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Mindless bullshit? Now Disney is producing it too

drrt

Tangled

For all that it’s worth, “Tangled” was a lot of fun. It’s a suspenseful story with a good premise, but unlike most older Disney films, it just felt way too fabricated. So they wanted to give the guy a lot of screentime – fine, but did you have to use such a bland character? Which Disney prince has ever made “smug faces” before? If you say it’s supposed to be realistic and modern, then I must say that I doubt I have seen such a smug face in the last 10 years.

What irked me the most was probably that the songs were really bad. Maybe that was always a problem with Disney movies but I cannot remember such a thing. As far as I know, people are still listening to the Lion King soundtrack, and I still feel nostalgy in my heart when I hear songs from “The Little Mermaid”. Because the songs were bad, I was also not able to feel any chemistry between Rapunzel and Flynn. Their romantic moment was nothing compared to Aladdin and Jasmine’s despite the beauty of the CG, because the lantern tradition is just sooo idiotic and almost politically incorrect. So if the film manages to be so modern and feminist, why is it incapable of getting rid of this princess thing, where the film must mention at least twice how much the kingdom loves their monarchs and they happen to have a yearly tradition for a member of the royal family?

I can’t pinpoint anymore why that is, but the writing of the story largely felt very… stupid to me. Perhaps this is because the old wench was perhaps the least likable Disney villain of all times. Just her presence managed to annoy me – and I thought this only happens with French arthouse films.

With all that said, coming to the beginning of this review, I am not surprised that “Tangled” was a big success. It might have its problems, but disregarding all that, it’s good evening entertainment and an enjoyable 90 minutes spent.

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Russians are good at everything!

drrt

The Return

Oh God, I wanted to cry when Ivan ran into the water crying “Papa, papa!” This movie is too beautiful for words, even though it took me ages to finally watch it. I read somewhere that the director was intensely looking for “genius actors” to play the brothers and these boys are absolutely brilliant. Vladimir Garin would probably have grown into a great actor, and Vanya Dobronravov probably is (despite his lack of large roles ever since).

This is one of those films where not so much happens, and more emphasis is put on subtleties between the character and the endless vastness of Russian landscape – Tarkovsky anyone? Luckily this film is more than just beautiful shots of Russia, although the film leaves me a bit speechless. After the most powerful moment in the film, the escalation of the conflict between father and son, Zvyagintsev brought out the most serene and beautiful shots of the sea, and the photo series at the end of the film was reminiscent of the ending of JSA.

God is dead. I agree that the film is clearly supposed to be religious in a similar way that “Au hasard Balthasar” is, except the father here is God. The brothers represent ourselves who have lost the father and are bound to lose him again. With that background, everything that happens in the film becomes acceptable – you don’t ask yourself why Andrei doesn’t reprimand Ivan for literally having killed their father, nor what is up with that box the father retrieved on the island.

I might not have loved the film as much Shii did, but I certainly loved it. It is memorable and beautifully shot (albeit maybe just a little bit less so than Tarkovsky’s Stalker) and Gorp should watch it if it has not happened yet. XD

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Berlinale 2012, closing comments and ranking

So “Cesare deve morire” got the Golden Bear. Quite unexpected. I can not say anything about the other competition films as this is the only one I watched. I am however not opposed at all; it was definitely great and I am happy that this time it was not the same blatant political shuffling as last year.

Continuing in my tradition of not really being clear in my reviews, I shall remedy this at least in part by ranking the films so you may get a hint on how much I enjoyed things:

  1. Parada
  2. Rent-A-Neko
  3. Cesare deve morire
  4. Kazoku no kuni
  5. Love
  6. Nuclear Nation
  7. Koi ni itaru yamai
  8. Highway
  9. From Seoul to Varanasi
  10. 10+10
  11. My Way

My criteria and weighting from last year’s ranking still apply. Unlike last year, we have cut-off which is just above last place. Watching “My way” was not completely worth the time and money invested. Everything above the cut-off is relatively close together, the cut-off also marks a great jump in enjoyment, so “10+10” far example was quite interesting despite being second-last.

Thank you for reading and may you have found something new to add to your endless lists!

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Berlinale 2012, day 7 (Taiwan Day!)

drrt

10+10 (???)
Taiwan 2011, Hou Hsiao-Hsien and 19 others, 114′

Initiated by the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, Hou Hsiao-Hsien and 19 other Taiwanese film makers made 5-minute shorts free from limitations regarding content or form.

Like any omnibus film, this one spans a wide range of style, genres and quality. Comedies about offering a movie screening (what lovely meta) at an extremely remote miniature shrine, about the problems that arise when you need to shoot a film for the Mainland and your location has a ROC flag plastered over it, about a young couple and their incompetent moving crew. Short vignettes about a cute rural bus driver, about a 100-year-old man, about the importance of family, about old pop songs, about a girl with stage-fright who ruins her rehearsal but then accidentally becomes a great star, etc. Some are just outright strange, like the tourist ad, turning silent film, turning pointless rape attempt.
Unfortunately not everyone was able to produce interesting or high quality material. There are other, better films of this kind but if you are at least slightly interested in Taiwan you should have a look, there’s always the fast-forward button.

drrt

Love (?)
Taiwan, PRC 2011, Doze Niu, 127′

Yijia is pregnant with Kai’s child, who is her best friend Ni’s boyfriend. She contemplates abortion, as Kai is not interested in her at all. Ni shoots down Kai’s desperate advances to win her back. Meanwhile Kuan, Yijia’s brother who works at a hotel and a car wash meets the flirty but unapproachable Zoe Fang, who first wants to become the trophy wife of Ni’s father, because she thinks it is her only outlook in life. Mark, a successful business man wants to buy a courtyard house in Beijing where he meets a quirky single-mom real estate agent who, together with her little son and a little help from local police, quickly turns his whole life upside down.

This one is kind of strange: On one side it is the epitome of over-produced with beautiful people who are either rich or at least middle-class, aesthetically perfect surroundings, obstinate mood music and sickly sweet Mandarin-pop. On the other side it is a genuinely funny script with good actors and just plain enjoyable, with the honest-if-not-kind-of-naive message that everything will work out with love. It also deserves merit for promoting modern family arrangements over traditional values which is definitely not a given if you want to make a commercially successful film for a still rather conservative audience.

The Q&A with the director who also played Ni’s father and Mark Chao who played the businessman was surprisingly funny. Mark joked about being an innocent, cute character, totally unlike his film persona. Doze later referred to this as the reason why he cast him: He needed someone to portray how important smell is for attraction to develop but feared that if he gave himself those lines it would come out as perverted, so he needed a cute, innocent flower boy to utter them. Doze then went on to prove this by trying to smell the male Q&A-host and successfully demonstrating a lot of playful creepiness.
Mark who spoke Chinese even though he was perfectly fine with English also produced a wonderful moment with the translator: Asked about Vicki Zhao, his partner in the film he gave a rather tame answer which the translator apparently exaggerated a little, so Mark cut in in the middle of the translation asking if the translator is a fan of Vicki as Mark was not that explicit in his answer. To everyone’s delight, the translator enthusiastically admitted that yes, he is a big fan!

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Berlinale 2012, day 6 (????)

drrt

Koi ni Itaru Yamai (The end of Puberty, ?????)
Japan 2011, Kimura Shoko, 116′

Madoka is an absolute failure as a biology teacher. No one respects him, playing around during his class. The only exception is Tsubura, a girl who literally obsesses about him and knows everything about his mannerisms and behaviour. One day she seizes the chance to attack him and after the resulting sex it turns out they swapped genitals. Madoka takes her to his ancestral home in the middle of nowhere to hide from the world. They are soon found by En, Tsubura’s promiscuous but emotionally void best friend who thinks she loves Tsubura and Maru, En’s childhood friend who is both a virgin and hopelessly in love with her and constantly tries to get En out of her sexualised apathy.

Oh boy, there is nothing more annoying than teenagers throughout puberty. We are not spared any emotional outburst or selfishness from any of the kids which at times gets a little unbearable. However in all its improbability and archetypical characters it is a quite beautiful and accurate story about the hopelessly jumbled maze of feelings puberty is for many people. The director said that all main characters are based either on her personal experiences or people she has been very close to. Also, the title of today’s post is the main character’s names; all of them can be written with the character ? which means “round” (or Yen, if you read it as ‘en’) and signifies that she sees all of them as part of one round, harmonic being.
The visuals were very mature for a feature film debut: Nearly all shots seemed deliberately framed and accentuated the mood well. The director also made the deliberate choice to give tsubura very bright floral, often red dresses most of the time, while En’s clothes all consisted of shades of beige and gray; important exception being her always flawlessly matching lingerie sets in bright pastel colors.
Nearly all of the music and the very deliberate sound effects consisted of chiptunes, which was supposed to evoke a feeling of Tsubura’s childishness and robotically immature feelings. Consequently both effects and music became almost completely absent in the latter part of the film. Accidentally, we can learn from this movie that the usage of “Freude schöner Götterfunken” is 90% less tacky if used as chiptune!

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How… Sundance

drrt

Wristcutters: A Love Story

This movie could have been my favorite movie of all times, but it’s not. I have always had a certain fascination with suicide, and I cannot imagine a better comedy premise than suicide itself. Perhaps I have grown out of it. No matter how bad things are, suicidal thoughts do not actually come up. I suppose I have learned to suck it up now. I can’t even remember the last time I cried, and there were quite a few bad cases these days. It’s not like everything is always perfect, I just don’t express it anymore when I happen to get hurt.

Nevertheless, having grown stronger (or number? LOL) should not have kept me up from enjoying a good comedy about people who killed themselves. But perhaps my expectations were just too high, because “Wristcutters” really wasn’t all that funny. In general, it is a good movie. It has interesting characters build upon a great premise and a few amusing elements like the dark tones of the film and the black hole underneath the car, which I think is the product of a genius mind. But everything else about the film just pretty much bored me. It wasn’t bleak enough to be a black comedy (although the whole family that killed itself comes very close to it), and after the first 30 minutes – which actually had a few good jokes and lovely background music – the film mostly confused me. Even Will Arnett’s awesome appearance couldn’t beat that.

All in all, I’d say I am ambiguous about the film. In retrospect I am not surprised that the film was made on a mere 1 million dollar budget and made less than 500,000 in theaters. I might have wanted too much because I was so in love with its premise beforehand that I couldn’t really relate to the film. I am glad I finally saw it, after planning on it some 2-3 years ago, but in retrospect, even though I enjoyed the film, I feel rather nonchalant about it.

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There can only be one true Hitchcock

drrt

Double Take

Since Pixelmatsch is watching Berlinale films now, I figured I should finally get myself “working” and write about these old Berlinale films we never saw.

“Double Take” is the kind of film that is so experimental that it cannot be put into words. I’d say it’s a collage of film snippets and comments on the cold war, paralleling a story of Hitchcock meeting his own double from 20 years later. The whole thing is a little reminiscent of film installations but without being annoying. So random! It’s fascinating to say the least.

Apart from that, I must admit that it took me a long time to get the movie, in fact I am fairly convinced that I never got the film. It’s like a problem whose solution is not quite obvious and I consider the possibility that one must be very good at reading between the lines to see the connections between the changing scenes in the film. I am not. What I did see is a visual feast of a film and a somewhat avant-garde treatise on the doppelganger topic, so incredibly fitting for Hitchcock. I did find it a little unfortunate that the film was mostly focused on “The Birds” (and its release date), which happens to be my least favorite Hitchcock film.

Hitchcock was the first movie director I have ever known, even before David Fincher or Steven Spielberg. I have seen all types of films by him – more than one even: 2 silent films, 2 black-and-white films and the rest were color. For me, Hitchcock is the movie director to end all movie directors, and with my two favorites of his, “Rear Window” and “The Trouble with Harry”, I think Hitchcock is the kind of guy who is precisely not cerebral, but provides entertainment infused with wit (“Rear Window”), comedy (“The Trouble with Harry”) and suspense (everything else). I might not have liked every Hitchcock film I have seen, but I love the unparalleled diversity he displays. I adore him to pieces, in a similar way as I adore my advisor who I regularly disagree with. With that in mind, I think that “Double Take” is playing too much the cliché-Hitchcock card, but that is alright because the film is a good homage to the master.

Without any background, “Double Take” is probably completely unwatchable, but for me, it hit the right spot by being incomprehensibly stylish instead of pretentiously avant-garde. Just don’t ask me what I watched there. If you are interested in such films, watch it and try to see it in a theater. You’ll come out completely confused, and it’ll feel good.

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Berlinale 2012, day 5 (*nya~*)

So apparently Cambodian films from the 70s are popular. Which means I do not get to see them. After today’s first film however, that was kind of bearable!

drrt

Rent-a-Neko (Rent-a-Cat, ?????)
Japan 2012, Ogigami Naoko, 110′

Sayoko, a girl nearing her 30s in (not very active) search for marriage lives in her dead grandmother’s house together with lots of cats, as these are the only living creatures attracted to her. Every day she goes out with her cart advertising her rent-a-cat service.

Four years the same director presented “Megane”, which I also watched. Apparently she is in the businees of making “healing” films, an absolutely wonderful sub-classification of various cultural products aimed at making you feel all warm, fuzzy and at ease. The cats are delightful, the music is healing, the visuals are healing, Sayoko is healing… Most of the movie is very episodic, with Sayoko going out to lend a cat and focusing on one specific customer and his problems. Only near the end, when she meets the boy from her past it looks like things might be heading somewhere. The episodes are separated from each other through several somehow surreal sequences showing her more profitable sources of income, which remind us, that this movie really is not meant to be a serious realistic story but just a lovely something to make you feel good.

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Berlinale 2012, day 4 (Marching)

Oh boy, I think half of ex-Yugoslavia came to watch Parada. Half the theatre laughed at distinctly different timings: One half to the subtitles, the other to the spoken dialogue. I’ll brag a little and say that I fell into the latter category a few times.

drrt

Parada
Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia 2011, Srdjan Dragojevic, 115′

A Serbian small-time gangster and war veteran wants to marry his girlfriend and somehow ends up needing to protect his gay wedding planner who wants to organise a gay pride parade in Belgrad even though groups of nationalists and skinheads have promised to destroy any attempt at doing so. He rounds up an impossible troupe of Croatians, Muslim Bosnians and Kosovarians and in the process learns a lot about life.

Seldom have you seen a movie that rides so much on every possible stereotype for joke material, be it homosexuals, nationalist skinheads, trashy girlfriends or any of the Yugoslavian people. It is very easy for such a film to turn positively revolting with banality. “Parada” however absolutely avoids this, because none of those groups is spared and while everyone dishes out on each other, they also take all “abuse” with a big heap of self-irony as they get to know each other. It was full of lovely little details, such as one scene where the Serb and the Croat make a cross: Catholics (Slovenians and Croats) first touch the left shoulder, while Orthodox (Serbs) will touch the right shoulder first. It showed quite realistically that people bond over the most banal things and that this is really all it takes sometimes. Our gangster’s evolution was just lovely, he starts out like a typical macho gangster but almost from the first minute it is absolutely clear that he really is a good person at heart and just needs a good thorough reality check. All of it beautifully transported the endearingly naive hope that somehow everything will work out if we just stop hating each other and start to listen.

drrt

Highway
Nepal, USA 2011, Deepak Rauniyar. 80′

A man and his wife have trouble conceiving. He travels into the mountains to talk with a healer. He receives a potion but it will only work for 36 hours so now he has to return as quickly as possible to Kathmandu. The bus he travels on is full of people who also need to be somewhere for various reasons, but progress is slow with road blockades, accidents, traffic jams and an ageing bus.

A very solid first work. The shots and colours make for great visuals, helped by the either exotic or plain beautiful sights of Nepal. The music is mostly fitting; not every piece feels right, sometimes it is a little off but it does never really hurts the atmosphere. Throughout the journey we learn about the passengers; who they are, what makes them take up the arduous journey to Kathmandu. The stories and their placement manage to tell just about enough to be interesting but are always short enough not to take away the feeling of a road movie. For anyone who has at least a little curiosity it is a quite rewarding look into a few typical issues of life in modern Nepal

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The Berlinale makes me homesick

drrt

Chroniken der Anna Magdalena Bach

Instead of looking for movies to see, all I can do is look for which talks I want to go to at my next conference – how sad. As much as I love movie theater experiences, I do not mind seeing films at home. There are a bunch of movies in my life which have managed to touch me despite having seen them on TV or just on a small monitor.

“Chroniken der Anna Magdalena Bach” is definitely a small monitor movie, although a good sound system definitely helps. It’s a lot like watching a symphony performance on a screen. I was quite amazed. It might look like a dry and “boring” movie, but compared with a symphony orchestra performance, it’s as exciting as “The Dark Knight”. I might be the only person in this world who likes this movie, but I certainly did. It made me get extremely interested in Bach again! I read up on his sons, who – unsurprisingly – also played a fairly important role in the Bach couple’s life.

Let this be a warning. The film is nothing like an actual biopic, and quite different from most movies. It looks very austere, stern and clean, and the voice-over in which Anna Magdalena Bach narrates her life sounds odd, because the language used is old, and the voice is impressively monotone. What keeps me up from falling asleep indeed was the music. I know almost nothing about Bach’s life and never really liked to play him. Bach’s pieces look easy and boring, yet they were awfully hard to play precisely because of that. It is not emotions in the romantic style which could tell you how to play something, and I thought it was hard to get into the “mood” to play Bach. Why does everybody I know like Bach so much? This film gives me some sort of an answer – after listening to Bach’s music for roughly 1 1/2 hours, I come to the conclusion that there is something strangely beautiful about it. It makes me happy and a little solemn to listen to it, and I think this little film is a great tribute to Bach.

I remember that Gorp, who loves Straub-Huillet, did not recommend this film to me. But it’s on Netflix and I was extremely curious, so I couldn’t resist. And now I am surprised at how much I liked it! (You probably won’t, but that’s fine.) I must go and do research on Bach now.