MIFF Day 10
Officially past the midpoint now, and the last of the crazy five film days. I'm getting old...
TATSUMI
Based on Yoshihiro Tatsumi's Eisner award winning autobiographical graphic novel, A Drifting Life, as well as a number of his other works, Tatsumi is a beautifully animated introduction to a side of manga and anime we don't often see. Gekiga, a more adult form of manga, is what this is, and Tatsumi is credited with inventing it. Rumour even has it that Osamu Tezuka was so jealous of its success he fell down the stairs of his house. The stories told are mature, thoughtful and disturbing. Adult here doesn't mean pornographic, it means for adults. There's a photographer who documents the aftermath of Hiroshima, taking an iconic photo only to discover its meaning to be far sinister than he thought. There's a sexually repressed manga artist who becomes obsessed with the crudely drawn pornography on a toilet wall. A retiring salaryman longs for one fling before he finds himself trapped at home in his loveless marriage. Most disturbing is the story of a girl who sleeps with American GI's, and is hassled by her father. The stories are all grim, but full of the beauty of fallen humanity. I was lamenting the lack of animation at this year's festival, but Tatsumi makes up for it. I loved it.
PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES
Print journalism is fighting for its life, everyone can see this, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing. This insightful documentary examines life behind the scenes at the New York Times as it struggles with maintaining a high standard of journalism in the face of diminishing revenue. It covers their involvement with Wikileaks, as well as their failures with two serious scandals as journalists turn out to be faking stories or neglecting their investigative duty. You see how serious these people are about quality journalism, and their fears about what it would mean for print journalism to go away. One of the most pointed moments occurs in a debate between Michael Wolff, the founder of Newser.com, and David Carr, the NYT media reporter. Wolff disparages "old media", but is silenced when Carr shows him what the front page of his website would look like without all the articles culled from newspapers... An almost empty page. It's a striking image that shows how dependent (or is that parasitic?) "new media" news sites are on print journalists for their content. It's a thoughtful documentary that leaves you wondering what the future holds for actual, quality journalism. As they say in the film, 1000 bloggers quoting each other isn't the same as someone actually going into a warzone to report on what's going on. Go see this when it his mainstream release, if only to watch David Carr lay the smackdown on half a dozen blogging punks. It really is glorious to watch.
POSITION AMONG THE STARS
The third in a trilogy of documentaries (which I haven't seen), I'm not entirely convinced this is documentary in the traditional sense of the word. There's too much editing between shots, standard angle/reverse angle stuff as well as establishing shots, etc. It feels a bit staged. But at the same time, I don't doubt the truth of what we see. Some of it might be re-enactments of events, but I think it's mostly telling the truth of life in the slums of Jakarta. It's a slice of life story, a bit bleak, a bit hopeful, a bit funny. There's no narrative running through it, it's just stuff happening, but it's engaging and the subjects are all interesting people.
BEGINNERS
Christopher Plummer plays Hal, who at 75 comes out to his son Oliver, played by Ewen McGregor. He's known he's been gay his whole life, and so did his wife, but she didn't care and proposed to him anyway. It's a light and airy story about finding yourself, breaking free of the restrictive ways of your past and embracing life. Though with the amount of lo-fi visual gimmickry used, it feels to me too much like a whimsical 90's American indie film. Director Mike Mills gets away with it, and it really is a very lovely film, but the style feels like a throwback. Halfway through MIFF, I'm starting to wonder if there are still filmmakers out there interested in advancing the medium.
HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN
Having just bemoaned the mimicry of older film fads, there's this fun little number that glories in seedy grindhouse style. Though truthfully, while this film, like Machete, was first born as a trailer for the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse project, grindhouse isn't quite where this film finds its DNA. It's more a Troma film with good actors and a budget. Rutger Hauer is the titular Hobo, and it's not long before he's found himself a hooker with a heart of gold to be his sidekick. The cliches come thick and fast, as do the grotesque one-liners and splat-tacular gore and violence. It's a genuinely unhinged film, complete with armoured demon bounty hunters with a pet tentacle beast. An audience film for sure, you'll want to be laughing and cheering with others as it gets more and more absurd and over-the-top. Good silly fun.
TATSUMI
Based on Yoshihiro Tatsumi's Eisner award winning autobiographical graphic novel, A Drifting Life, as well as a number of his other works, Tatsumi is a beautifully animated introduction to a side of manga and anime we don't often see. Gekiga, a more adult form of manga, is what this is, and Tatsumi is credited with inventing it. Rumour even has it that Osamu Tezuka was so jealous of its success he fell down the stairs of his house. The stories told are mature, thoughtful and disturbing. Adult here doesn't mean pornographic, it means for adults. There's a photographer who documents the aftermath of Hiroshima, taking an iconic photo only to discover its meaning to be far sinister than he thought. There's a sexually repressed manga artist who becomes obsessed with the crudely drawn pornography on a toilet wall. A retiring salaryman longs for one fling before he finds himself trapped at home in his loveless marriage. Most disturbing is the story of a girl who sleeps with American GI's, and is hassled by her father. The stories are all grim, but full of the beauty of fallen humanity. I was lamenting the lack of animation at this year's festival, but Tatsumi makes up for it. I loved it.
PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES
Print journalism is fighting for its life, everyone can see this, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing. This insightful documentary examines life behind the scenes at the New York Times as it struggles with maintaining a high standard of journalism in the face of diminishing revenue. It covers their involvement with Wikileaks, as well as their failures with two serious scandals as journalists turn out to be faking stories or neglecting their investigative duty. You see how serious these people are about quality journalism, and their fears about what it would mean for print journalism to go away. One of the most pointed moments occurs in a debate between Michael Wolff, the founder of Newser.com, and David Carr, the NYT media reporter. Wolff disparages "old media", but is silenced when Carr shows him what the front page of his website would look like without all the articles culled from newspapers... An almost empty page. It's a striking image that shows how dependent (or is that parasitic?) "new media" news sites are on print journalists for their content. It's a thoughtful documentary that leaves you wondering what the future holds for actual, quality journalism. As they say in the film, 1000 bloggers quoting each other isn't the same as someone actually going into a warzone to report on what's going on. Go see this when it his mainstream release, if only to watch David Carr lay the smackdown on half a dozen blogging punks. It really is glorious to watch.
POSITION AMONG THE STARS
The third in a trilogy of documentaries (which I haven't seen), I'm not entirely convinced this is documentary in the traditional sense of the word. There's too much editing between shots, standard angle/reverse angle stuff as well as establishing shots, etc. It feels a bit staged. But at the same time, I don't doubt the truth of what we see. Some of it might be re-enactments of events, but I think it's mostly telling the truth of life in the slums of Jakarta. It's a slice of life story, a bit bleak, a bit hopeful, a bit funny. There's no narrative running through it, it's just stuff happening, but it's engaging and the subjects are all interesting people.
BEGINNERS
Christopher Plummer plays Hal, who at 75 comes out to his son Oliver, played by Ewen McGregor. He's known he's been gay his whole life, and so did his wife, but she didn't care and proposed to him anyway. It's a light and airy story about finding yourself, breaking free of the restrictive ways of your past and embracing life. Though with the amount of lo-fi visual gimmickry used, it feels to me too much like a whimsical 90's American indie film. Director Mike Mills gets away with it, and it really is a very lovely film, but the style feels like a throwback. Halfway through MIFF, I'm starting to wonder if there are still filmmakers out there interested in advancing the medium.
HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN
Having just bemoaned the mimicry of older film fads, there's this fun little number that glories in seedy grindhouse style. Though truthfully, while this film, like Machete, was first born as a trailer for the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse project, grindhouse isn't quite where this film finds its DNA. It's more a Troma film with good actors and a budget. Rutger Hauer is the titular Hobo, and it's not long before he's found himself a hooker with a heart of gold to be his sidekick. The cliches come thick and fast, as do the grotesque one-liners and splat-tacular gore and violence. It's a genuinely unhinged film, complete with armoured demon bounty hunters with a pet tentacle beast. An audience film for sure, you'll want to be laughing and cheering with others as it gets more and more absurd and over-the-top. Good silly fun.
posted by Andrew Lee at 11:27 PM
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