Dead Crows

Space Trek

2010-03-05T18:25:00.001-06:00

"Captain?"

The disassociative gun was charged and whining, pointed dead at the door, before he realized he was awake. On ship. And apparently sane for all he could tell. He ran through a few quick sanity-rationality protocol matrices, each cross-indexed with cyclic self-reinforcing super-ego engrams. Tried a bit of tantric empathy, attempting to attach himself to the reality of others around him. And then he knew where he was, and wished to the gods that he didn't.

In the dream, oh lords almighty, in the dream it was mostly Inverness 27. Fucking other name for hell. It was dark, Because it was always fucking dark. And it was hot. Because it was always fucking hot. Heat came at you in waves off the baking iron of the night sky. At first -- in the dream -- there was the godsawful quiet. You sweated, you burned, naked and alone, every part of you straining outwards towards the sky and the dark trying to find something. Maybe that was why it came. Or them. One was very much the same as the other. But that was the moment when you knew your mind was breaking.

He really fucking hates that dream, and yet, it seems rather comforting now. He slaps the com switch, ponders setting the pistol down for just long enough to take a swig of Jasminian nullethene, decides against it.

"Tell me it's not the goddamned AI. I'm just... I'm just not in the mood."

"No, Captain, the AI is currently operating in sublimely divinitional mode."

"Okay, good. Because I was wondering about that. It's not the body-mass generator, is it? We had the fucking zombies --"

"Actually that was a corporeal manifestation of slide-shifted cross-sectional entities."

"I don't want to -- what?"

"Captain?"

"No, explain that last bit."

"Of my previous statement?"

"Yes. Specifically the cross-dissected alien thing."

"Rather than operating in parallel to a dimensional or temporal flow, their consciousness bisects multiple timelines and parallel universes. They are unable to manifest corporeally, however, and have chosen a belief system in which -- to paraphrase our linguists -- 'meat is a tool,' and so they occupy, or in their parlance, 'ride' a deceased body which is then possessed with a ravening appetite for protein-rich food in order to fuel the anti-necrotic processes necessary for their continued manifestation."

"Okay. So, these demon-things like to make dead bodies get up, walk around, and eat people. And because all of our dead bodies go into the creepy-ass body-mass generator, that was why Crewman Jensen was ripping the ear off of Science Officer Wachowski earlier in the cycle? And, honest to gods, that was his best feature. Godsdammit."

"Approximately, Captain."

"Thanks. Sometimes it's hard to keep it all straight. I had the goddamned dream again and... fuck it. Probably fucking precognizance or dream implantation. I hate fucking dreaming. It's just the alternative is so fucking worse. Look, I'm rambling. I just woke up. I've still got the pistol charged."

"That's probably prudent, Captain."

"Okay, so go ahead and -- no, wait. Please tell me it's not a temporal purse? I really, just, it's too goddamned early for that. Just tell me it's not anything temporal. Or psycho-boxing. I can deal with some mood avitics or empathic linkage or whatever, but just not the psycho-boxing."

That was his morning. That was actually a fairly slow start to his morning. Any morning, really, on which he didn't wake up to the sound of klaxons or fists banging on doors or writhing alien polymorphs attempting to implant their geneline constructs into his tear ducts was a morning to be treasured. He turned to the bedside table and took the pills in order:

Blue was an anti-telapathine histamin. Clear orange was a long-chain sugar compound that fed the nanoline constructs battling throughout his bloodstream to hold off the ravages of the Neumann Pathogen he'd carry for the rest of his life. Dark orange, blue, and white were respectively a multi-vitamin complex, anti-viral boost, and a maxisprin for a pulled muscle in his lower back. The shiny black one was a half-component poison, the other half nestled into a vessicle imbedded in a maxillary tooth. The square pink, brown triangle, and bit of loose leaf were various forms of slow-pull amphetamines that would keep his nerves singing all day long, and if their voices started to crack, that's what the purple cubes were for. The gold ones he took just because they made him feel stupid and reckless and otherwise he'd probably just sit in his room and scream all day long.

"It's none of that, Captain."

"Fantastic. Okay. I'm good. Hit me."

FF09 Wrap-Up; Or, Bring On The Black Parade

2010-01-31T18:33:00.001-06:00

Update 10-01-30: I obviously never got around to finishing up my intended epic summary of Fantastic Fest 2009, but for what it's worth, here are a few of my final thoughts on what was certainly one of the highlights of the last year for me. In the meanwhile, I'm working on my own scripts and hoping to return for Fantastic Fest 2010: The Revengening.

I can't quite shake the feeling that next time I drive down to the Alamo South Lamar there will be a vacant lot and an old man sitting on a chair who just shakes his head and says "Alamo? Ain't been no Alamo here for going on thirteen years, ever since the old place burned down..." Which is to say, the whole experience of Fantastic Fest was a bit phantasmagorical. Speaking as someone who generally feels one of the things I should do every day is watch at least one movie, even I was a feeling a bit of sensory overload by the final day of the show (and a certain amount of relief to get back to something like a normal schedule, hence the delay in writing this post).

The festival experience itself was largely fun, even if I didn't feel like I was truly connected into the larger geek ecology on display, but I got the chance to meet some cool folks (shout-outs to Jason and Michelle) and had a lot of fun hanging out in the virtual community that sprung up on Twitter around #fantasticfest (something that also proved to be a surprisingly useful way to get hard info about lines and showtimes during the general confusion of the Fest). Collected my own list of small war stories, managing to squeak into sold-out showings, and brushing up against the pseudo-famous while standing in line outside the single restroom; apparently some people found the line outside the men's room more than a little amusing. But mostly it was about watching movies, hustling out of one theater and turning the corner to hustle into the next one, sometimes playing a friendly game of "avoid the hall monitor" when showings were running late. Props to the Alamo staff who were amazingly courteous in the crush of glazed-eyed film fans, and to the Fantastic Fest personnel who managed to pull off a surprisingly well orchestrated bit of controlled chaos (yeah, yeah, #chaosreigns). Though I still think this note was pretty damn funny.

As for the movies themselves, I just wanted to wrap everything up by mentioning a few of my favorites and maybe a couple of my disappointments (I'm not sure I saw anything truly terrible at the festival, except relative to all the other incredible films I had a chance to see, so "disappointing" is probably the better way to go).

Best Of The Fest

Private Eye was easily my favorite film, a South Korean period thriller set in 1910 Seoul. This film hadn't even been on my radar prior to the festival, but I'm a sucker for detective stories set around the turn of the century and this movie didn't disappoint. Director Park Dae-Min appeared at the showing to answer questions and was quite up front about being influenced by Sherlock Holmes, Chinatown, and even a bit of James Bond, and frankly, you'd have to work really hard to mess up a formula like that for me. I didn't realize at the time that this was his debut film as a director and it's a remarkably assured piece of work for his first movie. Likewise, Jeong-Min Hwang gaves a breakout performance as the titular private eye whose easygoing manner hides a keen mind and a desire for justice that he just can't seem to suppress.

Our Kung-Fu Is Better, And Besides, We Didn't Have The Money For CG

One of the movies I'd really been looking forward to catching was an early sneak of Ninja Assassin, the new movie from James McTeigue (who previously worked as DP on the Matrix films and directed the surprisingly solid Alan Moore adaptation V For Vendetta) and produced by the Wachowskis. The title alone promised some silly fun -- and I'm one of the few people who still professes to love the Wachowskis. Early news around the festival was that it was a surprisingly bloody, violent affair, which is a selling point for me. And the first ten minutes were pretty awesome -- it doesn't hurt to start with Randall Duk Kim and then proceed to outright bloody mayhem as ninjas tear through a bunch of annoying Yakuza thugs, arms, jaws, and other body parts hitting the floor in the process. But after a killer opening, the movie simply runs out gas, descending into a trite, cliche story that only got intermittently interesting whenever Sho Kosugi showed up to chew scenery as Worst Ninja Clan Dad Ever (where's that t-shirt?). But worst of all, the action was boring: the fights were complicated bits of Hollywood choreography but almost every element in them -- from the weapons, to the blood, to half the actors -- was so obviously CG that it was difficult not to see a bunch of people simply dancing in front of a green screen. It was cheesy, ineffective, and as one review noted, animated blood gets splashed around everywhere but somehow never seems to stain the floor... And to top it all off, the movie ends with a ludicrous climax and quite possibly one of the dumbest "twists" I've seen in a long time, even for a movie with the words "ninja" and "assassin" in its title.

Contrast this with Hard Revenge Milly, a pair of hour-long films from the mad warehouse of Noboru Iguchi (Machine Girl) and Yoshihiro Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police). Iguchi and Nishimura lead a loose collection of Japanese effects artists, filmmakers, actors, and escapees from mental asylums to create incredibly strange, violent, and funny movies on a budget that could be called shoestring if they hadn't already used the shoestrings for something else in a movie. A new addition to the stable is Takanori Tsujimoto, writer/director of Milly -- I have no idea how he became involved with Nishimura and company, but he's previously worked on the Kill and Women of Fast Food omnibuses from which Mamoru Oshii's new Assault Girls movie was spun out, and was introduced by Nishimura to the audience at Fantastic Fest. This was, by the way, the same introduction where a flame thrower was used to roast yakiniku for everyone in the crowd.

Hard Revenge Milly -- and I never, ever get tired of that title because it is awesome -- is a trip to the land of Postapocalyptica where dust storms blow across deserted highways, everyone dresses like a cattle call for Road Warrior, and extras are standing by with firehoses of fake blood. Milly has (of course) been brutalized by a gang and mysteriously repaired with an array of biomechanical attachments including -- in one of the most inspired no-budget flourishes in the film -- a shotgun leg that she reloads by shoving a shell into the pocket of her leather pants, followed by a kick and the sound of a slide being racked. That put a grin on my face right then, and I'm guessing it cost a millionth of whatever was spent to give Rose McGowan a machine gun leg in Planet Terror. And that's why, in the end, I enjoyed Milly so much more than most of the Hollywood action films I saw during the festival -- no matter how silly the action, it was always real people up on screen. The filmmakers simply had no budget for anything else.

Rather than using CG to supplement or replace the hard work of choreographing an action scene, Tsujimoto and his crew had to go ahead and actually teach someone how to swing a sword, plan their shots, and work out an interesting rhythm in the editing room with whatever footage resulting footage was useful. Sure, half the time they're fighting in abandoned parking garages or random warehouses, but at least the people being hit, shot, and thrown through the air (often all at the same time) had a weight and inertia to them. When blood sprays across the floor or walls in Milly, it's with a liquid splat that renders all the gallons of animated blood in Ninja Assassin weightless and cartoonish by comparison. Rather than spectacle, we get some wit and imagination -- I mean, you knew the nunchuks would have gun barrels, but I nearly fell out of my seat laughing when they also had laser sights. And no slight to Rain, but Miki Mizuno as the titular Milly would kick his ninja assassin's ass without even breaking a sweat. Mizuno has got charisma to burn, and in her leather jumpsuit, trenchcoat, and spiky hair, she strides through these films like a 21st century gender-swapped Woman With No Name. In other words, she's a badass, and when she punches through someone's chest, Tsujimoto is going to make damn sure that you feel the impact.

Still Recovering

2009-10-03T20:29:00.000-05:00

Will write a summary of some of my favorite (and less so) films from the Fantastic Fest in the next couple of days, but it was a great experience.

Day Six

2009-09-30T01:55:00.003-05:00

As of 1:30AM this morning, I've seen 20 films. That's a lot, even for me.

Luckily, lot of fun showings today. Kicked off with Private Eye, a South Korean murder-mystery set in 1910 Korea heavily influenced by Sherlock Holmes and Chinatown, one of the absolute best movies I've seen at the Fest. Ninja Assassin, the new movie from V For Vendetta director James McTiegue was fairly silly, but lots of action and CG blood to keep things entertaining. Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl is Yoshihiro Nishimura's follow-up to Tokyo Gore Police and manages to be equally insane while having its tongue planted firmly in cheek, and features the cutest vampire girl you've ever met. Then wrapped things up with the splatter-fest Macabre, a feature-length version of the previously mentioned short film Dara. Do not let the Asian woman near the chainsaw. And with that piece of advice, I'm going to sleep.

Two days to go!

The Novak Express

2009-09-28T23:09:00.006-05:00

Both movies I saw today had explicit Vertigo references. Huh.

Day 5, fifteen movies. Which might sound impressive but I've heard of people seeing over twenty movies by this point -- that's nearly every time slot, including the midnight films. Now that is a cinema warrior. In the meanwhile, I'm taking a little breather this evening before diving back into a full schedule for the remainder of the Fest (which runs through Thursday). Skipping out on the awards ceremony and the "debate," unfortunately, but I'm trying to save up my energy for the 100 Best Kills showing tomorrow and the closing night vampire party (a great excuse for full goth regalia if I have the time).

After the crush of films Thursday and Friday, the weekend has been relatively light. We kicked off Saturday with Takashi Miike's Yatterman, a live action adaptation of a late '70s Japanese animated series by Tatsunoko, the same studio that brought you Battle of the Planets (or its proper and way more awesome original title Science Ninja Team Gatchman). This is one of the 35 or so movies that prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike is releasing this year, and it just goes to show that, yet again, there is no genre -- and no level of insanity -- which he's unwilling to explore. I actually run hot and cold on Miike; he's most well known for transgressive and gruesome fare like Audition and Ichi the Killer, and a lot of his inspiration in these films seems to come from the Italian giallo genre of Argento and Fulci which doesn't do a lot for me.

But on occasion he also does more mainstream movies -- given the speed with which he cranks out films and switches genres, he seems like a man desperately afraid of growing bored -- which in the best cases is rather like installing firework launchers and a nitro booster into your run of the mill automobile. Whatever the result, it's usually interesting. And in the case of Yatterman, you can thrown in a half-ton of glitter, a battering ram, massive subwoofers, and a Vargas girl paint job. The movie simply does not know when to stop, and for the most part, it's damned entertaining as long as it doesn't drive you screaming from the room first.

You have to understand, Yatterman is not a lost classic of animation and people do not generally fondly remember it. It revolves around a team of good guys who own a toy shop fighting a bunch of bad guys using giant robots. See what I mean? As far as I can tell, Miike saw the Wachowski Brothers' Speed Racer, said "I can top that," and went to town with an even goofier series, probably a sixth of the budget, and a mad cackle. And like Speed Racer the words "live action" should be put in quotes given that 90% of everything on screen only exists in a computer. But the end result is a piece of film that is jaw-dropping to look at, detail and animation and general weirdness simply crawling from every part of the screen as if everyone involved injected themselves with day-glo crack each morning. Live action Cutie Honey? Kamikaze Girls? A gray day in October compared to this film.

But dammit, it's entertaining. I had a goofy smile on my face almost the whole way through. Miike riddles the film with numerous gags winking at the inherent silliness of the premise -- you know, in between the song and dance routines -- and Kyoko Fukada (Kamikaze Girls) is just shockingly cute as the Queen of Thieves, who secretly pines for quiet domestic bliss when she isn't dressing in dominatrix gear and ordering about her love-smitten henchmen. The movie goes on for fifteen minutes longer than it really should (Miike is nothing if not self-indulgent), but it definitely helps meet my minimum level of Insane Japanes Movies for the festival.

Amusingly enough, the film was delayed by a good half-hour with much grumbling from the crowd of us waiting. It turned out that getting Yatterman had been quite a coup for the Fantastic Fest based on their relationship with Miike (he's been to previous Fests) and Miike was happy to ship them a beautiful high-definition copy of the film with an intro he personally taped for the Fest. Unfortunately, this pristine copy happened to be lacking... English subtitles. But despite our grouching -- okay, my grouching -- they came up with a brilliant solution: The nice, high-def version of the film was run on the top 4/5 of the movie screen, while on the bottom 1/5 they projected the subtitles from a DVD screener. Everyone ran with it, had a good time, and even some of the questionable translations in the subtitles ("Oegypt"?) added to the fun.

In an effort to see if I could induce mental whiplash, we followed that up with the North American premiere of George Romero's Survival of the Dead, the newest film in the Dead series, at the stately Paramount. Romero is not a filmmaker who will ever win an Oscar, but he's been hugely influential -- as far as I can tell, he invented the entire modern zombie genre with Night of the Living Dead, which means he's right up there with Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker in my book (neither of whom would have probably won a lot of awards today, either). As I've developed more as a screenwriter I've found a lot in his work to admire and emulate, particularly the way he bucks modern narrative conventions to create his own unique style of storytelling.

It reminds me of David Mamet's hermetically sealed universes with their own artificially constructed vocabulary, except in Romero's case it expresses itself in stilted dialog, oddball characters, and bald social satire. And it speaks to me in the same way that Mamet's best work does: real people don't talk like characters in a Mamet play, but neither do they talk like characters in a Hollywood movie, and Mamet's dialog evokes the stuttering, elliptical pauses in actual conversations without emulating them. Romero takes our reality, one where people often make poor -- or random -- decisions under stress, relationships shift for unexplained reasons, and neither the good guys nor the bad guys get the ends they respectively deserve, and uses it as a way to evoke real feelings of dread and hope in the way a standard Hollywood film can't possibly achieve. In 99% of all movies, we know who the hero is within the first five minutes and can be assured that if the hero dies (which they usually don't), it will be a heroic death. In Romero's universe, death plays no favorites, righteous sacrifices are rarely rewarded, and just like real life, no one is assured of survival. The real terror of Romero's zombie movies is that, one way or another, everyone will become one of the dead.

But while Romero's original Dead trilogy is justly considered a classic, his recent output has proved to be more controversial. I was very much in the minority of people who liked the way Land of the Dead expanded the universe, while his docudrama experiment in Diary of the Dead was interesting but severely flawed, certainly the weakest of the series. Survival of the Dead probably won't win over too many converts, but it's definitely a return to form after abandoning the Diary gimmick along with its media commentary (Romero seems genuinely interested in new media, but hasn't gotten substantially past the usual analogies to voyeurism and self-flagellation). The story follows a few of the minor characters from Diary as they find an island off the coast of Delaware settled by immigrants who've been engaged in the Irish equivalent of the Hatfields and McCoys for a couple generations. When the dead begin to return, one family argues for putting a bullet through their heads, while the other believes that the they can eventually be cured... or, at least, trained not to feast upon the flesh of the living. The stage is set for a classic Romero showdown in which the real enemies aren't the ravenous zombies, but the humans fighting among themselves who cause Things to Go Horribly Awry.

Romero himself introduced the film and it was a real pleasure to see him in person. By all appearances he seems a smart and pleasant man who genuinely enjoys what he does and was glad to share his work with an enthusiastic audience. With the exception of a few films, he's managed to stay completely independent, keeping his budgets low enough to turn a profit and still tell stories in his own fashion while working with the crew that he prefers. It's not a bad position to be in, even if he'll never win an Oscar for his work. Oh, and he did mention that Diary and Survival were the first two films in a quartet that he hoped to produce (both movies share some incidental characters).

Sunday was another triple-header with Duress, Down Terrace, and House of the Devil. All were interesting films and had some enthusiastic proponents -- particularly House of the Devil, an amazingly meticulous recreation of '70s horror films -- but they simply didn't grab me as much as other films I've seen for various reasons. But even when a movie hasn't been a favorite, I've really enjoyed the Q&A sessions with the filmmakers and actors afterwards.

Today was also a pretty short schedule with Mandrill and Metropia. Mandrill was a lot of fun, a Chilean film starring martial artist/stunt man Marko Zaror (who had his big break as the stunt stand-in for The Rock in Rundown). The movie is an homage to those cheap '70s crime exploitation films -- particularly the south of the border versions -- but also, according to the director, heavily influenced by early Bond, Sergio Leone, Gogol 13... and Vertigo? It's a smart combination of sleek '70s style and inventive, no-holds-barred fight scenes, like a Brut cologne commercial starring Bruce Lee.

Metropia was a highly stylized computer animated film about a dystopian future where all of Europe is connected by a vast subway and personal surveillance has been taken to absurd levels (let's just say your shampoo may do more than conditioning). It's very reminiscent of Brazil, as well as Kafka and Phillip K. Dick, but despite all the weirdness the story is a relatively straight-forward one of an average man being manipulated by forces he can barely comprehend. Unfortunately, while the animation style can be very striking in places, it also has an odd stiffness that proves distracting from the story. The director said that he was attempting to replicate the feel of stop-motion animation -- his father's profession -- and while I admire the feel of stop-motion, the way it was executed in the film wasn't something I ever grew comfortable with. It's a worthwhile experiment if not an ultimately successful one.

I'm already yawning and don't even feel like I've scratched the surface of everything I've seen and thought about during the Fest, and there's still three more days to go. If I have any regrets at all, it's that going to the Fest has made me realize how out of touch I am with the rest of the movie geek community in Austin, as it seems like almost everyone is connected in a network of web sites and creative projects. One of the downsides to being a screenwriter, I guess, is that I spend most of my time hunched over a computer screen or sending out submissions, and very little interacting with the local movie community. But I have managed to make some interesting new acquaintances over the weekend, and it's certainly whet my appetite for attending future festivals.

Signing off for now. Next few days will be packed, but I'll try and update when I can. More frequent updates can be found at my Twitter feed.

Statistics

2009-09-27T23:52:00.000-05:00

Day Four, thirteen films. Will write longer entry in the morning -- I'm dead tired (ha) -- but one of the best things I saw today was a short film titled "Next Floor." The film itself unfortunately isn't online, but you can find the trailer here.

Recalibration Fix

2009-09-26T16:01:00.006-05:00

Last couple of days have been a blur -- 8 movies in 48 hours, but thankfully the schedule eases up a bit today. So yes, I've acknowledged the reality that reviewing every film I've seen is going to be nearly impossible; I'll try and hit the highlights while giving longer reviews when I have the time. Likewise, liveblogging has been an exercise in futility given the limited time between showings and the Alamo wi-fi connection crumbling under the weight of several hundred other people all trying to transmit their reviews. And, you know, I don't want to spend the whole festival crouched over my netbook rather than simply enjoying the atmosphere and socializing. So expect more Twittered updates, with longer blog entries when I'm able to return to home base.

In the meanwhile, here are a few highlights from the past couple days:

I mentioned Terribly Happy before, but I'm surprised how the movie has stuck with me. It's a gray, unsettling film that manages to mix black comedy, suspense, and drama with some interesting symbolism -- a water table table that lies just below the soil, in the same way as secrets in a small town, and a bog that can hide secrets but muddies anyone who gets near it. It feels like a Shirley Jackson story in some ways, and has a nice circularity to its narrative that echoes Jackson's maxim "journeys end in lovers meeting." Not a movie that will get a lot of buzz coming out of the festival (and the only real shame of a program like this is that when almost every movie is excellent, some very good films will suffer by comparison), but it's one of the main reasons I wanted to attend in the first place -- the chance to see films that I might otherwise have never had the opportunity to experience.

The short film program was a mixed bag -- as they often are -- and if some entries seemed to hit closer to the mark than others, it was both fascinating and educational to see all the different moods, methods, and techniques that the different filmmakers would use to present their stories. One of the standouts, "Full Employment," was a sly bit of comedy that starts off as a pedestrian satire of German society to the point where you could almost sense everyone in the audience rolling their eyes -- just at the moment when the filmmakers execute one of the best twists I've seen during the entire festival. I won't ruin the fun for anyone who hasn't seen it, but directors Oberlies and Vogel have got one hell of a sense of comic timing.

I also liked Thibault Emin's "Else," an interesting variation on the New Flesh idea and the concept of "otherness," in which Paris is under quarantine for a plague that merges flesh with inanimate objects and a man is forced to make some difficult choices when his girlfriend begins changing into something else, merging with the apartment all around him.

The highlight of the shorts was undoubtedly "Dara," an incredibly polished half-hour Indonesian film from the Momo Brothers; haven't heard of them before, but I'll definitely be looking into what else they've done based on this short. It's almost not even fair to include this entry given the obvious budget and degree of polish -- it's an extremely slick piece of work. Not necessarily a surprising one, but slick (in more ways than one) and blackly funny. Just beware cute Asian chefs with enigmatic smiles, and certainly think twice before they volunteer to have you over for dinner.

Despite missing out on Paranormal Activities -- which seems like it might have actually lived up to the hype given some of the buzz afterwards -- we caught REC 2 instead, which has so far been the highlight of the festival. The original is a fun little "zombie" movie, but the sequel ups its game in every way and takes an intriguing turn away from the zombies-as-disease mythology while nodding in the direction of Aliens when a SWAT team enters the quarantined apartment complex. If I have a chance, I may do a longer review later, but as good as the first movie is, the sequel is even better. I imagine the twist on zombie mythology might be hard to swallow for some people, but I thought it was just an amazingly fun paradigm shift. Bring on REC 3.

Yesterday morning, we kicked off the day with Kamogawa Harumo, a Japanese film that the programming guide intentionally refused to describe -- apparently Tim League, owner of the Alamo, had personally selected this film and not even given his staff a plot summary, though some kind of craziness was to be expected. But rather than the surreal dreamscapes of Funky Forest or Survive Style 5+, Harumo is actually an incredibly charming -- if deranged -- bit of Japanese comedy in which a hapless (and more than a little selfish) Kyoto University student joins a "completely normal" after-school club. The club, in fact, goes out of their way to stress exactly how normal they are, which should tell you something right off the bat. Of course the club ends up being part of a centuries old rivaly between the four main colleges in Kyoto, and their method of battling for the yearly crown involves unexpected spiritual help -- as well as dance moves. Never has someone commanding a retreat made me laugh so hard, for reasons that I can't adequately describe unless you've seen the film. But it's well worth a look and another of my favorites from the festival.

Hard Revenge Milly has both the awesomest and most accurate title of any movie at the festival. It's also from much of the same crew that brought you Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police, Robogeisha, and Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (I'll be seeing that next week!) which means cheap production values, imaginative visuals, and some brutally inventive fight scenes that involve firehoses of blood. You can figure out the plot from the title, but I had a hell of a good time watching this one.

But the best part -- and why Fantastic Fest is what it is -- is when the director of Milly, Takanori Tsujimoto, came on stage prior to the film to present his special recipe for yakuniku, a Japanese dish of marinated beef. The Alamo staff wheeled out large trays of beef which the director then proceeded to roast with a flame thrower. I kid you not (Tim League said that they spent much time with translators making sure everyone understood that neither the first row of guests nor the movie screen should be set on fire). Wish I had a picture, but I think Gray caught one that I'll try and link to later.

But the best part of the gag is when half-way through the film, Milly (who is like an Asian female Eastwood) uses her biomechanical knives to dice a bad guy into yakuniku -- and then cooks the bits with a flame thrower attachment, which are promptly consumed by the neighborhood dogs. Suddenly I understood why we were being served meat prepared in such a unique fashion. Well played, Tsujimoto-san, well played.

After that it was the world premiere of Zombieland at the Paramount downtown -- a fun ride, but it would have been nice if the director and actors could have actually credited the screenwriters (Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick) during the Q&A afterwards when repeatedly asked about how the story was developed. Finished out the night with Trick R Treat, a Halloween-themed horror film patterned after Creepshow that was an enjoyable bit of traditional horror.

We then caught up with Jason and Don from Quiet Earth at the Meet the Japanese party being held at the newly opened Alamo Highball next door -- it's a swank space, with tons of seating, bowling lanes, a dance floor, and karaoke stage. But exhaustion finally set in, and after the third or fourth, uh, loudly enthusiastic karaoke rendition ("Guns and Roses is a priviledge not a right") we decided to make our escape.

Missed out on an early showing of Under the Mountain today (no worries, it has a second showing next week) so actually taking some time this afternoon to hit the gym, clean up the house, and write up a blog entry. Then this evening it's Takashi Miike's day-glo superhero movie Yatterman, and in a neck snapping bit of cognitive dissonance, we'll be following up with the premiere of George Romero's new film, Survival of the Dead. While Romero can be hit or miss as filmmaker, I've always had a huge amount of respect for his unique voice and he's definitely been inspirational in my own work. I'm really looking forward to seeing him in person and seeing the premiere of a new Dead film.

Signing off for now, more to come.

FF09: First Squad Review

2009-09-25T09:38:00.002-05:00

I've been looking forward to First Squad, the new anime from Japanese Studio 4C for a while now -- most people have probably seen Studio 4C's work stateside in the Animatrix and Batman: Gotham Knights (aka Anibatrix). Their work usually exhibits a melding of traditional (though often highly stylized) animation -- sometimes lumped under the rather amorphous art movement of superflat -- and detailed 3D renderings that yield a uniquely distinctive but extremely polished look. Some of their earliest work with Katsuhiro Otomo (of Akira fame) resulted in the classic anime movies Spriggan and the omnibus Memories; later work has drifted towards more artistically ambitious projects such as Mind Games and Tekkon Kinkreet, two films that I enjoyed more for pushing the boundaries of animation than for their story.

But First Squad looked to be a neat change of pace, set on the WWII era Eastern Front where a team of Russian psychics battles the Nazi occult during one of the major battles of the campaign -- think Hellboy's BPRD gone Stalin. What causes more than a little cognitive dissonance is that the movie is a Russian production, spoken in Russian and German, based on a series of Soviet-era propaganda comics. It makes for some odd imagery, such as Communist training camps where all the students wear the standard red kerchief but all have crazy anime spiked hair, or a jeep spray-painted with the Red Star... and yellow stars! And smiley faces! It's like the Japanese just couldn't help themselves.

Some great ideas get tossed around: a "Sputnik-01" suit that can be used to cross over to the Gloomy Valley, the afterlife for fallen soldiers; a movie theater is an afterlife waiting room; astral-radar; trips through the subconscious of a clairvoyant as a bridge between life and death; "Moments of Truth" in which ghosts and demons can influence the course of human events. Unfortunately the already thin story linking these ideas is broken up by live-action "talking heads," soldiers and historians purportedly recounting their own memories of events.

The effect is jarring, not just because of the shift between animation and Ken Burns docu-moments, but also because it breaks the pacing -- sometimes only a few minutes of animation would elapse between talking heads. I'm not sure if this was done in attempt to add dramatic weight to the film (the press materials seem to indicate that the filmmaker's prided themselves on their historic realism), or if it was simply to stretch out the movie without increasing the animation budget. It's not a dealbreaker, but the film would have flowed much better without these breaks.

And it's a shame because if they did have the budget, that additional run time could be used to fill in the many holes in the story -- a host of major characters barely have an introduction, and two villains (a pair of twin German spies) show up, fight the heroine several times, and then disappear without explanation. Meanwhile, the final battle is almost an afterthought that doesn't even begin to pay off the set-up. There's a lot of potential to explore here -- and the ending is basically the set-up for a sequel -- but First Squad feels more like an interesting (and somewhat unfinished) experiment rather than a fully fleshed-out movie. Still, Studio 4C has rarely done conventional work, and if First Squad isn't entirely successful, it's certainly a unique entry in the burgeoning market of global animation and worth a viewing in all its Super-Deformed Marxist glory.

Zzzzz...

2009-09-25T02:39:00.000-05:00

[REC 2] was fantastic. More on that later. Now, sleep...

Still Going!

2009-09-25T00:37:00.001-05:00

Been tough to get any updates written in between showings, particularly with spotty wi-fi and everyone here posting to their own blog. Almost finished with a review of First Squad, the first movie I saw today.

Sitting in the theater, getting ready for [REC 2], one of the films I've really been looking forward to. We've got a lot of the Spanish filmmakers in the audience, including Nacho Vigalando (director of Timecrimes). And the guy who played the monster from [REC] is up on stage introducing his new short film!

Also got to meet Tim League earlier, and have been hanging with some of the guys from Quiet Earth

Otherwise, hope to have some longer reviews of Terribly Happy and [REC 2] later, but Happy was a film I knew nothing about going into it and so was pleasantly surprised (particularly after the buzz coming off the Gentlemen Broncos showing). If you can imagine the Coen Brothers Blood Simple crossed with Twin Peaks and filmed in Finland, you'd be in the ballpark.

Plans Change

2009-09-24T15:31:00.000-05:00

Nice rainy day in Austin. After weeks of living under the Anvil and 100 plus temperatures, I'll take gray skies and wet grounds while I spend the rest of the afternoon in a theater.

Badge and ticket pick-up went smoothly excepting usual Terrible Badge Photo. Was surprised that Paranormal Activity had already sold-out (apparently some people had been in line for hours) as well as Solomon Kane -- which apparently has better buzz than I heard. But got lucky, snagged all my other showings, and swapped out Paranormal for REC 2 -- which I was looking forward to catching later in the week, so no problem there. I'll catch Paranormal when it opens. :)

So hanging on the Alamo porch now with Gray, Nautilus balanced on lap and surrounded by a bunch of other people I probably should know doing the exact same thing. Need to figure out how I can post photos -- Flickr doesn't seem to like linking externally.

Hey, first announcement of the Fest, and it's completely unintelligible! It's like the aliens have landed! But I suspect this means seating for First Squad should begin soon...

Day One

2009-09-24T13:32:00.003-05:00

Atomic batteries to power. Engines to speed. Heading down south to grab badge and tickets.

Thursday's Schedule

2009-09-23T19:29:00.003-05:00

Hopefully, depending on tickets, etc.

First Squad: New anime movie from Studio 4C, WWII alternate history set on the Eastern Front... but with zombies and psychics.

Terribly Happy: Don't know anything about it; Danish film about a strange town with its own rules. Sounds interesting.

Short Fuse: Short films! This is the live-action program -- animated short films will be in a separate showing later.

Paranormal Activity: This film has been getting a lot of buzz as this year's model of "scariest movie ever," while also garnering comparisons to Blair Witch Project (which may be good or bad).

Really wanted to catch Solomon Kane, but it conflicts with the Short Fuse program, which I have to see on Thursday so I can catch Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl on Tuesday... the sacrifices we make.

More info on all the movies at the Fantastic Fest site.

Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends

2009-09-23T16:45:00.004-05:00

Come inside, come inside... This is where I'll be (attempting) to liveblog Fantastic Fest 2009 here in (usually) sunny Austin, TX, beginning September 24th. Along with my intrepid friend, Gray, we've come up with a brain-melting schedule of films that will result in a solid week of some of the weirdest and wildest movies doing the circuit. I'm hoping to somehow capture the experience and review as many films as I can in the process. So buckle-up and hope that this doesn't degenerate into the ravings of a madman. Or maybe that's exactly what you want... I don't know all that much about you.

As for me, you can take a look @ 7 Crows if interested, but the site is currently in a state of flux. Short version: I'm a writer and screenwriter, I've worked on a few videogames that you might have heard of, I'm easy to spot in a crowd -- just look for the guy with blue dreadlocks -- and Lawrence of Arabia is my favorite movie. Also, will work for margaritas.