Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Someone mentioned the other day in a talkback that would wouldn’t have the “guts” to run a review of OPERATION DREAMLAND. Well, here you go, and surprisingly, I’m not dropping dead from the shock of printing it. Go figure!
Hey Harry, Moriarty and crew!
Since you posted my first report, I’ve decided to try and sneak in one more…
Saturday I spent throwing boomerangs on the beach. Not much to tell, except that it’s mighty bizar to throw something forward and having it hit the guy standing behind you on the head.
Sunday gave me two films, the first of which was PANORAMA EPHEMERA, by American experimental filmmaker Rick Prelinger. The film was the type of which you really should always check out a few from at a festival, if you have the time. While you do run the risc of seeing something you’ll absolutely loathe, every now and then there’s someting in the experimental film sections that’s really worth your time in a large theater with surround sound. While PANORAMA EPHEMERA unfortunately didn’t reach that level (we sat on wooden seats in small theaterroom behind a restaurant) it was certainly interesting, being a collage of mostly pre-Vietnam American educational filmfragments, centered around the themes fear, migration and the relation between humans and animals… according to the filmmaker self, who was present at the screening. The nice thing about these experimental or abstract-like collage films however, is that they are pretty much inherently devoid of a strict single possible interpretation or meaning, in contrast with main-stream Hollywood filmmaking, which works so succesfully narratively because it adheres to a strict set of rules and narrative structures. In the discussion afterwards members in the audience also managed to see a very political component in the film, and also much humor. One of the favorites was a clip from a fifties government film about the riscs of a nuclear attack. They showed three small modelhouses, two very dilapidated, badly maintained, with leaves and toys lying around in the garden, and one which was painted white, had a nice picket-fence and a neatly-trimmed lawn. Now let’s see what happens if we detonate a nuclear weapon in the neighbourhood. “Here comes the heat-wave!” It will be no surprise that in the end the only house left standing was the white one. The clip about Gardiana, our own great superheroine dressed in aluminium-foil and holding a trash-can (no, really) warning small kids not to play around with the gas-stove and your father’s hand gun (“A gun is always loaded!”), stood a little out from the rest, being from 1977 and having a very seventies feel, but was still also good for a laugh… Silly Americans! ;-) The entire film, and all of the material it was based on, can be downloaded for free from internet… on some dot-org site of which I forgot the name.
Second film of the night was 3EXTREMES or THREE….EXTREMES… or… whatever. I think this has already had some reviews here, mine will be short, not in the least since I only saw 2EXTREMES, really wanting to catch that last train home… What I did see however, was great. The first section, DUMPLINGS from director Fruit Chan, is a wonderful portrait of a woman who is willing to cross a few very nasty lines to regain her youth and beauty. One of the first shots by d.o.p. Chris Doyle we see is a small pink featus being cleft in two with a hack-knife. While this doesn’t look remotely as disgusting as it sounds, and there’s actually quite some humour to be found as well, it does give a good indication of how far this film is willing to go. From other reviews that I’ve read, this one stands out from the other two as being the most intense and well-crafted of the three segments, with an emphasis on the psychological side of the story. But in my opinion, it lasted just one shot too long.
The second segment, CUT by Park Chan-Wook is a very grand-guignol story about a man forced to make an extreme choice. A succesful director is kidnapped on the stage of his own vampyre-film by a neglected extra and forced to choose between killing an innocent small child or watch his pianist wife’s fingers being cut off one by one. Again, there’s a good deal of humour in between the agony, but the story does drag out a bit, and has a somewhat strange macabre twist at the end.
I didn’t see Miike Takashi’s BOX, wanting to catch the train and not being a fan of his work anyway. (It’s just silly!)
Today I opened with LATE BLOOMER, by Japanese director Shibata Go, a totally original film about a man with a spastic disability, driving an electric wheelchair and using a speech-computer to express himself, slowly turning into a psychotic serial-killer. Think this sounds weird? Wait ‘till you see the movie. It’s shot in black and white, and with it’s experimental techno-sound track it feels a lot like Aronofsky’s PI. The main actor, Sumida Masakiyo, pretty much plays himself, having the same disabilities as his movie-counterpart. While he needs assistance to survive, he is no idiot. He enjoys drinking and partying and has friends and a crush on a girl, like everyone, although his reactions soon turn out of control. Since (as always) I showed up a little late at the screening, so I missed the actor and director introducing the film, but I did see Masakiyo being carried out of the theater, looking quite content. Freaky insect- and abstract visuals-lovers should check out the short WHILE DARWIN WAS SLEEPING, which played before the feature.
Second film was the Indian Bollywood film THE KILLING (HANAN) by Makrand Deshpaande. The story is about a man we initally only know as Pagla, or Madman. He lives in an Indian village where he works at the tempel, keeping it clean and fighting lions in his sleep. One night an angry woman comes to the temple and cursus the goddess Bhagawita for dealing her with a husband that abuses her, after which she drowns herself in the river. Then there’s some joyous singing and danicng, and lo and behold, the goddess now seems to manifest herself in the beautifull young girl… Pagli, or Madgirl, whenever Pagla plays his drums. Intrige insues, and they end up in the city as a cash-cow for a police-chief, who charges people for seeing the possessed Pagli and recieve blessings from the goddess Bhagawita. Or something along those lines… While the film is Bollywood, in that it has a pretty girl (actually, a lot of pretty girls) and a tough but sweet guy, singing and dancing and it lasts two and a half hours, but still it feels a little different. There are really only three songs in the film, and the story makes an enormous twist in the last part which with it’s violence and darkness feels somehow non-Indian. Then again, I’m no expert, I just loved the film.
Next on the programme was OCCUPATION: DREAMLAND, a documentary by Americans Garrett Scott and Ian Olds about unit 24/7 from the 82nd Airborne Division, stationed in Falluja in Iraq in early 2004. Embedded with the crew, they follow the persons in the group on their daily activities, and listens in on their conversations. Except for some text-comments at the end of the film, the entire geo-political situation surrounding them is hardly addressed, except by the soldiers themselves. The film does a great job in just showing what happens there, and who the people are that are working and fighting in Iraq, and many soldiers eventually have to admit that it seems somewhat pointless what they are doing, no matter what your political preference may be. This is best seen in a scene showing a mission debriefing where even their superiour has to admit that basically the only thing their doing out there is protecting themselves, which you can of course do easily from the comforts of your own living room. When the troubles really started in Falluja in the summer of 2004, the unit returned home and was replaced by marines.
Final movie of the evening was MYSTERIOUS SKIN by Gregg Araki. Once again the filmmaker, who really now seems mainly interested in the relation between aliens and sexuality, has managed to gather a cast of young main-stream actors and makes them do naughty things. To eventually make a beautiful and surprsingly respectful film about child-abuse. The film, based on a novel by Scott Heim, follows two boys who share a childhood experience. About ten years later, one of them remembers being abducted by aliens while the other knows better, and has turned to prostituting himself to adult men. The shy and nerdy Brady is desperately searching for answers for what happened to him, and through a detour by an alien abductee (played by the actress who stars as Chloe on the tv-show 24), eventually turns to his old friend. Joseph-Gordon Levitt, who is probably best known for his role on 3RD ROCK FROM THE SUN plays Neil, the boy with a crush on his little league baseball coach and who grows up to be a dark teenager with a great kiss-my-ass attitude. Levitt should be applauded for having the guts to play the role as he did, and being willing to act in quite a few graphic and disturbing sex-scenes. Michelle Trachtenberg has a nice supporting role as Neill’s soulmate. I love Araki’s films THE DOOM GENERATION and NOWHERE, they’re great films of the nihilistic side of the early nineties. MYSTERIOUS SKIN bears his signature as well, but is much more subdued and, as I said, in it’s sometimes shocking bluntness surprisingly respectful to the difficult subject-matter. In that sense, it is a slightly calmer and perhaps intellectually more satisfying variation of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM.
Well there it is for today… Tomorrow brings Tiger Award nominee SPYING CAM, amongst others. For now,
Greetings
dapascha
Excellent work. Keep up the boomerang tossing and the reviews.
"Moriarty" out.
