As I mentioned before, I saw another bunch of films over my vacation, including the last part of the Subway Cinema Asian Film Festival…
MIND GAME
The one film of the festival that I’ve been wanting to catch for quite a while now, Mind Game is one of those movies that is genuinely impossible to explain or describe. As I mentioned before, its part FLCL, part Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and even parts of Waking Life and Yellow Submarine.
It starts off with a failed manga artist running into his unrequited love. They go and get dinner when all of a sudden some Yakuza thugs barge into the restaurant and rough everyone up, including the girl. But the guy, instead of rushing to her aid even though she’s about to get raped, cowers in the corner with his face in his hands and crying. The thugs end up killing him and then we see perhaps one of the greatest renditions of the afterlife I have ever witnessed in any film, cartoon, or comic ever. After a humiliating exchange with God, the guy rushes back to the living world to take charge of the situation and saves the girl, plus kills a thug in the process. A wacky car chase scene ensues and eventually the two, plus a waitress from the restaurant I believe, ends up in the stomach of the whale. And that’s where most of the film takes place.
Mind Game is the work of Studio 4∞C, a very little known, and very small, yet highly acclaimed animation house that does mostly work for hire projects; they did the Canon Fodder segment in Memories (easily the most visually impressive of the three shorts) as well as a segment for the Animatrix, and most recently did work on Steamboy. It was founded by industry vets, including folks who have directly worked on Akira, Robot Carnival, plus assorted Studio Ghibli titles, and the film represents the desire to move into a more experimental realm, and the film succeeds at that brilliantly.
Perhaps the only other thing I could compare the film to, both visually and feel-wise, is maybe FLCL, except its far more challenging, bolder, and even darker. Its also very challenging and is one of those movies that you have to see than wait a few days to let it sink it to form a proper opinion about. But you don’t have to “get it” to recognize that its easily one of the most visually compelling and unique animated films to come from Japan in a very long time.
The film’s creator, Eiko Tanaka, who also founded Studio 4∞C, was on-hand at the screening and it was rather gratifying to hear that the film did find an audience in Japan, which unfortunately will almost always let something actually good and different fall by the way side for stuff like Dragonball and Naruto. She mentioned that it opened up on just a few screens to very modest turnout number (since it was so small budget, there wasn’t much left over for advertising) but word of mouth was so strong, more and more people told others to see it till it became a bona-fide hit. Hell, even another animation house, one with no relation to the film whatsoever, started its own grassroots campaign to create buzz, which tells you a lot about the current state of Japanese animation right there.
It ain’t perfect of course; the films does drag in spots, and is a bit full of it self at times, but overall its a total success. At the very least, its worth checking out for the end sequence which is total edge of seat goodness.
THREE… EXTREMES
Its a collection of three short stories, each directed by a different person, and from a different country, and each one ends of reflecting the qualities and distinct features of its native land’s cinema.
The first was Dumplings by Fruit Chan, from Hong Kong, and its about a former actress who’s seeks to regain her youth. Her solution is to seek out some special dumplings prepared by a woman that uses a special ingredient… any guess on what? Babies? Close, but think younger. Yup, she uses fetuses. And you know a movie is gonna be awesome when you see a fetus being diced up during the opening credits.
Aside from being super disgusting and rather disturbing at times (like when you see one of the mothers), the segment was absolutely gorgeous to loot at, thanks to the cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, the man Wong Kar-Wai uses for all his films. And he even led to a funny joke from Subway Cinema figurehead Grady Hendrix when talking before the flick: “[Doyle] said he’d stop by tonight since he lives in the city but I haven’t seen him anywhere. I guess he came across a bottle of voldka on the way and had to fight it.” Haha, alcoholism is funny!
The second story was Cut by Park Chan-Wook, the Korean director who did Oldboy, which is easily one of the top Korean films I have ever seen (and which still holds the title of “oh my God that was fucked up and I think that those who feel the same way about Seven is a pussy” movie in my book). This one was about a super nice film director and a pissed off extra who decides to kidnap the nice guy because he can’t accept the fact that someone can be both rich and successful and also be a totally cool person to boot. So the nutso decides to make the director do a very bad thing, like kill some random kid off the street or watch his piano playing wife loose a finger every five minutes.
As mentioned by Subway Cinema before, it totally plays like a Tales from the Crypt story, one of those mean, sadistic, and funny stories, and something that Korean films in general are so good at doing simultaneously. Plus, it being Korean and all, there’s a fart joke.
The last was Box by Takeshi Miike, the current crown prince of crazy guy director in Japan. He makes like nine movies a year (I’m not exaggerating here) and each is pretty wild and blood. And Box was not. Instead its a creepy quiet tale about a writer who’s haunted by her circus performing childhood when she accidentally killed her twin sister. I rather enjoyed it despite it not being typical Miike-fare, but you could tell the audience was a bit disappointed with the low-key end tale. I just liked it cuz it does the whole creepy dead girl thing right for once (I personally thought Ringu and the Grude were total ass).
TETSUJIN-28
AKA Gigantor here in the states. Yet another flick that I’ve been wanted to catch for a while now, mainly cuz it has huge robots fighting (duh). This one is a total throwback to good old-fashioned family movies, the kind Disney used to make back in the 60′s. In fact, its perhaps the most straight film I’ve ever seen from Japan (though mind you I mostly see stuff from folks like Miike and Kiyoshi Kurosawa) with no real jokes, wacky situations, and the like.
Basically, its just about a boy and a robot (that’s created by the kid’s now dead dad that he has to now pilot, of course). Its one of those “Can he do it?” type of stories where the kid does a shitty job piloting the robot at first, leading to the robot getting its ass handed to him by the evil robot, so all the adults hate him, but other kids still have faith in poor guy. Excellent casting of the boy by the way, a perfect mix of “ahh… he’s so cute!” and “Jesus Christ, what a fucking pussy!” And bad guy is the classic dude with all silver clothing and all silver hair. Plus there’s a scientist from the UN who happens to be some spunky 20 year old teenage girl who like to “believe” in the boy.
The film was nothing mind-blowing, just totally by the numbers, but in this case it actually worked. And the special effects were fairly top notch. Nothing like seeing huge CG robots walk around like dudes in uncomfortable and hard to manage suits.
THE TASTE OF TEA
From the same person who directed the super bloody and violent anime sequence in Kill Bill, as well as a movie that goes by the name Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl (trust me, it wasn’t very good), comes a very quiet and tranquil look at a family in the Tokyo countryside.
The father is a practicing hypnotist. The mother is a former animator working on a short that will help her get back into the business. Her brother is a sound engineer who once took a crap on a dead mean’s skull. The grandfather sings crazy songs and makes watercolor flip-books. The son is just your average high school student that wants to impress the new pretty girl by joining the Go team. And the young daughter has a giant-sized double that she can’t get rid off no matter how hard she tries.
Again, another film that’s difficult to really describe, The Taste of Tea is just a nice slice of life piece about a quirky but caring family; there’s no real story just a couple of set-pieces that highlight their individuals traits and missions in life. The best thing about is how casual and comfortable it all really feels. It could have easily been a colossal mess of overly weird characters that have no real purpose, much like the aforementioned Shark Skin Man, but it never once stumbles and everything just clicks. Some of called it a tribute or parody of Gozu, and I suppose to see the connection, but I never once found it slow or dragging. Its surreal for sure, but never stupidly so.
GAGAMBOY
I had heard that Filipino movies are almost always extremely low budget and extremely cheesy, and Gagamboy turned out to be the perfect introduction to the genre. Basically a parody of the Spider Man mythos, its about Junie, a bright-eyed and goofy nice guy that’s in love with a girl but too shy to do anything about it, though he does his best to fend off Dodoy, his rival who’s some slick weasel that Junie used to even work (Junie used to sell ice cream but was fired for giving his away to poor kids). Anyway, Junie ends up swallowing a radioactive spider which gives him the ability to climb walls and shoot gunk which is supposed to be webbing but comes off looking like orange silly puddy. He then gets a costume made, fashioned after the comic book character Gagamboy (which seriously is one of the worst looking comics in the history of comics, even by Filipino standards) and goes about doing good deeds in the shanty town that he lives in. Think of him as the really poor man’s Spider Man. But soon Dodoy ends up swallowing a radioactive cockroach and that’s when then things really get “totally wacky!!!”
There are numerous reasons why the movie is so damn awesome… the guy who played Gagamboy is so effin’ gay but totally fun to watch, everything looks as if it was shot in the late 70′s on a budget of 200 bucks American, the “oh my God she’s scary, but I can’t stop staring at her” tailor character Gloring (the woman who makes the suit and who has an overbite that would put Mr. Ed to shame), and the fact that no one has the guts anymore to venture to the realm of slap-stick comedy. I also like how its much like the Popeye movie in the sense that everything takes place in some dirt-ball community and the same six character keeps showing up over and over again in slightly different roles, like how the resent gangster thug also happens to be a beauty contest judge. I know its been said before, but its true; if John Waters was in the Philippines makes a super hero picture, this would be it.
I can’t even begin to think when anyone else might happen to come across this onme (unless you have access to a Kim’s Video), though I wouldn’t be too surprised if Galavision or Telemundo manages to pick it up; seems like their standard 2pm Saturday fare, right after Lucha Lebre and before championship soccer.
… I also saw Land of the Dead, but I’ll skip the write up for that one (the only reason why I wrote so much about the Asian Film Fest flicks is cuz unless you go to Midnight Eye, you’ve probably never heard of most of them). But I will say that Dead of was good. Very good actually; I’ll repeat what MK said by saying that its what Day of the Dad wanted to be, with the whole mix of zombies and militia thing finally right. Plus it was nice to see Dennis Hopper and John Leguizamo together again for the first time since the Super Mario Bros Movie.
There were a few other selections from the fest that I wanted to catch, like P, the Thaiwanese hookers eating human flesh and fighting demons or whatnot movies, but I’ve been told by Russ that it’s not that hot. But as I said, Grady can make any film sound totally amazing.
