Father Geek here posting our second great report from the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Edgard, Ozy, and Otto have put together a nice column on what's happening in Scotland for you, and a nice look at some wonderful movies to be on the lookout for in the coming months as they begin to filter into your local theaters...
Edgard reporting in...Well... here it is, our second report from the great
Edinburgh Festival. Ozymandias just sent me these,
written from Otto who is over there. You will find
some weird stuffs here below (beware some spoilers) as
well as reviews of TIMECODE and NURSE BETTY. Enjoy !
Remember there may be SPOILERS below!
Remember there may be SPOILERS below!
TUESDAY 15/8/00.
Already I feel hopeless and lost at celluloid sea. I have never seen so many crazy flickershows in my life. Saw the three RING films from Japan yesterday, which I hated to varying degrees, (though Miller came with me and kinda liked the first one a bit) and was a bit worried about going to see the first film today, which was (ack!) ANOTHER damned Japanese horrorshow! I must be either insane...or masochistic, one of the two. But I got the train through nice and early to see...
9:00-11.20 FILMHOUSE 1. AUDITION. JAPAN 1999.
Man, was THIS thing ever a surprise. I don't know what I was expecting, but not...this. Brrrr. This was SERIOUSLY disturbing shit, which was based on a novel by somebody called Ryu Murakami. Must be fun at parties. This started out friendly enough too. Aoyama loses his wife at the start of the film. Seven years go by, and his now-teenage son is now starting to date girls himself, concerned about his dad's solitary activities. Aoyama knows a guy who makes movies, so they decide to hold an audition that will serve a dual purpose - to cast a part in a film which may or may nor come off and to find the pining widower a new wife. The casting couch taken to the naked extreme. Aoyama is captivated by a young woman by the name of Asami. She used to be a ballerina until her legs were burned in an accident, and to Aoyama this is one of the classy old-school qualities he looks for in a woman. Seriously smitten, he starts to woo her. Things go bad when he tells her about his ex-wife, whom he hasn't ever fully gotten over. Asami turns weird, and bad things start to happen. This is FATAL INSTINCT (il)logic taken to the extreme - and I MEAN extreme. The last third of the film brings in some ultra-disturbing child abuse and torture subplots, and we find out that Asami is not who she ever really pretended to be. She suddenly comes on like some sadomasochistic fetishist's wet (from blood) dream, dressed in rubber and carrying some serious instruments of torture. The entire thing climaxes with one of the lead characters lying drugged on the floor, (injected through the tongue!) having huge acupuncture needles rammed into his chest and eyes(!) and having one of his feet cut off with a cheesewire. Nobody in the audience could believe what we were seeing, and there was a LOT of squirming and groaning at the ultra-realistic and gory carnage on the screen. This was sick shit. If that sounds like a recommendation to you, well, be my guest (and stay the hell away from me). If not, well, you have been warned. This was a good film, but I don't know if I could wholeheartedly recommend it to anybody else. Just warn them, really, and allow them to make up their own mind. Grand guignol to make you gag. Reminded me a bit of the pinku eiga GUINEA PIG, if that's a helpful reference point. And if you've seen that, you'll almost know what to expect. Almost. Bonus Best Line: "I don't know much about ovaries." Never were truer words spoken. Probably.
I stumbled blindly out of AUDITION and killed some time across the road at the Delegate club until the next film started, which was...
12:00-13:35 FILMHOUSE 1. TIME CODE. USA 2000.
You've probably heard of this one. Mike Figgis (using the abominable jazz music on the soundtrack that trashed Leaving Las Vegas - although thankfully not Sting this time) has made a film comprising of four continuous digital takes running at the same time on one screen. That's right, the screen is divided into four segments and you can watch four different - though inter-related - stories unfold at the same time. While it may sound complex and unwatchable, it's really not. You find your eyes flitting from one corner of the screen to the other to try and keep up with certain story strands, aided along by musical and dialogue prompts. GUARANTEED every male (and lesbian) eye in the place was on Salma Hayek though - especially when she was kissing Jean Tripplehorn. This thing takes place in LA and is a satire of film folk and their foibles. Now this is all well and good, and there are some extremely funny scenes, but the thing is this: I am heartily FUCKING SICK of seeing self-deprecating, self-referential Hollywood films by Hollywood people about how shallow and stupid Hollywood is. Okay. Hollywood is crap. We got that with THE PLAYER and SWIMMING WITH SHARKS and any other twenty satires you may care to mention. Does it make a director feel better about themselves to say 'well, you know I'm not part of the jolly Hollywood system, I mean, look how ironic I'm being, I'm laughing at myself and everybody else'? THE HELL WITH THAT! I WANT A STORY! I don't want rich Hollywood people making parodic films about how stupid rich Hollywood people are. I don't care. They're PAID to be stupid, that's their job. To act. Like idiots, if need be. Figgis, who got PAID to make this film, should've just had the guts to make a film about a few characters who had nothing to do with film and hang the critics. He provides himself with a 'get out of jail free' clause by having a character describe the basic premise of the movie and then another character describing it as the most 'pretentious crap' he's ever heard of. Oh, how witty and self-deprecating and post-modern, Mike. Oh, how boring. Make films about STORIES. ANYTHING except Hollywood stars will do. If you think all your peers and colleagues (and paying customers, for paying to see the work of 'idiots') are fools, then get a job as a brickie or something. Wash dishes. Get a job in Kevin's burger bar down in Florida - sure he'd love to talk geek with you about films. But PLEASE, NO MORE self-referential shit about Hollywood. This subject is now even more officially DEAD AND BURIED than it was when all the stars queued up to prove they could 'laugh' at themselves in THE PLAYER. And that was many, many years ago. Let it go, Mike. Flipping burgers awaits...
This was actually a good film, but boring. I had a couple of videos booked across at the videotheque in the Delegate Club, so I scooted across the road to take them in before my 6pm film. One of them, ANGELS OF THE UNIVERSE, has been reviewed on this very site - plus it wasn't there - so I won't/can't talk about it. Unfortunately, the other one was...
1:45-3:15 IRREFUTABLE TRUTH ABOUT DEMONS. NEW ZEALAND 2000.
Well, okay. New Zealand gave us Pete Jackson for which we should be eternally grateful. But he also has celluloid lobotomies like this to answer for, by inspiring people like director Glen Standring to believe he can make movies. Well, he can't.
Actually, okay, maybe that's a bit hard. There were some good scenes in this thing. It's just that they were far, far outweighed by the bad or the ugly ones. DEMONS brings us the heady tale of university lecturer-cum-cult-buster Harry Ballard (hey, wonder where they got the surname from? Guy who wrote the book I'm reading could no doubt tell you) who has become obsessed with demons since they killed his brother a year before. He hooks up with his Toyah look-alike female 'saviour', who has "a talent for making the ridiculous sound probable" and who is "pretty fuckable for a crazy person." Somewhat ticked off when the demons kill his girlfriend (leaving her dangling with blood dripping from her foot in a scene lifted straight from SUSPIRIA - loads of Argentoesque lighting in here too) and colleague, he sets off to find the - sigh - head demon (who looks - and is probably supposed to look - like Anton LaVey, Head of the Church of Satan). Much unentertaining carnage ensues; some cheesy gore FX (which looked just as good when they were done 20 years ago in MARDI GRAS MASSACRE), some listeless sex scenes and...the end. This is straight-to-video stuff, guaranteed. Karl Urban, the guy from THE PRICE OF MILK, is a likeable enough actor, but reminds me of somebody out of Aussie soap NEIGHBOURS. He just doesn't get very much to do apart from wander round the streets at night, shirtless and covered in blood but not attracting any attention. The director apparently got a degree in archaeology, and must've fancied himself as some sort of demon-killing character a la Harry D'Amour from LORD OF ILLUSIONS. There are some CGI demons in here, but they're only in it for a few seconds and remind me of nothing more of some of the shoddier FX from BRAINDEAD/DEAD ALIVE, especially the Sumerian Rat Monkey. And you'll remember how crap that was. If you've seen the film, that is.
Disappointed I couldn't get to see ANGELS, I got out a short film because it was based on a short story by Charles Bukowski, who is one of my favorite LA writers. You can't imagine how crushed I was to come back to earth and find that he'd died. Hard drinking and blackouts will just never be the same again, man!
BRING ME YOUR LOVE. UK 2000.
This is a very faithful adaptation (except translated from LA to England) of the tale by the same name from Septuagenarian Stew, a book of Bukowski's poems and short stories released in 1993. Robert Crumb did some excellent illustrations for a chapbook edition of the same story. Its about a writer called Harry who visits his wife Rose in a mental institution after she's had a nervous breakdown. He tries to placate her fears that he's not just going to a nearby hotel to have sex with somebody else, but it turns out Rose may be onto more than she could know. This had a real 70s feel to it and was pretty good, but the thing to do with something like this would be to make another four or five of them and stick them together on one tape or in one film, like Marco Ferreri did with Bukowski stuff in TALES OF ORDINARY MADNESS in 1983. Ian Hart, who plays Harry here, reminded me uncannily of Ben Gazzarra in that film too, for some reason. If you've seen the two, you'll know what I mean. It's the stubble that does. Outright Winner Best Line Of Day: "Are you the conductor of verisimilitude?" (Reply, deadpan) "No, no I'm not."
Well my friends and neighbours, tomorrow brings more technicolour treats. You'll just have to be patient until then. Right now I gotta get home. Heard Miller has ended up in the slammer again, for trying to tell somebody in a Bonnybridge pub about his 'cosmic unconsciousness' theory. He's become obsessed with the fact he thinks that the scientist in ME & ISAAC NEWTON may have seen the 1984 Alex Cox biopic based on our lives, REPO MAN, and stolen the basis for his 'unifying theory of everything' from the a speech the guy who plays Miller says in the film. I dunno, could be possible. I'll let you know when I find out one way or the other. Catcha later...
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WEDNESDAY 16/8/00.
Slim pickings at the festival today insofar as I could see. Saw two films: the excellent CHOPPER (which has been adequately talked about here before, so I won't review it, but can only advise anybody who hasn't seen it to do so) and...
9:00-10:50 ABC 1. NURSE BETTY. USA 1999.
This is the new film by Neil LaBute, the cheery guy who brought us In The Company Of Men and Your Friends And Neighbours. Cheery if you have a jet-black sense of humor and find misanthropy, mean-spiritedness and male gang rape being discussed as one of life's little pleasures, that is. I asked Miller what he thought of LaBute's films and he mumbled something through a bruised mouth (from his barfight of the night before) about not trusting anything that bled for three weeks and didn't die. I wasn't quite sure what he was talking about, so just ignored him and turned my attention to the screen from our front-row vantage point.
NURSE BETTY is the first film LaBute has directed that he hasn't written but it certainly hasn't lightened him up much anyway, that's for sure. It concerns Betty (Renee Zellweger), a neglected housewife married to dipshit car salesman Del (great, slimy performance from Aaron Eckhart) who fucks around on her and treats her like an unpaid housemaid. She escapes from her humdrum existence by watching a trashy soap opera, A Reason To Love. Del gets embroiled in a dodgy drugs deal and gets murdered by two drug dealers (played brilliantly by Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock, who has the best performance in the film), who scalp and shoot him in a cringe-making scene. Witnessing this, Betty is extremely traumatised and unwittingly takes off in a car containing the drugs the murderers are after. But it's where she's heading that's the kicker. She heads to LA from Kansas, determined to meet the heart surgeon heart-throb from her fave soap. She has been traumatised by the murder into fusing herself with the soap plot, and now believes that she is fated to be with the doctor she idolises. I know, just go with it, it's well worth it. Freeman and Rock follow her, Freeman ridiculously idolising her in much the same way she has done with her soap star, a nice little plot thread. She gets to LA, meets the actor who plays the heart surgeon...and that's all I'm going to tell you, because you have to see this thing. It's a great, funny (if somewhat sick) little film, and charming as hell with it. Renee Zellweger gives a lovely, innocent, unaffected performance, and really is a great character. You really root for her, and feel sorry for her towards the end when things just aren't going her way and she is being forced to awaken from her enveloping soap opera cocoon. She truly is brilliant. This is nowhere near as misanthropic as LaBute's other two nihilistic little anti-epics, but is still no cakewalk. There is some stuff in this to match anything in IN THE COMPANY OF MEN or YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS. But this is ultimately a romantic, post-modern comedy. A sick and twisted one, but a comedy nonetheless. See it and smile. And be sick. Great to see Crispin 'cockroach anus' Glover giving one of his usual eccentric performances too. It's been too long, Crispy baby!
I was going to go see another film, but this thing overran and walking into films when they have started just doesn't compute. So I just headed home after waiting a couple of hours to see CHOPPER and waited for tomorrow, an also-charmed Miller running at my heel like a bruised dog, enthusing about the performance of the guy who played him in REPO MAN when he was in the anti-classic CONAN THE DESTROYER. I switched off. Never was a Conan fan. Guys in leather wielding swords and speaking in an Austrian accent never did it for me, sorry. Beginning to wonder about Miller, to be quite frank. If he mentions Crom or Thulsa Doom, I'm outta here...
Otto Maddox.
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