Father Geek here with our two Reporters covering MIFF, Tamsin and Norman, and lucky for us they have once again taken in different flicks for the most part giving us a broader view of the Aussie Film Fest... Check it out below...
Today was not too good for me. 6 films and only 1 that I really enjoyed.
Here goes...
First up was "Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story", another doco about a member of Andy Warhol's factory. Brigid was the daughter of Dick and Honey Berlin, both New York socialites (Dick was extremely high up on the totem pole in the Hearst Corporation) and was expected to follow in her mother's socialite footsteps. Unfortunately (or fortunately) Brigid was born with a weight problem, which she still struggles with at 60. This caused immense concern for her parents, who sent her to fat programmes after fat programmes but nothing helped. All it did was cause her to have major hang-ups about her body. After failing at every subject in school, eloping with a gay window dresser and spending her entire savings in one Summer, she discovered Andy Warhol and the Factory. She starred in a number of his films and was known for performing stage plays where she would call her parents and argue with them on stage. The doco uses a lot of great taped conversations as well as all the films and photographs she was in as well as depressing interviews with her now, as she counts every calorie and obsesses over Key Lime Pie and the dust in her apartment. Fantastic doco.
Now it's all down-hill from here...
"The Pledge" wasn't really as bad as I expected (sorry, didn't like "The Crossing Guard"). It was an okay idea and could have been a nice little film but Penn's "Actor-Acting-Like-A-Director" style did not match the story. Too many long (both in distance and length) shots and pointless moments. Once again, Aaron Eckhart wins as the best actor - he's fantastic as always. There were some nice surprises, and the actors always had something to do with their hands, but compared with others I've seen it wasn't up there with the best.
Now to one of the worst films so far..."Shiner". This is from the UK and stars Michael Caine as Billy "Shiner" Simpson, a second-rate promotor who finally has a chance to make it big by staging a world title boxing match between his son, "Goldenboy" and a visiting American fighter. This could have been a great film as basic premise was a good one. However, the script was appalling and some of the lines were so corny and melodramatic it was laughable (except in places where it was suppose to be funny and then the lines were inappropriate). Slow and tiring.
Next up was "Electric Dragon 80,000 Volts" by Ishii Sogo who is also a guest of the festival. He introduced his film by apologising for it being "a very loud film." It was damn loud. I'm not entirely sure what it was about but basically a boy receives a huge electric shock which triggers the "dragon" in his brain and gives him the ability to talk to reptiles. His electric powers are so strong his only relief comes from playing a mean electric guitar. His main rival (not sure why) is "Thunderbold Buddha" who had been struck by lightning as a kid and has 2 million volts of power. This film is really how all those videogame turned feature films (i.e. Tombraider) should be. No daughter/dead father issues. Just hard core music with a major rumble at the end. There were some great visual effects in this one but I had a headache at the end. It was a good wake up from the "Shiner" that's for sure.
Then we jumped back to Lake Tahoe with the US film, "The Deep End". This starred Tilda Swinton as Margaret Hall, a mother of three who has to deal with Beau, her seventeen year old son's involvement with a thirty year old nightclub owner, Darby. When Margaret finds Darby dead in their lakefront backyard after a confrontation with Beau, she decides to protect her son and get rid of the evidence. Unfortunately this leads to 'deeper water'. Once again the premise of this was actually a good one but there were some amazingly bad lines and choices with the script. Without Tilda Swinton, this would have just been a MOW with nice views of a big lake.
The final film was "Ring O: Birthday" the prequal to Ring and Ring 2 which I saw at last year's fest. Isn't Ring being remade in the US? I enjoyed this more than Ring and Ring 2 but it still suffered from some corny lines and not enough scares. There are so many better Japanese psychological fright films but unfortunately it is the Ring series which has become a cult hit now.
It was a big one today. So far 17 films in three days. Not too shabby.
Tamsin
Father Geek back with our "other" reporter from down under, Norman...
According to Day 2 MIFF doco AMERICAN NIGHTMARE, American horror died a death in the early 80s and has been lost in its own abstractions ever since. I love a wisecrack as much as the next guy but I like feeling scared - that chill up the back - a lot more. That's why I've gone looking elsewhere. And I have to say, it's Asian horror that gets me a lot more nowadays. Last year's AUDITION, Day 1 MIFF shocker THE ISLE, and today RING 0: THE BIRTHDAY.
This is a prequel to last year's RING 1 & 2. I missed both at the time and my cohorts have never let me forget it. A quick synop of the premise of the series as established by 1 and 2 (courtesy MIFF booklet): it's a "fatal video virus that ensures a miserable, screaming death". RING 0 deals with the events 30 years previous that result in this virus. Sadako is our alluring anti-heroine, a Carrie-type figure who has potential for great evil or good. The paranoid suspicions of her workmates help to tip her over the edge...
I liked this, a lot. Director Norio Tsuruta has created a super-stylish piece of celluloid. His colours are vivid and strong, and a superb sound-design fills out the world nicely. The frights are perhaps too widely spaced, and story-wise the last act falters... but it takes genius to come up with some of the images on show here. Particularly when "evil" Sadako lets her hair fall over her face and advances towards camera in that spastic Lynchian backwards motion with her bones crunching...
It was scary at the time okay!
I was surprised when I saw the Dogme 95 certificate up in front of F***LAND (damn that cursory reading of the program). I don't mind the odd Dogma film - THE IDIOTS & FESTEN being probably my favourites - but this was hard going. We're following Fabian as he journeys to the Falkland Islands looking to cause a revolution by impregnating British women with his Argentinian seed. Perhaps it was because Fabian carried the camera in a strap under his arm, but much of the time we were watching the action at a nausea-inducing 30 degree angle. His encounters with naive but sweet British nurse Camila produces some involving material, but I was happy to see the end of this.
Asian actioner DIE BAD was next up until it was cancelled at late notice. I tagged along with a bunch of fans to see the Polish THE BIG ANIMAL. Adapted from a 1973 short story by the late Krystovf Kieslowski, this deals with... a camel that turns up on the doorstep of a couple one day, and the ripple effects (some good, some bad) this sends through the community. What I saw of this was sweet and quirky and very much a fable. But I disappointed myself by snoring through the last half hour. Five days in and seventeen films later, MIFF was starting to get on top of old Norman. But no fear, I had a Bex and a quick cappucino and was raring to go for my first Ishii Sogo film of the fest, ANGEL DUST.
"I hope you enjoy the film, it is like a beautiful bad dream" said Ishii, wearing black leather rock star pants. He could barely look over the lectern, and I was surprised to see he looked all of 18 years old.
And then ANGEL DUST started. It's a riff on serial killer films, with a dash of HOLY SMOKE! thrown in. The story is pure gibberish but Sogo kept my interest alive with his genius craftsmanship. His Tokyo has a low sonic rumble and subway flash... along with a couple of stunning locations near the foot of Mt Fuji. I hesitate on writing a synopsis because I wasn't all that clear on what was happening and indeed where we'd finished up. The word on the way out seemed similar - people were pretty flummoxed. The pictures were real pretty, though...
Norman
