tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-145338672024-03-08T07:32:23.780+08:00Cinematic ConcernsMakan Filem. Tidur Filem.McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.comBlogger588125truetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-68520461980763571992015-08-22T21:21:00.003+08:002016-01-05T01:26:10.483+08:00Suggested Oscar Nominations List 2016<div style="font-size: 16px;">
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<b><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />BEST PICTURE</b></div>
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Inside Out<br />
Mad Max: Fury Road</div>
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<b>BEST DIRECTING</b></div>
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Denis Villeneuve — Sicario<br />
George Miller — Mad Max: Fury Road</div>
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<b>BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE</b></div>
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Matt Damon — The Martian</div>
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<b>BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE</b></div>
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Alicia Vikander — Testament Of Youth<br />
Charlize Theron — Mad Max: Fury Road<br />
Jennifer Lawrence — The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part II</div>
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<b>BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE</b></div>
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<b>BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE</b></div>
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Chloë Grace Moretz — Clouds Of Sils Maria<br />
Kristen Stewart — Clouds Of Sils Maria<br />
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<b>BEST WRITING, ORIGINAL</b></div>
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Inside Out<br />
The Voices</div>
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<b>BEST WRITING, ADAPTED</b></div>
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The Avengers: Age Of Ultron<br />
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part II</div>
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<b>BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY</b></div>
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Macbeth<br />
Sicario<br />
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.<br />
The Water Diviner</div>
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<b>BEST COSTUME DESIGN</b></div>
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Macbeth<br />
Star Wars: The Force Awakens<br />
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.<br />
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<b>BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN</b></div>
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Ex Machina<br />
Jupiter Ascending<br />
Mad Max: Fury Road<br />
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.<br />
The Water Diviner</div>
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<b>BEST MAKEUP</b></div>
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Jupiter Ascending<br />
Mad Max: Fury Road<br />
Star Wars: The Force Awakens<br />
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.<br />
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<b>BEST FILM EDITING</b></div>
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Mad Max: Fury Road<br />
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation<br />
Sicario<br />
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.</div>
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<b>BEST SOUND MIXING</b></div>
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Mad Max: Fury Road<br />
Sicario<br />
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.<br />
The Martian</div>
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<b>BEST SOUND EDITING</b></div>
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Inside Out<br />
Mad Max: Fury Road<br />
Sicario</div>
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The Man From U.N.C.L.E.</div>
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<b>BEST VISUAL EFFECTS</b></div>
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Ant-Man<br />
Jupiter Ascending<br />
San Andreas<br />
Star Wars: The Force Awakens<br />
The Avengers: Age Of Ultron</div>
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<b>BEST ORIGINAL SCORE</b></div>
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Everest<br />
Inside Out<br />
Mad Max: Fury Road<br />
Sicario<br />
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.<br />
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<b>BEST ORIGINAL SONG</b></div>
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"Get Ready For It" — Kingsman: The Secret Service</div>
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<b>BEST ANIMATED FEATURE</b></div>
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Inside Out</div>
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<b>BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM</b><br />
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-37187585405355711302014-12-16T13:15:00.004+08:002014-12-16T13:27:06.224+08:00REVIEW: Whiplash<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the thirty-second film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival. </div>
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And rather surprisingly to me, this American production emerged as the best film I saw in the entire film fest, by far. This it achieved by having a story that is as simple as it gets, but presents us with two very strong characters – an ambitious and dogged drummer who falls under the training of a tyrannical but well-meaning music conductor/coach – and is at all times dramatic and inspiring and intense. It was the only film in the whole festival that left me pumped up and excited.</div>
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And when I say that the story is simple, I mean that it's very focused with barely any subplots to distract from the main story. The film opens with Andrew (Miles Teller, who broke out with what should've been an Oscar-nominated performance in <i>Rabbit Hole</i> and has since moved on with <i>The Spectacular Now</i>, <i>That Awkward Moment</i>, and <i>Divergent</i>) training furiously with his drum moves. It already looks impressive, but then in walks Terence Fletcher (JK Simmons, from the Sam Raimi <i>Spider-Man</i> movies and <i>Juno</i>), who conducts the best jazz band in Shaffer Conservatory of Music where Andrew studies (though we really don't see him in any other context other than training for his drums … see what I mean by focused?). The opening scene immediately foreshadows the imminent dynamics of the two, with Andrew eager to please and dogged in his determination to be accepted and be the best, and Fletcher displaying a flippant attitude towards his efforts, viciously foul-mouthed and decidedly unsympathetic.</div>
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Andrew doesn't immediately get inducted into Fletcher's band, but once he's there he becomes proud, and is promptly destroyed by Fletcher's tyrannical dishing-out of insults and rants. But that only spurs Andrew further on and he trains harder and harder; the image of blood specks rubbed raw from Andrew's hands splattering onto drumheads and cymbals is pretty much the defining image of this film. Just how dedicated Andrew is is demonstrated in a pretty climactic and intense scene … in the <i>middle</i> of the film, before we even enter the third act. The largely Korean audience members at the Open Cinema (a 4,000 seater auditorium) collectively flinched at it.</div>
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In an earlier scene, the audience members even clapped in the middle of the film when Andrew gets an "you earned it" acknowledgement from Fletcher.</div>
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The real climax of the film is set in yet another jazz band competition, and I didn't even know it was the climactic scene until the plot twist happens and Andrew suddenly finds himself in a vulnerable position and unable to perform. But then he finds a way and out comes one of the most explosive and jaw-dropping endings to grace the screen in recent years, where the protagonist turns the tables against those who want to tear him down and proceeds to win and win and win. I haven't felt this euphoric over a film's ending since Annette Bening managed the same feat in <i>Being Julia</i> a few years ago.</div>
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The word I use a lot here is 'intense', and that characterises both a lot of the drumming sequences (whether it's Andrew practicing or performing) as well as the two leads' personalities, but it also describes the editing. The editing really deserves an Oscar nomination next year; in terms of storytelling the pacing is spot-on from beginning till end, fast and slow when needed; but also in terms of its micro-editing, cutting from shot to shot, it was highly kinetic, as energetic as it could be without cutting from shakycam shots and without seeming messy.</div>
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Teller is spot-on in his portrayal of the dedicated Andrew; and I'm calling Best Supporting Actor nomination for JK Simmons right now. He's able to exude both the entertainingly vulgar and tyrannical side of his character as well as the few moments when it seems the guy does </div>
actually has a heart, though Fletcher has a way of switching from one mode to another within a split second that makes you wonder how sincere he is sometimes. The film is dominated by these two characters, that I didn't even notice that Paul Reiser is in the film … also because he looks a lot more plump since we last met him. There is a minor subplot, really minor, involving Andrew's courtship of the popcorn counter girl working at a cinema he frequents.<br />
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I've said enough. The short of it, is go see it!</div>
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How Good I Think It Is: <b>8/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep: <b>No way!</b></div>
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-71180343332861540032014-12-16T12:35:00.003+08:002014-12-16T12:35:30.991+08:00REVIEW: 绣春刀 | Brotherhood Of BladesThis is the thirty-first film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.<br />
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As mentioned in earlier posts, I've been rather delayed with writing reviews for the last few films I caught at BIFF.<br />
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With this film though, I literally didn't remember a single thing about it when I looked at the title, and then looked at it again. Not the story, not the characters, not the actors – no inkling at all. Which says a lot, I guess.<br />
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Watching the trailer jogged my memory. I remembered that the story succeeded in setting up a dilemma for the characters, a trio of men loyal to each other but who hid secrets from each other in trying to do right by each other. But you know what, I was also thinking while watching the trailer, that new Wong Fei Hung movie was more intense and entertaining.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="338" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Fq6meXcDfr8" width="600"></iframe>McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-90286644986840582232014-12-16T12:23:00.002+08:002014-12-16T12:26:22.865+08:00REVIEW: V Tichu | In Silence<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the thirtieth film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.<br />
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I'm doing a disservice with this review, given that I'm writing it a couple of months after I saw the film. I'm looking at my scribbled notes but I don't fully remember much of the film. Not necessarily the film's fault, it's not a conventional narrative.<br />
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Essentially, the film portrays the lives of a few members of the creative community in Poland around the World War II era, but instead of an integrated story we see their lives re-enacted, and their thoughts narrated, separately from one another, in a movie largely devoid of dialogue, relying instead on sumptuously shot images that magnifies the emotions of the scenes. These are musicians, dancers, artists, all Jews I believe. It's a strangely effective way to portray the plight of the Holocaust victims, one that I don't think I've seen before. It eschews traditional movie storytelling and focuses entirely on thoughts and emotions as the world around the characters descend into hell, which affects how the film is shot and edited.<br />
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And my, was the film nicely shot. Just watch the images in the trailer below. In happier times everything is warm and sunny, with gratuitous use of rack focuses, showing beautiful memories, a man kissing his new bride while the camera circles around (and other such poetic camera moves), sunlight glinting off crystals in a homely room with a man playing his piano, extreme close-ups, that sort of thing; and then when the story gets dark it's brooding, lots of blacks and dark colours in the production design.<br />
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I did note down in my scribbled notes 'despite sumptuous values, disembodied from audience' and 'cuts disjointedly', but I can't remember why I felt so. I was also pretty sure I fell asleep in parts of it, but that's probably due to general tiredness (I saw this on Day 8 of the film festival) and this isn't exactly a fast-paced film. I think I should give the film another watch when I'm in the mood some day.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="338" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/_eMuUkQiNoE" width="600"></iframe>McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-17208930589146157262014-12-16T11:35:00.000+08:002014-12-16T11:35:22.269+08:00REVIEW: Fehér Isten | White God<div class="p1">
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This is the twenty-ninth film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival. </div>
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The movie opens with an oddly empty Budapest during daytime, calling into mind the opening scenes in <i>Vanilla Sky</i> and <i>I Am Legend</i>. Then a young girl cycles into the picture, an incongruent image. Knowing the premise of the film, you're not surprised when you see a line of dogs appear far behind her, before growing into an army and charging down towards the girl, calling into mind the mass animal attack films most prominently featured in <i>The Birds</i> or <i>Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes</i>. Along with the <i>Bourne</i>-esque music, the sequence felt like an odd mix of <i>The Birds</i> and the Tangier chase sequence in <i>The Bourne Ultimatum</i>.</div>
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After that, the movie naturally flashbacks to days earlier, when that young girl Lili (an excellent Zsófia Psotta) is dropped off to stay with her estranged father Dániel ... along with a dog (a kind of Labrador perhaps) that Dániel isn't expecting. Lili's dog Hagen attracts our sympathy immediately, of course (it's a dog after all), but in the early scenes it seems that owning dogs can be a hassle, especially in apartments; Dániel doesn't care for dogs, especially when Hagen howls at night, and the neighbours complain that they don't have a license and shouldn't be allowed to keep it. Things come to a head when Lili is sufficiently distracted at band practice by her dog and Dániel was called in by her teacher, so a frustrated Dániel unceremoniously dumps the dog by the roadside, leaving it to fend for itself.<br />
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From then on we mostly follow the dog on its adventure, one that is kind of familiar, except that it's more usually seen in animated films (and where animals talk). The lonely and vulnerable Hagen slowly finds its footing as it makes friends with other dogs, but is soon captured and passes through several hands; unlike Oliver Twist, the poor dog never meets its Mr Brownlow, but just gets treated worse and worse, eventually ending up with a a heavy-set man whose specialty is in aggressifying dogs for dogfights. We watch in horror as our gentle protagonist is turned, through the power of steroids, into a saliva-spewing fighting machine. After its first fight though, Hagen escapes ... only to return and – rather inexplicably, by the way – becomes the dog version of Caesar, leading a seemingly ubiquitous army of dogs to terrorise the entire city.<br />
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The dogfight sequence is amazing to watch, if only because it was violent and bloody and left me wondering how on earth did they film it without hurting the dogs.<br />
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The other accomplishment, of course, is getting what seemed like a hundred or more dogs running down street after street, barking madly, seem to attack the extras/stunt persons. To be honest, as much as it is a novel spectacle to watch on screen, it is also kind of silly, because while the film does show us a few accounts of Hungarians being terrible to dogs, it can't be that the dogs are taking revenge against everyone (and unlike in <i>Apes</i>, the dogs don't have the sort of intelligence to desire to take over human civilisation).<br />
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As a result, in the third act the narrative begins to frazzle and it felt a little like it doesn't quite belong to the rest of the film, which had up to that point done a skilful job in portraying the drama surrounding Lili's relationship with her dad and her peers (I've seen a few Hungarian dramas by now, and they really excel in portraying 3-dimensional characters who are both realistic and yet still manage to surprise audiences), as well as showing Hagen's sad slide into violent mania.<br />
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I did think about Malaysia during the film, fantasising that the dogs in the movie are in Malaysia, mowing down the pet shop owners who mistreated dogs, the so-called religious figures who persecuted Syed Azmi for his charitable 'I Want to Touch a Dog' project,<br />
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I noted in my scribbled notes 'quick homage to birds' but it's been a couple of months since I saw the film so I can't remember what that referred to, lol. I guess you gotta watch the film to find out. :)<br />
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How Good I Think The Film Is: <b>7.5/10</b><br />
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-40463572787159088092014-11-26T04:42:00.000+08:002015-02-27T20:18:40.938+08:00Suggested List of 2015 Oscar Nominations<div style="font-size: 16px;">
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<b><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />BEST PICTURE</b></div>
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Big Eyes<br />
Birdman<br />
The Grand Budapest Hotel<br />
The Imitation Game<br />
Unbroken<br />
Whiplash</div>
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<b>BEST DIRECTING</b></div>
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Alejandro González-Iñarritu — Birdman<br />
David Fincher — Gone Girl<br />
Doug Liman — Edge of Tomorrow<br />
Wes Anderson — The Grand Budapest Hotel</div>
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<b>BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE</b></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Aamir Khan — PK<br />
Benedict Cumberbatch — The Imitation Game<br />
Eddie Redmayne — The Theory Of Everything<br />
Michael Keaton — Birdman</div>
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<b>BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE</b></div>
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<div style="font-size: 16px;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Felicity Jones — The Theory Of Everything<br />
Hilary Swank — The Homesman<br />
Keira Knightley — The Imitation Game<br />
Rosamund Pike — Gone Girl<br />
Scarlett Johansson — Under The Skin</div>
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<b>BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE</b></div>
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Chris Pine — Stretch<br />
Edward Norton — Birdman<br />
Elyes Gabel — A Most Violent Year<br />
JK Simmons – Whiplash</div>
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<div style="font-size: 16px;">
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<b>BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE</b></div>
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<div style="font-size: 16px; min-height: 19px;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Patricia Arquette — Boyhood<br />
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<b>BEST WRITING, ORIGINAL</b></div>
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<div style="font-size: 16px;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Birdman<br />
Begin Again<br />
Neighbors<br />
Stretch<br />
The Grand Budapest Hotel</div>
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<b>BEST WRITING, ADAPTED</b></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Gone Girl<br />
The Imitation Game<br />
The Theory Of Everything<br />
This Is Where I Leave You</div>
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<div style="font-size: 16px;">
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<b>BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY</b></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Birdman<br />
Exodus: Gods And Kings<br />
Into The Woods<br />
Magic In The Moonlight<br />
The Grand Budapest Hotel</div>
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<b>BEST COSTUME DESIGN</b></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Exodus: Gods And Kings<br />
Into The Woods<br />
Magic In The Moonlight<br />
The Grand Budapest Hotel<br />
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<b>BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN</b></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes<br />
Exodus: Gods And Kings<br />
Into The Woods<br />
The Grand Budapest Hotel<br />
Unbroken</div>
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<b>BEST MAKEUP</b></div>
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<div style="font-size: 16px; min-height: 19px;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Exodus: Gods And Kings<br />
Foxcatcher<br />
Guardians Of The Galaxy<br />
The Theory Of Everything<br />
Unbroken<br />
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</div>
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<b>BEST FILM EDITING</b></div>
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Begin Again<br />
How To Train Your Dragon 2<br />
Into The Woods<br />
The Imitation Game<br />
Whiplash</div>
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<b>BEST SOUND MIXING</b></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Birdman<br />
Fury<br />
Godzilla<br />
Into The Woods</div>
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<b>BEST SOUND EDITING</b></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Fury<br />
Godzilla<br />
Interstellar<br />
RoboCop</div>
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<b>BEST VISUAL EFFECTS</b></div>
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<div style="font-size: 16px;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes<br />
Exodus: Gods And Kings<br />
Godzilla<br />
Interstellar<br />
Unbroken<br />
X-Men: Days Of Future Past</div>
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<b>BEST ORIGINAL SCORE</b></div>
</div>
<div style="font-size: 16px;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Birdman<br />
The Imitation Game<br />
The Theory Of Everything<br />
<div style="text-align: start;">
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<div>
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<div style="font-size: 16px;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>BEST ORIGINAL SONG</b></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
"Lost Stars" — Begin Again<br />
"Song Of The Sea" — Song Of The Sea</div>
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<b>BEST ANIMATED FEATURE</b></div>
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<div style="font-size: 16px;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Big Hero 6<br />
How To Train Your Dragon 2<br />
Mr. Peabody & Sherman<br />
The Lego Movie</div>
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<b>BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM</b><br />
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Leviathan (Russia)<br />
PK (India)<br />
The Fatal Encounter (South Korea)<br />
The President (Georgia)<br />
The Tribe (Ukraine)<br />
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<b>BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE</b></div>
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Rocks In My Pockets</div>
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-30720055641783276232014-10-29T18:06:00.001+08:002014-12-16T10:19:18.446+08:00REVIEW: Племя | The Tribe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the twenty-eighth film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival. It is the first Ukrainian film I've seen, and also the first one told entirely in sign language; every single actor communicates only with sign language throughout the film, without exception. Without subtitles. </div>
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In fact, there's probably no other film like this.</div>
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The idea is that while we lose out in understanding the precise content of their communication, we get the gist of what's happening based on the characters' settings and circumstances, and the actors help us along by signing constantly at an intense pace (they seem to be arguing or scolding each other most of the time). Also, it's worth mentioning that it is not a silent film; the audience is hearing what the characters cannot.</div>
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What's the setting? A teenage boy enters a boarding school, presumably for the deaf, and is quickly admitted into the school's alpha male gang, owing to the boy's firm physique and robust strength. The teachers are present only in the beginning of the film — for example, there's a very familiar scene in a classroom with a teacher signing her lessons to the class but one of the alpha male gangsters is interrupting it with his own cheeky signing, leading to silent altercations with the teacher — but after a while they seem to largely disappear from the scene, and we're only shown the interactions among the students. Those interactions are also fairly familiar tropes, with the alpha male gang bullying the younger kids.</div>
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On the other hand, there's a subplot involving two girls who are close to the alpha male gang because the gang pimps them out to the truck drivers nearby. One of the girls is the lover of one of the alpha male gang, so things get complicated when our main boy first engages her sexual services, then later falls for her. This leads to a couple of sex scenes, shown in its entirety.</div>
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The film makes use of fluid long takes, and many scenes are filmed entirely in one take; the Steadicam work here is stellar and I didn't notice any issues with focus. And these aren't slow-moving shots; the camera is generally swooping along as it follows the fast-walking boys, coming to abrupt halts sometimes as they are interrupted by something, and then continuing, which sort of mirrors the staccato like gestures of the characters. Other times there are static long-shots, with lots happening within the frame, like when the alpha male boys come to ransack the younger boys' room, or when one of the girls go through an excruciating experience of an illegal abortion. (How excruciating? You actually hear her voice.)</div>
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The film leads to an explosive final scene, again filmed in one long take as we see our main boy, now innocence all gone, walking up 7 flights of stairs and turning the tables on the alpha male gang. It is both surreal and cathartic, and reminded me slightly of what happened at the end of von Trier's <i>Dogville</i>.</div>
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All the actors did well; Grigoriy Fesenko is perpetually brooding as the protagonist. I didn't find out whether all the young actors are actually deaf, or if they're not whether they knew sign language beforehand.</div>
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It's probably not the sort of film that you can walk into without knowing its nature and still enjoy it; but, knowing what you're walking into, it's certainly an interesting experience, and not as difficult a watch as one would imagine. You will notice of course that, with the content of the conversations missing, you're more aware of the physical poses and gestures of the characters, and sometimes you're surprised by the fact that something happening nearby isn't registered by another character because he or she isn't looking in that direction and thus isn't aware of it.</div>
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An unusual film that's a recommended watch if it's available to you.</div>
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How Good I Think The Film Is: <b>7/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep: <b>Might have.</b></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="338" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ZeYO_EoHP0k" width="600"></iframe>McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-67543170546316401812014-10-29T17:49:00.001+08:002014-10-29T17:50:34.649+08:00REVIEW: The Cut<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the twenty-seventh film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.</div>
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Tahar Rahim, one of the most watchable actors from France, was the reason I decided to catch the film (even before I read the synopsis). He's played various characters in France, and then a Celtic tribal leader in <i>The Eagle</i>, and then an Arab in <i>Day Of The Falcon</i>, and now he's … an Armenian Christian at the onset of the genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks during WWI.</div>
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The film begins as these films do, showing us the relatively happy lives of a family just before the storm clouds of war rolled in, starting off with the words "Once upon a time … once upon no time …". Nazaret (Rahim) is father to two cheerful daughters and has a wife who sings him to sleep (the song consists of a hypnotic repetition of the word 'chanoi'). The ominous war finally arrives at his doorstep as Ottoman soldiers turn up at their village without warning and seize all adult men to become slave workers, and just like that Nazaret is torn from his family. The work is hard and meaningless (I never really understood why in war movies and prison movies do we always see hostages/convicts hauling stones in wheelbarrows and breaking them down), and the soldiers are moderately bullying. One day, however, all the Armenian men are taken away by a separate group of Ottoman soldiers and … executed. Nazaret somehow survives, though not unscathed, in a way that the title of the film hints at.</div>
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By then Nazaret's spirit is crushed, and he wanders from place to place, at first being rescued by deserting soldiers, later finding his sister-in-law in a camp of dying Armenians before she expires herself, and then arriving at a village where he is taken in by the kind owner of a soap factory. Nazaret works hard and tries to survive, but then a coincidental meeting leads to a sudden revelation: his daughters are still alive! From here Nazaret's adventures begin proper. He travels from place to place, looking for information about his daughters, and when he finally finds out their fate, his next destination to seek them out is a surprising one, and one that embiggens the scope of the film even further ...</div>
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There's probably been other films that've dealt with the topic of the Armenian genocide but I haven't seen them before, but it's hard to believe there's any that matched the epic scope of this film, even though the film does quite intimately focus on the experience of this one Armenian man. </div>
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Interestingly, it's directed by Fatih Akin, a German Turkish director of whom I've only seen one of his earlier films <i>Im Juli</i> (<i>In July</i>), which starred Moritz Bleibtreu (who makes an unexpected – for me, slightly distracting – cameo here). While the Turks are indisputably the bad guys here, they're not unsophisticatedly vilified; there is a scene set after the end of the war which sees the Turks ignominiously walking out of the town while the Armenians curse and stone them from the pavements (a scene that is of course reminiscent of so many movies set during wartime Germany, including <i>Schindler's List</i> with the Jews walking out and the Germans cursing them and a kid yelling repeatedly "Goodbye Jews!"), when an Armenian manages to thr</div>
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ow a stone that hits a Turkish boy squarely in the eye and he bleeds profusely, you kind of feel for that kid for that moment, and so does Nazaret, who puts down the stone he is about to throw.<br />
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Also helping with the epic feel of the film are the evocative sets and locations, from the simple, rural Armenian towns in the beginning of the film to the various kinds of desert scenes, moving on to authentic recreations of the early 20th century look of the surprising countries the film takes Nazaret to.</div>
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Once again, Tahar Rahim doesn't disappoint. But I knew that already. :)</div>
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How Good I Think The Film Is: <b>7.5/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep: <b>Don't think so.</b></div>
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-63777295303404832682014-10-18T07:01:00.001+08:002014-10-18T07:01:12.286+08:00REVIEW: The Mule<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the twenty-sixth film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.<br />
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It's based on a true story, though I haven't been able to find the Wikipedia article about said true story, which I really wanted to because parts of the story strained credibility. Which makes it really interesting!<br />
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The year is 1983. The film centres on Ray Jenkins (Angus Sampson, who also wrote and co-directed), a really naïve man with an over-protective mother (obviously), who works at a dead-end job at an electronics store. So when his best mate Gavin (Leigh Whannell, whom you might know of as the writer of the <i>Saw</i> trilogy and other James Wan projects) offers him a slightly dangerous job of smuggling 1 kg of drugs through his stomach from Bangkok with the promise of 8,000 Aussie dollars in return, Ray takes it after some amount of hesitation.<br />
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Naturally, where the story gets really interesting is when Ray is detained at the Melbourne airport. The customs officers couldn't find anything, so the detectives who take charge of the case, the intentionally violent-prone Croft (the world's favourite Australian character actor, Hugo Weaving) and the default good cop Paris (Ewen Leslie) put Ray up at a hotel room and attempt to wait Ray out ... I mean, the bloke has gotta shit at some point, right? Ray is in on their plans and begins to ... constipate himself. This is as simple and effective as dramatic conflict gets in a movie. It's the opposite of a race against time.<br />
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Meanwhile, other things are building up around Ray's story. Gavin is pressured by the drug lord whose drugs are in Ray's stomach to get the drugs and kill his friend Ray, perhaps both at the same time. The lawyer assigned to Ray's case attempts drum up sensationalism about Ray's case to the media, but is entirely blockaded by the yacht race that has the nation gripped. Meanwhile, Ray's over-protective mother attempts to help her son by sending over laxative-laced steak ...<br />
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The ordeal Ray goes through in trying to avoid jail by holding his shit in literally (one doesn't often get to type 'holding his shit in literally' often, really) is both awesome and stomach-churning to watch. One could almost smell the fart in the room from the way the detectives cringe their noses, and the sound editors helpfully gave us an audible account of Ray's bowel grumblings.<br />
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Despite the waiting nature of the story, the film never sags through its middle act, which is kind of a feat, and as an audience member you get used to the incredulity as the X in 'Day X' goes into double figures. In the third act a number of subplots come together and get resolved in a satisfying if slightly incredible manner, but we come to like Ray (or rather, feel sorry for him) and wish to see him get through this alive.<br />
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I did ask the question in my head, given that the film stated that this was based on a true story, how much of what we see happening at the end of the film was true.<br />
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Overall, a pretty good story in a pretty good Australian production. Check out the excellently edited trailer below.<br />
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How Good I Think The Film Is: <b>7/10</b><br />
Did I Fall Asleep: <b>Nope.</b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="338" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ezAqlEdF3wk" width="600"></iframe>McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-63759368358806038682014-10-11T18:30:00.000+08:002014-10-11T18:30:42.005+08:00REVIEW: 그들이 죽었다 | We Will Be OK<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the twenty-fifth film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.<br />
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Gosh, I really regretted picking this film. I didn't remember why I picked it when the movie started as I had forgotten the synopsis, but soon I understood why: the film deals with a group of filmmakers who are finding the business rather difficult to get into.<br />
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Except that the whole thing is just rather aimless and boring. Our main character is Sang-seok, who is in ennui. His friend Jae-ho decides that he's not getting enough roles as an actor, so why not make their own films? So Jae-ho pulls together just a few friends who constitute his skeleton crew, but doesn't know a thing about directing, and annoys his DP by not getting location permits first, and perplexes his actress when she saw that they're filming with an iPhone. By the middle of the film the little filmmaking venture Jae-ho is attempting has clearly fallen apart.<br />
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Then the film changes direction with its story; it's not a subplot, but a new plot. Sang-seok meets a karaoke girl and kind of uses her as a rebound after finding out that a girl he slept with was totally not interested in him. He goes back home, tries to write a screenplay himself, then tries to kill himself, then coincidentally finds the karaoke girl living not far away from him. The karaoke girl firmly believes that the world really is ending on 12.21.2012, so Sang-seok invites her to spend the last day with him. Except that at the end of that half of that film, in what feels like a spontaneous move on the part of the film's writer-director, that sequence changes into "oh, Sang-seok was just imagining all of that for his screenplay". And then it pulls out a Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World ending, except that it's not at all emotionally satisfying, quite the opposite.<br />
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As I mentioned, it's all rather aimless and boring, and it doesn't help that the characters aren't likable, except maybe the karaoke girl (not very, just a bit). For sure it's a low-budget film and its plot is partly dictated by the available resources (which is very little), but ultimately the filmmakers failed to give the film a purpose for the audience to watch it.<br />
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There's the fact that the actors all use their own names for their characters; Sang-seok is Kim Sang-seok, and Jae-ho is Baek Jae-ho, who also wrote and directed it. Baek's explanation as to why they did it made sense: if audiences remember the characters then they'll already remember the actors' names. After all, they really are a bunch of filmmakers who are trying to break into the Korean film industry (which is over time resembling more and more of the impenetrability of the Hollywood studio system, spurred on by Korean society's celebrity worship), so one could imagine there's a lot of autobiographical element in the film. ... But what happens if the film is annoying to the audience? Would we think of those names favourably?<br />
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There's a scene showing Sang-seok's ennui that led to his misguided suicide attempt. It lasts about 2-3 mins, and felt like forever without a point; could've been done in 20 seconds.<br />
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Another random comment: Sang-seok actually looks better in person than in the film. Odd.<br />
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Probably the least enjoyable film at the film festival for me.<br />
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How Good I Think It Is: <b>2/10</b><br />
Did I Fall Asleep: <b>20 mins at some point in the beginning, and then here and there after that.</b>McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-51766934405154060282014-10-11T18:03:00.000+08:002014-10-11T18:05:13.115+08:00REVIEW: National Gallery<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the twenty-fourth film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival. This was the film I gave up <i>Boyhood</i> for. If only I had been able to get into an earlier screening, I wouldn't have to make such compromises, sigh …</div>
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It's nothing more than a documentary that shows us the going-ons of London's National Gallery. I have fond memories of the place, it's probably my favourite of London's museums or galleries. I was never good at art, nor did I have the aptitude for art appreciation, but I remember feeling happy walking past all those paintings and looking at them. </div>
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One of the paintings, a portrait of a young man, had caused me to halt my steps and stare at it longer than usual. I was happy to see it again in the film, made me smile.</div>
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Well, having been there, what does this film offer that's special? Besides showing us the gallery space and the visitors who look at the paintings and the guides who explain to the members of the public the stories behind the paintings, it also takes us into the restoration rooms where deteriorating or vandalised paintings are meticulously retouched, the discussion meetings between administrative members of the gallery, a life drawing class with nude models, etc. The film is just that, and more of that, over and over again. It doesn't get more straightforward than that.</div>
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The parts I enjoyed the most are the tour narration bits: one female guide always invites her audience to stand in the shoes of one of the characters in the paintings, and then weaves the context and the story within the painting to get people to appreciate the painting in front of them more strongly; another male guide who takes younger children and tweens around naturally takes a more talking-down attitude, but also does it in a way that I personally found engaging.</div>
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Other than that, I struggled to stay awake in some parts of the film's nearly 3-hour running time. Director Frederick Wiseman does tend to allow his subjects to talk onscreen. I mean, sure, he shot the entire conversation in all cases, but was there a need to include almost all of it? It's hard to care when you keep having to discover the context and references of what these people are discussing regarding the gallery and the paintings and the people, especially after 2 hours of it and still more to come. </div>
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Perhaps it's something that would be appreciated by people who like people-watching. But personally I would've shortened the film significantly, perhaps down to half, and it wouldn't have lessened the experience for me, possibly enhanced it because I would've kept awake for all of it, because it's not like I gained more from listening to ten minutes' worth of discussions about how, for example, how effective are the members of the public's experience of the gallery (it doesn't help that the woman who was arguing her case was so politely diplomatic that she took ten times longer than necessary to make her point), or five minutes' worth of the pity it is that the placement of a particular painting resulted in a shadow across the top 10% of it but well, there's no better place for it ... as opposed to just a minute or two of those conversations.</div>
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Based on one of the scenes in which the National Gallery's budget was being debated, it seems the film was shot in 2011. Did it take that long to edit ... and still be this long?</div>
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In a way the film reminded me of <i>Into Great Silence</i>, a German documentary film about French monks in a secluded monastery that is almost the same length as this film that is every bit as patience-demanding as it sounds.</div>
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How Good I Think The Film Is: <b>6.5/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep: <b>Many times, but in a film like this it actually doesn't matter.</b></div>
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-58895515162137186922014-10-11T17:43:00.002+08:002014-10-11T17:43:28.872+08:00REVIEW: The President<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the twenty-third film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival. It marks the first time I've seen a Mohsen Makhmalbaf film. It's not too bad.</div>
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It's a really nice idea for a film, and one that taps into the zeitgeist. A dictator rules his country with an iron fist. Unfortunately at this point I fell asleep for about fifteen minutes, but in between I was vaguely aware of two women in the dictator's limousine arguing bitchily, presumably the dictator's daughters. I read in a synopsis later on that later on the dictator would order the entire city's lights to be switched off as a prank, then finds to his surprise that it couldn't be switched back on. This was the straw that broke the oppressed citizens back, who finally revolt and launch a revolution to overthrew the dictator.</div>
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When I woke up, it was for the scene when the revolution begins. Travelling in the limo with his grandson, who at 5 years old has been trained to be respond to His Royal Highness and calls his grandfather Your Majesty, the people suddenly attack, and an exhilarating and extended sequence with the limo trying to escape the city ensues, a sequence that I found rather unexpected for a low-budget film and one produced in that part of the world. By the end of that chase, the president's bodyguard is dead, the driver has fled, and the president and his grandson are left alone in the middle of a desolate town. The president has effectively lost his country.</div>
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For the rest of the film, the president, who along with his grandson have always had everything done for him, is forced to learn how to disguise himself and blend in with the crowd. He traverses the country that formerly belonged to him, pretending to be a street musician (he does know how to play a guitar), and sees the consequences of his reign for the first time. Women are raped and nobody lifts a finger to help. People are so desperately poor, they couldn't possibly have anything to pay taxes with. Political prisoners are tortured, and some who started with a bright future but were unfairly imprisoned came back home and found only despair and heartbreak. The president just looks on, neutrally, and we're never entirely sure whether he is ever empathetic over his former subjects' plight, or just far too concerned with his own life and his grandson's to care.</div>
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Through the film we hear radio reports updating the status of the country, with the revolutionaries overrunning the country and the bounty on the president's head increasing at hyper inflationary rates. I often write such radio report updates into the film scripts I wrote, but friends insist that it doesn't work, "too much words"; well, it works here. </div>
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The film is filmed in Georgia and uses Georgian actors, but the film invites us to think about this not as a story set in a specific place or time, but as a story that has been happening a lot lately in various parts of the world, and also since time immemorial. Makhmalbaf did mention that he was not able to make the film in many countries, because of the theme about fallen dictators and their comeuppance, and Georgia was one country where he could.</div>
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Yet it's also a story that hasn't been done before for a film, at least not in this way. (I'm obviously not including Sacha Baron Cohen's <i>The Dictator</i> in the same category!) It can be a bit slow at parts, but it's an interesting film so it's worth catching if it appears anywhere near you.</div>
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How Good I Think The Film Is: <b>7/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep: <b>15 mins in the beginning, and probably a minute or two here and there.</b></div>
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-44668396531291474332014-10-10T07:23:00.002+08:002014-10-10T07:26:11.932+08:00REVIEW: The Drop<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the twenty-second film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival. When the 20th Century Fox trumpet music blared to the logo of Fox Searchlight after the lights went down, I almost wanted to cheer: it felt like a lifetime ago since I saw a Hollywood production.</div>
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Starring the ever watchable Tom Hardy, a surprising Noomi Rapace (her accent work has improved further), an even more surprising Matthias Schoenaerts (the Belgian actor who appeared in Jacques Audiard's Rust & Bone alongside Marion Cotillard … I didn't think he could do an American role so well), and James Gandolfini in his last film appearance. The cast was the reason I picked this film. I was surprised by what the film turned out to be.</div>
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Watching the trailer, one might expect to see a slow-burn suspense drama about Tom Hardy's character, Bob facing increasingly tense and threatening situations to his life and the people around him. In fact, that description is largely true, except the film is even slower-burn than that, if that's possible, to the point that really, not much is happening, or just barely.</div>
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The 'drop' refers to gangsters transferring money across town but using busy bars such as the one Bob works in as a drop and switch point for the cash that comes in in envelopes perfunctorily hidden by newspapers. Bob's partner in running the place is Marv (Gandolfini), though Bob seems to do all the work. One day they are robbed, and the Chechen gangsters who are doing all that money-transferring are not pleased. This is the first twenty minutes of the film, after that the whole idea of the 'drop' becomes somewhat secondary as a plot … I mean, it's still pivotal to the major turning points of the film that happens later, but we're barely at the bar for the middle hour of the film.</div>
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In fact, the movie spends time with Bob … learning how to take care of a pitbull puppy he found in a dumpster. And also the woman, Nadia, whose dumpster Bob pulled the puppy out of … Nadia is sweet but untrusting of men, and she has good reasons. Then there's the nosey detective (John Ortiz) whose MO in questioning witnesses consists of asking about everyday things before switching to crime-related question he wanted to ask suddenly so as to disorientate the witness. And then there's Eric Deeds (Schoenaerts), who goes around making strange threats, like wanting the puppy back from Bob (in order to abuse it more), or else he'll get it back anyway and then he'll beat it to death. He's creepy, threatening, and generated a few 'wtf' moments.</div>
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If it's a character piece, it's just not very interesting to watch. I fell asleep a couple of times. Sure, Tom Hardy sunk into his character brilliantly here, and had already proved in Locke that even if he's the only person onscreen for 70 mins we'd still watch him. He plays Bob as a simple-natured, good-hearted man until mounting pressure from circumstances around him, which took the entire film to build up to, finally cracks out a different side of him, one wholly unexpected to come from that character … and this will likely be true even if you've read this sentence.</div>
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As for the rest of the actors, all good ones, in a story where most scenes constitute dialogue discussing what has happened and speculating what might happen (with a cute pitbull puppy running around from time to time) and the occasional threatening scene by various characters, there's really not much for the actors to play with to stand out from.</div>
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It's really an odd one. I don't know whether to recommend it. Well, maybe watch it if you like all the actors.</div>
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How Good I Think It Is: <b>6.5/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep: <b>Inevitably, yes, for a few minutes.</b></div>
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-38973895898427774412014-10-10T07:15:00.003+08:002014-10-10T07:25:37.837+08:00REVIEW: Paper Planes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the twenty-first film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.</div>
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A children's movie with a simple story. Dylan lives with his father, who is depressed after his wife's recent death and just stays at home and watch TV all day long, even though his own son has moved on, creating a frustrating household for Dylan. By chance, Dylan is suddenly found to have a special talent for throwing paper planes, he is encouraged to try for the national championships in Sydney. The rest of the film is about how he prepares for the championships, his frustrating relationship with his father, how he deals with the arrogant bully (there's always one in such films), and how he courts the Japanese girl who happens to be the paper plane champion representing her country.</div>
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It's all fairly predictable stuff, but with young actor Ed Oxenbould virtually carrying the entire film on his shoulders (he's there in almost every scene of the film) but doing so capably, it's a nice enough encouraging film for kids that age. I do question the characters written for Sam Worthington, who plays Dylan's dad, and for David Wenham, who plays the bully's dad. Worthington's character is so inexplicably irresponsible here that I thought there might be further revelations later in the film for such a behaviour, but no, he's just being all depressed and shit coz his wife died, to the point that he would rather sit at home than attend his son's competitions, and then grounds his son when the son takes some money in order to pay for his bus fare to go for the competition himself, since he himself wasn't in the mood to take him to it. … What the hell? Under the circumstances I don't think Worthington could be blamed for what is clearly a terribly written role.</div>
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Even worse is Wenham, who, untypically for bully dads isn't an asshole, but is a popular golfer who dishes out good advice for his son, but his son doesn't listen to him, and he doesn't chastise his son about it, and seems almost indifferent to it all. Is he a good or bad dad? How about both? There seems to be almost no point for his character to be in the film; he has one job just before the climax, to dish out platitudes to help Dylan, technically his son's competitor, to figure some things out. In fact his platitudes weren't clear, but Dylan nods knowingly anyway as if he understood (I certainly didn't).</div>
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I also have a problem with how the bully (portrayed to the maximum level of arrogance by Nicholas Bakopoulos-Cooke) is dealt with by the plot. He spends the whole film so assured of his abilities to win that he rubs everybody the wrong way, and in the end loses (this despite pushing Dylan off the staircase and causing Dylan to sprain his wrist, an incident that also does not bear any consequences), and just because he lost he suddenly becomes reformed? Clearly there's a lesson to learn here about forgiveness and admitting your own mistakes, but it was not dealt with at all. He just meekly takes his third place; first act him would have thrown a massive tantrum.<br />
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The advice dished out by the Japanese girl to Dylan is pretty good though.</div>
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The music in the film is rousing and energetic almost all the time, almost too much. The use of Japanese drums did come in at a perfect time though, not used too early, and generated a strong feeling of 'yeah, let's do this!' in the audience. The visual effects work isn't too obvious.</div>
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How Good I Think It Is: <b>6.5/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep: <b>Nope.</b><br />
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-49478954831733536322014-10-10T07:10:00.000+08:002014-10-10T07:10:21.297+08:00REVIEW: 카트 | Cart<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the twentieth film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.</div>
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Inspired by true events, the story is about a group of female contractual employees of a supermarket named The Mart, cashiers and cleaners mostly, who were unfairly terminated before their expected termination date, in order to make way for cheaper and more efficient "outsourcing" (it's a term bandied about but I didn't fully understand how outsourcing would work for these jobs, not from the English subtitles anyway). </div>
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Now, these are working class ladies, and there's something about middle-aged and older Korean women which inspires certain emotions: they generally work really hard without complaint, are very maternal figures, and depending on the scene are lightning rods for generating tearjerking moments or respect and admiration.</div>
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And what transpires is that a couple of mothers (one a single mother, the other has a husband so absent in their lives that she feels like one) bandied together to form a union with all the terminated female employees. The union is naturally ignored by the company (of whom we only see that particular supermarket's general managers and supervisors, and we get the sense that the larger corporation behind them is applying pressure on them to sort things out).</div>
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What to do? The ladies stage a strike, effectively shutting down The Mart. The managers (all men) are taken aback. Since when do women do things like that? They're not supposed to have the balls for it. No biggie, they'll just wait them out. And so the women find themselves living permanently in the supermarket; to entertain themselves they cook and sing and share sad stories about their lives. We get a sense that this isn't a high-paying job, but it's what little they have to support their families. These are familiar themes for movies, of course (shares themes with <i>Norma Rae</i> and <i>Made In Dagenham</i>), and one that isn't surprising for Korean society, but it is the first time for me watching it in a Korean film.</div>
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After many days, the police are sent in to forcibly pull the women out. I was waiting for a scene where an older lady collapses from the assault … and of course I wasn't disappointed. :p The movement seems doomed, except that an assistant supervisor, seeing his own days numbered, as are the other regular workers of the supermarket, combines forces with the women to continue the protest until they all get their jobs back.</div>
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From this point onwards, the film starts to meander. I assume the film is trying to stay true to true events, because what happens is nothing much. The employees continue their protest in the face of utter indifference not just from the company but also from the customers who come to buy their groceries everyday without acknowledging the workers in front of them. There were at least two heart-tugging riot scenes, but never mind that the customers just stepped back, they were never shown sympathising with the cause of the workers. The only time you hear the customers, they are complaining that this is inconveniencing their lives.</div>
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In fact, an early scene with a customer did make my blood boil. The single mother cashier is doing her job of checking the upper class woman customer's items, which offended the woman who says she felt like she is being accused of stealing. She complains so high up that she returns with her son to force the single mother cashier to kneel down and apologise to her. That scene made me so angry I wanted to see the woman hacked down to pieces.</div>
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There's also a subplot involving the mother with the absent husband and her mildly estranged son, which plays out conventionally: she's really nice and works hard for the family but is often oblivious to what her son is thinking about, so the son is a complete arse and not respecting her in the beginning but by the end he understands her and supports her. The actor who plays the son is some guy from some band called EXO, and when he appeared on stage with the other actors the thousands of girls in the auditorium were screaming out their lungs as if it's Robert Pattinson (people had to cover their ears). His acting was decent, but a couple of times when he was slapped onscreen the thousands of girls flinched, and you can imagine how audible that is. I don't get Korean celebrity worship. A film festival volunteer, Korean herself, rolled her eyes hard *urgh* when I mentioned it – "I don't understand that either," she says.</div>
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Ultimately, while the film is well-intentioned and the acting was good enough all across the board, I felt the film wasn't tight enough, the tension and conflict dissipated before the halfway point and never quite regained. Perhaps the film is accurate in how it portrays the way these movements fizzle out after enough weeks and months go by, when the oppressors are able to wait out the protestors, who feel that they are not achieving much and thus lose the momentum and the motivation to continue. The film does end with one last confrontation scene that ends not with a resolution, but a depressing note that in real life the employees only got half their demands.</div>
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How Good I Think It Is: <b>6.5/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep: <b>One of the advantages of watching a film at the Open Cinema – it's pretty hard to fall asleep, with the cold and the din from the street.</b></div>
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-62503475662720157622014-10-09T12:27:00.002+08:002014-10-09T12:27:29.882+08:00REVIEW: Kill Me Three Times<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the nineteenth film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.</div>
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I really wanted to catch this Australian film because of the cast; I think I didn't even read the synopsis before getting a ticket. Starring Simon Pegg, Teresa Palmer (Warm Bodies), Alice Braga (I Am Legend), Sullivan Stapleton (looking a lot less fit for this movie after his 300: Rise Of An Empire days), Bryan Brown (so many 80s American films), and Luke Hemsworth (there's another one?).</div>
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No one gets killed three times. The title refers to the film's structure, the same tale told first from the middle, then from the beginning, and finally the end. So as an audience member, you spend the first third of the film interested to see what's going on but never knowing exactly why the characters are doing what they do, then the middle act starts parcelling out information that makes you go "oh, so that's why s/he did what s/he did in the first act!", and finally the ending is a showdown between all the characters. A gleefully bloody one.</div>
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As such I won't go into the plot and leave you to enjoy it. Suffice to say it's well-casted. It's impossible not to enjoy Simon Pegg in whatever he does, and his contract killer character perfectly utilises the alternately grinningly confident and expressively annoyed persona that Pegg excels in. Braga comes across as both beautiful and strong; Palmer is deliciously malicious, like a 21st century Sharon Stone; Brown is chillingly menacing as a corrupt cop; and Stapleton plays a character so utterly different from Themistocles it's jarring.</div>
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The music has one of those jaded jazzy tones and is quite repetitive, but delivers the right tone of black humour for the film. One of the best things about the film were the mouth-wateringly attractive shots of the landscapes of Western Australia, especially its beautiful beaches. Overall I was thoroughly entertained, and the film ties up all the loose ends nicely in the end. It's a fairly conventional film, but it's no less enjoyable for that. Catch it if you can.</div>
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How Good I Think It Is: <b>7.5/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep: <b>Nope!</b></div>
McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-40107220813561759112014-10-09T08:17:00.002+08:002014-10-09T08:18:46.370+08:00REVIEW: You (Us) Me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the eighteenth film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.</div>
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As soon as the first image popped up on screen, completely doing away with any opening credits, I was in dread – oh no, what had I gotten myself into? What stared back at me was a grainy night scene and the sort of sound editing that immediately screamed "British student horror film" at me. And for most of the film, that's what it is … well, not so much the horror bit.</div>
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The story is about two very disturbed people; there's Edward, a creepy serial killer of women who does what he does at night because he has mommy issues (the director mentioned that he intended this Psycho reference to be a marker for the audience and an homage, an archetype if you will … I would argue it is too obvious and not at all a strong choice, and comes across as amateurish unfortunately); then there's Vivian, who is a bitch to people around her and generally unhappy with her life and has suicidal impulses.</div>
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So it happens that they meet just as he's about to kill her and she's about to kill herself. Match made in heaven, right? (You betcha that line appeared in the film.) Except that Edward's not used to women wanting to kill themselves, hesitated, and decides to save her from herself instead. He takes her home, whereupon Vivian accidentally stumbles on Edward's secret room of horrors and, terrified for her life suddenly, makes excuses to leave. But as soon as she steps out of Edward's house, she suddenly stops, and smiles. She has changed her mind, just like that. We get it, she realises she could get him to kill her, but that's a logical conjecture, and not very motivated by anything we see in the film at that point. This is a problem that pops up from time to time through the rest of the film, characters making decisions or reacting to situations in a way which left me, the audience, with either a 'huh?' or 'o-kay …' feeling.</div>
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The rest of the film plays out as you would expect, but not very interestingly: the conflict in the film is engendered by this symmetrical irony, with Edward falling in love with Vivian and thus not wanting to kill her anymore, but Vivian wanting him to end her life (because she finds it hard to do it herself) and needing him to do it for her but she can only do so by being near him which makes him love her more. Or, in the way the director puts it, "2 characters whose needs happen to define each other's obstacles", which makes it a good dramatic conflict … in theory. Perhaps, but it's not enough.</div>
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To begin with there's little to like about the two broken characters. The actors do try, but ultimately there's not much charm to Edward and Vivian, and for characters like this it really comes down to the actors' charms to make us, the audience, root for them and care for what they do. So, with no characters to root for, no stakes. (Having a great plot could then compensate but … nope, doesn't have that either.) </div>
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Also, the two no-nonsense detectives were annoyingly unconvincing; why postpone a questioning just because the subject's girlfriend is walking around the house in a bathrobe? (I mean, I know, it's for plot reasons.)</div>
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Then there's the filmmaking itself. The HDV-like footage is one thing, but the shots are often uninteresting and the edits not very graceful. In some of the scenes they seem to be filled with insert shots (CU of a hand on a coffee mug, CU of eyes, CU of woman's face, CU boob shot ...), accompanied by horror suspense music, but the reaction it inspired from me was 'okay, so what? … move along will ya?' There also seems to be a lot of thinking montage scenes … I can't remember how many but enough for me to jot down on my notes. The dialogue was mostly uninspired.</div>
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Oddly enough I found the graphics they put up for the end credits quite interesting. Though of course it's a bit of a back-handed brickbat when I imply that the end credits of the film was more interesting than anything in the film itself.</div>
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Ultimately it's a film that's defined by the resources available to the filmmaker, which is virtually nothing at all. It's young British writer-director Max Sobol's first feature, and directors should always be encouraged to try things. On the other hand, I don't see any potential spark of talent in this work. To be fair, it may just be my own prejudiced preferences; during the Q&A, one Korean audience member was half-sobbing and barely able to ask her question to the director because she found it "extremely moving". Well, what do I know.</div>
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How Good I Think It Is: <b>3.5/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep:<b> It's amazing I didn't. Or I forgot.</b></div>
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-86634129160705382972014-10-08T08:54:00.003+08:002014-10-10T08:01:58.182+08:00REVIEW: Rocks In My Pockets<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcxvcdNsEiSZQTGe031aU5YPTBGsqa3R69UoYtREZrOzlbIVzjB_Bv2hqRBauB3dcx9axCUC3NxTczN2-Q36ep9jDDPPMFiInXvcPvxVkUIL7jacpRnFVixV5G4vCuSrNw-KfLeg/s1600/1017617-signe-baumanes-rocks-my-pockets-selected-latvian-oscar-entry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcxvcdNsEiSZQTGe031aU5YPTBGsqa3R69UoYtREZrOzlbIVzjB_Bv2hqRBauB3dcx9axCUC3NxTczN2-Q36ep9jDDPPMFiInXvcPvxVkUIL7jacpRnFVixV5G4vCuSrNw-KfLeg/s1600/1017617-signe-baumanes-rocks-my-pockets-selected-latvian-oscar-entry.jpg" height="358" width="640" /></a></div>
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This is the seventeenth film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig_pAH4ZVqWV-QxLipcd6z0Ah3Ay9yGRtZ2PseoXPY9RAEhk4mEumXuFxa58wKroNfS0-JWoaNr_q6Nmf4cJ-fjgmNxMAeotNLHO_kLeFt8leHrRpm9z9A4EGvJ4Fb7NM29mwWYg/s1600/Signe_Baumane_2009_09_06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig_pAH4ZVqWV-QxLipcd6z0Ah3Ay9yGRtZ2PseoXPY9RAEhk4mEumXuFxa58wKroNfS0-JWoaNr_q6Nmf4cJ-fjgmNxMAeotNLHO_kLeFt8leHrRpm9z9A4EGvJ4Fb7NM29mwWYg/s1600/Signe_Baumane_2009_09_06.jpg" height="200" width="161" /></a>A highly entertaining animated documentary film, kind of reminds me of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, although they deal with completely different subject matters. </div>
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Here, Latvian-origin artist Signe Baumane narrates her extended family's history with chronic depression and suicide, starting from her grandmother Arne and tracing it down to her many cousins. The animation work (a combination of hand-drawn animation and papier mache props) that she created to accompany her narration is expressionistic, showing us representations of ideas and thoughts and feelings as opposed to realism, and they are often very humorous, even when dealing with subject matter as grim as this. The characters are all drawn with big bulging eyes, with a perpetually and uniformly bemused expression to all of them.</div>
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In fact, Baumane's narration is light-hearted throughout, often ironic, always funny, even when talking about her own kin killing themselves and the methods they use, that audiences might even be fooled to thinking that suicide is such a fun, normal thing. And maybe that's the point: for a family line where every other family member is depressed and potentially suicidal, it's a normal thing that one just has to deal with, including when loved ones kill themselves.</div>
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Of all the stories that Baumane tells, the most interesting one (and the one that Baumane spends the longest time on) is that of her grandmother Arne. Baumane describes how her grandparents met, but very soon after her grandfather's fortune swayed back and forth according to such international events as the occupation of Latvia by the Soviets and World War II, which turned him into a more insecure, resulting in Arne being practically locked up in a small village somewhere, bearing son after daughter (eight of them in all), and having to work the farm cows and horses herself. This she does under the crushing weight of depression, nearly succumbing except for the thought of her children. (Although, at one point a terrible thought surfaced: "You can be free if you let your children die.") </div>
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The happy ending is that she managed to get the kids reading and studying and all eight children were sent out into the world to become successful. We don't even mind that Arne, after having done her duty for her children and after her husband's death, might have taken her own life. 'Might', because Baumane's dad and uncles and aunts don't really know or just assumed she died of exhaustion ("how many women could carry 40 buckets of water a day and still live till 50?"), nor seem to care very much.</div>
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I also liked that we get a sense of life in Latvia in the early 20th century.</div>
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The rest of the film continues in this vein, cycling through Baumane's cousin sisters who either went mad from depression or succeeded in taking their own lives.</div>
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Not much else to be said, except that if you come across it, you should definitely check it out. The images are fun to watch and the narration fun to listen to. Who knew depression could be so entertaining?</div>
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How Good I Think It Is: <b>7.5/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep: <b>For 10 mins unfortunately. I really didn't want to. Was tired.</b></div>
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-43076746298699908972014-10-08T08:18:00.003+08:002014-10-08T08:18:53.790+08:00REVIEW: x+y<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the sixteenth film festival I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.</div>
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Finally, a British film! And one starring <i>Ender's Game</i>'s Asa Butterfield and based on a documentary by this film's director, a documentary filmmaker who decided his subject matter was interesting enough to inspire a feature film adaptation of it.</div>
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That documentary, <i>Beautiful Young Minds</i>, reveals the existence and lives of very gifted young British mathematicians, kids of secondary school age who often do have a place on the autistic spectrum, but can explore mathematical questions that are sometimes beyond that of university maths students; these kids are sent to compete in the International Mathematical Olympiad. One student in particular, Daniel, learnt Mandarin on his own, went to China to compete, met his girlfriend and married her … at the age of 18. Asa Butterfield's character is inspired by (but does not follow closely) the story of Daniel.</div>
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We begin with young Nathan, who is already showing signs of autism and mathematical supremacy by the age of 9, tragically losing his father in a car accident. Unfortunately, he has always connected better to his father than his mother Julie (played by the ever charming Sally Hawkins), and now she is more cut away from him than ever before; Nathan does not even allow her to hold his hands, and calls her incompetent when she makes trivial mistakes with lunch. We can see her loneliness and sadness eating her up, though she tries her best to keep it to herself.</div>
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One day Julie decides to take Nathan to a secondary school teacher, Mr Humphreys (Rafe Spall, perfectly casted for this role), a former Olympiad contestant who was since struck down by multiple sclerosis and is generally seen to be a sort of pariah who never fulfilled his glorious potential. Humphreys does manage to connect with the boy, however, and though the film eschews the done-to-death training montage sequence, we get the idea that teenage Nathan is ready for the Olympiad.</div>
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The qualifying round is in the form of a math camp that takes place in Taiwan, so Nathan and fifteen other boys are led by their supervisor Richard (Eddie Marsan) to join other teams in practicing before whittling them down just to six contestants. Humphreys manages to slip a book about learning Mandarin into Nathan's luggage and lo and behold, Nathan could speak a bit of Mandarin by the time he gets to Taipei. (For the record, Asa Butterfield's Mandarin pronunciation is acceptably passable, though there were a couple of lines that sounded a bit off.) The UK and Chinese teams are paired together in a buddy system, so Nathan finds himself paired with Zhang Mei. Nathan remains a shy and intensely sensitive boy, but finds himself opening up to her more and more.</div>
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Meanwhile, the film does something slightly unusual by not focusing on Nathan all the time, but instead gives us glimpses of the lives of Julie and Humphreys back in the UK as their loneliness turns them towards each other; we also see the dynamics of the nerdy math kids, the ego-posturing some of them take on, and the tragic consequences the pressure to succeed has on some of them.</div>
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Overall it was a well-made film, with performances that don't distract and good production values. If nothing else it might inspire curiosity for audiences to look more into the lives of these kids (<i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTDcYi_uG08" target="_blank">Beautiful Young Minds</a></i> is a good start). I teared up at a reunion scene of sorts at the end of the film.</div>
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I felt that the film lacked a denouement though. Basically the film ends, having hinted to us at what's going to happen next, so we know, and it's not necessarily a scene that would matter for the main themes of the film, but that doesn't excuse the film from presenting that final scene to us, even if just a few seconds.</div>
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How Good I Think It Is: <b>7/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep: <b>Nope.</b></div>
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-88923523873520210992014-10-07T23:52:00.000+08:002014-10-07T23:58:44.737+08:00REVIEW: בורג | Self-Made<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the fifteenth film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.</div>
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In this film we are introduced to two different women who are very different yet strangely similar in one way: while one is a well-known Israeli modern artist and the other a jaded Palestinian furniture parts worker, both are oddly catatonic and walk about in a daze.</div>
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Michal Kayam, the Israeli, doesn't so much as wake up on the wrong side of the bed but was thrown to the side of the bed when it breaks. Her husband has to leave the country for work so Michal has to sort out buying a new bed for herself. That simple act of buying a bed turned into a seriously convoluted story, as she finds a screw missing, which led to her to make an angry phone call to the furniture company Etaca (a version of IKEA, I suppose), which led to them filling up half her living room with furniture as compensation. Meanwhile, an anonymous person sent her some flowers, a chef arrives to prepare crabs for Michal's wedding anniversary (… a few days in advance, as he has to play a violin to soften the insides of the crabs in her bathtub … which btw meant Michal can't bathe in the meantime), and a German interview crew come in to interview her at her home, while another man has to come fix her husband's computer. The strange thing about all these arrivals is that Michal doesn't seem to recall having any of them scheduled when first meeting these people at the door. Is she herself? Did she lose her memory?</div>
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In the meantime there's Nadine. She's the Etaca worker in charge of filling bags with screws. She steals some screws so that she can drop them along the way between the Israeli guarded checkpoint and the factory, because she has "bad sense of direction". Her mother wants to marry her off, her brother wants to send her to Kuwait. She on the other hand is seeing a terrorist recruiter, although she doesn't want to become a terrorist herself. She likes listening to Arabic rock songs, and mostly spends most of her daily life living inside her head.</div>
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Eventually, really contrived circumstances transpire that caused them to switch to each other's lives; it's not credible because the women only very mildly resemble each other. But by then odder things have happened in the story; a lot of the plot just doesn't make much sense, and yet there's a mildly comedic feel to the scenes, and we watch it just to see how everything ends up. In the end, if you think the story goes where a story about two women who switched identities would go, you'd be wrong; neither does it really comment much about the Israeli-Palestinian situation, just hinted at in small visual jokes (like the bulldozer with its ripper raised framed next to a residential building, but not moving). It feels more like a given situation which affects the characters' actions and reactions.</div>
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Eventually, I only realised that the absurdism is intentional through the odd tag lines that appear on Etaca's furniture delivery vans. The first time we see it it reads "This is not a chair" right next to an image of a chair. The second time an Etaca van appears it merely says "Everything today is so strange!" And immediately I was reminded of the surrealist art piece "Ceci n'est pas use pipe", which features a picture of a pipe with the title stating that it is not a pipe. The film doesn't make sense because it purposely didn't want to make logical sense the way conventional films do.</div>
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What's the point though? I don't know. Is there meaning or themes to the film? Couldn't bother to figure it out. Was it entertaining? I did chuckle lightly in a couple of moments. The Hollywood Reporter did catch on to a couple of witty jokes which went past my head when I was watching the movie: "... from Michal repeating to a range of people how she's 'missing a screw', and the soldier describing her army's bullets as 'Israeli patent' because 'it hurts but it doesn't kill'".</div>
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Should you watch it? Go search up <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images" target="_blank">"Ceci n'est pas use pipe"</a> and if what that says interests you, then go right ahead. :)</div>
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How Good I Think It Is: <b>6/10</b></div>
Did I Fall Asleep: <b>Nope.</b><br />
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<b><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="338" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/acY1VaSWy7Y" width="600"></iframe></b>McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-43235482662766026612014-10-07T23:34:00.004+08:002014-10-07T23:37:12.985+08:00REVIEW: الأطلسي | Atlantic.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="text-align: center;">This is the fourteenth film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.</span><br />
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There are two strands of the story of one Moroccan villager who is a master windsurfer, one being the backstory and the other being the present, and the film's structure is that it cuts back and forth between each other. It doesn't work.</div>
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Fettah has grown up in this village with a beach with mighty waves which offers great windsurfing opportunities that has attracted foreign tourists around the world. One time some French people came, and Fettah finds himself smitten with the Frenchwoman. Nothing ever happened between them, because it couldn't and soon the woman leaves to go back to France. That constitutes the first strand. The second strand sees Fettah windsurfing his way northwards, and most of it consists of beautifully shot images of this North African man skilfully gliding his way through the limitless ocean. After reaching a point in Africa, however, in order to get to Europe without getting caught by military patrols, Fettah will have to swing out into the open sea and make a 300+ km journey before reaching unpatroled waters where he could safely infiltrate Europe.</div>
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The problem is, we don't know most of this. We see a man windsurfing, like a nomadic traveller, and then we cut to relatively uneventful scenes introducing Fettah and his family, and later the tourists. So this sets up a question in the audience's mind: why is he windsurfing away? Was it escape? What's he running away from? Did something happen that destroyed his family? But for more than an hour the film doesn't really give you much hints. Except that the Frenchwoman was the hint, and you get to the film and you find out that that is all the hint there was. As the director explains, it's not that Fettah is charging to France to find the woman, it's just that the arrival of the Frenchwoman awoken a kind of spirit in him to get out. Well, that was a thought that I suspected while watching the film, but I kept waving it away because it seems too slight a reason to motivate a person to make such a dangerous journey across the seas to an uncertain future.</div>
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Ultimately, it's very hard to care about characters, even when they meet life-threatening situations, when you don't know what they want and what their motivations are. The whispered voiceover narration sprinkled intermittently over the film generated a few 'eh? what does that mean?', and felt rather pointless.</div>
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Why the '.' after the title? Director Jan-Willem van Ewijk explains that it's because he did that for an earlier film, and found that it gave it a punch that he liked, and decided he'd like to keep doing that. He did admit sheepishly that the Hollywood Reporter found it pretentious.</div>
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How Good I Think It Is: <b>3.5/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep: <b>At least 10 mins.</b></div>
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-50395561011844837012014-10-07T23:09:00.000+08:002014-10-07T23:09:40.878+08:00REVIEW: 꿈보다 해몽 | A Matter Of Interpretation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the thirteenth film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.</div>
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I won't be giving a rating for this one, for I fell asleep for about 20 mins in the middle, and was bored with a lot of the rest of it and might have dozed off for other bits as well. The problem with the film is its meandering aimlessness, a quality to the film the director might've felt to be appropriate for the story anyways because of what it's thematically about: dreams.</div>
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A theatre actress huffs and puffs her way out of the theatre when it transpires that not a single person has bought a ticket for the weekday afternoon stage play she is in, delivering bitchy putdowns on another cast member before she does so. She goes to a quiet place and has a phone conversation with a friend, but is so incensed by her friend's success in life (friend happens to be breastfeeding a baby and rubbing it in over the phone) that she delivers another bitchy remark … and is lonely again. Next thing, we see her in different clothes in a lonely park, where a detective warns her about smoking in a no-smoking park, and then charms her enough for her to tell him about her odd dream, whereupon he proceeds to interpret her dreams, which she found astonishingly accurate and insightful.</div>
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From there the film continues to ping pong through episodic interactions with different pairs of characters: the detective and his suicidal sister, the actress with her loser actor boyfriend, the boyfriend with the landlady's boy, the boyfriend with the detective, the actress with the landlady, and so on and so forth. </div>
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The truth is, although I fell asleep and lost a big chunk of scenes, it didn't matter because the scenes don't really connect. The chronology is off; we see the actress dump her boyfriend, seemingly very soon after the zero-attendance play, then a short couple of scenes later tells the detective it was a year ago. And it's intentionally off because of the nature of dreams … except it's a long way into the film before I got that what we're seeing is a dream, or a representation of reality if it played by the rules of dreams. Yet the interactions between the characters are in the form of not-exactly-meaningful exchanges about life, love, dreams, and most of all the dichotomy between pursuing one's artistic passions as opposed to earning a proper income through more conventional means.</div>
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But they're all ultimately moot, as the worse problem with stories about dreams is that whatever happens and whatever meaning is generated in the scenes is very throwaway, has no consequences – you know this, you might've remembered how annoying it is to read your friend's essay in high school and see "It was all just a dream" at the very last line. If you had to make a movie about dreams it better be innovative, like in Inception.</div>
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During the Q&A a lot of the director's replies were that he eschews giving an interpretation to his film and its meanings, because it's up to the audience. A fine answer normally, except that his film is so vague that it seems almost irresponsible as an answer.</div>
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Having said that, one thing I did enjoy was Yoo Jun-sang's acting. He played the intensely malicious villain in The Target, and yet here projects a comfortable charm in a way that's so completely different from that previous character … a mark of a good actor who's able to transform into different roles and fit nicely into all of them.</div>
McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-41298169316489159422014-10-07T08:19:00.005+08:002014-10-07T08:20:44.485+08:00REVIEW: 역린 | The Fatal Encounter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the twelfth film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.</div>
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The film begins by foreshadowing what's about to happen: King Jeongjo of the Joseon Dynasty is about to be assassinated. The film then cuts to 24 hours before the event, and essentially the whole film is about setting up the circumstances and the characters leading up to that so-named fatal encounter.</div>
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But the first scene we cut to in that very brief prologue is an image that we've not really seen before: a studious young king with the demeanour of a Marcus Aurelius … gym-ing in his private chamber. We're talking about push-ups and stuff. Seems almost too modern, but then the king explains without explaining that he has to. The threats to his life are multiplying exponentially.</div>
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The setup is that while the king is king, the circumstances that led to his early ascension is convoluted, and a short-lived reign wouldn't be surprising, because a powerful faction within the aristocracy is plotting for his downfall, and that faction includes the most powerful general in the Joseon army, and the ridiculously young Empress Dowager, his step-grandmother who's about the same age as the king himself.</div>
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The film then introduces a whole host of characters: asides from the serious king and the scheming Empress Dowager and the arrogant army general, there's the king's mother who's terribly concerned about her son and hatches her own doomed plot to save him, the eunuch who is the king's most trusted companion (their relationship is on the order of David and Jonathan), the assassin who is reluctantly assigned to kill the king, the dutiful palace maid who is in love with the assassin, an even younger palace maid who at age 11 seems too young to modern sensibilities to take part in palace intrigue, and the king's stern and capable bodyguard. Some of these characters will turn out to be sleeper agents planted in the palace decades ago … but who?</div>
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Despite the film taking the time to properly introduce all these characters and their secret agenda and gradually revealing strand-by-strand the interactive web of these characters, through it all King Jeongjo remains the serene centre of the piece. Handsome and perfectly-physiqued Hyun Bin was able to carry this role throughout the film, exuding a kind of precociously sagely but intensely serious demeanour, inspiring his eunuch companion and his bodyguard and later even an enemy with sound bytes from his philosophical studies that aren't in the least pretentious but actually quite moving. Here's a king who has limited but formidable martial skills, but he is a good king because he places principles and wisdom above all, never mind how characters and circumstances shift around him. It's a very easy character to like.</div>
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But that is not to downplay the contribution of the rest of the cast. Han Ji-min is positively delicious as the Empress Dowager; Kim Seong-ryeong managing the intense fear of the king's mother and portraying her breakdown as well as dignified defiance well; Jeong Jae-yeong does a fine job portraying the eunuch, as does Jo Jung-suk as the assassin torn between love and forced duty.</div>
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The film can be a bit slow-paced at parts, and there were certain scenes which felt rather cryptic, in that I had no idea why, for example, did a character suddenly feel terrified over a seemingly trivial reveal, or why another character did certain things and then the scene changes and we never get back to it. Perhaps some trimming would've been beneficial, at no cost to the pervading sense of dread and suspense about what's coming in the climax. The climax is worth waiting for; it's nothing we've not seen before, though it is well-shot (think raindrops in high-shutter speeds in the dark of the night) and genuinely suspenseful. Good editing is what leads to that, and in a sense the film cannot come too early and has to tease the impatient audience with skilful foreplay. (Foreplay can sometimes be a bit too long, is what I'm saying.)</div>
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The dialogue is also rather nice. When the Empress Dowager hints at the threat to the king's life, it's in the form of the words, "I would be so troubled if anything should happen to the king." Later another character is threatened with the words beginning with "I will dig up your ancestors and crush them", followed by a list of what will be done to the rest of that character's family and clan; that's possibly the most satisfyingly menacing line I've heard in a while.</div>
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Overall, despite minor flaws, I highly recommend it.</div>
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How Good I Think It Is: <b>7.5/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep: <b>Don't think so.</b><br />
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-38214470507989631762014-10-07T06:10:00.002+08:002014-10-07T06:11:23.362+08:00REVIEW: 국경 아닌 국경선 | Border Line<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the eleventh film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival. It is part of the Korean Cinema Retrospective, which this year looks at the films of Chung Jin Woo, a director I'm not previously aware of but has been making movies in the Korean film industry from the 60s to the 90s. This marks the first time I'm watching a classic black-and-white Korean film.</div>
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It's also the only film projection I'll be catching in the film festival; everything is digital projection these days. The print they used has broken down quite badly over the years, and isn't even in Korean, but dubbed in Mandarin. So here I am watching a 1964 Korean film with perfectly intelligible Mandarin dialogue and English and Korean for subtitles. The projection is sometimes jumpy, there are scratches and hair constantly, sometimes parts of the image blurs out, and there were a few minutes where the sound is inaudible and given that there aren't any subtitles over that part, it's clear that this really was the only print of the film they have. The English subtitles don't even match the Mandarin dialogue sometimes, which made me wonder which version is accurate – where was the English translated from, and is the Mandarin dialogue accurate, and do they perhaps have the original shooting script (in Korean)? And in terms of the sound, a lot of times the only sound track heard is the dialogue and the music, with a lot of foley and most background sounds missing.</div>
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Overall, it made for an interesting viewing experience. I studied filmmaking but had never taken on film studies (completely not my interest) so I haven't had much experience watching old prints of obscure movies.</div>
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Now to the story, which is rather interesting. A pair of brothers, Dae-il and Han-il were born to a pair of Korean fighters a couple of decades before the Korean War. The brothers were separated as each parent took one boy and the mother ended up in the North with Han-il while the father ended up in the South with Dae-il. Now here's the terrible part; I fell asleep for about 20 minutes, virtually the entire prologue, so I don't actually know why the parents decide to separate.</div>
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Cut to 3 years after the Korean War. The mother, now a high-ranking DPRK official, sends her son Han-il to Seoul to conduct clandestine missions. One of his assignments was to assassinate a General in South Korea; unbeknownst to him, the General is his father, and unfortunately for him, he doesn't know that and succeeds. Dae-il eventually finds out the truth of what happened and finds his way to his long-lost younger brother, leading to a dramatic meeting. (Both brothers are played by the same actor.) This is a melodrama film, so you know things won't end nicely: Han-il commits suicide upon accepting his responsibility of his father's murder, but tells Dae-il with his last breath to save their mother. </div>
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Dae-il then easily impersonates Han-il, though it does generate some tense scenes as he (and we the audience) try to work out what to say and what to know when amongst the North Koreans. He follows the North Koreans to escape Seoul and join a boat, where his mother awaits …</div>
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A pretty dramatic story, don't you think? The film is a bit slow-paced and I can't really get used to the melodramatic storytelling style of the 1960s, and for certain there were a few cultural norms and references that went past my head (though it was fun to see what constitutes sexuality that is allowed to be depicted in cinemas back then), but the interesting premise made me want to see how the story plays out and for the most part it made sense. Other than the meeting up of the brothers, there were other dramatic scenes like Dae-il being forced to kill his girlfriend for the sake of his nationalistically important mission in order not to give up the ruse that he is not his brother (how that gets resolve is a bit of an 'oh really?'; and his meeting with his mother.</div>
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The actor who plays both Dae-il and Han-il has this classical look to him, and I suppose he was well-casted for it. I don't know my Hollywood classical male actors enough to make accurate analogies, but let me suggest that he resembles a Korean version of Gregory Peck. </div>
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In general, I feel that it's a story that, if adapted to the present with today's Korean war thriller style of filmmaking, it would still be an incredibly compelling story to tell. Certainly I would like to see that remake.</div>
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How Good I Think It Is: <b>7/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep: <b>For 20 mins in the beginning, and then intermittently throughout the rest of the film. I was seriously tired and black and white movies aren't generally my thing.</b></div>
McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14533867.post-82423891695711889152014-10-06T21:50:00.000+08:002014-10-06T21:50:42.078+08:00REVEW: La Rançon De La Gloire | The Price Of Fame<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the tenth film I saw at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.</div>
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A Swiss film inspired by true events that happened in the Canton de Vaud in the late 70s … the true events being a couple of small-time crooks bungled their way into international consciousness by breaking a Charles Chaplin … out of his own grave which recently became his new home. Unfortunately, the premise is far more entertaining than the film itself.</div>
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Essentially, Osman, an Algerian emigrant is in a tight spot financially, what with his wife requiring an expensive surgery he can't afford and isn't allowed to borrow money for, and his daughter expressing a wish to study to become a vet someday. He takes home Eddy, an old friend who recently got released from prison. Eddy sees how troubled his friend is and one day gets an eureka moment and convinces Osman (though it took a while) to go and steal the recently deceased Charlie Chaplin's coffin from its grave (which happened to be in the canton they live in, the Chaplin family having moved there for years) in exchange for a reasonable amount of ransom.</div>
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At this point of the movie I fell asleep, and woke up about ten minutes later, when Eddy and Osman commence stealing the coffin. And there's one of the problems of the film: it didn't matter that I fell asleep, these ten minutes didn't matter and could be discarded without the audience missing out on anything. It takes too long to tell its story, going into unnecessary scenes and details and stretching those scenes out (when I say uninteresting, I mean they didn't engage nor entertain me). While it's nice when filmmakers think about giving their characters more time to establish their backstory and their characterisations, well perhaps I'm used to Hollywood mainstream filmmaking now where such things really can be established in a much shorter time … or, you'd have to cast major film stars who look interesting that we'd like to look at just doing anything at all.</div>
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For this reason, when Peter Coyote, an actor I recognised, showed up halfway through the film, I was looking forward to seeing him rather than the main characters, even though his character is merely a supporting player, and a little bit silly, if intensely sincere as Chaplin's loyal butler who wants to ensure that his former master's body isn't more maligned than it already is.</div>
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The incident does spiral out of control in a mildly comedic manner. After a gruelling sequence showing how the two steal the coffin (one can almost feel how heavy it is seeing them struggle with it), they are naturally quite relieved, and were surprised that no one would believe them; not the police, not the family. But once the obscenely dug-up and empty grave hits international headlines, they found that all sorts of conspiracy theories are generated around Chaplin's coffin's disappearance, and Chaplin's butler proving to be a cunning and formidable man, the men begin to lose hope and despair of ever getting their money. What now of Osman's wife's surgery?</div>
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Overall I really think this isn't the best way to tell this story. I almost wish a Hollywood film director had taken on this instead; sure they would have changed more things around from the true story, but at least it would be more entertaining and engaging. As it is there were some mildly funny moments in this film, but there could easily be a lot more funny scenes and funny dialogue whose potential went unrealised; we are talking about a film involving Chaplin after all. It's too bad the story got a plodding European cinematic treatment.</div>
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Another really annoying thing was the choice to score the film with grand and bombastic music in some of the scenes. The music was so grand and bombastic and the lighting of the film so bland that at that point I was actually not really watching the film and just listening to the music, such was the force of distraction of the music. Neither did the music give any meaning or reason as to why it had to be so, given everything else about the film is so muted.</div>
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A lost opportunity.</div>
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How Good I Think The Film Is: <b>4.5/10</b></div>
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Did I Fall Asleep: <b>About 10 minutes.</b></div>
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McGarmotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08100492626536604356noreply@blogger.com0