Father Geek here in central Texas with Robert Bernocchi in Rome, Grozilla in Paris, Amahagger Muggle in Rotterdam, and James Bartlett in London, among others to bring you this week's edition of our long running weekly column... Euro-AICN... before we get to our regular cast of Euro-writers I have received this for you...

As promised, I send you some info about the New Argento Flick.

It seems that after an endless period of rewrites, Dario Argento and his trusted screenwriter Franco Ferrini, who wrote most of Argento’s Movies, finally gave birth to a Final Draft.

Everything is still kept very secret – but, since he is starting to shoot the movie in Rome this spring, more news will soon be available. (By the way, Argento intended to shoot in Venice; he clearly expressed he wanted “to experiment with the mysteries of water - It was Ferrini that persuaded Argento to shoot in Rome - probably for budgetary reasons)

Anyway – The Movie, which was formerly known as “Occhiali Neri” (BLACK GLASSES), has a new (definitive?) title: “Il Cartaio” (THE CARD DEALER).

“THE CARD DEALER” will be a “Giallo” (“Giallo” meaning yellow, which comes from the yellow covers of the penny-dreadful detective/thriller paperbacks that are sold in Italy since the Sixties) – and not a Horror Movie. In fact it’ll be Argento’s first film in which police investigations will play a major role.

THE CAST

STEFANIA ROCCA – who, apart from appearing in many Italian flicks, also starred in movies by Minghella (The Talented Mr. Ripley), Branagh (Love’s Labor’s Lost), Figgis (Hotel), and recently in Tykwer’s Heaven – will play the lead, as a young (and big breasted!!!) Detective who has to stop the psychopath/killer.

While the whole casting has already been done (all Italian Actors), they still have to cast another main character, a French cop that comes to Rome to investigate about the killings – and this is clearly nothing new to Argento’s thematic, since we can find a significant Stranger/Foreigner in almost every one of Argento’s Films.

What will be a NEW to his Authorial Vision – is the real protagonist of this movie: “INTERNET”

Metaphorically speaking, “The Card Dealer” is the one who organizes the game, the one who gives out the cards, the one who allows the others to play...

In fact, “The Card Dealer” is nothing else than the “nickname” that the psychopath/killer uses when he communicates with the police via chat rooms and e-mails, when he informs the police about his killings. Does he want to be stopped? Is he challenging them into some sick and perverted game? I wanna Know! I wanna Know!

That’s all for now, I know, it’s not much, but more news will come. Let’s really hope that Argento can interpret/reinvent this abundantly abused “Internet-Theme” (Fear Dot Com, anybody???) and create something creepy, challenging and finally worth seeing - since his latest offerings haven’t actually been at the same niveau as his first movies.

Perfect Popcorn

Father Geek back with another interesting bit that found itself on my Geek Headquarters monitor today... from wonderful Catalonia...

This is Mr. Ocre from Catalonia and I saw La gran aventura de Mortadelo y Filemón last Wednesday!

It was in Barcelona (press screening), with the principal cast (Pepe Viyuela as File and Benito Pocino as Morta)... And it was... Well... I think is the best comic adaptation ever made in Spain! Better than El día de la Bestia, too... As adaptation, of course.

Yeah, they're Mortadelo and Filemón (or Mortadel·lo and Filemó for me, 'cause I read that comic in Catalan). And they are alive! It was amazing! Go away, Spiderman! Goodbye, X-Men! Here you have the best super-heros of world in the big screen!

When you see movies like Astèrix et Obelix, you think in the bad jokes and hilarious humor that some director has put in the story that doesn't fit with the original characters... But in Mortadelo and Filemón... Well... Fesser (El milagro de P. Tinto) plays with his particular humor in the movie, and fits PERFECTLY with the characters, 'cause that comic characters are the ones he read when he was young.

THEY ARE THE REAL MORTADELO AND FILEMÓN who were created by Ibañez 40 years ago! They are alive! Ibañez was in the Press Screening and was very proud of it: "They're my characters!", he said, smiling.

Dominique Pinon as a mega-super-perfect-agent rules too! It's fantastic!

OK. That's just a movie that just wants to be very funny. And it's very funny. If you liked El milagro de P. Tinto you'll like this one. And for those fans of the characters... Congratulations!

I loved that comic when I was young... And it's the comic in the big screen. No more words.

The best? Mortadelo. Simply fantastic. He is... him. Is the comic character. And that actor it's Catalan (Ibañez is Catalan too)! For that reason, he has a nice Catalan accent when he speaks Spanish... Very funny. (He makes one joke in Catalan, too! Very multi-cultural; it's too difficult find something about other cultures from Spain in Spanish movies! God bless that movie, then!)

The worst? Maybe some characters like Professor Bacterio (Janfri Topera) or the ryth'm of the movie... But, anyway... Last year I enjoyed very much that beautiful and funny masterpiece called "800 Balas"... But this year is Morta and File's year. Uoh!

Is this love, is this love, is this love what I'm feeliiiiiiiiing?

Well... Excuses for my poor English. I will study more, I promise. Greetings!

Father Geek back, turning you over now to Robert in Rome...

Steven Soderbergh was in Paris a few days ago and who was listening for us? Of course, our great grandmaster Giallo-esque gab-artist Grozilla…

Hi,

Just a very short one:

Steven Soderbergh was in Paris today to promote Solaris' french release. Among the stuff he told me... he is taking one year off, breaking it off just long enough to shoot his part of Eros (a 3-part erotic film made by Antonioni, Wong Kar Wai and previously Pedro Almodovar who had withdrawn and was replaced by Soderbergh.) He said Antonioni's part is already wrapped. (First rumours say it's very very explicit on the sex.)

So I guess we have to wait until at least 2004 before The Informant, or Ocean's Twelve begin their shootings.

Asked about the up coming "Confederacy of Dunces", which he's producing, he (Soderbergh) told me that as of today Philip Seymour Hoffman is on board for the part of Ignatius (great choice !) for a shooting to be starting sometime in the fall of 03, with David Gordon Green (i.e the Malick for the 00's) directing.

Soderbergh also "denied" strongly to me that he was about to build some independant producing structure in Hollywood with the partnership of Pierre Lescure (ex CEO of Canal Plus Universal).

Until next...

Grozilla

If you liked Elaine’s reports from Rotterdam, then you have to read what Amahagger Muggle has to say from the dutch festival. I left his Takashi Miike’s review, even if you maybe have already seen it in the Asia-AICN column…

Hi, you good people at Aint-it-cool-news, here is a limited view of the Rotterdam Film Festival from Amahagger Muggle.

For this years festival, I've been immensely stuuupid. Me and my friends had been gambling on a couple of movies but... Well, like Elaine said, there are a couple of big films missing, and Rotterdam sometimes has a habit of getting these films one year after the buzz about them started. They showed Avalon in 2002 (we anticipated it for the 2001 festival) and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in 2001 (instead of 2000). Last year, we were hoping Spirited Away would be shown, but it had it's european premiere mere weeks later in Berlin instead and wrote history there. So guess what we were expecting this year? Not Hero, that'll probably show in 2004. No, we wanted Spirited Away!

And it's not being shown.

Making Rotterdam maybe the only festival that hasn't shown it. We are probably the only country in Europe that hasn't had it in the cinema's yet. So that was a very big disappointment, but we started looking through the list for more cool stuff from Asia: The Eye? Not shown. Dark Water? Not shown. Resurrection of the Match Girl? Yes! Oh, wait: cancelled. The next thing that happened was the total breakdown of the internet reservation system (leaving us stranded for a couple of titels), and we started to give up on this years festival. And that was what I meant with "incredibly stuuupid".

For it's that very attitude that has made me miss a couple of movies which I probably could have seen, if I had just put a bit more effort in it. Whale Rider? Missed it. Russian Ark? Tried to get tickets, but just missed it (and everyone standing in line for THAT one was telling each other how wonderful Whale Rider was, which didn't help). "Three" is a movie about three ghost stories from Korea, Thailand and Hong-Kong, and a friend of mine calls it the best movie he's seen in... haha... three years. Missed it. However, this one is not totally my fault: it wasn't on the list originally. I'm just warning everyone: the word is out that "Three" is very, VERY good indeed.

The very atmosphere of the festival started to get to me once I finally was in line for tickets. Even though that ended without getting into the movie I was hoping for, the conversations with fellow moviegoers were fun. Indeed, the moment people know you are going to (or have been to) a movie, total strangers start asking your opinion on it, leading to good information on other movies and friendly disagreements. I've been bitten by the festival bug again. So next year, I'll do my homework better and put in more free time and effort.

So what did I DO manage to see? I went to "I Love You". And here is my review:

"I love you",

directed by Zhang Yuan, China, 2002.

Although Zhang Yuan has shown his movies in Rotterdam before, I have never seen any of them yet. However, this one was on my "to see" list because it takes place in Beijing (a place I recently was lucky enough to visit) and was advertised as a realistic view about a young couple marrying (which I'm about to, so it seemed worth seeing the worst that could happen). As a minor disappointment to me personally, not much of Beijing was shown, but that doesn't hurt the movie at all because it's about people and not Beijing.

The story is very simple: a boy, Yi, and a girl, Ju, are shown meeting and falling in love. Very quickly they marry, but with the two of them living together in a tiny appartment, tempers start to flare. Even though they love each other they start to fight, and keep fighting almost continuously until the relationship tragically spirals out of control. And that's basically it. Most of the time you are watching the two of them being mean to one another, in close-up.

A couple of things keep this interesting to watch, namely the terrific acting by the two leads, Xu Jing Lei and Tong Da Wei (embarrasingly I don't know which is which), and the facts that the fights are believable and (dare I say it) vaguely recognizable for everyone in the group I saw it with. Note: discussions afterwards are guaranteed, especially if you are seeing it with a group of mixed gender! This is because the two main characters aren't caricatures. Both are initially likeable, and it's not pleasant to watch these two tearing into each other later on. Yi is a bit easygoing and isn't comfortable with showing affection in public, while Ju demands attention and is quick to nag when she doesn't get it. Escalation is quick. A typical evening for the lovely couple: Yi wants to be left alone, Ju wants attention, Yi gets angry and withdrawn, Ju starts pulling stunts to get a reaction out of him, Yi starts calling her childish and crazy... etcetera. Before you know it, both are yelling insults and accusations. You get to watch this a lot in this movie, with differing results. Sometimes one of them is right and the other unreasonable, but that shifts often. You start to fear for the both of them. Hell, if Miike Takashi was in charge, you'd be waiting for the chainsaws to come out! But Zhang Yuan keeps his tale firmly rooted in reality, with the only horror being the unstoppable deterioration of their relationship even though they both obviously care. Watching them fight is tragic, but also occasionally funny as they jump from one subject of conversation to another when cornered, or when the reproaches become absurd ("you are UGLY!", Yi at one point yells at Ju, who is quite the looker). The nice cinematography and music didn't hurt either.

What I didn't like was the absence of any way to find out how much time had passed. Are the fights shown daily, weekly or over years? There are certainly points where I'd have liked to know how long they would have put up with their "situation". Or, come to think of it, their neighbours with them? Also, some events seem a bit fabricated, like an explanation for Ju's sometimes hysterical nature that comes out of nowhere.

However, the main point is to show how these two characters butt heads, and this film brings it's points across on that account. There is also no easy ending to this story. It never becomes "War of the Roses", and it's never "Audition", but sits inbetween those two, toned down until it looks realistic enough to be believable. More than a day later, I'm still pondering this movie, and that's what it sets out to do.

Extra note: reading the slightly inaccurate blurb about this picture in the festival newspaper, I'm also pondering if I've mixed up the names of Ju and Yi in the review! If I did, I did it consistently though, so exchange them all or don't exchange them.

This is Amahagger Muggle from the Rotterdam Film Festival. I hope to "score" tickets for a couple more movies, and I'll be quick to write reviews if I succeed. And it's just been confirmed that Whale Rider, Russian Ark and Spirited Away WILL get released in the Netherlands later on, so I'll get to see them anyway! And "Resurrection of the Match Girl" can already be imported on DVD. Reviews are out on the internet, and apparently it looks gorgeous, being described as as intelligent as Avalon but as entertaining as The Matrix. Huh? Why isn't it here, in Rotterdam, now? I'm getting mad again...

Hello, good people of Aint-It-Cool-News, here is some more news on the Rotterdam Film Festival from Amahagger Muggle.

Although I was terribly late for seriously covering this festival, I did manage to see Miike Takashi's latest offering to Rotterdam audiences. As I mentioned in my "Ichi the Killer" review last year, I think Mr. Takashi by now must have a pretty skewed view of us Dutch. In 2002, no less than four movies by him were showing, and "Ichi" got the highest audience rating of them all.

This may have influenced the festival organization in deciding which film to choose this year from his prolific output, for "Deadly Outlaw: Rekka" is a oftentimes very funny crowd-pleaser.

"Deadly Outlaw: Rekka",

directed by Miike Takashi, Japan, 2002.

Of course it is possible to criticize Miike Takashi for a lot of things, but he has a knack for opening a movie in a very cool way. Anyone who saw "Dead or Alive" will immediately feel at home here: the leader of the Sanada clan (a major yakuza family) is shown being killed, intercut with bits of scenes featuring several main characters, while loud Japanese rock music is playing. What follows is one hour of decent storytelling, showing the various yakuza families nervously awaiting the war which must undoubtedly follow. By the end, all factions neatly gang up against the main character, a lower Sanada gang leader called Kunisada, as an excuse to stop the war. Kunisada is played by Takeuchi Riki (the bad guy from "Dead or Alive") as a stubborn loner, following a strict code of honor and occasionally exploding with rage. When he finds out what's been happening, he starts an apocalyptic retaliation against everyone, and a very weird last fifteen minutes follow.

And had there been one clear enemy for Kunisada to hate and kill, this could easily have been called "Dead or Alive 2, 3, 4, 5, 6" as it almost follows a formula: MTV opening, slow fleshing out of intrigue, and setting everything up for a cliché ending (hero wins, or hero loses, both have been done to death). But in true DoA style, when it's time for that cliché ending to happen, Mr. Takashi gets bored and starts having fun by throwing the damnedest weird stuff in there. For his next yakuza movie, I fully expect to suddenly have aliens attack Japan at the end. Or all main characters to turn into werewolves, or vampires, or seahorses, or something.

The same thing happens here, as a pretty clear-cut revenge story gets very confusing later on, but the difference is that much of the weirdness can be explained away as long as you take the paranormal into account. There is a lot of paranormal goings-on in this movie, with Kunisada getting a warning from beyond the grave, and early on he has a telepathic connection to the Sanada leader who gets killed at the start (whose severed hands only release their grip on their murderer when Kunisada gets released from prison).

But no matter if the story make sense or not, there were a lot of things I really liked here. To start, the Sanada family leader who is the target at the beginning. The first time you see him he looks funny, but when he attacks his murderer he becomes just cool. Imagine Patrick Stewart with waist-long white hair kicking ass in a medieval samurai outfit, and you're close. Is that Sonny Chiba? Rock & Roll indeed...(you'll understand this after seeing the film). It's obvious why this man's death upsets the yakuza balance of power as shown in the picture, as the rest of the yakuza "management" here consists of cowards, backstabbers and perverts.

Other neat touches are the crude jokes such as the Chinese secret-weapon bazooka's, which cause small initial but HUGE secondary explosions, and a very obvious and funny reference to John Woo which is more a spoof than an homage. There is also some subtle character development here: Kunisada is of Korean heritage, which means he has been discriminated his whole life by both yakuza and society in general. This turns out to be one of the reasons why he is totally devoted to the late Sanada Boss, who didn't care about this and allowed him to achieve some sort of rank.

What I liked less is that after having seen a couple of movies by Miike Takashi, this one doesn't really surprise or shock a lot. It's fun, but not as good as "Audition" (which I think is a great, great movie), as outrageous as "Ichi the Killer" or as startling as "Dead or Alive".

All in all a good popcorn movie, if you don't mind being befuddled as well as entertained. Stay to watch the credits, as there are bits of movie hidden in them. Ando from the "Ando's gang" movies gets a thanks in them, but I don't have a clue what for.

The audience gave Rekka a 3.62 out of a theoretically possible 5 (Ichi got 3.93 last year), making it number 97 this year on the Audience-price list.

Which brings me to this years final list, and I'll mention some movies that were mentioned on Aint It Cool News and/or made it into the top 5:

• 1: Whale Rider, New Zealand / Germany (4.63)
• 2: City of God, Brazil (4.59)
• 3: Etre et Avoir, France (4.53), documentary about a small school.
• 4: The Magdalene Sisters, UK / Ireland (4.52)
• 5: Remake, Bosnie-Herzegovina / France / Turkey (4.51)
• 6: Rabbit proof Fence, Australia (4.49)
• 10: Dirty Pretty Things, UK (4.42)
• 21: Lilya 4-ever, Sweden (4.20)
• 25: Punch-drunk Love, USA (4.16)
• 35: Far from Heaven, USA (4.09)
• 46: Dolls, Japan (4.01)
• 52: 24-Hour Party People, UK (3.95)
• 60: Choses Secrètes, France (3.88)
• 65 : Russian Ark, Russia / Germany (3.83)
• 70: Spider, Canada / UK (3.82)
• 75: Morvern Callar, UK (3.79)
• 77: Three, South Korea / Thailand / Hong Kong (3.79)
• 111: Auto Focus, USA (3.48)
• 126: I Love You, China (3.34)
• 128: Gerry, USA (3.32)

And that concludes the Rotterdam Film Festival for me. Audience-wise, it was the biggest yet, with 355.000 people visiting. Hopefully till next year!

Amahagger Muggle.

Greetings, Ard Vijn

Last but not least, the usual review by our James Bartlett of a movie that european audience didn’t see yet.

Beware, spoilers below...

The Wild Thornberrys Movie

Director: Cathy Malkasian/Jeff McGrath Featuring the voices of: Lacey Chabert, Tim Curry, Tom Kane, Danielle Harris, Rupert Everett, Jodi Carlisle; 85 mins; Certificate U

Eliza and Debbie Thornberry (voiced by Lacey Chabert and Danielle Harris) are two sisters who don't get on. There's nothing unusual in that, but there is something unusual in where they live, as the Thornberry family travels the world learning about and filming wild animals. How cool is that?

Actually, Debbie thinks it's very uncool, but Eliza loves it and it was while they were travelling that she saved a warthog (really a shaman in animal form) and was granted the gift of being able to talk to animals. It's a gift that is her biggest secret and vital for her, as her best friend Darwin (Tom Kane) is a monkey - and a clumsy, pompous one at that. It's not much help with her brother though - Donnie was brought up by monkeys and loves "the wedgie dance" (I'm not explaining what that is here).

When poachers grab a young leopard that was in Eliza's care, her parents Nigel (Tim Curry) and Marianne (Jodi Carlisle) reluctantly send her to boarding school in England where, unsurprisingly, Eliza - and Darwin - struggle to fit in.

Still feeling guilty about the baby leopard, Eliza runs away from the school and makes her way back to Africa, where she plans to meet her parents at the valley where thousands of elephants go when there is a solar eclipse - alas, this is the same valley where the poacher has set up a huge and nasty trap for them all.

As the family members all have adventures on their way to the valley, we have to hope that they get there in time to save the elephants.

Based on the Nickelodeon series and very much pitched in the Rugrats camp, The Wild Thornberrys Movie is aimed at a young audience and does a good job in that respect. Others may be less interested, though it does have some laughs and a cracking soundtrack featuring Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, Hugh Masekela and Youssou N'Dour.

James Bartlett

That’s all for today See you next week

Robert Bernocchi

My Italian Day Job... Check it out.