here. Enjoy!!!
Moon Yun here signing in from Hawaii with reports from the Hawaii International Film Festival…
This report has a mix bag of Hollywood movie and Hawaii-made films. Before I continue, I want to thank Dario Belenfante for all the great photography work that he’s been doing for us this HIFF year. Without further adieu, let me start with my interview of Ben Younger, the writer/director of PRIME.
PRIME
Interviewed director and screenwriter Ben Younger
Ben Younger just walked out of a screening of his new movie PRIME in Texas when he called me for a telephone interview. He was supposed to come to Hawaii for the Hawaii International Film Festival where his movie screened but he suddenly fell ill.
AICN: I loved the premise of the movie – Uma Thurman’s character sharing every explicit detail of her sex life to her therapist played by Meryl Streep. Unbeknownst to both of them, the person she’s talking about is the therapist’s son. That was classic. How did you get that idea? Is it from your own life experience or someone else’s?
Younger: No…well, a little bit. My mom is a shrink. Obviously she never treated any of my girlfriends. I wouldn’t have made a movie about it if that had happened. That’s how I got the original idea. I thought, “How crazy would it be if one of my girlfriends would ever go see her as a patient?” That was the little kernel of an idea I had and I went from there. (Contrary to previous reports that it took him eight years to write the script, Younger said it actually took him only three months but that he got the idea eight years ago.)
AICN: How did you come up with the idea to make Meryl Streep the psychiatrist? That part is perfect for her.
Younger: Before I wrote it, I knew that was who I wanted…In writing the part, I kept her in mind the whole time. I just thought she’d be perfect and that’s one thing I was right about.
AICN: As a director, it must not have been difficult getting the performance you’d like out of Meryl Streep. She is a living legend after all.
Younger: To tell you the truth, that’s a nice thing about Meryl. You don’t have to be a good director. You can be an awful director because she really doesn’t make many missteps. You can sit back and enjoy the performance. She’s Meryl Streep. She’s got 13 Oscar nominations. She doesn’t need a ton of direction.
AICN: Uma Thurman, like her character Rafi, is a recent divorcee. In directing her, did you ever sense her vulnerability?
Younger: She and I never really talked about whether her performance was inspired by what was going on in her life. She was doing it so well that I didn’t even want to dissect from whatever she was drawing from. I didn’t want to get into it because (her performance) was so perfect. I don’t know if that was what it was but I do know that I felt that she gave me something that I feel like she’s never given another director…this nuanced performance…a really emotionally open performance that I’ve never seen her give. She definitely was doing something right.
AICN: Bryan Greenberg who plays Thurman’s love interest, Dave, is an unknown. Was that a deliberate choice?
Younger: Yeah, I didn’t want everyone to have a presupposed notion about all three of the actors. You already know Meryl. You already know Uma. I just thought it would be nice to “break somebody open.”
AICN: How did you come up with the title PRIME?
Younger: Both their ages are prime numbers – 23 (Dave) and 37 (Rafi). Both their characters are in their sexual prime.
AICN: Prime is a romantic comedy. Was there any idea or message about love that you wanted to get across with this movie?
Younger: The notion that I wanted to get across was one that…I feel like there’s this notion that whatever relationship you’re in that if it doesn’t end up in marriage or children you’re a failure (and) that your relationship is a failure. I don’t like that idea. I feel like some relationships are meant to be a month and some are meant to be a year (and) some are meant to be sixty years. This idea of if you don’t end up married with kids… that you f*&cked up is really bad. That’s why we have a 50% divorce rate in this country. I feel like the ending of this movie is not so bitter. It’s sweeter. They really loved each other and they taught each other how to live again and they moved on.
Moon Yun’s comments: And not so surprisingly, Younger said his mom didn’t help him with the research. (With all those sex scenes, can you imagine?)
It’s hard talking badly about a movie you wanted to like so much, especially since you just interviewed the director/writer and he seems like such a nice guy. I was excited about seeing the movie because of its premise and because Streep takes on a comedic role. However, I felt let down after I saw the movie because I never really felt like I was falling in love as the characters were and I wasn’t touched by the bittersweet nature of their breakup. From the trailer, I was expecting more patient/son/therapist comedic situations but I was surprised that Streep wasn’t in that much of the movie. Don’t get me wrong, I do have a pulse but I feel that this movie is one I’d suggest setting aside for a matinee with a friend rather than plunking down full ticket price for a Friday/Saturday evening show.
PRIME is scheduled to open October 28, 2005.
PARADISE NOW
Interviewed director and co-writer Hany Abu-Assad
Standing before a crowd who came to see his movie PARADISE NOW, Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad began telling the story of how he moved to Holland to study engineering. He fell in love with a woman but she wouldn’t have anything to do with him. So he became a filmmaker. In his youth he rationalized that if he became a filmmaker, then the woman he loves won’t regret rejecting him. The audience laughs and Abu-Assad points out that now she must regret rejecting a successful one.
Indeed she must. PARADISE NOW won three awards at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival and is Palestine’s submission for the foreign language Oscar.
For a movie about the 48 hours in the lives of two young Palestinians recruited for a bombing in Tel Aviv, there is no violence in the movie. Instead the movie focuses on the young Palestinians, Khaled and Said, best friends since youth, as they grapple with their consciousness.
Maybe that’s why this movie didn’t work for me as a thriller. It lacked the suspense and excitement associated with a thriller. It was an odd choice not to use any music in the film. It was more interesting for me to hear him talk about the movie than watch the film itself. For example, I found it fascinating that in order to do research for the movie, he talked to lawyers who defended suicide bombers whose attempts had failed. I didn’t even know there was such a thing.
However, the audience seemed to have loved it. I had to steal him away from his admirers for a quick Q&A:
AICN: You come off as a laid back, witty and funny type of guy. What made you embark on such a serious subject?
Abu-Assad: Life is not always serious. I don’t believe in the absolute. We are all human beings battling between…conflicting elements.
AICN: How did you come upon the subject?
Abu-Assad: I wanted to make a thriller. We came up with the idea to make a thriller about the last (forty-eight) hours of somebody who was going to commit a suicide (bombing) action. Still we don’t know anything about them. (The fact) that we don’t know anything about them was more horrifying than the action themselves. Actually it’s very horrifying that we don’t know anything about them. They don’t leave their (diaries) just the video…we don’t know how they were at school…this kind of curiosity makes me very, very scared. I don’t know but I ought to know.
AICN: When you set out to make this movie, did you have an agenda?
Abu-Assad: I have an agenda but not for the movie. Movies are an art form. What is an art form? An art form is (what) you take (from) reality and put it in a new form and watch it from different points of view in order to open your vision.
AICN: Did you film in Palestine?
Abu-Assad: Yes. I was there for five months (to prepare for the movie). We filmed forty days. I think if the situation was normal we could’ve filmed in twenty five days but many times we couldn’t work because there was a curfew or the army was attacking somewhere. It was a very difficult situation.
AICN: It was interesting that for a movie about suicide bombers there weren’t any violence in the movie.
Abu-Assad: Yes, if a movie shows you what you already know than it’s a boring movie. I let (the audience) use their imagination.
The film is scheduled to open October 28, 2005.
HAWAII PANORAMA 2
One of my favorite things about the Hawaii International Film Festival is seeing the films made by the local filmmakers. While lacking in experience and budget, they are a super enthusiastic and creative bunch. That’s why HIFF created the “Hawaii Panorama” series to showcase the local talents. While I’m unable to see all of the entrants – HIFF reports a record 50 Hawaii-based films this year – I was excited about seeing budding filmmaker Scott Lee Mason’s first feature, a horror, suspense film THE ORB, and the ever prolific Gerard Elmore’s short, VALTOR THE GREAT VS. THE UNIVERSE, in the Hawaii Panorama 2 section.
THE ORB
Scott Lee Mason tossed out an idea for a movie to his producer friend Dusty Cross. How crazy would it be if a blue orb that when it flashes makes people want to have sex? Not wanting to go there for their first movie, they asked, “What if this blue orb goes inside people and makes them want to kill each other?”
High five! So they set out to do a horror movie with practically no budget and on an insanely short shooting time, about 13 days. Garison Piatt set out to write the script.
The premise is simple: Horny teenagers go off to the woods on a camping trip only to be terrorized by a sinister blue orb that gets inside them and turns them into bloodthirsty killers.
How was the movie? The gore – it’s present but not enough to gross me out. The sex – the most I’ve ever seen in a local production. The scare factor – not so much but that didn’t stop the raucous crowd from getting into the movie. The globe – the blue sphere reminded me of planet earth but you got what it represented. Fun to watch – actor Lew Lappert, who because of his height and beard looks like an adorable leprechaun, jumping in and out of scenes.
“We had hoped for a horror movie but we knew once we finished it that it’s not as scary as we would have liked it to been. But it was a fun movie. The audience reaction was great,” says Cross.
It was an ambitious project and an admirable effort on the part of Mason who not only directed the film but edited and lensed it. Had they had the luxury of having more time to put together the movie, I feel the movie would have been more cohesive.
For Cross, the main challenge of making an indie was not having enough money to do things the way they would’ve liked to. “Hopefully (for) the next time, people can say, ‘this is what you can do for no money. And with a little bit of money you guys should be able to do a great job.’”
VALTOR THE GREAT VS. THE UNIVERSE
Aah, Gerard my favorite funnyman, filmmaker…the one who swears he can make TROY for a $1,000. Well this time he took a stab with his latest character creation, Valtor the Great, who has traveled the universe to fight in intergalactic battles. While I had laughed my head off from his previous shorts – THE AMAZING ASIAN and THE MAKING OF A KARAOKE VIDEO – this one was more for kids. But I think VALTOR, a 10-minute short, was more of experimentation on what they could with High-def. Gerard says this marked the first time that a movie was projected in High-def at HIFF.
The Hawaii filmmakers are planning to submit their films to other festivals so you can catch it if they come to a festival in your town.
BLOOD OF THE SAMURAI: THE SERIES
Talented local filmmaker Aaron Yamasato’s BLOOD OF THE SAMURAI: THE SERIES is out on DVD and available through amazon.com. It’s a six-episode television series based on the multiple award-winning film, BLOOD OF THE SAMURAI. That film was a hit at past HIFF festival. Hawaii’s first ever locally produced martial arts show, the series follows the further exploits of the characters in the film, as well as maintaining the film's blend of action, martial arts, humor, and pop culture sensibility. The six episodes form a continuous, complete narrative. Although the series culminates in an exciting resolution, it also provides a foundation to pursue future stories, says Yamasato.
That’s it for now. More on HIFF later. Moon Yun signing out…
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