Harry here, today... like most things in North America, the Toronto Film Festival shutdown to apraise the situation... give festival goers a chance to communicate with loved ones, friends and business acquantances in New York and D.C., but according to Anton Sirius, everything will be up and running today at the festival. He's hoping to reschedule his interview with Jeunet, and that the films that were scheduled for today... get shown sometime. He has been told that the festival is going to make every effort to reschedule all events from September 11th to be included in the run of the fest! This is great news! A festival of arts at a time like this becomes a celebration of life... the creativity of it all instead of the destruction. And AMELIE is a perfect example of that... a film that celebrates the concept of helping others to find that missing thing that will change their life for the better... That one person possessed with the magical will to do good unto others... AMELIE is a jewel, something we will all be seeing this November!
Day Five
Aaaaaaargh!
At the half-way mark of the festival, I normally have a pretty good idea what my favorite film is going to be. Usually I see a film and I just KNOW- it sinks down into my brain for a while, floating images and lines of dialogue to the surface to amuse itself. Last year, for instance, I knew an hour after seeing Goddess of 1967 that is wasn’t going to be matched.
This year, though, nothing has leaped to the forefront. Which is not to say that I’ve only seen crap- far from it. But instead of one film selfishly seizing my consciousness, a group of them is sharing the space, and they seem more than happy to welcome newcomers to the party. Right now I have four tenants in my head, and I have no idea which one will eventually sign the lease- All About Lily Chou-Chou, Devil’s Backbone, Dogtown and Z-Boys and if know me and saw the list of titles I reviewed today I’m sure you can guess the identity of the latest resident.
Anton2001Fest@yahoo.com
Le fabuleux destin d’Amelie Poulain (2001, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
Magic. It’s such a simple, elusive thing, something we all, to some degree or other, crave in our lives, but something that most people can’t seem to accept. It’s one of the central contradictions of humanity, wanting that- needing that- which scares you and unsettles you.
For myself, I got over that fear a long time ago. Magic is not a scary thing- it’s wondrous and strange, and it provides me with a sense of warmth and comfort. It’s like the universe is not just paying attention to my life, but sharing a joke with me.
Let me be clear here, I’m not talking about dragons and spells and broomsticks. I’m talking about the odd, unexplainable little lapses in the logical progression of the world. I’m talking about THOSE coincidences. I’m talking about a thing that, unobserved, would serve no purpose, but when hooked into a nervous system can have all sorts of amazing effects.
I feel like I’m not explaining this well, so I’ll give you an example (and keep in mind that these sorts of things happen to me constantly): the other day, the day I ended up seeing Prozac Nation and having my little mid-review breakdown, I was running late and took a cab downtown to my first film. As I got out of the cab the song playing on the radio was Wham’s "Careless Whisper". After the Midnight screening that night, when I got into another cab to head home, one with a different radio station on, guess what song picked up exactly where it had left off more than 12 hours before. And this isn’t just my head making a connection that wasn’t there- I know it was at nearly the exact same point, because I had sung the next lines (tonight the music seems so loud, I wish that we could lose this crowd etc) as I walked down Bloor Street that morning.
When you think about someone you haven’t seen in ages, turn a corner and they’re there. The way two butterflies dancing above a flower seem to exactly duplicate Fred and Ginger’s ballroom sequence from Swing Time. Those times when you are plugged into what John Constantine called the Synchronicity Highway and everything just falls into place a little too perfectly, or those times when everything goes spectacularly, hilariously awry. Those inexplicable, inscrutable events that leave you with no possible reaction but a quiet, infectious smile.
That’s magic.
And that’s Amelie.
From Hell (2001, directed by Albert and Allen Hughes)
I hate being put in these situations.
On the one hand, I was sitting in the theater thinking, "I can’t believe I’m actually seeing an adaptation of From Hell on the big screen!" On the other hand, half an hour later I was thinking, "This IS an adaptation of From Hell, right?"
A brief plot summary- in 1888 some guy butchers women in Whitechapel. I mean, c’mon, it’s Jack the Ripper. You know what’s going to happen. What made From Hell compelling reading was the why- whether you agree or disagree with the theory Alan Moore presented in those pages it made for a ripping good yarn.
And on that score From Hell does stick reasonably close to the Moore original. But like the case itself the closer you look the more odd details start to jump out at you.
I’m trying really hard to like this film. For one thing, it looks absolutely gorgeous. The color scheme borders on Dario Argento territory. The grime and filth accumulated in the back alleys of the Hughes’ Whitechapel spill off the screen and get in under your fingernails, not to mention the copious amounts of gore dripping all over the place. (Make no mistake, this is a visceral film experience. Literally.) The performances are quite good too- Depp, Holm and Coltrane are all top-notch, and miracle of miracles Heather Graham was actually bearable. The Hughes brothers deserve a lot of credit for the magnificent job they did here.
But the things that were done to the plot are very nearly unforgivable. The only justification I can think of for this savage butchering is metaphoric, in that fans of the comic will in some small way feel the same revulsion they might have felt stumbling onto the Ripper’s handiwork first-hand. To say the story was Hollywoodized isn’t even in the ballpark. Abberline is psychic; Abberline falls for one of the doxies; there’s a nominally happy ending (think about that for a minute- a HAPPY FREAKING ENDING to a jack the Ripper film) but Abberline’s brains leak out of his head at the end of the film and he doesn’t take advantage of it. It’s a joke. Some of the tweaking makes sense (focusing on Abberline in the first place, for instance) but most of it is just insulting.
Speaking as someone who loves the comic, From Hell is a disappointment.
There was a double-bill of sorts tonight at Midnight. I’ll review both halves separately.
Clip Cult Vol. One
My thoughts on this collection of freako music videos-
That’s pretty much it. What did you expect? They’re just videos.
If all you’ve ever seen of Ishii’s work is Angel Dust, you’ll probably have some difficulty believing this is the same guy, or that he hasn’t suffered some sort of recent brain trauma.
Electric Dragon is a noise-punk assault. The plot is flimsy at best- actually, it’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man, only shorter and with a better soundtrack. The film tells the story of ‘Dragon Eye’ Morrison, how he acquired his strange electric powers and learned to channel them (and his all-consuming rage) through an electric guitar, and his eardrum-splitting duel with the mysterious Thunder Buddha. At least they don’t merge into one uber-electrical being at the end of the film.
Goofy and giddy, Electric Dragon gets by on its attitude and its music (provided by Ishii’s own band Mach 1.67). It has no choice, really- that’s all there is to it, attitude and raucous Japanese rock ‘n’ roll. It’s no Wild Zero, but it’ll do in a pinch.
Anton Sirius
Electric Dragon 80,000 V (2000, directed by Sogo Ishii)
