MIFF Day 11
The King and the Bird
Wow, this was unexpected. An animated film from 1980, little seen outside of Europe, and I have no idea why. This is incredible. A retelling of a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, but completely demented and totally sweet. The King of the title is a vicious little bastard, but he dies early on, assassinated (in a very humorous and totally karmic way) by a portrait of himself, come to life and leaping off the canvas. There's a Chimney Sweeper and a Shepherdess, also paintings, who fall in love and escape their paintings to seek love in the real world. The jealous king orders his police to hunt them down so he can marry the Shepherdess, and the Bird of the title aids them in their escape. There's hundreds of little details that are absolutely charming. The baby birds, the King's puppy, they get heaps of scenes that are just lovely. And the imagination on display is staggering. There's an underground city, a megalopolis style castle complete with elaborate elevators, the secret police appear in a number of inventive guises and there's a giant steam-powered robot centurion as well. Add to that the animation is incredibly well-crafted, with several scenes of buildings collapsing where the level of detail had me gobsmacked (remember, this was done in 1980, because computers could assist in such things). All in all, it's a crime more people haven't seen this gem. It's a stunner.
Che Part 1: The Argentine
Part one of Steven Soderberg's hagiography to Ernesto "Che" Guevara is a brilliant piece of cinema. Beautifully photographed, expertly paced, it's nice to sit in a cinema and know you're in the hands of a master filmmaker. It's a great film, definitely worth watching. Part one is probably the easier of the two to take, as it covers the period before Che became the questionable figure most people would prefer to not talk about. I'm curious to see how they tackle part two. Advance word is that it's a highly uncritical film that fails to deal with Che's participation in death camps and doesn't really address the ethics of his philosophy on how to foment revolution, whether the indigenous population want it or not. But that's the second film. This one is excellent, and the guerilla battle where they take Santa Clara in particular is a great piece of war cinema.
It Might Get Loud
A doco about guitarists, in particular Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White, it's basically three guys talking about their passion for music. And really, that's all you need, because they're all three very vocal about their passion. The different approaches they take are all interesting, and there's a golden moment where The Edge shows where he'd be without his effects rack. The opening to Elevation is completely uninspiring. But for him, the effects rack is what he loves to play with. Jack White hates it, preferring to play with old guitars that he has to wrestle to get the sound he wants from them. He likes to fight his instrument, and the blood on the fretboard isn't a figure of speech. Jimmy Page is less forthcoming about his process, but his tale about his move from session guitarist to Led Zeppelin is inspiring. And seeing all three musicians seated together and swapping techniques is great too.
Eden Log
An object lesson in low-budget science fiction, this is HR Giger channeled through Shinya Tsukamoto. A man wakes up with no memory of who he is or where he is, and slowly climbs through the levels of an underground greenhouse. There's a tree that is harvested for its sap, apparently the sap provides power to a city above, but it also turns the workers into aggressive mutants. There are guards fighting off the mutants while trying to find someone loose in the complex. Is it him they're after? Or someone else? There's shades of Bio Shock, Half Life and Flashback in the story, and the end somehow skips explanation to go straight to denoument, though how the man knows to do what he does is unexplained, but it's still cool. The visuals are absolutely top notch, with some incredible in-camera editing tricks as a projector plays back a scene and the man finds different flat surfaces to hold up to get the whole image. The slow reveal of the entire sequence had me transfixed. The film is shot in completely desaturated colour, with lots of darkness and backlight making the most of what would have been a minimal budget. It looks the goods, and the design is stunning. It's let down a bit by the end, but visually it's one of the most striking SF films in quite a while.
Wow, this was unexpected. An animated film from 1980, little seen outside of Europe, and I have no idea why. This is incredible. A retelling of a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, but completely demented and totally sweet. The King of the title is a vicious little bastard, but he dies early on, assassinated (in a very humorous and totally karmic way) by a portrait of himself, come to life and leaping off the canvas. There's a Chimney Sweeper and a Shepherdess, also paintings, who fall in love and escape their paintings to seek love in the real world. The jealous king orders his police to hunt them down so he can marry the Shepherdess, and the Bird of the title aids them in their escape. There's hundreds of little details that are absolutely charming. The baby birds, the King's puppy, they get heaps of scenes that are just lovely. And the imagination on display is staggering. There's an underground city, a megalopolis style castle complete with elaborate elevators, the secret police appear in a number of inventive guises and there's a giant steam-powered robot centurion as well. Add to that the animation is incredibly well-crafted, with several scenes of buildings collapsing where the level of detail had me gobsmacked (remember, this was done in 1980, because computers could assist in such things). All in all, it's a crime more people haven't seen this gem. It's a stunner.
Che Part 1: The Argentine
Part one of Steven Soderberg's hagiography to Ernesto "Che" Guevara is a brilliant piece of cinema. Beautifully photographed, expertly paced, it's nice to sit in a cinema and know you're in the hands of a master filmmaker. It's a great film, definitely worth watching. Part one is probably the easier of the two to take, as it covers the period before Che became the questionable figure most people would prefer to not talk about. I'm curious to see how they tackle part two. Advance word is that it's a highly uncritical film that fails to deal with Che's participation in death camps and doesn't really address the ethics of his philosophy on how to foment revolution, whether the indigenous population want it or not. But that's the second film. This one is excellent, and the guerilla battle where they take Santa Clara in particular is a great piece of war cinema.
It Might Get Loud
A doco about guitarists, in particular Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White, it's basically three guys talking about their passion for music. And really, that's all you need, because they're all three very vocal about their passion. The different approaches they take are all interesting, and there's a golden moment where The Edge shows where he'd be without his effects rack. The opening to Elevation is completely uninspiring. But for him, the effects rack is what he loves to play with. Jack White hates it, preferring to play with old guitars that he has to wrestle to get the sound he wants from them. He likes to fight his instrument, and the blood on the fretboard isn't a figure of speech. Jimmy Page is less forthcoming about his process, but his tale about his move from session guitarist to Led Zeppelin is inspiring. And seeing all three musicians seated together and swapping techniques is great too.
Eden Log
An object lesson in low-budget science fiction, this is HR Giger channeled through Shinya Tsukamoto. A man wakes up with no memory of who he is or where he is, and slowly climbs through the levels of an underground greenhouse. There's a tree that is harvested for its sap, apparently the sap provides power to a city above, but it also turns the workers into aggressive mutants. There are guards fighting off the mutants while trying to find someone loose in the complex. Is it him they're after? Or someone else? There's shades of Bio Shock, Half Life and Flashback in the story, and the end somehow skips explanation to go straight to denoument, though how the man knows to do what he does is unexplained, but it's still cool. The visuals are absolutely top notch, with some incredible in-camera editing tricks as a projector plays back a scene and the man finds different flat surfaces to hold up to get the whole image. The slow reveal of the entire sequence had me transfixed. The film is shot in completely desaturated colour, with lots of darkness and backlight making the most of what would have been a minimal budget. It looks the goods, and the design is stunning. It's let down a bit by the end, but visually it's one of the most striking SF films in quite a while.
posted by Andrew Lee at 11:49 PM
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