Father Geek here with the last two (2) reports from Viking Fest aka The 22nd Annual Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival. They're from Talkback/Chatroom regular and CONvergence staffer "433", and the man on the scene who has given us 2 previous reports on MSPIFF, the infamous "Mr. E". Sooooo, with no further BS from me... Here they are...
433 here, the arch nemesis of PetSnakeReggie, giving you a small update on our local film fest.
It's nearing the end of the 22nd Annual Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival, and I have been so busy that I have only gotten to see two films. However, one of the cool things about MSPIFF is that audiences are given ballots to rate each film. The 1-5 ratings are averaged that the week after the festival, there's a "Best of the Fest" week, where the highest-rated films get another showing or two. There are three days left in the festival proper, with the closing night gala at the beautiful Riverview Theater being SAVED, with Heather Matarazzo (WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE) and director Brian Dannelly in attendance. The remaining films found on the Minnesota Film Arts website at http://www.mnfilmarts.org .
Last Friday I saw PIRATED COPY, He Jianjun(BUTTERFLY SMILE)'s film about the prevalence of pirated DVDs in the streets of Beijing, and how they affect the lives of the people who buy and sell them. Being a big intellectual property fan myself, I was excited about seeing this film, but sadly it was not a big winner in my book. It was far too scattershot, and at only 89 minutes, felt overlong. It could have worked if the film had focused on a couple of people instead of moving from character to character like a Robert Altman movie that was completely unplanned. Shot on digital video, there are some excellent shots in there, but there are just as many amateurish handheld running shots that last far too long. Very disappointing.
Last night, however, was cautionary tale OVERNIGHT, the story of Troy Duffy, the writer/director of cult hit THE BOONDOCK SAINTS. Every wannabe director should see this movie and do the exact opposite of everything Duffy did. Duffy is a talented writer and director - the problem is, he knows it. He gets lucky with a sweetheart deal from Miramax's Harvey Weinstein worth over a million dollars, then proceeds to blow it by being impatient and full of himself. Tapped to document his rise to the top, director Mark Brian Smith lucked out in getting Duffy's fall from grace on film. Duffy complains when people help him, and is never wrong in his mind - if there's a problem, it's somebody else's fault, someone is trying to screw him, etc. I see a little bit of Troy in quite a few of my filmmaking friends - the bombast, the attitude that Hollywood "needs" them, the shock when deals fall through...
Hope to see some local AICNers next week at Best of the Fest!
- 433
Father Geek back again... This time with the Third Report on the fest from "Mr. E"...
Mr. E here with one last report from the MSPIFF. For those of you just tuning in, some great films were shown in the last two weeks up here in the Twin Cities, many of which I managed to see for free. For those of you who live here, Best of the Fest is going on this week. Of this selection, I can't recommend Surplus enough. It's showing at the Bell Auditorium (U Film Society), Wednesday the 21st, so check it out if you get a chance. And now, without further ado, the final thoughts:
ZATOICHI - excellent samurai epic from director Takeshi Kitano, breathing new life into the mythical anti-hero Zatoichi, a kind of Zen Zorro played by Shintaro Katsu in over 20 previous films and a 1960s TV series. Zatoichi is a deadly blind swordsman who, in this film, assists two geishas (only one of whom is actually female) in seeking revenge for the murder of their family. Meanwhile, an equally deadly ronin named Hattori hires himself out to the leader of one of the yakuza gangs responsible for this murder, leading to an inevitable deathmatch between he and Zatoichi.
Under Kitano's very stylish direction, this film achieves the quiet beauty of Kurosawa, mingled with over-the-top bloodletting that would please any Tarantino fan. The film is also very funny at times, especially in an exquisitely timed, recurring musical interlude reminiscent of Jeunet & Caro's Delicatessan. To be honest, most of the CG used in the fight scenes looks very faky, but this hardly detracts from what is a highly intelligent, beautifully choreographed work of cinematic art. Zatoichi won the top award at the Toronto Film Festival and should most certainly be coming to theatres nationwide ... hopefully soon, because I want to see it again. 41/2 out of 5.
PERFECT STRANGERS - a very, very strange film from New Zealand, written and directed by Gaylene Preston, Perfect Strangers stars Sam Neill as a fellow (we never learn his name) with questionable intentions toward Melanie (Rachael Blake), a woman he meets in a bar and invites home with him. Melanie passes out on Neill's boat and wakes up the next day en route to his deserted island home. Once there, Neill, a man whom Melanie has never (as far as she knows) met before, professes his love for her and his desire to "save" her from her miserable life of going home with strange (very, very strange) men she meets in bars. From there, things get even weirder.
While the film is certainly interesting, and perversely funny on many occasions, I found it difficult to identify with either of the main characters, both of whom are, to use a medical term, really fucked up. Still, it definitely has its moments, the acting and cinematography are very good. Maybe it was just overshadowed by the fact that I saw it right after Zatoichi (sort of like how Cowboy Bebop The Movie didn't have much of an impact when I saw it right after Irreversible last year). Overall, I would say that Perfect Strangers is worth another look. 31/2 out of 5.
THE TESSERACT - the latest film from Oxide Pang, who co-directed The Eye and Bangkok Dangerous with his twin brother Danny, is a fascinating, non-linear study of cause and effect. Based on a novel by Alex Garland, the film examines the intersection of four lives, repeating scenes from various points-of-view, in the ironically named Heaven Hotel in Bangkok. We are first introduced to Sean (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), a wired and paranoid British drug runner working for the local mafia. Staying in the room just downstairs from his is a Thai hitwoman treating a desperate bullet wound she incurred trying to retrieve a stash of opium that later finds its way into Sean's hands. A British psychologist (Saskia Reeves), who is in Bangkok filming a documentary partly inspired by grief at the death of her son, moves in just down the hall and forms a strange but sweet and lasting bond with the hotel's 13-year-old bellboy, in whom she f! inds echoes of her lost child.
These four lives become irrevocably entangled in a symbolic representation of the Latin word "tessera", from which the title is taken, meaning a four-sided box or cube. According to a title at the beginning of the film, the tesseract has four dimensions that, when folded, become three. The plot is so multi-layered and complex that the symbolism is difficult to grasp on a single viewing, but the film is certainly entertaining enough to warrant a second. The cinematography is beautiful, despite the fact that it appears to be rather low-budget, and the editing is excellent. I particularly enjoyed an unconventionally shot sex scene between Sean and a Thai prostitute, as well as a brilliant cut from a butcher who is killed by a car to a butchered pig in his shop. The acting is also very good; I was especially impressed by the young actors playing the bellboy and the girl who seems to have a crush on him (these performances were particularly refreshing after having ! seen Kill Bill Vol. 2, in which a child actress is the weakest link, earlier that day). An ingenius parallel drawn between these two and the Thai prostitute and her lover is one of the best moments in this great film, following a series of twists and a jaw-dropping climax. One of my favorite films of the festival. 5 out of 5.
SAVED! - a wickedly irreverent comedy reminiscent of Heathers and Pumpkin, this is a very clever sendup of the hypocrisy of supposedly devout Christians. Jena Malone plays good girl Mary, from whose perspective the story is told, with suitable aplomb. When Mary finds out that her boyfriend, Dean, is gay, she has a vision in which Jesus (actually a bearded pool cleaner) advises her to save him from this sinful lifestyle by any means necessary. Unfortunately, this results in Mary getting pregnant. Her excessively pious best friend, Hilary Fay (Mandy Moore), spends most of her time trying to "save" Cassandra, a foul-mouthed, chain-smoking Jewish girl who finds a kindred spirit in Hilary Fay's wheelcair-bound younger brother Roland (Macauley Culkin). When Mary, Roland and Cassandra decide to stop believing in Hilary Fay's bullshit, she demonstrates just how vindictive and, dare I say, wrathful a devoted ! Christian can be.
This was the closing film of the MSPIFF, and it was definitely a crowd-pleaser. A fellow volunteer sitting behind me, Cameron Slick, cheered when Macauley Culkin's name came up in the opening credits, and he was vindicated; Culkin steals the showm deadpanning some of the film's most hilarious lines. And Saved! does contain some extremely funny dialogue (Mac's Halloween costume was a personal favorite); at times there was so much uproarious laughter in the theatre that I couldn't hear some of this dialogue. Also, one woman in the audience unabashedly let it be known that she hated the ending, shouting out her dissent while the movie was still playing. This was "uncool in the eyes of God". Personally, I liked the ending in much the same way I liked the rest of the film: it was well-written, entertaining and ... well ... kind of cheesy. Though I found Patrick Fugit's skateboarder/missionary character largely uninteresting (he did much bett! er work in Spun), Heather Matarazzo of Welcome to the Dollhouse evens out the ranks in another brilliant characterization of an outcast desperately trying to be accepted. There are many moments in this film that should make even the most devout Christian laugh out loud. "Let's get our Christ on!" 4 out of 5.
Well, that's it, y'all. Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed it, and if you want more stuff by me, check out: www.angelfire.com/film/boomstickreviews/ or http://troma.com/fansart/term/ezrastead.html and if you do live in Minnesota, check out something at Best of the Fest at both of the theatres in Dinkytown.
