Hey folks, Harry here - well with Sundance - we signal the beginning of the Film Festival Cycle, and as usual the next biggie is in Rotterdam. This is a fantastic film festival I attended years and years ago as a guest and would love to visit again. Their International selection of film is just excellent - and the best of type till we begin getting reports from Berlin here before too long. Anticipating a Kim Ki Duk film goes without saying, but this SURVIVE STYLE 5+ sounds awesome. Definitely one to look out for! I expect at any moment to hear from Elaine - she's always on the spot for us. Here ya go with Mr. Tough Guy!
Hey Harry and crew
Here’s a report from the 34th International Film festival of Rotterdam. It’s the first year under new Festival director Sandra den Hamer, but so far there haven’t been any major changes compared to last year, like always there are a ton of great movies. The second day just ended and so far the festival went on to have a great start, the openings film on Wednesday was Sideways, I won’t say anything on that since you all know how great a movie it is, but I will say something about two of the movies I saw today.
3-IRON
Bin-Jip (3-Iron) is the latest film by director and festival favorite Kim Ki-Duk. Bin-Jip is the story about a man, Tae-Suk who stays in other people’s houses, every morning he sticks flyers on people’s doors, and in the evening he looks for a house where the flyer hasn’t been removed, and breaks in. While he’s in the house he makes himself at home, eats the food he finds in the fridge, wears the clothes he finds in the closet, and even uses the toothbrushes he finds in the bathroom. But while he’s there he also helps out, he waters the plants, does the laundry and repairs appliances that are broken, like clocks, and cd-players. One day he breaks into a house that isn’t empty, though he doesn’t know that, as he goes about his business, the woman who lives there spies on him. The woman is covered in bruises and is obviously in an abusive relationship, when her husband comes home, Tae-Suk helps her and they both take off, together they continue to break into other people’s houses and start a love affair, but things are stirred up when Tae-Suk is arrested.
To me Bin-Jip is pretty much perfect, it’s beautifully shot, and in many ways it reminded me of my favorite movie of last years IFFR “Last life in the universe”. The film is almost a silent movie, while people do speak, the two main characters don’t speak much, in fact Tae-Suk doesn’t say anything at all throughout the movie, but you don’t need words to understand what they feel. Bin-Jip is a beautiful, romantic film that at times is hysterically funny, and though the year has only just started I’ve got the feeling this one will make my best of 2005 list. This film really raised the bar and I’m looking forward to see Samaritan Girls, Kim Ki-Duk’s other film that I’ll be seeing later this week.
SURVIVE STYLE 5+
Survive Style 5+ is the first feature by Director Sekiguchi Gen, who previously worked on commercials. The movie was introduced by the director who was present, and made a great first impression, dressed in bright pink pants, and wearing a weird hat. The movie itself is hard to describe since it’s so loud and blaring and over the top, the movie follows a lot different characters, there’s a man played by Tananobu Asano who tries to kill his wife and succeeds, but after burying her in the woods, he returns home to find her back alive, and stronger then ever, he goes on to kill her again and again but each time she returns. Vinnie Jones appears as an English Assassin, with a sidekick translator. Then there’s a family whose father is hypnotized into thinking he’s a bird. And there’s even a short cameo by Sonny Chiba.
The movie is hilarious, the plot is absurd and over the top, and the movie contains a couple of hilarious made up commercials. The entire movie looks fantastic, the sets are as outrageous as the plot is, they are bright and multicoloured, and everything from the sets to the wardrobe looks over the top.
After the screening there was a Q & A with the director, I can’t remember every question but some of the ones I can remember were:
-If the sets were originally made for the movie or if they were recycled commercial sets, and if he designed them himself, to which he answered that they were all made specifically for this movie, and while he didn’t design them himself he did ask the designers for sets that were bright and vivid since the sets in traditional movies are usually a bit more boring.
-If it was hard to work with established actors as a new director. Basically he said that he had already worked with most of the actors in commercial work so there weren’t any problems
-There was also a question about the commercials featured in the film. The hilarious commercials in the movie were al thought up by him, and were basically the commercials that his clients didn’t like because they were too much
Anyway that’s all for now, there will be more later as there are some great movies I’m really looking forward to see, like Casshern, Howl’s moving castle, Izo and Three…Extremes, to name but a few.
Mr Tough Guy
