Mad Monkey Kung Fu Saves The Day

Until last night, it had been 2 weeks since I'd seen a movie. A full fourteen days and not a flicker of a film. Not in a theatre, not on DVD and not in any streaming way, shape or form. No stunning cinematography, no twisting plots and not even a probing analysis of the human condition. I pulled through though...

It's not like I was suffering - we took a little family vacation out to California and drove up the coast, so I had a few other things to look at (to any and all blogger friends I have in the region, my profound apologies for not getting in touch - we just didn't have much time in any of the bigger cities). Of course, like any other vacation, I had my laptop along and had brought some DVDs - but somehow I just never got around to watching anything. It's probably my longest "drought" since my son became a sentient being in his first year and began sleeping through nights. Since he just turned 10, it's been awhile since I had that big a break and so I've had a rather solid streak of regular movie watching. The break ended up not bothering me that much really, but once we left the Golden State, I was very much looking forward to getting back home and returning to my regular hobby time. The plan was to jump back in right away with the opening night of Toronto After Dark (which I may have mentioned once or twice...).

The little Friday the 13th demons wouldn't hear of it though. Just as I checked in to my flight back home early Friday morning, they cancelled it. No reason given, just a sudden "I'm sorry sir, I have some bad news...". Now that I'm in a better mood, I'll be charitable and assume that the plane had some major malfunction that would have killed us all and so they decided to pull the plug on it instead of getting bad PR. Earlier on Friday, however, I was severely bummed - OK, it's no big deal, but the festival is one of my fave times of year. It has entertaining genre films and I get to hang out with some truly great people I've met over the years (with each year adding new folks to the list).

So while I wiled away the time waiting for the next flight (a solid 4 hours later) and moping about missing the festivities, I made the decision to catch a later movie with a few of the After Dark crowd at the recently opened Toronto Underground Cinema). The film in question was kicking off the Son Of Kung Fu Fridays series that the venue was looking to install as a regular event. It was an old Shaw Brothers production entitled "Mad Monkey Kung Fu".





The title alone made me feel better (though not quite as much as this did). So a quick stop by the house to drop the luggage, re-engage the A/C and verify that the fish weren't ex-fish and off I went to view one of the Kung Fu classics. I met up with a few co-horts from RowThree and bumped into a friend from J-Film Pow-Wow, so immediately I was shaking off those little Friday the 13th varmints and settled in for some solid martial arts fare. Let's just say I received my money's worth.

Curator of the series Colin Geddes (who also runs the Midnight Madness portion of TIFF) treated the crowd to four (count 'em, 4) trailers of other Shaw Brothers films before the main picture started and he could have turned up the lights afterwards and cleared the house out with nary a complaint - worth three times the price of admission for these gems. Of course, each was a good 4-5 minutes, so there was plenty of wicked kicks, punches, wooden poles, swords, fast zooms, contorted faces and laser beams. Yeah, that last one surprised me too, but it was a beautiful thing to see.

Imagine this trailer about three times as long:




With the Friday the 13th trolls firmly beaten down now, the feature began. Like many martial arts films of the time (at least what I've seen - I'm woefully under-educated in the genre), there is a fairly large chunk of setup time, some overly broad humour and a story that isn't exactly fresh. However, and you had to see this coming, when they really start the fights (one-on-one, one-on-two, one-on-many, two-on-many, etc.), it's pure ear-to-ear grinning entertainment. The sound effects are amped way high, but even that can't take away from the obvious incredible athleticism of many of the moves that showed up on screen in the form of flips, training sequences, different postures and the interplay between the fighters. What was really impressive were the times when you would get a wide slo-mo shot of an acrobatic somersault of some variety - the control these guys had of their bodies was remarkable and truly a thing of beauty to witness. Many of the sequences during the fights were done in long takes as well. There were plenty of edits to mask certain hits, but plenty more instances of entire choreographed battles going on for minutes at a time. There was also lots of laughter and not only the "I can't believe he just did that" variety, but also because of several humourous situations and dubbing that provided additional layers of absurdity and silliness in the context of the story. One always wonders if there is some poor translation at work or if the script was meant to be rather simplistic and halting at times.

Nevertheless, it was heaps and heaps of fun. Thank you Shaw Brothers. You've reinvigorated me.

Toronto After Dark 2010

This year's Toronto After Dark Film Festival kicks off its fifth year on August 13th and, as I've mentioned time and time again, it's one of the highlights of my year. The entire festival plays at a single theatre - the city's legendary Bloor Cinema remaining the headquarters for the fest - so it becomes a mini-community for a week and the late night pub conversations typically get rowdier (and slightly stranger) as the closing gala approaches. Every year I meet more people at the festival, so the lineups outside the theatre can be just as fun as the films sometimes.

Speaking of the films, the full schedule was just released a few days ago. There's some definite "I can't wait!" films on the list along with the usual set that typically don't look phenomenal from the trailers, but at least inspire some confidence that they'll be worth the trip. One difference this year is that there's one film I'm going to purposely avoid. See if you can spot it in the round-up of films below. The full list is here and all trailers should be considered extraordinarily NSFW.



The Last Lovecraft
Henry Saine, USA

The festival's opening night film asks the question "What do you do when you are the only surviving relative of H.P. Lovecraft and need to save the world from invading sea monsters?" You find your old comic book loving friends and put your heads together of course! With a mixture of animation and "old school" monster effects, this sounds like it could be an extremely fun way to begin the proceedings.




Doghouse
Jake West, UK

Zombie Day at After Dark begins. In the first part of the double feature, we travel to the British town of Moodley which seems to be part of a government experiment and has an abundance of women. So it's obviously the perfect place for a group of lads to get away for the weekend (particularly since one of them has just been dumped by his wife). A major flaw in the plan: all the women have become man-eating zombies. My hope is that it doesn't devolve into juvenile humour and stays with a Shaun Of The Dead vibe.




Evil In The Time Of Heroes
Yorgos Noussias, Greece

If you're thinking that this must be the only Greek zombie film ever made, you'd be wrong. It's actually a sequel (of sorts) to the director's own earlier zombie film entitled Evil. At the very least, though, it's likely the only Greek zombie film with Billy Zane in it.




Cargo
Ivan Engler, Switzerland

To Switzerland next and what appears to be the sci-fi entry for the year. A very Alien-esque look and feel to the story gives one pause - derivative and dull or suspenseful homage? Needless to say I'm hoping for the latter.




Robogeisha
Noburu Iguchi, Japan

I actually predicted this film would be in the lineup this year, but with the same special effects crew gracing films from the last 2 fests (Tokyo Gore Police in 2008 and Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl last year), I suppose it wasn't a stretch...Though TGP had moments of amazing creativity and very warped imagination, it actually became rather dull in its last half. VGvsFG was also a mixed bag, but fared better due a stronger sense of humour and a shorter running time. The trailer for Robogeisha is, to say the least, odd...CGI (and rather old CGI at that) seems to be creeping in even more. I haven't quite figured out if the style is intended or not, but I'm hopeful that the sense of humour here is high.




High School
John Stalberg, USA

A stoner comedy that might (I said might...) actually work for people who aren't stoned. Adrien Brody looks to be way over the top in his role as Psycho Ed, but that could be a good thing for him. The rest is a crap shoot, but I'm going to stick with my optimistic outlook and assume that with an audience wanting to enjoy it, the film may provide a good rollicking time. An observation: there sure is a rather large chunk of comedy in the festival this year...




The Last Exorcism
Daniel Stamm, USA

Just when I note the rather long list of comedies, we get to what appears to be a straight up supernatural horror film. Now that he's giving up the game, an exorcist wants to document his final case to show what a sham he's been all these years. In yet another entry into the "point of view" horror genre, things don't quite go the way he thinks they will...




Alien vs Ninja
Seiji Chiba, Japan

This could be complete and utter silly fun. It reminds me a great deal of Ryuhei Kitamura's Versus - a film I quite liked, but which picked up numerous detractors - but much more self-aware. Chiba's film seems to approach things with less of a serious mind to it and that may be the difference. I can see a cultish audience developing over this (yes, I know that's a bit of a leap from just a trailer).




Phobia 2
Poolvoralaks, Pisanthanakun, Purikitpanya, Sugmakanan & Wongpoom, Thailand

One of my most looked forward to films of the week. Its predecessor, 2008's 4bia, also used 4 different short stories by different directors and completely won over the audience with its humour, jump scares and creative "kills". It's possible that they are returning to the well too soon, but since 3 of the 5 directors listed were involved previously, I'm going in pretty confident they will pull out another crowd-pleaser.




All About Evil
Joshua Grannell, USA

Though listed as campy fun, the trailer warns of possible forced comedy. The premise sounds reasonable: young woman inherits movie theatre, accidentally kills evil step-mother on security camera, footage is mistaken for a gory film and a career as a horror director is born. I've always thought Natasha Lyonne had good comedic skill and timing, so it's nice to see her making films again and this could have potential as a decent black comedy. It could also be a train wreck.




Centurion
Neal Marshall, UK

I wasn't much of a fan of Doomsday, but Neal Marshall deserves a few second chances. I'm not much of a "swords and sandals" genre fan either, but again Marshall could make it of interest. Unfortunately, the action scenes look to be shot in the quick-edit, low frame rate style of Gladiator. The movie will be all over the multiplexes pretty soon anyway, but a festival crowd could add some additional incentive to see this early.




Heartless
Philip Ridley, UK

Philip Ridley's first film in 14 years tells the story of a young disfigured man who stumbles across a group of thugs that may be something other than human. Because of his outsider status, he enters into a pact with them and becomes part of the group. I expect it's downhill from there...This looks really solid.




Black Death
Christopher Smith, UK

The UK is certainly holding down the fort this year...Christopher Smith is another name that automatically raises at least curiosity from me (not particularly because of Creep, but moreso due to Severance). His latest is set in Medieval England and finds a young monk tasked with finding out why a particular village remains untouched by the disease spreading throughout the country. Plague-porn? Maybe, but with accusations of witchcraft levied at the town and a call to bring them back to God, the film could end up being more than just that.




I Spit On Your Grave
Steven R. Munroe, USA

A remake of the 70s rape-revenge exploitation film that pushes the boundaries further and is actively marketing its extreme and graphic violence? Nope. Not for me. I'm curious to hear director Munroe's rationalizations about the film, but I have no interest in actually experiencing it myself. I'll get an earlier start at the bar that night...




Rubber
Quentin Dupieux, France

One of the most talked about films coming out of Fantasia. A tire gains consciousness and the ability to blow things up with its "mind". The tire also has a name (Robert) and is really, really peeved at the human race. How could that possibly be bad?




The Human Centipede
Tom Six, Holland

I figured this would enter my viewing sphere at some point...I can't say I've been looking forward to it, but there have been several schools of thought on the movie so I'm curious to see where it falls. I think I'll skip dinner beforehand though.




And don't forget the short films! Each screening is prefaced by a Canadian short (on average the quality of these in previous years has been quite outstanding) and there's an entire set of After Dark Shorts on Saturday afternoon.

Commence festivities!

Shinsedai 2010 - The Water Magician

At the tender age of 22, Takako Irie was already a power player in the Japanese film industry. Impressive for anyone, but triply so considering that she was able to do this as a young woman in 1933 Japan. She created her own production company and struck out into the world of independent film with Kenji Mizoguchi's "The Water Magician" as one of her first projects. She not only produced, but also took on its main starring role. Hearing these details in the introductory comments before its screening at this year's Shinsedai Cinema Festival provided some additional information as to why a silent film from a noted master of the artform managed to sneak into this year's lineup. After all, it's not really the first thing you think of to program in a festival dedicated to new Japanese films by young filmmakers (the term Shinsedai actually means "new generation"). One assumed the film was being screened simply because the opportunity was there - and if you could add on live musical accompaniment, why would you not? Especially when the music is by experimental Toronto band Vowls and the space within which they would perform it is the lovely confines (acoustically friendly one at that) of the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre.

It's somewhat hard at this stage to separate out the music from the movie since the ebbs and flows of the soundtrack provided by the 5-piece band (including many analog and digital effects) meshed with the pace of the movie. The tale is straightforward - a young woman named Taki no Shiraito travels around with a circus performing tricks with water and becomes taken with a young carriage driver. She's attracted to him, but is also impressed with the way he stands up to her and the other passengers who taunt the slowness of his buggy. She insists that he make something of himself and offers to pay for his education with the condition that he become an honourable gentleman. The slow build of Vowls' music during the film's opening exposition is initially hard to fit into the 80-year old look of the film and its characters, but it pulses and weaves its way into your head until you're hooked - into both the music and the story.




In the grand tradition of melodramatic storylines, the separated lovers are doomed to encounter each other again and, of course, in a fashion that tests those initial promises. It's all in the telling, though, and Mizoguchi has a couple of weapons at his disposal to make this a very engaging story. The first is his camera - it moves a great deal throughout the film pushing in, following, tracking and staying with our characters. Things just seemed more vibrant with all that movement. The second high-powered item in his arsenal is Takako Irie herself - specifically her beautiful, expressive and mischievous face. When the lovers are apart, we spend almost the entirety of the time with her, so that face gets a lot of screen time and I have to say that she makes use of it well. The emotions are high and her expressions match them, but it never feels like its played too broad. Because of the nature of the story, there certainly are moments when you think things like "if you'd just talk to that guy, it would all be fine!", but it's not meant to be...

If there was a small downside to the screening it was that the film had a great deal of subtitles that were explaining much of the action on screen - these were actually for the narration used by Benshi who would typically tell the story of the film to an audience while also speaking the roles of several characters on screen. This was common for many silent films in Japan and apparently true Benshi were performers in their own right and could elevate what they did to an artform. Unfortunately, without the Benshi present, it was just a whole lot of additional subtitles on the screen. After awhile you could safely ignore them and just read the intertitles, but it's hard to ignore that blaring white text at the bottom of the screen...It's a small annoyance though.

The score by Vowls kept enveloping the audience more and more as the film went on. One of its early peaks was during the sequence when Shiraito is hiding out with a young couple and is discovered and led away to jail on suspicion of murder. The band shifted gears a bit during this section to bring an overall darker and more insistent tone to the rhythms of the piece. The final 10 minutes or so seemed to be one constant build that completely fit the tone of the trapped feelings of the characters. If the band were not overly animated in their performance, they certainly knew how come up with intriguing sounds and stitch them all together to make a great film all that much better.

A magnificent evening.

Shinsedai 2010 - The first half

A little over a year ago my friend Chris MaGee was at the 2009 Nippon Connection film festival and emailed myself and a few of the other contributors to the Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow (which he started in 2007) that he had met Jasper Sharp. This was exciting news to me as Jasper was somewhat responsible for my interest in Japanese film - I was already curious when I read the book The Midnight Eye Guide To New Japanese Film (which he co-authored with Tom Mes) and was instantly hooked after diving headlong through the chapters on individual directors like Fukasaku, Suzuki, Kurosawa (Kiyoshi) and Miike. Just in case the title of the book wasn't a dead giveaway, Sharp and Mes co-founded Midnight Eye - one of the premiere web sites for anything related to Japanese film.

Chris had more news in the months to come though. He and Jasper had hatched a plan to start a new film festival - one dedicated to young Japanese filmmakers working independently of studios and who were early in their careers. Even better (at least for me), it would be held in Toronto and Jasper would attend (it really was an honour and a pleasure to meet Jasper last year and to be able to thank him directly). That's how the Shinsedai Cinema Festival was born and last year's premiere outing was, to my mind, a roaring success. Filmmakers attended, press coverage was given and suddenly people were coming to Chris and Jasper.

What to do next? Hold the second annual festival of course! It kicked off this past Thursday (sigh, how good a friend am I that I'm only writing about it now?) with a crowded opening night reception at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre packed with local press, film writers, guests, several of the filmmakers and numerous bottles of Asahi Black. Jasper couldn't attend this year, but the crowd was willing to give him some slack due to his new status as a parent to a brand-spanking new bouncing 2 week old son. Among the other guests at the opening was Canadian director Deepa Mehta who caught the evening's first film as well.

I should say the evening's first 2 films since things started with the wonderful 6 minute animated short entitled Ladybird's Requiem by Akino Kondoh. It's essentially a series of small fantasies in a young girl's mind about ladybugs, buttons and the metaphysical which all occur after she has accidentally killed a single ladybug. Kondoh's art also adorns the poster for this year's festival (seen above). Her hand drawn panels are uncluttered and drift and merge together with seamless fluidity. I missed her film from last year's festival and regret that terribly now...




The first feature of the evening was Momoko Ando's full length debut Kakera: A Piece Of Our Life. It's the tale of a young university student named Haru who seems stuck with a selfish boyfriend (he hasn't quite yet got rid of his old girlfriend yet) and is appears to going through the motions of her life joylessly. She's not really stuck with him actually, it's just that it's too much fuss to get rid of him. Until she meets Riko that is. She's a rather forward young woman and simply walks up and introduces herself to Haru because she is interested in her. She claims she isn't necessarily a lesbian as she doesn't care about someone being a man or a woman, just that they are of interest to her and she feels an attraction to them. Haru is somewhat apprehensive, but is also curious and contacts her to see her again. They hit it off first as friends and soon as a couple, but it's still all quite confusing for Haru (played wonderfully by Hikari Mitsushima who was equally fine in Sion Sono's crazily good "Love Exposure") as she tries to deal with her feelings for Riko, her boyfriend's continued presence and a freshman's own attraction to her.

The performances of the two leads and their characters are the strongest part of the film. Riko is pushy and becomes clingy while Haru is frustratingly unable to make any decisions, but there's a charm to the two of them that keeps the story alive. Which is lucky since there are many issues with the rest of the film. The low budget is a bit too readily apparent sometimes, but it's the heavy-handedness of the script and plot points that weighs the whole movie down. Riko is a prosthetics artist (she creates realistic new body parts for people "missing" something) and Haru certainly fits the bill even if all her physical parts are present. The issue with the film's presentation can be summed up in a single scene: while tossing their bottles of soda back and forth during an early "date" they laugh and giggle until one of the bottles is thrown high up in the air, the camera follows it up and as it reaches the crest of its arc it turns into a 2-headed dove.

Though there aren't that many magical occurrences like this in the film (except another beautifully rendered scene of the night sky appearing in a pool), it gives an indication of the subtlety, or lack thereof, at work. However, due to the charms of the characters, I was happy to focus on their progression and not worry so much about getting hit over the head.

I misssed the evenings's second film (a retrospective on master puppeteer Kihachiro Kawamoto via several short films), but was able to catch both of Friday's offerings. The first was Kenji Mizoguchi's 1933 silent film "The Water Magician" complete with a new musical score played live by local band Vowls. The show was magnificent and requires its own post that will follow later.




The second film of the evening was described as taking certain stylistic cues from Seijun Suzuki's 1950-60s output as well as Kinji Fukasaku's dynamic street level filmmaking. So as evidenced by my earlier comments, I was obviously looking forward to Island Of Dreams. Director Tetsuichiro Tsuta's debut feature doesn't crib directly from its influences (something that may throw you off initially if you go in with lofty expectations), but certainly has them as antecedents through its tone and approach. The "you're with the action" hand-held camera adds some energy to a plot that doesn't contain quite as much as you might have expected (an eco-terrorist blows up a small cabin in the woods and then sets his sights on larger targets) and bits of humour pop in and out (mostly via detective Terayama who is chasing the bomber). I particularly liked the moment when Terayama is running full tilt down the edge of river in pursuit with blaring high-paced music - until he begins to slow down from being out of shape and the music slows to his own pace.

The Island of Dreams from the title is also the name of a man-made island that is used to hold all the garbage that Tokyo spits out. The bomber - a young disillusioned man named Alan - works daily at the island and has come to hate the consume-and-dispose society that surrounds him. The environmental message is extraordinarily heavy-handed - including a club band's sappy dedicated song to Mother Earth - but given the film's Black and White look (filmed on 16mm) and ancestry, it fit reasonably well and didn't cause the usual rolling of eyes. It also ties in nicely with some magic realism that the film pulls in towards the end in quite lovely fashion.




Something new this year is the usage of the Jishu Eiga Room at the JCCC to present several experimental films. Throughout the day several selections are continuously looped, so there were ample opportunities to catch some really new directions. One of these films is Kazuhiro Goshima's hour-long Different Cities - a gorgeous walk through the different corridors and corners of a large city via the eyes of several characters who seem to be out of sync with their surroundings and have lost their ability to navigate them. Whether it's the couple on an expressway with no exits and surrounded by incredibly tall buildings or the woman who follows what appears to be an animal's tracks over, under and through a myriad of different sections, the film takes you through a variety of structures imposed on the city that seem to trap its denizens. And yet, it also shows the beauty of some of this architecture. One sequence of a young man walking through a series of different staircases is quite extraordinary. Goshima seems to have an eye for picking interesting angles and creating perfectly composed frames. It's a lovely work and one of my favourite films of the festival so far.

Another 5 films from the Saturday and Sunday schedule to come...

I'm Not Even Two Minutes In...

...and I already know that I'm going to love Return Of The Street Fighter, Shigehiro Ozawa's follow-up to The Streetfighter - both of which come from 1974 and star the most supremely excellent Sonny Chiba.

The initial setup of the film has Sonny requesting double his normal fee after being asked to "take care of" a couple of embezzling accountants (one of them in police custody). In order to get into the area where one of the accountants is being held, he purposely speeds off on his motorcycle to get the cops after him. He magically leaps his cycle over a crash in front of him, screeches to a halt in front of a set of embassy gates, somersaults over the high fence in one smooth movement and engages in hand-to-hand combat with a multitude of easy prey (while wearing a coat only he could make look cool). Watch out for the "duck from under helmet before pummeling guy left holding it" move. Sweet.




I can't wait to see the rest...


Update Note: 8 minutes in - a character in a movie theatre is watching one of Kinji Fukasaku's The Yakuza Papers films (you can't miss that terrific theme music). Awesome.

A Single Image #7B

Red Beard (1965 - Akira Kurosawa)

A Single Image #7A

Red Beard (1965 - Akira Kurosawa)