Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Sounds like a hell of a fest. I hope FantAsia is this good this summer...
Lonewolf here again with a report on the first film in competition proper (both in the European and International competitions).
Nos Miran (They are watching us) by Norbero Lopez.
When did the Spanish get so damn good at making ghost stories? They seem to have quite an industry going and some of the resulting films are of a very high quality. Nos Miran is no exception. I'll try and do this as spoiler free as possible as while there are no big twists (a la 'The Others' another excellent Spanish ghost story. Although I had guessed the ending of that one...) there are some nice little twists and turns.
The film opens with a group of children playing by the railway tracks. They pull straws to see who's turn it is to lie blindfolded between the tracks while a train rides over them. The children give nice naturalistic performances and the subtle camera-work and haunting piano score by Bingen Mendizabal draw us gently in and before you know it you are hooked.
Fast fowrward to a few years later. We meet a policeman, a good father and husband, played very well by Carmelo Gomez. He is asked to reopen a missing persons case after three years. During the course of the investigation he comes across boxes and boxes of files pertaining to the hundreds of people who have disappeared without trace over the last 20 years in Spain. Slowly he becomes obsessed with these missing people or 'Others' (The book that this is based on was originally called 'The Others', the film has changed it's title for obvious reasons...) and his past is brought out into the open.
This is a film that works on atmoshpere. As the charming Lopez himself said before the film, he hopes that it is a film that will haunt the viewer afterwards. And he was right. Lopez is definitely a director to watch. He has an excellent eye for framing and use of colour and light. The suspense is beautifully built up (the dream sequence is a particular stand out as are the reflections and shadows in the walls on the metro). Wonderfuly creepy use of sounds.
The acting is generally very good, particular kudos to Gomez and Margarita Lozano as his wife. This is a film that will be compared to The Sixth Sense and The Others and I think it will be favorably compared. Recommended and here's hoping that Hollywood will not try and re-make it....
Thanks for putting up my last couple of missives here from the land of beer and chocolate. Tuesday night here and I thought I'd fill you in on the new one with Edward Furlong and the vast awesomeness that is The Eye
Three Blind Mice
The English language debut of French direct Mattias Ledoux. Apparantly this was the world premiere...
Edward Fulong plays a computer geek living in London who has sort of cooled off on the woman front after his brother ran off with the woman of his dreams. His contact with women is now through personal web-cam pages. One night when he is visiting his current fave he is blocked from the site by a firewall which he breaks through with suspicious ease just in time to see her get gutted in front of the camera. He calls the police and almost imediately becomes a suspect. Enter cyber-cop played by the lovely Emilia Fox.
Plot holes abound in this one. How does he know that his brother will have a password to crack the firewall on a site that has nothing to do with him? Why is he so worked up about his brothers wife when she is extremely dull? Do all people over the age of 30 really hate computers? The protaganists seem to catch on to what is really going on extremely fast based on little to no evidence. The end feels, well, rushed. Conspiracy? Where did that come from? Who are these people shooting at each other?
But it's not all negative. Furlong is good considering the material, he gives us a sympathetic hero who does not see what is wrong with internet porn... Fox is good. The scene where a web-cam site is being set up is well handled and the end (I mean the very end) is pretty good. Apart from the music. My god man, what made you think that a jaunty Texas tune would be the right thing to play over that? It's just wrong....
Ledoux said in his introduction to the film that this is a look at what is real and what is not and how information can be manipulated. Not sure if they showed the right film after his speach in that case. All I saw was a bit of a mess with a few nice touches here and there.
Still, maybe with a few beers when it comes out on dvd it could be a way to pass a while when we are bored of the internet porn....
And now, The Eye.
Oh. My. God. This rules like an Albanian dictator. Why are we going to be treated (if that is the right word to use) to a US remake of what is pretty damn close to being a perfect film as is? Why not just spend all that money promoting the original and teaching people that subtitles do not mean afilm is a touching romance between a Latvian goat-herd and a seal pup? See the original. Kill and maim if necessary. This rocks like a great big rocking thing.
Quick summary. Mann has been blind since the age of two. Now in her early twenties she is given a new cornea coming from an anonymous donor and gets her sight back. But along with the sights of the normal world, she can also see a lot more that she bargained for... I don't want to give too much away because the story is a trip, from the first time she opens her new eyes to the very end.
Great performances, these are real characters (even the male lead who seems to be stoned for the entire film. Either that or he is really stupid.) You feel for these people. But the real stars of the show are the Pang Brothers who directed this mini masterpiece of supernatural cinema. They use every trick in the book. The first shots from our heroines point of view, all blurred shapes, with a few that we feel should not be there...
The feeling of menace they manage to build in key scenes. The lift scene : pant-wetting. In a really, really good way. This is what horror should be like. Creepy, masterful and truly terrifying. The nightmare sequences are amazing. The way the glimpses of the dead are handled, each in a slightly different way. A fabulous ending.
This must get a wider release. It deserves to be seen. I belive that Tom Cruise's company has the rights, and he has not done much wrong recently but I don't see how this can be topped. It really is a shame when the only way to get people into a cinema is to re-make a film with ten times the budget and one tenth the imagination.
Anyway, it's late and I'm tired. If I can just stop thinking about The Eye I may be able to get some sleep....
Later all.
Lonewolf.
Keep us posted as you see more, Lonewolf, and thanks for your good work so far.
"Moriarty" out.
