Film Fests Archive for June, 2009
LAFF 2009 Review: Ponyo
Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo is, very loosely, based upon the Hans Christian Anderson tale The Little Mermaid, but with some bizarre twists that mark it as a Miyazaki film. I’m a huge fan of Miyazaki’s work, but I’ve found in general that I very much prefer his films in the original Japanese with English subtitles than re-dubbed in English with American actors. There’s almost always something lost in the translation with Miyazaki’s films when they’re dubbed: cultural references lost, or the way in which particular characters say things, or the emphasis put on this or taken away from that.
I realize that American audiences often find subtitles difficult to swallow, and further realize that in trying to market Miyazaki’s films to younger audiences, studios are targeting a demographic that might not be able to read subtitles anyhow, so I appreciate the necessity of dubbing Miyazaki’s films for this market. But that doesn’t mean I have to like the end result, although I can hope that seeing dubbed Miyazaki might eventually serve as a gateway of sorts to encourage older kids and adults to explore Miyazaki’s work in the original Japanese.
Because I recognize that I have this preconceived prejudice against Miyazaki dubs, I’m not going to judge the film completely until I can see a subtitled version. This dubbed version, though, is the one that you and your kids are more likely to see, so it’s only fair that I share some thoughts about it.
Animation-wise, it’s as gorgeous as one would expect a Miyazaki film to be. I heard a lot of “oooohs” and “ahhhhs” from little voices around the Mann Village Theater during the closing night screening, and the adults around me seemed to be as delighted by it as the kids. As with much of Miyazaki’s work, there are some dark and scary moments, but I don’t think there’s anything in this film that’s too much for younger kids to handle (and certainly, there’s nothing that’s any scarier than the evil sea witch in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, who I thought was pretty terrifying).
Story-wise, I can’t say I liked Ponyo as much as my favorite Miyazaki films, Kiki’s Delivery Service, My Neighbor Tortoro and Howl’s Moving Castle, or even as much as Princess Minonoke and Spirited Away, which I rate very slightly below those. Ponyo for me falls below all those films in terms of story and even the animation itself, but it’s still so much better than just about any animated fare offered to families by anyone other than Pixar that I’d still recommend it.
Certainly I’ll want my own kids to see it, though I want them to see both the Americanized version and the Japanese dub. In the meantime, all this talk of Miyazaki makes me think the long holiday weekend might be a perfect time for a family Miyazaki marathon. Subtitled, of course.
LAFF 2009 Review: Weather Girl
If Weather Girl had been made by a big studio, someone would have had the bright idea to cast Kate Hudson in the lead role of the Sylvia, the “sassy” weather girl on a Seattle morning show who loses it on live television after learning her boyfriend Dale (Mark Harmon), the “talking haircut” who’s the host of the show, has been cheating on her with his co-host.
As it is, Weather Girl doesn’t aspire to be much more than a slight romantic comedy, but Tricia O’Kelley (who also produced) brings a sharp, biting edge to the somewhat predictable plot that keeps it from feeling too sappy. Sylvia moves in with younger brother Walt (Ryan Devlin) and soon finds herself attracted to Walt’s best friend, Byron (Patrick J. Adams), who lives across the hall but seems to be perpetually in Walt’s apartment. Byron’s younger than Sylvia, though, so even though there are sparks flying between them, she deems him unsuitable for anything beyond a sexual dalliance. This is fine with Byron at first, but … well, you can guess what happens once these kids start connecting.
Weather Girl is looking to explore larger issues around women past their early 30s begin to be perceived as running out of time, both in careers and relationships. Faced at the age of 35 with having completely start her life over at a time when YouTube has made her outburst about Dale’s affair fodder for public amusement and mockery (and, in the process, made a mockery of any serious job prospects for her), Sylvia’s at first at a complete loss for how to move forward. A date with a dorky accountant (Jon Cryer) pretty much lays out Sylvia’s situation: she’s past the age of being able to afford to be too picky, and her life has now been reduced to the possibility of considering a business-like relationship with guys like this. Or is it?
The script mostly skims the surface of these ideas, though, never quite delving deep enough to seriously explore these real issues in a comedic or ironic way, instead opting for the safer (though far less interesting) realm of the rom-com, where all life’s problems are resolved in 90 minutes or less. It’s fine for what it is, but there’s nothing terrifically compelling going on here; it’s not quite edgy enough to break any barriers as an indie-type film, not quite shiny enough to be a true Hollywood-style rom-com, which leaves me not quite sure how to classify it.
I’d have liked, honestly, to see the edge a mind like Tina Fey’s or Sarah Silverman’s might have put to this concept, but as a slight, moderately amusing rom-com, Weather Girl’s fair-to-partly cloudy.
LAFF 2009 Review: Convention
Documentary filmmaker AJ Schnack leads a team of filmmakers behind the scenes of the 2008 Democratic National Convention in his new film Convention. Although the convention was itself an historic occasion, ending with the first nomination of an African-American for the presidency of the United States by a major political party, this isn’t a documentary following Obama’s road to the White House, or even his road to the convention; rather, it’s a behind-the-scenes documentation of the vast amount of work and coordination it took the city of Denver to host this convention while assuring the safety and comfort of delegates, nominees and Denver residents.
With remarkable access behind-the-scenes (particularly given the security concerns), Schack and his team capture the human moments behind the convention machine: the young reporter assigned for her first-ever political beat to cover the convention; the editorial and writing staff of the Denver Post, working their asses off to capture this historic occasion happening in their own backyard while struggling to keep up with and compete against all the journalists from out-of-state; the city officials charged with organizing things at their end while coordinating with the team responsible for the convention itself, and a merry band of protesters there to remind those watching that the first step toward losing your freedoms is failing to use them.
LAFF 2009 Review: Mid-August Lunch
The delightful little Italian film Mid-August Lunch is exactly the sort of foreign film you might imagine an American studio eyeing for a remake with an amusingly befuddled Albert Brooks in the lead role. The film centers around Gianni, a middle-aged man with no job and seemingly little ambition, who lives with his elderly mother.
Gianni and his mother are in trouble with the fellow residents of their condominium complex over a pile of unpaid dues and shares of upkeep work, so when the building administrator offers to take care of some of their debt in exchange for Gianni caring for the administrator’s elderly mother for a few days while he goes on vacation, Gianni reluctantly agrees to have his endless days of sitting around doing nothing imposed upon. Before Gianni knows what’s happened, his apartment is full of little old ladies and his quiet life of relative leisure turned upside down by the demands of caring for them and mediating their quarrels.
LAFF 2009 Review: West of Pluto
West of Pluto, a look at the lives of suburban Quebecois teenagers by directing team Myriam Verreault and Henry Bernadet, might have been a rougher, edgier, take on the American Teen-style micro-examination of the lives, attitudes and behaviors of those curious creatures, adolescents.
Unfortunately, once it breaks away from the mockumentary style it begins with into attempting to construct an actual plot for the teens to follow, the film devolves into a not-terribly-interesting storyline that includes all the usual suspects of teen bad behavior: cruelty to peers, sibling battles, hormones, unrequited adolescent love, rudeness toward the ‘rents, and a birthday party that goes out of control. (In other words, everything we’ve seen teens do in just about every teen film ever made.)
Where are the parents of these teens? Certainly not particularly involved in the lives of their wayward offspring or much interested in doling out consequences for bad behavior, as we see them primarily as either ineffectually nagging, awkwardly trying to connect, or being yelled at and berated by their bratty teenagers. These kids don’t seem to have a lot of limits, or if they do they treat both the rules and their parents with utter disregard. They certainly wouldn’t survive long acting like that if they were living under my roof, as my oldest, now-grown daughter, could attest (and frequently does to her younger siblings when they toe the waters of mouthiness or disrespect).
At any rate, we meet this particular group of wayward youths as they awkwardly present class projects on things they’re passionate about, an eclectic mix ranging from the expected (music, dancing, skateboarding) to the quirky (a last-minute Ben Affleck substitution after another student “steals” a girl’s idea to talk about Matt Damon), to the geeky (Pluto, in particular its revoked planetary status). It’s actually a clever way to introduce us to the main characters we’ll be spending time with for the next 90 minutes or so, and it’s too bad the rest of the film doesn’t keep the same tone as the opening bit.
LAFF Review: We Live in Public
The other night I attended a LAFF screening of We Live in Public; I’d missed seeing it at previous fests and was determined to catch it this time. I was expecting a documentary mostly about internet mogul Josh Harris and his experiment living his life with his girlfriend completely online and how that tore their relationship apart. And it is partly about that, but it’s also about what made Harris the particular sort of crazy genius-visionary he is, his early understanding of how the internet would change all our lives, and the ways in which it’s good — and bad — that we live our lives now in a public space more than anyone could have imagined possible a few decades ago.
CineVegas Dispatch: Leaving Las Vegas
I’m finally home from Las Vegas. Apparently I need to sacrifice a goat on the alter of the travel gods or something, because once again my flight was delayed due to a mechanical problem, this time with the fuel gauge. They boarded the flight, we all buckled into our seats, eager and ready to get the hell out of Vegas, and then a couple guys in mechanic’s coveralls popped into the cockpit for a chat with the captain. When you see that, you have to figure they’re not just planning their next poker night or golf game while the plane’s held up at the gate, so folks around me started muttering about a flight delay, and one loudmouth genius in first class indignantly marched up to the cockpit demanding to be told what was going on, only to be quickly put in his place by a feisty flight attendant.
1 Comment »CineVegas Award Winners
Easier with Practice Receives Grand Jury Prize
Godspeed and Etienne! Receive Special Jury Awards
All In: The Poker Movie Awarded Documentary Jury Award
Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo Wins Special Documentary Jury Award
Full press release after the jump …
CineVegas Dispatch: Parties, Gambling, Shows … Oh, and Movies
These folks at CineVegas sure know how to throw some parties. I’ve skipped out on most of the bigger shindigs, but did make it to late-night bowling the other night (awesome time, and, for the record, drunk film biz people bowling = much hilarity if you’re not drinking yourself) and to last night’s smaller party in the Kingpin Suite at the Palms, which was just crazy. Bowling lanes in the suite, two tables of distributors (and a few non-distributors who managed to get in on the games) playing poker, DJ cranking out the tunes, amazing views of Vegas and a bathroom bigger than most NYC apartments.
I heard they shut the party down at 5AM, and even then a group of folks headed downstairs to a bar to keep the party hopping. I hung out at the party for a while before heading downstairs to get in on a poker game at the casino (and also for the record, guys should never assume a chick doesn’t know how to play poker … though I do thank the drunken gentlemen playing at my table for their heavy alcohol consumption, generally poor betting decisions, and mistaken assumptions about my poker naivety).
Seattle International Film Festival Award Winners
Full press release after the jump …
CineVegas Dispatch: Redland
Director Asiel Norton’s first feature film, Redland, is the kind of film I go to festivals hoping to find: imaginative, lovely, and not quite like anything I’ve seen before. The film is about a family struggling to survive the Great Depression in a remote mountain cabin and the tragic aftermath of an affair the daughter, Mary Ann, has with a neighbor. The story itself is simple and not particularly unique — jealous, protective father; young lovers heedless of the consequences of their actions — but the way in which Norton tells his tale is unique and visually quite stunning.
Norton grew up on a remote mountaintop near where he shot the film, and he plays with and understands the light and shadow of his rural setting as a canvas for his story. There are shots in this film that are absolutely stunning, almost painterly in their beauty. Norton uses sepia tones that evoke Depression-era photographs like Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” to set the tone of the time and place in which his story is set, evoking a sense of stark hopelessness, hunger and desperation amid the deceptively fertile forest setting; these shots tend to feel like those old photographs come to life — or, perhaps more accurately, as if we ourselves have stepped into that world.
When Norton’s exploring the love affair between Mary Ann and her lover, Charlie, he bathes his shots in golden rays of light as if the happiness the couple is carving out of these moments in an otherwise bleak and desperate existence fills them and spills out to color the world around them as they see it; by way of contrast, he uses shadows and noise to evoke uneasiness and tension in the films darker moments.
CineVegas Dispatch: Vegas: Based on a True Story
This inhuman place makes human monsters. — Stephen King, The Shining
About halfway through Vegas: Based on a True Story, a film about two former heavy gamblers struggling to keep free of their addiction and make a decent life for their young son while continuing to live in a town where gambling is front and center, the above quote from The Shining popped into my head and stayed there.
Like The Shining, this is a story about a man with an addiction — and some underlying personality issues that his addictive behavior draws to the surface — and the way that monster within leads him to destroy himself and his family. The line between love and hate, security and utter ruin, is thinner than many of us might like to believe, and director Amir Naderi explores the dark spaces in between here, peeking through the lens of Las Vegas not just as the stereotypical glitzy destination for gamblers, pleasure seekers and lost souls, but as a place where people live and work and raise their families.
CineVegas Dispatch: Saint John of Las Vegas
My trip to CineVegas almost got off to a very bad start on Wednesday when I got to the airport and belatedly realized that my driver license had expired two days earlier on my birthday. Oops. Fortunately, my oldest daughter was kind enough to drag herself out of bed at 6:30AM in response to my frantic phone call, pick up my passport from my house, and schlep it out to the airport for me in time for me to catch my flight, so all was well.
It’s my first time at CineVegas, and my first trip to Las Vegas at all, and I have to say, this is one fun festival. Given the many distractions Vegas has to offer, I’m pretty pleased with myself for catching four films so far (though I’ve still managed to make time for some Vegas-style fun as well). The fest opener was a curious film called Saint John of Las Vegas, the first feature by director Hue Rhodes, who also wrote the script.
While the rest of the fest takes place at the Palms Casino and Resort, the opener was held at Planet Hollywood and enthusiastically kicked off by Dennis Hopper, rising up from a stage trapdoor to the tune of “Born to Be Wild.” The theater at Planet Hollywood, according to the many large breasts on display on larger-than-life posters at the venue, normally hosts a burlesque show called Peepshow (which is apparently pretty popular, as we were unable to score tickets to it this weekend). There’s no shortage of scantily clad women here in Vegas, though, so I’m sure fest attendees inclined toward experiencing the fleshy, sexy side of Vegas won’t find it too hard to find other options.
SIFF Dispatch: Cold Souls, The One-Handed Trick, and Fear Me Not
I finally caught up with Cold Souls, which I managed to miss at Sundance in spite of a couple folks who know me well suggesting I might like it. The film entertwines the tales of Paul Giamatti (playing a fictionalized version of himself) as an actor stressing about an upcoming performance who decides to have his soul temporarily removed so he can get through it, and a Russian woman who works as a “mule” illegally transporting black market souls from Russia to America. It’s a fascinating concept, a bit reminiscent of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, though less twisted plot-wise and less artistically rendered.
Giamatti’s performance, though, is fantastic — the film is absolutely worth seeing just for him — and I liked the creativity of the screenplay, though I kind of wish director Sophie Barthes had delved a bit deeper into all the moral and philosophical implications of the idea. It’s more idea-centric sci-fi than intellectual exploration, but it’s fun, and there are surprisingly funny moments throughout.
