Hey folks, Harry here with another report from Mr Tough Guy at Rotterdam's International Film Festival which is going strong a zillion miles from Austin. HERO is a tremendous film. It was nominated for last year's Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film... and for some inexplicable reason... it has yet to be released in the United States. Miramax wonders why so many people order all region discs of these films... Well, if they didn't re-edit, dub or take over a year to release them... well, they might be in harmony with the audience and the profits to be found there. As for LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE, this was generally considered one of the best titles to emerge from last year's Venice Film Festival - and is reputed to be absolutely beautiful. I'm really excited by the emerging talent from Thailand with this film, ONG BAK MUAY THAI WARRIOR and KRASUE. Here's Mr Tough Guy...
Hey Harry
Back again with another report from Rotterdam. Yesterday I saw the best movie of this festival so far as Hero was one of the surprise movies. Every year there are a couple of surprise movies, and since I missed Shoalin Soccer as a surprise movie last year, this year I decided to take a chance and it paid of.
HERO
It wasn’t the first time I saw the movie as I bought the DVD way back in April when a theatrical release date was still unsure, and I just couldn’t wait to see it. Since then I’ve probably seen it more then a dozen times, but I was still waiting to see it on the big screen.
I loved the movie on DVD, but here’s a movie you really should see on the big screen. The cinematography is just brilliant, the coloured themes are beautifully done and the fights are phenomenal. I overheard someone in the audience that pretty much summed up my feelings about the movie as he said that Hero makes crouching tiger hidden dragon look like a third rate episode of Kung Fu with David Caradine. Not taking anything away from CTHD which was a great movie, but Hero is just so much better. I’m planning to go see it again after the festival ends, since it will get a general release in the Netherlands on Thursday.
LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
Today I saw another great movie, Last Life in the Universe(Ruang rak noi nid mahasan). It was preceded by a short introduction by director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang. He seemed to be a bit shy or maybe just not used to talking to large audiences, and after seeing the movie, the main character reminded me of him. He said that the movie was very nice, maybe a bit slow, at least, he didn’t think it was slow, but the producers thought it was a bit slow, he just thought it was nice. He asked people not to leave before the ending of the screening and jokingly added that if at the end they didn’t like the movie it was okay, but if they did like the movie, they had a problem.
Personally I loved the movie, and I’m just lucky to see 2 of the best movies in the same weekend.
The main story of the movie is like this: Kenji, a suicidal Ex-yakuza, hides out in Bangkok, living live as a librarian, then his live gets turned around as girl dies in a car crash before his eyes, he meets the girls sister, a thai girl who’s planning on moving to japan, his live changes as the two spent time together.
This movie has something in common with Hero, it’s absolutely beautiful, no surprise since Christopher Doyle did the cinematography for both. Tadanobu Asano (known from Zatoichi, and Ichii the killer) plays his role of Kenji, the shy, suicidal, clean-freak yakuza perfectly and is quickly becoming on of my favourite Japanese actors. It’s a really beautiful, sensitive movie, that really surprised me. I wished I could have stayed for the Q&A after the movie unfortunately I had tickets for another screening at another theatre.
With these two movies this festival is already a great success for me, and I’ve still got American Splendour, Lost in Translation and Elephant coming up.
Mr Tough Guy
