BLOOD TEA AND RED STRING
This is a strange little animated film directed and scribed
by Christiane Cegavske. It’s a handmadetop motion
fairy-tale, which she constructed over the past 13 years in
her basement. It chronicles the struggle between the
aristocratic White Mice and the rustic beak-faced creatures
who dwell under an oak tree. I went into this screening
without even knowing this much. It’s a testament to
independent filmmaking as well as animation that this film
ever got completed. Cegavske produced it entirely on her
own. She handcrafted the costumes, sets, characters and
manipulated all of the stop motion movements.
That aside, it’s is a very difficult film to become
immersed in. There is no dialogue. It features only
primitive grunts and cawks from it’s characters. Because
of this, the story is hard to follow and borders on being
incomprehensible. It would benefit very much from
hallucinogenic drugs, or Cliff’s Notes. I suppose it’s
nice to see old school animation in a CGI dominated arena,
but it sort of reminded of why Pixar is as bad-A as it is.
RENAISSANCE
From the most rudimentary of animation to the most
innovative methods today, RENAISSANCE shot me into the
future to the year 2054.
A lot of people have been comparing it to Sin City, and
it’s really not fair to the filmmaker. The style of the
films are completely different. Sin City was filmed with
real actors in front of green screen and the backgrounds
were painted on in post production, whereas this employs
motion capture to attain the character’s movements before
animated everything.
At first, the beauty of this method had me separated from
the narrative of the film. It took me a little while to
settle into it’s awesomeness and stop thinking about how
flipping amazing it looked. I’m glad that the director
used this brand of animation as opposed to live action,
because of the constraints that would have taken hold of his
originality of camera direction.
As far as story goes, RENAISSANCE is a case of style over
substance. I wish that they would have taken more time with
the script and really nailed an engaging, plot twisting
episode of film noir, but it’s just not there. The second
act of the film struggles to come up with surprising twists
and I found myself accurately predicting what would happen
next. Without the hyper-stylized animation, I don’t think
this film would be getting as much attention as it is.
That aside, there were a number of action scenes that
unexpectedly blew me away. These were staged in a way that
left me with soiled pants. This was another instance when I
was excited about the animation because of camera movements
that were pulled off which would have been otherwise
impossible.
Despite the shortcomings in the story department, this is a
film that I will most definitely drool over again. If not
for the animation, for the computer generated nude women, of
which it features several of.
UNREST
A note to all Fantastic Festers, do not try to eat during
this movie. I saw it first thing in the morning (12pm) and
was still a bit hung-over. I consider myself relatively
tolerant when it comes to gore and the exposing of organs,
but UNREST really challenged my gag reflex and had me
squirming. I’m not even quite what it was that did it.
Possibly knowing before hand that portions of the shooting
used real cadavers, or the fact that the filmmaker used to
be a surgeon, but it was awesome.
The film is about a group of first-year medical students,
who while working on dissecting their first patient, begin
to experience strange “feelings” emanating from their
particular body. People start dying mysteriously and
Alison, the protagonist, must uncover the strange goings-on
and hidden past of her cadaver.
Besides one instance of over-acting, the performances are
fairly solid and play out well. It has all the obligatory
factors of good horror: a hot lead, dead bodies, gore, a
British professor, and a booming soundtrack. At times the
music and effects were a little over the top and
manipulative but they definitely had a creepy effect. If
you’ve got an open timeslot in your schedule, I would
highly recommend seeing this film.
THE HOST
I was going to wait to see if Harry or any of the other AICN
peeps would review this, but since they haven’t I’ll
give you guys my take on it. If you haven’t heard
anything about this Korean monster/comedy/sci-fi/political
movie, it’s the latest from MEMORIES OF MURDER director,
Joon-ho Bong. Conflict arises when an American doctor
stationed in Korea forces his Korean assistant to dispose of
formaldehyde down the drain. The assistant resists at first
but obeys a “direct order” from his superior. Flash
forward a couple of years and a mutant has formed as a
result of this illegal dumping. The monster ransacks a
nearby park, kidnapping Hyun-Seo, the daughter of our
dim-witted hero, Kang-so. Kang-so and his family are
arrested because of the proximity they had with “the
host,” or mutant mix of frog, gator and newt. The rest of
the film is about Kang-so and his remaining family battling
the monster, nature and the government to retrieve his
daughter.
The film confused me a bit at the beginning. It’s hard to
really understand the tone of the film until the ball really
gets rolling. As it begins, it is mostly dominated by
elements of physical comedy. The character of Kang-so in
particular has a lot of hilarious moments. The way that
government is poked fun at was subtle and even though it is
a very strong theme throughout, it doesn’t overshadow the
pure human emotion that the audience feels for the Park
family.
Also, the beast is shown full-on in the first 20 minutes,
which I thought would kill any possible suspense to come
later. I was wrong. As the movie unfolds, we start to
better understand the characters and identify with them more
and more, which for me, made the beast that much more
threatening.
At it’s heart, THE HOST is an urge for both governments,
American and Korean, to open their ears to it’s citizens
and listen to what they have to say but it does this in a
sardonic and comical way that doesn’t ever hit the
audience over the head with it’s message. This is easily
one of the best films I’ve seen at Fantastic Fest. I
would recommend it to fans of any of the genres listed
above. Props to all who worked hard to program this film.
