Mike Atherton

To Catch A Virgin Ghost - PODCAST transcript and notes

The following is the transcript and notes to this podcast.

Two thousand five, May thirteenth, Friday. Cinema Minima, audio edition, podcast. MIKE ATHERTON podcasting from London. The London Korean Film festival and TO CATCH A VIRGIN GHOST. This program is 8 minutes. Program notes at CINEMAMINIMA DOT COM SLASH ATHERTON.

Trust me to start podcasting with a Korean film festival… it took me forever to get my tongue around some European directors (so to speak) but I’m going to a very special circle of hell after I get through mutilating a bunch of Korean names. Apologies in advance and there’ll be a bunch of links on the website to save you from trying to decipher the important names from my garbled pronunciation.

So yeah, the 3rd Korean London Film Festival is underway even as I speak. It’s kind of a short one - less than a week - but it’s had a great bill of movies and best of all every single one of them has been completely FREE. Now one of the great things about this gig is that it’s been a while since I’ve had to pay to see a movie BUT I do feel guilty sitting through some of this stuff knowing that the majority of the film’s audience is digging deep. Then again I figure I’m owed a pile of free movies for all the crap I’ve paid to sit through. Someone still owes me a tenner for TROY. Piece of crap. 

Anyway - I digress - which is something you’re going to get used to. Let’s get this thing back on track by simply stating that it’s nice in such an expensive city as this one to find a festival that puts the audience before the coffers.

So onto TO CATCH A VIRGIN GHOST whose title alone reminds you that Yep - it’s a Korean Film Festival alright. First off though we’ve got to ditch that god-awful title. Yes there’s a ghost in the movie and yes she’s a virgin, but there’s no catching going on and to be quite honest the film has a lot more going for it than just its supernatural elements. The original title of the movie seems to be SISILY 2KM taken from the sign that points to where most of the action unfolds… so let’s talk plot because this film has plenty.

Gangster Sok-tae is on the run after stealing diamonds from his boss but after an accident finds himself stranded overnight in the town of Sisily. I say town but it’s nothing more than a hotel and an abandoned school, but the locals seem nice enough and soon Sok tae is safely hidden away with his stash. A prank then backfires leaving the locals with a body and one of the diamonds. Rather than involve the police they vote to get rid of the corpse and keep the diamond.

Enter the bad guys - or so it would seem - with the arrival of Yang-I and his three fellow gang members hot on the trail of the missing diamonds. The locals have no choice but to keep quiet despite threats of violence from the new arrivals and a waiting game begins. So far so good, but it’s not the most original set up so let me add the fact that Sok Tae, now safely walled up inside the hotel isn’t actually dead and of course the gangsters searching for him have taken the very room with the fresh plaster work that conceals him. And now he’s conscious and still has his cell phone. Oh and a six inch nail is about to be hammered into his head in order to hang a photograph...

The absurdity here is intentional as the director Shin Jeong Won is tapping into the same territory as Takashi Miike’s THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS (Katakuri-ke no kôfuku) which this film most resembles all be it minus the singing and dancing - although there is at least one reanimated corpse. The plot is convoluted but wonderfully paced (perhaps it overplays itself with one twist too many towards the end, but there is more going on here than in a handful of Western comedies or horror movies combined.

The audience’s expectations are constantly played with as we become attached to the misfit mobsters and laugh out loud at the next indignity to befall Sok Tae as his still breathing corpse is moved from one place to another. The simple kind locals are not quite as they seem and there’s more than one secret here finally revealed in the abandoned school which leads us the virgin ghost herself.

There’s been a whole spate of ghost inhabited revenge movies coming from Japan over the last couple of years The RINGU sequence, DARK WATER (Honogurai mizu no soko kara), The JU-ON movies and the subsequent American remakes - there’s even a Korean riff on the Sadako movies under the title THE RING VIRUS and there’s probably a few more on the way before the cycle runs out of steam. In TO CATCH A VIRGIN GHOST the director manages to both pay homage to and satirise this trend - at one point one character says explains to the ghost that he’s seen a lot of horror movies and that she’s supposed to be out for revenge - “You’ve got to hold a grudge,” he informs the dead girl, but of course she’s more worried about him being scared of her dead eyes - it’s this hidden back story surrounding the girl’s death that becomes crucial to the movies conclusion and It’s another reason why the audience I was with had so much fun with this movie - it blends genres perfectly playing the gangster clichés without a hint of irony one minute and being, as I said, laugh out loud funny the next. The early sequences have the ghost appear fleetingly and help add an air of strangeness to the proceedings but horror tactics are also employed from time to time and they work well.

It’s hard to comment on much of the film’s charm without giving to much away but let me add there’s time for a little romance and bags of comedy violence along the lines of Ash’s antics in THE EVIL DEAD trilogy. It’s also the one movie that finally puts to rest the question of whether a female virgin ghost is scared at the sight of a penis.

TO CATCH A VIRGIN GHOST was released in Korea back in August but is still doing the festival rounds and very much available if you have a multiregional DVD player.

And that’s the end of this podcast. Next time I’ll be talking about another much more melodramatic Korean movie. This is Mike Atherton for Cinema Minima. Thanks for listening! Program notes at CINEMAMINIMA DOT COM SLASH ATHERTON. For more information on our podcasts and the website in general go to CINEMAMINIMA DOT COM.

Buying Info: You can buy a sweet looking Region 3, two disk copy of TO CATCH A VIRGIN GHOST from ASIAN DB.

The London Raindance East Film Festival 2005

The Raindance East Film Festival fosters local talent by providing a platform for aspiring filmmakers and now in its fourth year again brings a heady mix of new movies by both fresh and accomplished directors...

Tonight sees the launch of the festival with Danny Boyle’s Millions:

Eight-year-old Damian Cunningham is almost killed by an enormous bag of cash that falls from the sky. It’s all sterling, and as Britain is converting to the Euro in just twelve days’ time, he needs to spend it quick. Damian believes that the money was sent from God (who else would have that kind of money?) and decides to give it away to the poor. However, his selfish older brother Anthony wants to spend it all on himself. What they don’t know is that the money is actually the fruit of a bungled robbery and the thieves want it back.

Newcomer Alex Etel is charming and captivating in his first lead role and he shares a remarkable chemistry with his on-screen older brother Lewis McGibbon. James Nesbitt, who plays the boys’ loving and wise father, proves once again that he is a great British talent. Shot by Anthony Dod Mantle, the film is vibrant and lustrous, eschewing any clichéd depiction of a muted and grey northern England. Millions may seem like a strange choice for Danny Boyle, the director of edgy films about zombies, heroin addicts and lost beaches, but his latest film proves that he is not all monsters and Iggy Pop. Millions is a touching, funny, and magical film that lives up to the director’s talent and creative vision.

I’ll be there for Cinema Minima and Londonist. So far I’ll be at the launch, Sunday’s Q&A with Danny Boyle and the screenings of Todd Solondz’ Palindromes and the Pang Brothers’ The Eye 2.  I’ll also be covering the Festival’s closing movie, the documentary Born into Brothels in which the children of prostitutes who work the Calcutta red light district are given cameras to document their lives.

I haven’t written for Cinema Minima since back in November so I’m eager to get things rolling again and will be following up the festival coverage with a regular podcast. Oh you lucky people...

Hate mail, death threats and dodgy polaroids can be sent to the usual address.

The London Film Festival: I HEART HUCKABEES

There is something inexplicably pleasing about the sight of Jason Schwartzman and Mark Wahlberg riding bicycles together. This one image almost stops the flashbacks of Jason Schwartzman being breast fed by Jude Law. Almost.

I HEART HUCKABEES (simply Huckabees if you are hip) is a meandering tale but a fun one. Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) is an environmentalist who is watching his beloved Open Spaces campaign being swallowed up by the Wal-Mart like Huckabees chain in a PR exercise headed by Brad Stand (Jude Law). To make matters worse he has been plagued by a string of coincidental meetings that he feels are somehow connected. Unsettled he turns to an existential detective service for the answers.

The detective agency run by metaphysicians Bernard and Vivian Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin) delve into Albert’s life with “full unfettered access” and chaos ensues. To make matters worse the detectives themselves have a nemesis in the form of sexy French philosopher Caterine Vauban who is attempting to turn their clients over to her darker take on the answers to life’s questions.

The film is quirky and rich in the way that a Wes Anderson or Paul Thomas Anderson film is but mines similar ground to ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND and BEING JOHN MALKOVICH. The philosophy offered isn’t particularly deep but makes for intriguing plot development and the odd unexpected turn (the meal with the God-fearing family is a comedic highlight).

The cast are all at their very best with Hoffman in particular seemingly having a ball of a time. Mark Whalberg’s character, a post-9-11 firefighter struggling with some big questions, is the perfect buddy for Schwartzman’s geeky downtrodden tree rock hugger. Their mini quest in resisting the ‘everything is connected’ view of the Jaffes leads them (literally for Albert) into the arms of Isabelle Huppert’s Caterine. Cosmic revelations and muddy sex ensue.

The rivalry between the two opposing schools of thought is deliciously played out with the American sunny perspective running scared from the French doom and gloom view. Bernard’s shock at discovering Katerine is nearby is played for hardboiled laughs and the film revolves around the two opposing viewpoints as much as it does the conflict between Albert and Brad.

Events gain a further complication when Brad enlists the help of the existential detectives himself without foreseeing the effect they will have on his girlfriend. Dawn (the ever dependable NAOMI WATTS) also happens to be the ‘face’ of Huckabees. Her subsequent self-discovery puts everything that Brad has worked for in jeopardy as she un-invents herself from supermodel flesh and bikinis to Amish bonnet and dungarees much to the horror of the board ("She said fuckabees!").

The interesting thing is that after meeting David O. Russell it’s hard not to see the character of Albert as a personification of the director himself. Perhaps it’s that trait of self examination and awareness that he shares with Albert that will lead to his next films being as strange and wonderful as this one:

“I believe there’s plenty of room in motion pictures to grapple with reality and consciousness. There are questions we should be asking constantly and preeminently as human beings, because our view of the nature of reality directly affects the future. There’s so much to dig into, I feel I could make 20 films about the subject, or maybe even 100 films. This is just one.”

The London Film Festival: 2046

I have been a fan of Wong Kar Wai since seeing AS TEARS GO BY back in the days when I devoured anything with a heroic bloodshed tag that was fresh out of Hong Kong. That led to DAYS OF BEING WILD and CHUNKING EXPRESS and that’s pretty much when I stopped enjoying his films. I couldn’t see how he could possibly top the beauty and exuberance of Chunking Express and nothing I’ve seen since has come close to giving me the thrill of hearing I’d be safe and warm if I was in L.A. over and over again.

To my mind he has yet to get back to those dizzy heights. I’ve enjoyed everything since of course, but they didn’t twist me up in the same way that Chunking did. In fact there were parts of IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE that I found out and out dull.

With that in mind I wasn’t too excited at the prospect of what promised to be at worst a sequel to the last film I yawned through and at best a tenuous flirtation with science fiction elements. Thankfully I found 2046 to be Wong Kar Wai’s best film since Chunking Express and while it’s still not quite as good as his vintage work it did completely exceed my expectations.

First off the baggage of Maggie Chung’s character, Su Li-zhen Chan from the previous film, is wisely thrown out and we get to wallow with Tony Leung’s Chow Mo-wan as he attempts to move his life forward after the events of In The Mood For Love. He is in Hong Kong, a womanising playboy and back to making his money as a writer. He moves into a small family run hotel and becomes obsessed with the adjacent room 2046 which provides motivation for his fiction and the films title.

The setting of the sixties allows Kar Wai to go back and open another window on the events of Days of Being Wild, in fact Wong himself sees both Days and Mood as chapters in a single story with 2046 being the most important segment that holds together everything that had gone before. Putting the pieces together is part of the fun here and I look forward to seeing all three back to back on DVD.

Chow begins to write a science fiction story set in the beautiful but simplistic future Hong Kong of 2046. The story of the hotel owner’s daughter’s unhappy love for a Japanese suitor is here transformed into science fiction. The tale of a man falling in love with an android whose failing mechanism causes her to delay in affirming her own feelings. The intertwining of these stories, Chow’s real existence with the fantasy of the future is remarkably successful, but as most of the futuristic settings are confined to train interiors it seems a real shame that Wong didn’t treat the sci-fi notions of his film with the usual stunning visuals that have become his trademark. That said, the rest of the film is a delight.

The strongest of 2046s many strands is the relationship that Chow has with the beautiful Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi). It’s a sign of Zhang’s strong performance that the other female roles become filler and it’s a thrill to see her character return before the end of the film. You also feel angry that Andy Lau’s Chow treats her so shabbily, but this is a film about the strength of memories and how they still have the power to reach out and influence the present.

Worth the wait then, and the sad December feel of the repeated ‘Christmas Song’ is evocative of Chunking Express, but I’m still hoping that Kar Wai can now move on from this period and treat us to something even more special next time out.

The London Film Festival: HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS

I was so excited about seeing HERO but then had to wait an eternity for Miramax to get its double-act together and release the damn thing on the big screen. By the time it arrived I already owned the region four DVD, and spent the following weeks perfecting my pause-rewind-freeze frame-remote control maneuver. Jaw dropping stuff.

I walked out of the press screening of HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS yesterday morning with teary eyes and jabbed away at my mobile until my girlfriend’s phone held the following message:

“House of Flying Daggers makes Hero look like Takeshi’s Castle.”

859AD – China. The Tang Dynasty is teetering and a rebellion is in the offing. The most prestigious of the rebel armies is the ‘House of Flying Daggers’, but deputies loyal to the government are determined to quash them. Captains Leo (Andy Lau) and Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) have been given ten days to capture the new leader of the ‘House’ even though it took them three months to assassinate the previous one. Leo hears that a new girl at the Peony Pavilion brothel may be the daughter of the old leader and they form a plan for her arrest.

The new girl is Mei (Zhang Ziyi), who turns out to be not only a gifted dancer but also a skilled martial artist despite her handicap. Mei is blind.

After a confrontation involving dance, impractically long sleeves, bean flicking percussion and some beautiful sword play it becomes clear that Mei will not talk. Leo suggests that Jin pose as a rebel sympathiser and ‘rescue’ Mei, hoping that she will grow to trust the man who saved her. Jin is warned by the wiser Leo not to fall for the prisoner but the younger man, a playboy well versed in seducing women, refuses to take the warning seriously.

Jin, now in the guise of Wind, rescues Mei and they flee through forests, heading north for three days confident that the House of Flying Daggers will find them. Government soldiers dog their escape but under the command of Leo the attacks are convincing fakes. Things change when the mission is reported to Leo’s superior who order the attacks to become real to ensure that the ‘House’ believes Mei to be in danger. As their path becomes more treacherous Mei and her rescuer/enemy find themselves drawn closer together and Jin finds himself in the unenviable position of having to fight for his life against his own side in order to betray the woman he is slowly falling in love with.

Hero was somewhat confined in its storytelling by the RASHOMON like flashback structure and relied on stunning colour-themed visuals and gravity defying set pieces to overcome its few limitations. House of Flying Daggers is a more typical wuxia (swordplay and chivalry genre) film and, although it adheres to the formula, Zhang Yoimou is such a confident director that he makes each set piece seem fresh and original. The best example of this is in the battle in the bamboo forest. If you’ve seen any other period swordplay movie from China then it is likely to have featured this convention. Up until now my favourite example of this was in the stunning MOON WARRIORS (again with Andy Lau) but the sequence offered in House of Flying Daggers is quite simply the best I’ve seen.

Where Hero relied on a very distinctive primary palette of colours, the director here uses sound to equal effect. This ties in perfectly with the character of Mei whose blindness forces her to rely upon her hearing. This is particularly evident during the first half of the film, obviously during the ‘echo dance’ sequence but more robustly during the bamboo forest battle where makeshift hollow spears whistle eerily as they speed towards the fugitives, building to a cacophony as the spears multiply to an indefensible number. Tao Jing, the sound supervisor, and Shigeru Umebayashi, the composer, both deserve special mention and hopefully award recognition for what they accomplish here.

The cast is impeccable. Andy Lau is a veteran of this sort of thing but gives a performance of icy resolve that works wonderfully against Takeshi Kaneshiro’s more hot-blooded youngster. Zhang Ziyi is again on familiar ground following CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON and Hero, but here takes a large portion of the film on her shoulders (as she does in 2046) and makes Mei much more than simply a heroine in need of rescue.

The most intriguing aspect of the film is the way that at the halfway point it begins to ripple and reflect upon itself. Mei who was initially led through the darkness by Jin finds her role reversed and as the revelations build and secrets are revealed the film takes on a darker tone. There is little here of the flowing beauty of Hero, no water-walking fight sequences and little slow motion swordplay. Instead, in one memorable final standoff we are faced with two characters gleefully hacking away at each other ruthlessly, as their passion finally overcomes the graceful convention of the genre and erupts like blood in the snow.

Film of the festival? Without a doubt. Film of the year? Probably that too. Alas there are only two screenings in London, both of which are already sold out. Unless you already have a ticket the date to have tattooed on your sword arm is the 26th of December.

House of Flying Daggers was originally to star Anita Mui but she died before her scenes could be filmed. The film is dedicated to her memory.

WAR GAMES

My good friend Heather recently had her documentary accepted for the Amnesty International Film Festival in Seattle in December.

I asked her for a preliminary blurb about the film to as at some point I’d like to interview her about the process of making a documentary in such a war-torn part of the planet.

Here is what she sent me:

“War Games has been a labour of love now for two and a half years. In March 2002 we read an article in an English newspaper about the amazing story of the Twic Olympics - a ‘bootleg’, barefoot Olympics held once a year a few miles from the front line of one of the saddest, most brutal conflicts in Africa.

When the games began in 2000, the current round of fighting had been raging for 17 years. By the time we arrived in Southern Sudan in early 2003, it had entered its third decade. Two million had died as a result of the war since the 1980s, and countless more had been displaced, forced to flee their homes to save their lives and those of their families.

There was hope, however, in the form of peace talks - alternately reaching accords and stalling as the political landscape changed almost weekly. And then came Darfur, and the explosion onto the international political agenda of a separate but very much related conflict. The pictures we see in the news now represent the realities of daily life in southern Sudan, not just this year but for the last twenty. It is not new, but it has been largely ignored by the international media for decades. The community we stayed in didn’t exist four years ago. Arab militia had raided and burned the villages, stealing cattle and kidnapping women and children. Government gunships and bombers had wiped out what was left.

In the midst of all this one man had a dream to stage an Olympic games for the children of his community, to “make them forget about the problems of war....and play like children again.”
We travelled to Sudan to film the compelling story of the realisation of his dream, to see the trials and tragedies as they unfolded, and to learn more about how these people are able not only to survive the brutality of civil war, but to maintain a belief in the future. The people we met were truly amazing, not just for their determination and courage, but also for their equanimity. The film we have made is a tribute to the humanity of the people of Southern Sudan, and twenty five percent of all profits made will be donated to humanitarian programmes there.

About the Production:

Two of us spent a total of 60 days in Sudan from December 2002 until February 2003. We lived there in tukuls - mud huts with thatched roofs - amongst the community which features in the film. All of our equipment was powered by the sun and, by some miracle, we only managed to melt one light. (It was the only one we had though.) We filmed a total of 60 hours of footage - 100 tapes, and recorded about half as much audio seperately. We took over 1000 digital stills and stored them on our laptop, which didn’t like the heat at all but somehow survived as well.

Only one of us got a serious bout of food poisoning, and only one of us was stupid enough to attack a swarm of ‘African Killer Bees’ with a can of ‘Doom’.

Only one of us got a bee stuck in his lip.”

You can contact Heather via coolhandproductions@yahoo.co.uk

TWITCH

I stumbled across Twitch earlier this evening and am still working through their archives. Great site. They reckon my review of Marebito may be the first English one online which is nice to know. I wasn’t the only one to love Marebito as it won the Official Selection Feature Prize at the Raindance Festival which is a mouth-full-of-marbles way of saying it was best in show. Tartan plan to release the film in the UK in 2005.

The London Raindance Film Festival - Wrap Up

I’ve been ill so this is overdue, but as the London Film Festival starts this evening (and I’ve already been to a bunch of preview screenings) I should be back to posting reviews pretty much on a daily basis for the next couple of weeks.

OLDBOY

Its an old adage that revenge is a dish best served cold, but Korean director Chan-wook Park prefers it cold, alive and preferably wriggling.

OLDBOY is a complex and deeply satisfying revenge drama that layers its plot in such a way that the audience is always a few steps behind. Oh Dae-su is your average everyman, who one day finds himself imprisoned within a strange apartment for no apparent reason. Months go by and still he has no word from his captors as to why he is being held. He is fed through a hatch in the door and has only a television for company. When he tries to harm himself he is patched up and returned to the room, and eventually settles into a kind of routine as he struggles to form an escape plan and work out who did this to him. He learns that his wife has been murdered and that he is the main suspect, and once he is provided with journals he begins to write a diary and list the events in his life that may have led to this unusual form of punishment. He sees the world slowly change through the pictures on the television set which becomes his only window over the next fifteen years.

Think Patrick McGoohan’s Number Six, but without the freedom of the village. While you’re reminiscing about THE PRISONER, add a liberal dose of Kafka and you are closer to the heart of the film than Dae-su is when he begins to see echoes of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ in his own situation.

Oldboy has you trapped in the sequence of events as neatly as its protagonist. Once he suddenly finds himself released you fully expect Dae-su to set off in search of revenge but, surprisingly, the kidnapper is quickly revealed and confronted. Now both audience and hapless victim alike need to know not the who but the why, and this is where the film really exceeds all expectations.

There is much here in common with ANGEL HEART and SE7EN but Oldboy is actually a very well thought out companion piece to the director’s earlier SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE. That movie examined the question of blame and revenge, and where (if anywhere) a cycle of vengeance could conclude. Whereas Sympathy was quite a stark movie Oldboy is more flamboyant in its style and looks beautiful even when the images are anything but.

The film rests on the shoulders of Choi Min-sik as Dae-su, whose brutalised features are reminiscent of Charles Bronson’s Paul Kersey (DEATH WISH), but he seems to carry the role effortlessly. Once locked into revenge mode he is nigh on unstoppable. In a film full of memorable scenes, one corridor fight sequence is a standout - filmed in apparently one take, we are treated to a video-game inspired set piece, in which Dae-su, armed with a clawhammer and shuffling with a Beat Kitano style of pace, slowly makes his way through a pack of armed thugs.

The scene which has most western viewers in an uproar is of course the one in which Dae-su, fresh from his imprisonment, orders “something alive” at a sushi bar and proceeds to devour a live octopus. It’s a hard-to-stomach sequence and the tentacles squirming from the actor’s mouth, with one sucker memorably securing itself to his cheek, is an image that will not be easily shaken free, but it is also an important one. I recently saw MEAN CREEK (in a way, yet another tale of revenge) in which a snail is stabbed on screen in closeup and I have to confess that I had more problems with that scene than anything in Oldboy.

The obligatory American remake is already on the way but as usual with such projects I see nothing that can be added and a great deal that will be lost in trying to shoehorn this film into an American studio.

Go and see it before someone gives the ending away...

The Alexander Mackendrick Memorial Lecture

This was less of a lecture and more of a standard Q&A session. Film director, writer and former Python, Terry Jones, was on hand to introduce a film of his choice. I must admit to being disappointed when the film turned out to be his own hit and (mostly) miss version of THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS. It wasn’t something I had seen beforehand and admittedly was not something that I would have sought to see otherwise. Jones has never really come close to repeating the success of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL and LIFE OF BRIAN and these days is a much more accomplished writer than he is a director.

In the conversation following the film he admitted that directing was something that he didn’t aspire to but nevertheless he has been approached to handle a new version of ‘Alice in Wonderland’. His revelation that the story would be following the lead of new songs penned by Garth Brooks does not bode well for the project.

When asked his thoughts after the screening he wasn’t entirely sure that the film worked and I’d have to agree with him. The Wind in the Willows was enjoyable enough but falls badly between it’s adult and younger audience and satisfies neither.

THE YES MEN

A short but almost constantly hilarious documentary following two political pranksters. The joy here is not that Andy and Mike get away with this stuff, but that often their outrageous behaviour is actually believed.

THE YES MEN reveals the roots of the pranksters, how they met and their first stunts involving bogus websites. This leads us to how these two left wing, anti-corporate activists find themselves being invited onto news programs and to speak at conferences on behalf of the World Trade Organization - the very body that they ridicule every chance they get.

One head-shaking sequence involves them speaking to a conference about the way that slavery never really got the chance to evolve into a profitable work system as delegates from across the business globe take notes. The moment when one of them whips off his suit to reveal a bright gold, skin tight ‘management suit’ complete with inflatable phallus that houses a computer system enabling the boss to keep his workforce under constant observation reduced the audience to squeals of delight. Not only does no-one see through their bizarre stunt but they are actually invited to attend a meal with delegates afterwards.

The point they are trying to raise of course is that the WTO is already so outlandish in its ethics that no one bats an eyelid at the claims The Yes Men make on their behalf.

Not so easily persuaded are a group of students who have the pleasure of sitting through a presentation on how first-world human waste could be recycled into third-world food via a partnership between the WTO and McDonalds. Andy and Mike take heart that their younger audience are inclined to throw things at them rather than simply buy into what they are suggesting, despite the Powerpoint graphics and 3D animation.

The film concludes with a trip to Australia where the pranksters officially disband the WTO and replace it with a more ethical institution. You can see more about The Yes Men over at their official site.

ARAHAN

To say that ARAHAN owes something to THE MATRIX is true, but also runs the danger of diminishing a film that is much more enjoyable. Sang Hwan is a policeman who tries to do the right thing, but constantly finds himself at odds with his superiors, his fellow officers and of course the neighbourhood thugs. He inadvertently gets in the way of Eui-Jin, a regular girl embodied with incredible martial arts skills that enable her to run down the sides of buildings or leap from roof to roof. Eui-Jin is the pupil of five of the remaining Seven Masters, Ch’i experts who are forced to appear on cheap television shows in order to raise their profile in a modern world that has turned its back on the mystical.

The Masters sense that bumbling Hwan has the potential to become Arahan - an ultimate warrior. That he is fixated more on Eui-Jin as a potential girlfriend and learning the palm-thrust maneuver than taking them seriously is a running gag throughout the movie. First and foremost this is a comedy, but the martial arts sequences are among the best I’ve seen and while the plot is extravagantly derivative it takes nothing away from a stunning movie.

Things take a more serious role once evil (or in this case, misguided good) rears its head and Hwan finds himself the only one capable of taking on the job of saving the world. The finale is perhaps a little overlong but even so my smile did not slip once. I have no idea if this has been picked up for a wider release yet but after the success of SHAOLIN SOCCER I’d be surprised not to see it again on a big screen (worth the price of admission for the credits sequence alone) before the DVD release.

Those of you that are too impatient can already find the movie awaiting a home in the nearest multiregional player.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS is a very old-fashioned comedy that walks a thin line between being genuinely amusing at best and deplorably out of touch at worst. I expect a lot out of Australian cinema and am rarely disappointed, but films like THE DISH and DIRTY DEEDS set a high standard for others to follow. This film tries it’s best to be heart warming and has a good enough cast but the predictable writing and outdated stereotypes result in a film that is easy to forget.

Paul Hogan and the usually dependable Michael Caton are two best friends with money troubles. Hogan hits on the idea that they declare themselves a same sex couple in order to benefit from a new tax law. Perhaps on paper the idea of Hogan and Caton taking gay lessons from the local hairdresser seemed like comedy gold, but the realisation is as tired as the aging cast looks.

The simple plan (of course) goes wrong when the government sends Pete Postlethwaite to investigate their claim, and at the same time the locals get wind of the rumour that the two buddies may be more than just friends. The sacherine ending is made even less palatable by the freeze frame of Paul Hogan’s rear end that closes the film and leaves you in no doubt of the level that the filmakers were pitching at.

BAD MEAT

I really enjoyed BAD MEAT although its a terrible film.

Earl and Buddy are two friends who need out of their respective ruts and hit upon the idea of kidnapping the local Congressman. For Earl the ransom money would mean a down-payment on a trailer home, one of the very exacting criteria given to him by Pam, the girl he intends to marry. For Buddy the job itself is enough as he sees himself as a master criminal whose ultimate goal is to make the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

Things go wrong from the start after Buddy’s first solo attempt to abduct the politician (improbably played by Chevy Chase) goes wrong and the corrupt official sets a pair of hitmen after his would-be kidnappers. Then the mark drops dead of a heart attack only for the idiots to go ahead and kidnap him anyway.

I keep trying to put my finger on what it was that tickled me about a film with low production values and bad acting and I think I can pin it down to one scene. After losing sight of the governor’s body the halfwit duo get him back as spam slices, rescued from the supermarket no less. Earl is at a loss as to what to do next but Buddy never stuck for a bad idea simply lays out the spam in a vaguely human shape and then tries to dress it. It’s the sheer audacity of the writing behind such scenes that help me enjoy the movie and although a lot of the gags fall flat there were still enough laugh out loud stupid moments to keep me entertained.

If the film has a major flaw its that it seems unsure whether to go for the bad taste comedy of Tom Green or simply try a more traditional slapstick approach. It’s probably closer to DUMB AND DUMBER than FREDDY GOT FINGERED but as this was made by the people behind The Onion you can’t help but feel disappointed.

FADO BLUES

FADO BLUES is a Portuguese/Brazilian heist movie that probably loses something in translation. There seems to be an emphasis on the differences between Brazil and Portugal that is lost on those that don’t speak Portuguese but Fado Blues provides an entertaining ride nevertheless.

Amadeu and Leonardo are two buddies who return to Portugal to enlist the help of crime writer Reis in a caper that they have yet to plan. Reis proves illusive but the beautiful Lia acts as go-between and before long the two friends seem more interested in winning her affection than the crime.

The pace is leisurely and the cast are fun to watch but the film lacks edge. The music is beautiful and the cimematography lush but I can’t imagine Fado Blues is going to break out beyond it’s homegrown audience.

THE UNDESIRABLES

THE UNDESIRABLES is something of a missed opportunity. In 1952 a group of gangsters are deported from the USA to an Italy that doesn’t want them. A reporter conducts a series of interviews with some of them and we see their rise to mobsterhood in a series of episodic flashbacks. The problem is that there is nothing here that we haven’t seen before and it boils down to young men wanting to be somebody and old men wishing that they had stayed nobody. Vincent Gallo is the main draw but his story is perhaps the most predictable and overall the film feels more like an extended TV show.

Rewatch ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA instead.

The London Raindance Film Festival: MAREBITO (The Stranger from Afar)

Takeshi Shimizu, the director of THE GRUDGE sequence (and the recent remake starring Sarah Michelle Gellar), here works with Shinya Tsukamoto (himself the director of the groundbreaking TETSUO) playing a voyeuristic cameraman obsessed with trying to understand the true nature of fear.

Following his opportunistic filming of a suicide, Masuoka becomes obsessed with finding out what it was that the man saw just before he died. After reviewing the footage over and over, he decides that the man was not terrified by something he saw, but instead the terror itself caused something to appear that only he could see. In an attempt to tap into that fear he returns to the location of the suicide and soon finds himself in a subterranean world far beneath the streets of Tokyo. He encounters the spirit of the dead man and strange robotic creatures that shuffle around in the darkness, before he stumbles upon a naked girl, mute and feral, shackled in a cave.

The film changes pace slightly once Masuoka takes the girl home and attempts to humanise her. He keeps tabs on her movements through remote cameras while he does dull TV jobs, but comes to realise that she isn’t human and cannot survive on the food that he offers her. Things take a darker turn when he accidentally stumbles upon the one source of nourishment she craves and he begins to go to more extreme lengths to look after her. By this point he has faced up to the fact that she is more likely to remain his pet, than ever becoming fully human.

For a film dedicated to fear Marebito is not particularly scary. It does create a vivid sense of unease, especially through the use of grainy digital cameras, but the director seems more interested in cataloging Masuoka’s descent than simply scaring his audience. There are some disturbing scenes though and in particular one scene towards the close of the film features a kiss that will linger long in the memory of the viewer.

Ultimately this is about the relationship that Masuoka forges with the silent girl, and despite the horrific elements, there are many touching (if disturbing) moments to be found. There are also references to the banility of Japanese television, the medium in which Masuoka is forced to work, andto the lonely existence that many adults lead. But some viewers may fail to see some of the subtler touches, focusing instead on the bloodier sections.

HP Lovecraft is obviously a source of inspiration here as the girl is found among The Mountains of Madness (discovered weirdly but wonderfully realised beneath Tokyo rather than in the arctic wastes) and there are some nice respectful nods to the Elder Gods that may or may not have been responsible for the mystery girl’s imprisonment. The story is actually quite faithful to the older style of horror stories, despite it’s high-tech trappings of cameras and video enabled mobile phones and the occasional flash of gore.

It also reminded me of Romero’s MARTIN although the connection is hard to pin down.

There is more going on here than the initial tale suggests and there are clues that maybe the girl is closer to Masuoka than he realises or cares to admit. These days Tsukamoto is as often found in front of the camera as behind it and here plays the dowdy voyeur very well, as a disenfranchised soul, more interested in the world as found in his viewfinder than the reality that bleeds in around him. The film ultimately hangs on his performance, but that is not to say Tomomi Miyashita does not give a sterling turn as the girl creature that Masuoka comes to name simply F. Her animal-like movements are graceful and, given almost no dialogue, she is free to use her body and facial expressions to great effect.

Japanese fantasy cinema is not for all tastes, but the rewards when compared to the simple and often patronising efforts of some western directors and writers are addictive. The good news is that Tartan, fast becoming the main distributor for Eastern strangeness, seem to have picked this up for both a UK and US release, and it would be nice for Shimizu to find a wider audience in the wake of his recent collaboration with Sam Raimi and Buffy.

The London Raindance Film Festival: COFFEE AND CIGARETTES

What’s not to like in a Jim Jarmusch movie? I’m listening to his rendition of Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as I write this which I guess makes me a fan and makes what follows a fan review. You shouldn’t have a problem with that as COFFEE AND CIGARETTES is a film for the fans. I took my life in my hands wandering outside the cinema with the invite in my hand as disgruntled Jarmusch fans listened in horror as staff told them the one and only screening was sold out. Poor bastards.

Coffee and Cigarettes is a simple premise done exceedingly well. Eleven vignettes in which characters share conversation along with the titular coffee and cigarettes. Well, ten anyway as the sequence featuring Steve Coogan and Alfred Molina has the British contingent drinking tea.

The film has the feel of Paul Auster and Wayne Wang’s BLUE IN THE FACE (itself a companion piece to SMOKE) but features many touchstones from Jarmush’s career. If you are a fan of GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI you are in for a treat here spotting familiar faces either in conversation or hanging from the walls. Themes overlap and theories put forward in one conversation find their way into later ones; at the film’s close William Rice and Taylor Mead share a coffee break and mention Nikola Tesla whose invention we earlier saw demonstrated bizarrely in the hands of Jack White while his sister looked on.

The opening segment is perhaps the weakest but is also the oldest being the seed from which everything else grew over a staggering 17 years. Actors are either thrown together with their contemporaries (Iggy Pop and Tom Waits), their polar opposites (Bill Murray and GZA/RZA) or themselves (Cate Blanchett and Cate Blanchett). The conversations themselves are funny as hell and at a brisk 96 minutes the film takes it’s leave just at the point that you want need one more fix.

As the film moves along you think to yourself ‘Oh, that was my favourite scene!’ only for the next one to delight you even more. Twenty four hours later and I still can’t pin down the most memorable exchange. Perhaps Tom Waits getting testy with Iggy Pop and revealing that he’s a doctor and a musician… but then there is Steve Buscemi as the waiter with the ‘Elvis had an evil twin’ theory… and what about “Groundhog Day, Ghostbustin’ mutha fucka’ Bill Murray!”?

This film is a joy.

Coffee and Cigarettes is laugh out loud funny and never boring. Shot in crisp black and white it effortlessly joins time fragmented scenes into one whole and Jarmusch of course makes the whole thing look effortless. Making it look easy is in my opinion always the best way to encourage new film makers and writers to enter the fray.

And best of all the film is dedicated to Joe Strummer.

NOTE: For the record I may be British but I hate tea and have a coffee-stained laptop to prove it.