Fantasia reviews

[petronia]

sub_divided was here all week - she's now headed down to Boston c/o Bing XD. A few Nuits d'Afrique shows, lots of movies. These are mostly going to be quick, because I've had time to whittle my thoughts down.

Ip Man (The Prequel): Arguably better than the second movie, despite absence of Donnie Yen, and increasingly outlandish plots attributed to evil would-be colonialists. I mean, it's pretty clear which parts must've hewn fairly closely to RL, and which were pastede on. XD; Ip Man is such a low-key protagonist (the anti-Bruce Lee in some sense... I really want them to hoist the third movie in the trilogy out of development hell, guys; not the Wong Kar Wai one, that's a whole other beast) that it's no bad thing for the movies to be a bit more low-key as well.

Another Earth: Co-written by Brit Marling, the lead actress, who spends a lot of time letting her body language speak for her. Essentially a tearjerker human drama in which the SF element acts as deus ex machina and brickbat metaphor, but also a love letter to a certain idea of space exploration - an elegiac one, despite the film assuming Virgin as de rigueur method of transportation rather than NASA. (This came... two weeks?... after the U2:360 show I watched from my bedroom window, during which Bono managed to ambush me with unexpected emotion(tm) with harping on the leitmotif of "Space Oddity".) It's more a Sundance film than Fantasia or even SXSW; you can tell because it brought out humourless science dudes on imdb. Such a scenario would have disastrous consequences on Earth's gravity, yes, fancy that. XD

Trollhunter: Immensely likeable gonzo nature mockumentary about a dude who blase-ly works a job no sane human being ought to hold down. Deploys horror movie flourishes of the "Blair Witch" strain, but way too funny to be truly scary. (Words that sound the same in Norwegian and English: "troll piss".) The screening was preceded by a stop-motion animation short about a troll, narrated by Max Von Sydow - a troll double header, as it were - which served as a helpful brush-up on the mythology, so by the time the put-upon eponymous protagonist started tying goats to bridge posts the audience was legit dying.

In light of the recent news, it's worth one's time to watch a film that makes Norway seem like a nice place to live. Not because of the weather - the majestic landscapes look dingy and muddy in digital video, and it's always damp when it's not snowing outright - but because the underlying satire on social democracy is an affectionate one. The veterinarian who worries about the cruelty of troll euthanasia via blacklight; the wildlife agency with its endless licenses and forms and bumbling coverups that no one bothers to uncover. If that's the worst it gets, one thinks... At one point the Scooby Doo kids hire a new camerawoman. Ixnay on redblooded Christian men, they ask the trollhunter, but what about a devout Muslim woman? The dude is taken aback, then shrugs. "You know, I haven't a clue," he says. "I guess we'll find out."

Comments

[tsutanai.livejournal.com]

I just want to know the ending to Another Earth, since I'm not about to watch a film where a little kid in a happy family gets killed. As soon as I saw it telegraphed in the trailer, I was out. (I fret enough already, I don't need to be inviting myself some extra mental trauma imagining a car crashing into my nephews.)

But I'm curious, because if it were me writing such a film--and I don't know if I'd put in the humourless science stuff or not--would be: somehow it's the female lead's guilt who conjures up the planet (or to be more precise: it appearing before her crashing the car's due to dependent co-origination plus the ambiguity of 天神相応説 prognostication). She gets offed or offs herself and the planet thus disappears. And that'd close out the film.

But then, I'm still working out how to do a Buddhist horror movie....

[petronia.livejournal.com]

OK, I'll PM it to you. XD It is really not supernatural or Buddhist though (I think most Asian ghost movies are, to some degree).

[tsutanai.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And I'm not surprised it didn't go there--like you said, Sundance type. XD

(And that's why I like most Asian ghost movies. XD)