Hey all, Ozymandias here...
Our tireless representative in the piss up capital of the world Otto has some more sage reviews for ya..... Despite his protestations, his workrate has been huge - I positively insist that any AICNers who meet up with him in the Granite city stump up a pint or two or three...... Let's see what sort of reports we get after that!!!!!
Otto here. Well, I have to laugh. Ozymandias calling me 'tireless' is ironic in light of the fact that I had to take today - Monday - off due to being utterly wiped out. That 19-hour Sunday was just the straw that broke the camel's back. But I'll be back into the breach tomorrow, mark my words...
Bonus quick review before I go on:
THE RING 0: THE BIRTHDAY. JAPAN 2000.
Absolute incomprehensible horseshit. This series got steadily worse and more confusing as it went on, and reached an apex of ridiculousness when, in this film, they had...ah, fuck it, I can't even be bothered. It's not worth wasting words on. Just don't see it. See the first one if you absolutely have to. Then forget it. You'll thank me for it. Trust me. You're welcome. Only wish somebody had done the same for me...
SATURDAY 19/8/00.
Only saw one film today for a variety of reasons, the main one that I'd been kept awake all night by Miller reciting a Dioretix speech he plans to give today to a crowd from the local bar. He tells me he is planning to spread the Dioretix word and free the minds of people everywhere - or at least in the pub. It tell him it's just paralogical nonsense written by some now-dead hack sci-fi author and that he should be building a sex, drugs and rock and roll cult to replace the one we had to leave on Titan. We had those guys worshipping Sid Vicious as a deity. It was a laugh. Until their god overdosed, that is...
THE HOUSE OF MIRTH. UK. 2000.
Well, what can I say. I hate period pieces (think Merchant-Ivory should have their artistic license revoked) and this was an adaptation of an Edith Wharton novel set in New York in 1906 amongst the upper classes. So why did I see it, you may ask? Because there's a Gillian Anderson cult on Arous who find the X-Files to be one of the most hilariously kitsch things they've ever seen - all that ludicrous conjecture about aliens - and they wanted me to tell them what this effort was like because she's in it. I don't think my little furry friends will like this one. Anderson swans about in big hats and has emotion-repressing contests with everybody around her. Only we know she's a 'scarlet' woman because she wears a scarlet dress to a night out. Ooooh, subtle symbolism, don'tcha just love it? She has massive gambling debts and runs herself ragged in ever-decreasing concentric circles trying to get out of her financially destitute situation. Then she ******spoiler alert****** wears some different colours of dresses and new hats. I would tell you more about it, but, as one character put it, "I do not think you would have cared for the denouement." Hell yes. 140 minutes of my life wasted. I could have seen the 16mm print of DAWN OF THE DEAD again in that time. I walked out of this and had to cross half the town in the pouring rain, cursing Terence Davies (the director), Gillian Anderson, rain, Edinburgh, humanity in general...and Miller, for having the foresight to avoid this one. The lucky, lucky bastard. He'll make a good cult leader.
SUNDAY 20/8/00.
Well, maybe not such a great one after all. He started his Dioretix speech in The Tartan Skull (our local pub) last night and got told to shut up because he was interrupting somebody singing Hava Nagila on the karaoke. He was crushed, but I told him that a full day of viewing would help him recover. So we took in...
KEEPING THE FAITH. USA. 2000.
This one has been out Stateside for a while too, so if you want to see it there's a good chance you already will have. I thought it tried a little too hard to be a Woody Allen film in places ("the kosher nostra"), but was still a diverting enough lightsplash. I kept waiting for Edward Norton, upon opening the first multi-faith karaoke bar, to say something like "welcome to karaoke club...if this is your first night, you have to sing." But he didn't, unfortunately. Sure the Tartan Skull regulars could teach him a few things about karaoke chaos. Miller wept openly at this one, especially during the karaoke scenes. I think it may take him a while to get over his crushed cult aspirations. Oh well.
WITHOUT LYING DOWN. USA 2000.
Bit of a change of pace here. This was an utterly fascinating documentary about Frances Marion, the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood for two decades during Tinseltown's early years. Her reputation to a certain degree seems to have been buried under a conspiracy of silence - know I've never heard of her at least. She wrote nearly 200 produced films, both silent and talkies, doing stuff for people you may just have heard of like Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Lillian Gish and Rudolph Valentino. Marion was an inspirational character, and an extremely interesting one too. Despite a horrible personal tragedy in her own life - the death of her husband on Christmas Day due to gangrene - she managed to live an active, amazing life into her 80s. The only problem I had with this thing was that it turned a bit too feminist and manhating towards the end, with various Hollywood women complaining about their lot in life (you only make movies, ladies, please remember that - you're not curing cancer) and about how 'little respect' women get these days. I couldn't help but think their very presence in the film - and their well-paid careers - made a mockery of what they were saying altogether. But then again, being male, I would say that, wouldn't I? One thing of note: this event was held in The Lumiere, a lecture theatre in the Museum Of Scotland, and the place isn't too well suited to showing films; the sound is terrible and the place was absolutely freezing. I doubt if I'd like to see anything else there, to be quite honest. EIFF, please take note...
SOME VOICES. UK. 2000.
Somebody described this movie to me as being like 'Eastenders with swearing'. Eastenders is a bland, depressing TV soap on over here in the UK, so that may give you some indication of what to expect. Pregnant Laura (Kelly Macdonald, she of the ridiculous TRAINSPOTTING speech - "a little bit crazy and a little bit bad" - the sooner somebody tells this deluded dumpling that she can't act the better) falls out with her violent boyfriend and lets Ray, a schizophrenic she's just met on the street, move in with her after her boyfriend assaults him. Realistic, eh? They wish. Laura falls in love as Ray (a thoroughly unlikeable, grungy, freaky character) falls apart. This is one of those depressing flicks that the Brits do so well - and so consistently, for some reason. It was unbelievable, badly acted and scripted, and basically a waste of film. Countless thousands of guitar picks could have been made from the raw celluloid that went into filming this. Think of all the great tunes bands out there could have been playing if it wasn't for the selfishness of the filmmakers, sigh. And talking of worthless wastes of celluloid...
PROMEMONS-NOUS DANS LE BOIS (DEEP IN THE WOODS) FRANCE. 2000.
Fucksake. You know, some films make you just despair altogether. This is one of them. A dance troupe take up a private job doing a somewhat highly sexualised and fetishised version of Little Red Riding Hood for the owner of a remote Gothic chateau and his creepy little boy. A couple of them indulge in a little chic lesbianism. Then the lights go out and they start to die one...by...(yawn) ...fucking...one. How utterly, utterly tedious. This is just a straightforward stalk-and-slash pile of sheepshit. It's beautifully filmed, but a turd's a turd, no matter how pretty you try to make it. There is a reason this inane, insane, misanthropic subgenre died out in the 80s: it was FUCKING BULLSHIT. If you've ever seen DON'T GO IN THE WOODS...ALONE or THE BURNING or any one of a hundred other dreadful 'get several Beautiful People into a shaky situation and then bump them off in gory, boring ways' films then you've seen this one and can easily skip yourself the entrance fee. I asked for my money back - and I didn't even pay to get in. Kevin Williamson and his grating 'post-modern' SCREAM schtick has a lot to answer for. The only redeeming factor that this thing had going for it was the fact that some of the women and the situations they put themselves into looked like they'd stepped right out of a book of Roy Stuart's erotic photography. Very European (non)sensibility on display here. Still complete fucking crap, though. I didn't like this film, in case you hadn't noticed. Oh well. Tomorrow may bring a great morsel or two. Know I've got least one more excellent film to report about before the festival is through anyway. Don't touch that dial.
Pasta la vista baby,
Otto. Okay, and Miller too. He's starting to demand equal billing now. Stardom is going straight to his ugly head.
