MIFF 2012 - Day 3
I think this will be the best MIFF in years.
Ernest and Celestine
I hadn't heard of Gabrielle Vincent's series of books about the adventures of Ernest the bear and Celestine the mouse, but if you've got young kids go check 'em out. And cross your fingers this film shows up with a decent english dub, because kids will love it. And so will you, it's a charmer. The story of a little orphan mouse named Celestine who doesn't believe that bears are big and bad and scary, she sneaks up into the city above to scrounge bear teeth to help the mice dentists replace the all-important incisors of other mice. The incisors being the foundation of mouse civilisation. When her mission goes wrong, she meets Ernest, a down on his luck bear who almost eats her but ends up becoming her best friend. And their adventures together are wonderfully inventive and thoroughly endearing. This one is a must see.
Your Sister's Sister
Why do I keep doing this to myself? If you run through the past few years I've been blogging MIFF, you'll find me constantly deriding the whole "mumblecore" movement. So why do I keep going to watch this shite? In this case it was because there was a gap in my schedule and Emily Blunt was there to lure me into filling it with the lastest effort from the director of Humpday, another mumblecore film I didn't hate but didn't love either. And I don't hate this one, it's funny until the third act falls apart and the final moments feel like the day one read through at a script workshop. But it still works, and it's satisfying enough. Halfway through I realised why I keep watching these films though. The Dogme school of filmmaking gave us unmitigated dreck disguised as "art", but it led to the wonderful film Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself. Mumblecore is a bit more advanced than Dogme, and this is towards the upper end of the scale (what with an actual story and everything), but I think I keep hoping for a film from the movement that pushes over the line and delivers a genuinely wonderful experience. This was fun, but it's not quite there yet. And for the love of God, sack the cinematographer and get someone who knows how to light a shot.
On The Road
I thought I was going to hate this, since On The Road is not really a story so much as it's a literary experience. The way it's written is almost the entire joy of the book. But just as Cronenberg knew the limitations of film in adapting Naked Lunch and mutated his film into a wonderful fusion of fiction and biography, Walter Salles has done much the same here. If Kerouac's On The Road was the mythologising of Neal Cassady as Dean Moriarty, Salles' On The Road is the deconstruction of that myth. Garrett Hedlund portrays Moriarty as a charismatic force of nature, a borderline sociopath who leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. Sam Riley as Sal Paradise may be the narrator, but he's often in the background as a result of Dean's personality. The film is fascinating as a critical examination of the Beats and their lifestyle, especially their treatment of women and the film doesn't flinch from examining the cost of their behaviour to the women in their lives. This isn't an adaptation of the novel, but rather a commentary on it. There's a few missteps, the Matt Damon background cameo was a distracting miscalculation, and a few other famous faces take you out of the reality created by the rest of the film, but by and large this is a success beyond what anyone had any reason to hope for. It's a genuinely good film of a novel largely viewed as unadaptable.
Flicker
I'm not entirely sure what I just saw. A comedy about a telecommunications company and the dysfunctional people who work there versus an underground terrorist cell of anti-electricity lunatics led by a man with a mechanical arm. I think that was at least part of what I saw. I'm not really sure I can describe it, it's just a joyously absurdist film about people being driven mad by technology. It'll be out on general release in a little while, I say go if you're in the mood for something weird, warm and funny.
Ernest and Celestine
I hadn't heard of Gabrielle Vincent's series of books about the adventures of Ernest the bear and Celestine the mouse, but if you've got young kids go check 'em out. And cross your fingers this film shows up with a decent english dub, because kids will love it. And so will you, it's a charmer. The story of a little orphan mouse named Celestine who doesn't believe that bears are big and bad and scary, she sneaks up into the city above to scrounge bear teeth to help the mice dentists replace the all-important incisors of other mice. The incisors being the foundation of mouse civilisation. When her mission goes wrong, she meets Ernest, a down on his luck bear who almost eats her but ends up becoming her best friend. And their adventures together are wonderfully inventive and thoroughly endearing. This one is a must see.
Your Sister's Sister
Why do I keep doing this to myself? If you run through the past few years I've been blogging MIFF, you'll find me constantly deriding the whole "mumblecore" movement. So why do I keep going to watch this shite? In this case it was because there was a gap in my schedule and Emily Blunt was there to lure me into filling it with the lastest effort from the director of Humpday, another mumblecore film I didn't hate but didn't love either. And I don't hate this one, it's funny until the third act falls apart and the final moments feel like the day one read through at a script workshop. But it still works, and it's satisfying enough. Halfway through I realised why I keep watching these films though. The Dogme school of filmmaking gave us unmitigated dreck disguised as "art", but it led to the wonderful film Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself. Mumblecore is a bit more advanced than Dogme, and this is towards the upper end of the scale (what with an actual story and everything), but I think I keep hoping for a film from the movement that pushes over the line and delivers a genuinely wonderful experience. This was fun, but it's not quite there yet. And for the love of God, sack the cinematographer and get someone who knows how to light a shot.
On The Road
I thought I was going to hate this, since On The Road is not really a story so much as it's a literary experience. The way it's written is almost the entire joy of the book. But just as Cronenberg knew the limitations of film in adapting Naked Lunch and mutated his film into a wonderful fusion of fiction and biography, Walter Salles has done much the same here. If Kerouac's On The Road was the mythologising of Neal Cassady as Dean Moriarty, Salles' On The Road is the deconstruction of that myth. Garrett Hedlund portrays Moriarty as a charismatic force of nature, a borderline sociopath who leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. Sam Riley as Sal Paradise may be the narrator, but he's often in the background as a result of Dean's personality. The film is fascinating as a critical examination of the Beats and their lifestyle, especially their treatment of women and the film doesn't flinch from examining the cost of their behaviour to the women in their lives. This isn't an adaptation of the novel, but rather a commentary on it. There's a few missteps, the Matt Damon background cameo was a distracting miscalculation, and a few other famous faces take you out of the reality created by the rest of the film, but by and large this is a success beyond what anyone had any reason to hope for. It's a genuinely good film of a novel largely viewed as unadaptable.
Flicker
I'm not entirely sure what I just saw. A comedy about a telecommunications company and the dysfunctional people who work there versus an underground terrorist cell of anti-electricity lunatics led by a man with a mechanical arm. I think that was at least part of what I saw. I'm not really sure I can describe it, it's just a joyously absurdist film about people being driven mad by technology. It'll be out on general release in a little while, I say go if you're in the mood for something weird, warm and funny.
posted by Andrew Lee at 12:41 AM
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