Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with Albert Lanier's newest dose of Hawaii International Film Festival for us. He's got tons of reviews like THE DYING GAUL, TETSUJIN 28, PRINCESS RACOON, PRIME, THE SQUID AND THE WHALE and DUMPLINGS. I myself saw THE SQUID AND THE WHALE tonight here in Austin and can give it the Quint seal of approval. It's a disturbing, but really funny and entertaining look at a family as it falls apart. You'll get my full review shortly, but in the meantime here's Mr. Lanier!
HIFF FESTIVAL NOTES: A SQUID, A WHALE AND SOME DUMPLINGS ON THE SIDE
by Albert Lanier
The 25th anniversary year of the Hawaii International Film Festival is turning out to be one of the most hectic and fascinating years to cover for a jaded HIFF and film festival veteran like me.
The first weekend of HIFF has been no exception. I have already written about hot Korean actors and the local Korean and Japanese women who love them.
Up until about Sunday night the festival was threatening to become just one large blur without focus or comprehension.
Part of this stemmed from the Meet the Press event held at the Outrigger Waikiki's 2nd floor lobby at 10 am on Saturday, October 22 where filmmakers met and mingle with the press and other media in attendance.
I quickly found myself meeting a number of filmmakers but mostly hopping from one interview to the next whether I was chatting with Georgia Lee, the lovely director of the drama RED DOORS or Frank Lin who's feature AMERICAN FUSION starring Sylvia Chang, Esai Morales, Pat Morita and James Hong had its World Premiere at HIFF this year.
I also sat down with Rena Owen of ONCE WERE WARRIORS and we had a terrific discussion about the impact of this powerful breakthrough film from New Zealand as well as a major project that Rena is working that once all the pieces are in place will in all likelihood be a phenomenal picture.
At 12 p.m. more madness occurred as Lee Byung- Hun and Director Kim Jee-Woon showed up at Outrigger Waikiki for a press conference promoting the U.S, Premiere of their film A BITTERSWEET LIFE which screened this past Monday at the Hawaii Theatre downtown to a packed crowd of Lee Byung-Hun fans.
But more about that in another report. I did get to ask the director during the Press conference who his filmic influences were and he replied through HIFF President Jeff Chung (who generously helped with translation duties that day) that he admired a number of directors such as Tim Burton and Martin Scorsese.
This press conference caused me to be late for my first screening of the day-Seijun Suzuki's PRINCESS RACCOON starring the gorgeous Ziyi Zhang as the Raccoon Princess aka Princess Tanuki.
As I will probably review this full-scale later, I will not go into much detail now other than to say that for most filmgoers in the United States this will be a weird, wild wonderful trip. No matter, PRINCESS RACCOON is an enjoyable musical bursting with color and loaded with charm. Its simply delightful.
TETSUJIN 28 was next. Directed by Shin Togashi, TETSUJIN's protagonist is Shintaro, a young boy who's father died when he was quite a toddler.
Shotaro is teased in school by some of his classmates especially since he has the ability to tap into memories of events with some accuracy.
This ability to remember details from memories will come in handy when a gigantic robot named Black Ox threatens Tokyo.
A former family employee has arranged for Shotaro to take a boat ride to an island where his grandfather's laboratory (in what looks like a converted railroad wheelhouse) is located.
Apparently Shotaro's grandfather was scientist who built giant robot for possible use for the Japanese military during the war. Tetsujin 28 currently lies fallow in disrepair.
Now the pre-adolescent Shotaro must continue his grandfather and father's legacy and use a remote control to manipulate giant robot Tetsujin to defeat Black Ox developed by robotic genius and magnate Takumi in order to rule the world and run it through bio-electrical computers.
TETSUJIN 28 is pure, unalloyed entertainment without any camp fillers or sub textual byproducts. There's a lot of draw-dropping and eye-popping acting here in an old fashioned reactive SFX kind of way.
Director Shin Togashi mixes live action with animation (the robots) and the result are robots who either deliberately or unintentionally look like cartoon or animated figures trapped in live action land.
The script by Hiroshi Saito and Kota Yamada is largely exposition driven with swaths of humor here and there. The performances by actors such Yu Aoi, Shosuke Ikematsu and Akira Emoto are the typically limited range of acting work found in these movies where emoting the basic amount of emotions and saying the lines adequately enough is just fine.
In all, TETSUJIN 28 is a blast of nostalgia for Japanese films and watchable throughout but not worth recommending to all but the most insistent Japanese Robot/ Monster film fan.
I then saw a trio of American films and had a surprisingly good time at all of them making Saturday night a really strong night at HIFF thus far.
Craig Lucas's THE DYING GAUL was the first of the three films. Set in 1995, one of the film's opening scenes turns out be quite ominous-a shadowy figure shaking hands in office silhouetted against a brilliant orange background.
This figure is Robert ( played with a John Malkovich like vocal tone by Peter Sarsgaard) a screenwriter who happens to be gay and is taking a meeting with a studio executive named Jeffrey (Campbell Scott) who is pleased to tell Robert that the studio is interested in making the script-a drama about two gay men, one of whom has AIDS, who in one scene of the script go to a museum in Rome and see a statue with which they can empathize with as gay men-on the proviso that one of the characters be re-written as a woman.
Americans just don't like gay men, Jeffrey states frankly, and a dramatic relationship movie with two men in bed just isn't going to get shown let alone made.
Robert gets offended and leaves the office. While pulling out of the studio lot driveway he gets a phone call from Jeffrey. We want the script and we'll pay you a million dollars for it, Jeffrey says over the phone. Robert wants to shove the offer but he's got college loans, child support payments to his ex-wife and their young son and other expenses.
So, he makes a Faustian bargain and agrees to the accepting the One Mil and goes to his computer to access the screenplay and types in a world change that will delete the character name Malcolm (named after Robert's agent and dead lover) and change it to a female name.
Robert is invited out to Jeffrey's home (which looks like something featured in Architectural Digest) and meets Elaine, Jeffrey's wife (Patricia Clarkson).
Elaine is a former screenwriter who finds Robert stimulating company. The two hit it off so well that Robert tells her that he logs on to Internet chat rooms including one called Men on A Park Bench.com.
Armed with this knowledge, Elaine decides to stealthily chat online to Robert. Things seem to be going well until Robert types in one night that he has been involved with a married man with a kind wife.
Elaine figures it out: Jeffrey and Robert have been seeing each other. In fact, Jeffrey has been making the moves on Robert throughout the rewrite process. As Robert states baldly to Jeffrey his sexual interest seems mostly motivated by his agenda to get a good script.
Armed with this knowledge and diaries of Malcolm and notes on Robert, Elaine goes on the same web site again. This time she is Arkk Angell66: Malcolm.
Elaine tries to convinces Robert that she is Malcolm back from the dead to chat with him once more. Logically, this unnerves Robert not only because Malcolm should be dead but because he killed him.
I won't reveal the rest of DYING GAUL, an interesting and effective thriller from a different perspective.
Playwright Craig Lucas does a fine job here, helming this feature with a certain confidence in its imagery and narrative ability.
Lucas is effective in bringing out top flight performances from Campbell Scott who plays Jeffrey with a calm but direct demeanor, a sureness that begins to disintegrate at a crucial stage, Patricia Clarkson who is strong here as the nice but devious and ambitious Elaine and Peter Sarsgaard who is excellent as Robert in a role that requires him to wear his emotions on his shoulder but also to react swiftly and surely when needed.
Credit should be given to DP Bobby Bukowski who does a terrific job with lighting scenes and bring out their visual texture.
THE DYING GAUL is aided by a verbose, sharply witty script also written by Lucas that gives its cast enjoyable lines to roll in off their tongues.
A fine piece of indie entertainment, THE DYING GAUL is a thriller that is not so much clever but fascinating to watch as the wheels turn to its closing shot reminiscent of BODY HEAT.
I next saw PRIME with a packed crowd in a 400 seat theater-surprising since this Meryl Streep/ Uma Thurman romantic comedy wasn't listed as a sell out or rush line film earlier in the day-and surprisingly enjoyed myself.
On a night out with friends in Manhattan, 37-year-old Rafi (Uma Thurman) who works in the fashion industry meets 23-year-old Dave (Bryan Greenberg), a painter with a dream to become an artist that he seems reluctant to act on.
Dave is actually with another woman when they meet but soon interest and then attraction grows between the two after they go out a couple of dates. Dave is quick with the wit and has a certain easygoing confidence about him, Rafi is highly attractive and good company.
Then, there's Lisa (Meryl Streep), Rafi's therapist. Rafi talks to her-as she does other things in her life-about her new beau. Eventually, Rafi doesn't hold back but dishes about the great sex life she's been having with Dave.
The problem is there's a twist in PRIME. Those of you who want to know what it is will need to read other reviews but this hilarious complication helps to elevate PRIME slightly as a romantic comedy.
PRIME is essentially ANNIE HALL remade with a screwball comedy plot point detour. Still, Writer/ Director Ben Younger pulls off a winner here thanks to smart casting with Meryl Streep playing a Jewish therapist and Uma Thurman playing...a gorgeous older woman (I never thought I would write that about Uma).
Both actress provide fine performances especially Streep who does a lot of the comic heavy lifting in this feature and who's reactions and double takes left the festival audience in Honolulu pissing in their pants with laughter.
Kudos also to Bryan Greenberg who does quite good filling the role of Dave. Greenberg more than holds his own against both Streep and Thurman, taking Younger's swift witted dialogue (lines like "You sound like an afterschool special") and makes them his own.
Finally, Ben Younger shows that he has the talent to helm a comedy (even if it is a romantic comedy) by writing a script loaded with fast, funny one-liners and ably directing the script and his actors with panache and style.
The final two films of the evening were Noah Baumbach's THE SQUID AND THE WHALE and Fruit Chan's DUMPLINGS which was shown at Midnight.
Set in Park Slope, Brooklyn in 1986, THE SQUID AND THE WHALE opens with a family of four playing tennis. Bernard and his son Walt are on one side and Joan and her son Frank are on the other.
They all belong to the same family. Though you wouldn't know the way Bernard hits his volleys at Joan which make contact a couple of times with her hips and backside.
Bernard and Joan both have doctorates in Literature. Bernard teaches at the college level and Joan is a writer who has had a piece published in The New Yorker.
Bernard's writing career has fallen on hard times with rejection notices turning up with regularity. Joan has had a piece published in The New Yorker and is enjoying some success as a novelist.
All the more reason why their marriage cannot be saved.
Well, there are other reasons as well: Joan's affairs and Bernard's direct, largely unemotional manner coupled with his puncturing and dismissive criticisms of Joan and anything else that he finds sub-par like when he calls the novel Tender is the Night "minor Fitzgerald".
Bernard and Joan sit down with their sons and tell them they are getting a divorce. They have worked out their decision and agreement with some degree of thoroughness. The couple will maintain joint custody splitting the days of the week they have both Walt and Frank.
Walt falls squarely into his father's camp and makes disparaging comments about his mother (whom he treats with contempt) and about certain works of literature while his brother Frank seems much more comfortable on his mother side of the fence as he enters the early stages of puberty and tries to get in touch with his emerging sexuality...but rubbing up against bookcases in the school library and smearing semen on bookshelves.
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE is an unsentimental comedy with some characters who could charitably be called abrasive and pompous, stuck-up horse's asses if you wanted to be a little blunt.
However, characters like Bernard and Walt make for a highly entertaining comedy and they are well played by Jeff Daniels and Jesse Eisenberg.
Bernard is an especially difficult role to pull because tone and nuances of the character have to be pitch perfect or the film will largely falter. Daniels nails this role in a performance worthy of an Independent Spirit award, let alone an Oscar.
Jesse Eisenberg is also excellent as Walt, the narrative center of the film, and he turns in another intelligent performance here. Unlike his somewhat gawky character in ROGER DODGER, Walt is a teenager armed with a certain amount of confidence and assurance in his own intellectual beliefs even if they seem-in spirit and tone if not in content-similar to his fathers thoughts.
The wonderful Laura Linney also does a first-rate job as Joan, easily a thankless role in the hands of the wrong actress but made convincing by Linney who shows the love she has for both Frank and Walt especially considering Walt's insults and put downs of her which can cut deep.
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE is a strong film-possibly one of the year's best- and certainly one of the strongest films showing at this festival.
One big reason SQUID works so well is Noah Baumbach's terrific script filled with lacerating wit and snide remarks that hit their targets like laser beams.
Baumbach also does a fine job in guiding this cast and maintaining a mood and tone similar in some respects to a Wes Anderson film(which is not unusual since Anderson produced this movie).
In some respects, THE SQUID AND THE WHALE is take a flower buffeted by stiff breezes that nonetheless still remains standing. It reminds me of what Tolstoy once said about families: that happy families are happy in a similar way but that unhappy families are miserable each in their own unique way.
Bernard and Joan have an unhappy family and the way this family is unhappy is both amusing and sad.
Actress Bai Ling was at the midnight screening of the THREE EXTREMES film DUMPLINGS on Saturday night.
Ling looked like she was having a good time in Hawaii-too good a time, I think.
Introduced before the film started, Ling admitted she was drunk caused some laughter among the few intrepid souls bold enough to come out to come to a midnight festival screening in Honolulu.
Quite a way to lead into a horror film of sorts about a former medical student known as Aunty Mei who now makes the best dumplings in Hong Kong.
So good that a former TV actress and now bored pampered wife named Qing comes to Mei's crappy, ramshackle apartment building to buy some of her delicious dumplings.
However, Qing eats Mei dumpling for reasons other than culinary delight. Mei's dumplings are said bring the eater a certain youthful essence and glow.
Just look at Mei-fine porcelain skin, breasts popping up as she wears a tight blouse-the dumplings seemed to work for her.
I know what those of you haven't heard anything about this movie (those of you who have keep it to yourself) are wondering: What are in those dumplings anyway?
I can't reveal the secret ingredient for that part of the recipe is the key to enjoying DUMPLINGS, an atmospheric film that creates an almost other world mood thanks to the excellent photographic work of DP Christopher Doyle who bathes a number of scenes in light especially at low camera angles to imbue them with a twisted, strange feel.
Doyle's work strengthens Fruit Chan's direction which is sure footed but patient, as he creates an environment and a mood in which his characters can seek their intended bliss.
Lillian Lee's script provides a decent, though unoriginal cautionary tale about the search for beauty and the human costs involved-taken to dramatic and cinematic extremes-for attaining that beauty.
DUMPLINGS is also aided by fine performances by its cast especially Bai Ling's excellent work here as Aunty Mei. Ling interprets as Mei as a woman both conscious and unconscious of her beauty who seems to revel being alone in her cramped, unattractive apartment.
Miriam Yeung also does fine work as Qing. Yeung underlines Qing's growing sense of desperation in keeping her looks and her marriage to well-to-do businessman with a roving eye intact.
Hong Kong star Tony Leung Kar-fai has a nice turn as well as Qing's husband who ends up hooking up with Mei and finding out an important secret about her.
DUMPLINGS is certainly not for everyone and can be quite bloody at times but this is the kind of film that was made for midnight screenings.
My advice: see this movie late at night.
Oh and try to eat before you do.
Check out photos of Albert (Image: 0186) and Korean actor Lee Byung-hun of BITTERSWEET LIFE (Images: 8019, 8033, 8044, 8067, 8111, 8114, and 8183) and BITTERSWEET LIFE director/writer Kim Ji-Woon (Image 8056). Photos of the actor and director together at Images 8059 and 8134. Go to this link!!
Thanks again to Dario Belenfante for the photos. (Note: we don't have all the caption information as it got pretty crazy during the press conference.)
Albert signing out...
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