Meanderings of a Monkey Juggler - film

It's a bit Hazy

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 07:30:00 +0100

We watched another fillum on Friday. It's called Haze and was an oddity by the guy who directed the Tetsuo fillums. It was only short and this was a blessing. First problem was nobody really seemed in the mood. The second problem was the content was so meaningless as to render it not interesting. Final problem was the camera work which was all close-up (for reasons of the plot) so you never could stand back and have a look. I imagine this last would work well in a cinema where it could be quite claustrophobic.

Summary: Bloke in hole. Doesn't know where he is but thinks he may be held prisoner by some "rich pervert". Tries to find way out of cramped confines. Some modest dental torture and nails into flesh etc. Finds live woman as well as bits of dead people. They try to escape together. Mandatory confusing bit at end so we really don't know what happened.

Waste of an hour. Might be better late at night on my own. I shall have a go one day.

Have fun.

Dynamite!

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 15:45:00 +0100

Saw "Napoleon Dynamite" last night.

Hmm. I haven't seen many fillums that have been cobbled together from merely one idea for one set-piece. In this case the writers clearly thought "I know! Let's have a nerd dancing really well. Now how do we set a fillum around that central scene?"

In fact the only fillum that I can think of that had less of an auspicious beginning was the Troma flick called "Mutant on the Bounty". I'm convinced they had that title way before they'd thought of a fillum to put it on.

Bits of Napoleon were funny. The acting was indifferent. The love interests weren't interesting. But the dancing was good.

Have fun.

Fillum round-up

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 12:55:00 +0100

Last night was a notable scary fillum night. Firstly 'twas Nicky's last regular one as she's moving to Cambridge. Second we had a new starter, Rod showed up with mad hair (see his site for details).

Secondly we watched probably the worst (in a couple of ways) fillum we've ever chosen.

But before I begin there's a previous one to review. Bear invited me over to watch "The Motorcycle Diaries" last weekend. For those not in the know "The Motorcycle Diaries" was the diary of a young Che Guevara when him and a mate scooted round South America on a battered bike. The point being he saw poverty and injustice and this hardened his socialist/communist views. The fillum, however, was a bit vague. Most of the time Che didn't get to say a lot. He was a quiet sort and kept his thoughts to himself and his diary. That's all very well but not much use for a fillum! It left a big gap that didn't really get filled by the succession of long monochrome shots of the dispossessed and poor they'd met looking mournfully at the screen with quietly dramatic music at the end of the movie. It looked pretty and the parts about him and friend trying to get off with girls with disastrous consequences were quite entertaining. Worth a look but not good enough to be worthy.

The second fillum we watched last night was "A Tale of 2 Sisters". This is a Korean flick about 2 sisters (No!) One of them had been to a mental institution and the story was her returning to home after leaving. Cue lots of halluinatory events and some pretty good scares. The characters were those you'd expect in one of these; the slightly unhinged evil step-mother; 2 nubile girls with lots of shots of their unclad legs (I mentioned this type of thing before); an ineffective father and a scary monster girl in green. C and L spent some of the time squeaking at the shocks and it was quite good at those. The twist was reasonably twisty and all ends resolved. Definitely worth a look.

The first fillum we watched last night was "Visitor Q" by Takashi Miike. Hmm? What to make of this oddity? It was the most disgraceful fillum I've seen in recent times. A short list of depravities would include incest (father-daughter), prostitution (daughter and wife), drug abuse, mother abuse, random violence, breast squeezing and milking (this made the ladies in the audience squirm like nothing we've ever seen before), rape, murder, necrophilia, adult breast-feeling [blimey that's one heck of a Freudian typo isn't it? I meant, of course, "feeding"], bullying (including forced defecation, urination upon, firing fireworks at), body cutting up and probably some more.

There didn't really seem to be much story to this. Visitor Q was the random stranger who just started living with this bizarre family. This led to a marvellous skit where the house was being attacked by the son's bullies. The dad started filluming the event and describing everyone else in the room "Here's... Well I don't know who that is. He just started living here". The best bit of the fillum. Apart from the champagne cork bit (I'll not describe that as I'll get my site pulled from the net).

Lizzah was bored by it. Clurb was utterly appalled. Nicky stayed quite quiet and Rod probably wondered what the hell he'd got into. An odd little fillum. Not sure I'd recommend it. One more bizarreness about it was the thing it reminded me most of was the play "An Inspector Calls". It has the same basic theme of a stranger entering a dysfunctional family and causing them all grief. I don't remember a very disturbing happy family at the end of Inspector though. I think JB Priestley should of put some more depravity in his thing and then the parallels would be much more obvious.

Have fun.

A big road is coming

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 14:35:00 +0000

Well hasn't this week been spectacular for screened entertainment? First off was the Freudian madman wittering on about fillums. Then, last night P and C came round and brought a couple of fillums to watch. In the end we only got through one of them but my word what a fillum.

It's called "The Happiness of the Katakuris" another of the Japanese fillums of Takashi Miike (director of Visitor Q, Audition, Ichi the Killer and more) so you'd expect a scary fillum. Well it wasn't really. But it was a tad odd (this is understatement). The DVD box says it's "a cross between The Dawn of the Dead and The Sound of Music". It's close-ish but not quite accurate. I'd link the "Sound of Music" with the family atmos of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre".

The start got things off on the right foot. It was a plasticine style animation of a little demonic "Morph" like creature biting the uvula out of a young lady who was wanting only to eat some soup. "Aargh! My uvula!" said the subtitles. The little critter then runs off to enjoy his feast of uvula. Whilst doing this he gets eaten by a crow. Somewhere soon an egg gets laid then it cracks and another little demon critter is born from it. Then it's eaten by another crow and the cycle is expected to start again.

But as the crow is flying away a gardener gets angry at it and hoys a stick (miles) and thwacks the crow which falls to the ground and the show then follows the gardener (now in real life). He's grandpa Katakuri the eldest of a family who have bought a remote guesthouse. They have had no guests yet and they feel it's because they are so remote. There are the usual tensions between them. Then one night there is a tropical storm and up steps a visitor. He dies overnight. What to do with the body? Tell the police? No! This would give us bad publicity. So they bury the guy in the garden near a big lake.

Then a couple arrive a few nights later. He's a huge sumo wrestler, she's a dot of a young lady. They get a room and shag noisily (heard from the rooms downstairs). No sign in the morning so they investigate and there's a dead sumo wrestler. Moving him (with difficulty) they find a dead dot of a young lady who's been smothered by the wrestler. So they go to bury these as well.

So the story continues. People come into their house and die. They don't kill any of them but things just conspire against them. I just thought about this. I wonder if the devil-Morph is giving his revenge.

The most bizarre thing about the fillum was the music. It's a musical so there are songs about cleaning up death scenes, digging holes as well as a couple of love songs. As I said it's rather odd.

Having said all that the fillum did drag for me. I spent some time wanting more dramatic impulse forward. It just felt like it was meandering forwards instead of being impelled headlong. Still worth a look though.

Have fun.

Best telly in recent times

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 09:10:00 +0000

Last night saw the show that's entertained me more than any other in recent months.

It was called something along the lines of "The Pervert's Guide to Cinema" and had the most wonderfully accented Eastern European doctor of Psychology presenting it. The enjoyment came from lots of clips being analysed by this slightly odd Freudian.

So we start with a fillum from 1933 which switches from normality to something far more cinematic as an ordinary girl walks down a street then watches as a train passes and you see lots of little individual stories pass by. "Za character becomes ze viewer in a way zat has not been done before."

Then we cut to that scene in the Matrix where Whassname offers Neo the blue or red pill. The red pill stopping the "ride" and "If you take the blue pill; I'll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes".

Cue presenter:"I do not want one of zees pills. I'm not interested in stopping ze ride nor do I wish to see the reality behind ze illusion. I wish to see ze reality OF ze illusion".

And on it went like this for the whole show.

"Psycho is like ze Freudian parts of the ze consiousness. Ze action takes place on 3 levels. Downstairs ze ego is in charge so ze behaviour is outvardly normal. Upstairs, where ze mother is, the superego is in charge so der is conflict between Norman and ze mother. In ze basement ze Id is in charge, dis is where ze acts of brutality are engendered....."

What a wonderful show! Putting Alien and Charlie Chaplin fillums next to each other. Comparing the Marx brothers to the 3 parts again (Groucho is the Superego, Harpo the Ego and Chico the Id).

Then he's wittering about "ze change in reality where you no longer feel comfortable" as a mechanism in fillum. He uses a David Lynch fillum (I think it was Mulholland Drive) where someone is singing live and then collapses but the song goes on. It's a very surprising clip.

Highly entertaining.

Have fun.

[edit, 'cos I just remembered] "Ven ve flush za toilet ve expect not to see what we flush again. It has gone, as it were, to anaza place, a parallel world if you will. Za unreality of cinema is like when you flush and za shit comes back out of za toilet and zis surprises us. When ve sit in ze cinema is ze screen not a toilet and are we not seeing ze shit come back out and surprise us?". Fantastic!

Show Me Love

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 22:10:00 +0000

No not a sad and lonely cry but the first fillum in the Lucas Moodysson set.

This film was notable for the BFI putting it on a list of fillums they thought every child should have seen before they reached 15. This is odd as it's actually rated a 15 in the UK.

Thankfully it's not as depressing as Lilya 4-ever. The setting is a school in a class of 14 year olds. You could watch any American high school film and see the characters that were in this film only the actors were better than the usual (and much better Swedish speakers).

Plot: popular girl bored with small town life. All the boys fancy her as does female class nerd. The nerd is from another town and has no friends. Rumours abound she's gay. Turns out rumours are true. Popular girl messes with nerd's head a bit, realises she's being a cow. Happy ending.

See that last bit was more than a little bit different from Lilya.

Enjoyed it loads. The actors were great and the supporting characters were well drawn even if the leads were a little stereotypical. One slightly distracting point was that the popular girl's sister really looks like Vicky Pollard.

Worth a look if you like euro-cinema and are not pathetic enough to whinge about subtitles. Incidentally why do people not like subtitles? It's far less distracting than staring at people's mouths as they move randomly to badly spoken lines. Perhaps they think that by reading a tiny bit they'll miss something. [Edit: "sigh"]

Have fun.

Squeak piggy squeak

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 12:34:30 +0000

Last night was fun. P, C and Lizzah came round to watch a coupl'o scary fillums.

We started with pizza and then once sated started to watch "The Grudge" (the Japanese one of course). C and L were sat together and me and P had much enjoyment from the squeals of shock and the huddling together behind knees or synchronised shuffling to the furthest corner of the sofa from the telly. Most entertaining! The fillum was excellent at creating an unsettling atmosphere but sort of fizzled horribly at the end. A disappointing end.

Next up was a brief loo break where we happened to see a snatch of Big Bro'. Good choice of words by me 'cos Jodie Marsh was the one to be evicted. Sounded whingy and dull. Anyway switch her off we have a fillum to watch.

Last fillum was "The Commitment" a Thai thing about a bunch of school girls making pledges ("if this happens I'll do that" type thing) at a shrine and then having supernatural consequences if they didn't hold up their end of the bargain. It was terribly confusing. Best thing about it was Clurby, the arch right-on one, kept repeating "How do you know which girl is who? They all look the same to me." The fillum was confusing, some good acting, some poor. Excellent character names tho'. Moss, Gus and Pin were the stand out names. When the character names are the best thing about the fillum it can't be considered that grand.

I did have a thought early on in the second fillum. "Why are all these fillums about teenage girls all the time?" I think my question was answered later as there were quite a few long lingering shots of girls in very small shorts and slow tracking shots of their tanned and smooth legs. It was definitely a man who came up with this story. I suppose the real answer is somewhere between that and the "women are vulnerable" thing.

Have fun.

Misery loves solitude

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 08:40:00 +0000

K's gone.

Watched first Lukas Moodysson film last night - Lilya 4-Ever.
Quick synopsis:
Poverty, abandonment by parent, abandonment/abuse by aunt, more poverty, betrayal by old best friend, drug abuse (glue), prostitution through poverty, abandonment by all but new best friend, further prostitution, chink of light - new boyfriend promising bright future, gang-raped by locals, leaves home for new life, new best friend commits suicide as left behind (no family, no friends now), hopes were misplaced, sold into forced prostitution, raped times x, meets best friend again in dream, further forced prostitution/rape, dream again, escape, suicide, end...

Sometimes I wonder if D has it right.

Have fun.

PS I went online to see what other folk thought about this film. Most are utterly impressed by the lead's performance as well as the young lad who becomes her best friend. But only one (that I saw) had the same thought I did. Why did the story have suicide as the answer? There was ample opportunity for a less bleak ending. Ah well.

Cracking evening

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 20:53:45 +0100

The weekend began at Ross Noble's do so started off at a good place.

Saturday was a trip to the folks back home. We'd agreed that a good thing to do was visit the cinema to see the new Wallace and Gromit filum.

It's a great one despite the plot being extremely thin, the twist being even more obvious than the one in the Sixth Sense and some of the jokes being rather obvious. But, shock horror! It's not all stop-frame plasticine type stuff. They've used CGI at times. It's nearly a disgrace.

Luckily the jokes are usually good and they get away with it.

Watch it and

have fun.

Shocker plus entertainment news

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 10:40:29 +0100

Tony Benn has had to go into hospital. Bugger! Why is it that the cool people get struck down and Anne Widdicombe and Michael Howard live a healthy life? At least he's not seriously stuffed yet. Sigh.

News re satellite TV: Last weekend I spent a couple of hours watching an Iranian film. It was very good although the surreality of watching an Iranian film in Arabic with Bulgarian subtitles was possibly the highlight.

The film was in 3 parts: the first a young girl reached the age of 9 and was told that she was now a grown-up, had to wear the scarf and told that she was not allowed to play with her (male) playmate any more.

Then it finished and we saw a young woman (20's) cycling along a cycle lane at full speed. A man approached on a horse and yelled at her, he went away and more people gave chase but one at a time and still she kept going. Eventually the POV changed to another cyclist and then 2 men on horses blocked the cycle path and you saw her being stopped and heard indistinct yelling and shouting. On translation the first man was her husband telling her to go home. The second man was her father telling her that she brought shame to the family by disobeying her husband. One of the following men was a priest who was happy to divorce her for disobeying etc... The 2 men who stopped her were her brothers and assumedly they took her home against her will.

The third part was an old woman being pushed around on a wheelchair by a young kid. She went to lots of shops and bought huge amounts of stuff. She kept asking children to be her son or daughter but they refused saying that they had their own families. They set all her stuff up on the beach and she sat there talking to 2 young women about the girl that had had to be forced home by her brothers. Then the local children looked like they nicked everything but they put it all onto rafts and the final shots were of the old woman sitting on a brand new double bed drifting out away from the beach whilst being watched by the 9 year old girl (from part 1) on the beach.

What?

I reckon it was a tale about freedom. The young girl was losing it, the woman was trying to get it and failing, and the old woman finally got it but it wasn't that great. Any one else got any ideas?

Have fun.