Film Fest

The Calgary International Film Festival is over and I saw a total of thirteen films. I would have seen more but I got a cold and confined myself to the couch for the last few days of the Fest. My personal best for films-watched-in-a-day was four. I was powered by the matcha smoothie I had at lunch.

Thirteen films:

Accidents Happen: Gina Davis in an indie film set in seventies American suburbia. Everything that can go wrong to her family does, including a car crash, coma, divorce, and death (multiple). Still scrapes by as a comedy.

Broken Embraces: Pedro Almodovar's latest, a love square (?) involving Penny Cruz. A blind filmmaker thinks back on a love affair doomed by betrayal and jealousy.

The Clone Returns Home: It's the future and the Japanese have invented (but not perfected) human cloning technology. An astronaut dies in space; he is resurrected as a grown man, but with the mind of his childhood self. Haunted by memories of his twin brother, he runs away to the remote countryside. Beautiful and sad.

Daytime Drinking: A group of Korean men make drunken plans for a trip out of town. The next day, only one man shows up at the destination. His attempts to make the best of the situation result in boredom, drinking soju, eating noodles, getting conned, losing his pants, drinking soju, heartbreak, being really cold, fighting, and drinking soju. Reminiscent of some real weekends I spent in SoKo.

Karaoke: A film about a young Malaysian's return from the city to his home on a palm oil plantation. What's interesting is not the narrative but the way the camera is allowed to linger seemingly forever on its subject: a worker on a huge pile of palm leaves, man walking through a forest, the singers in a karaoke bar. Compelling despite the fact that not much happens.

Made in China: A young American has dreams of making it big as an inventor of novelty items (the snake in a can, pet rock, slinky, fake poo, ect.). He leaves his trailer park for Shanghai, where he hopes to have his idea manufactured. His naivete is fortunately matched by his tenacity, as he gets lost, get conned, gets on the wrong train, gets beaten up. And he loses his pants. The big reveal of his novelty idea comes near the end and makes all the trouble worth it.

Miao Miao: A Taiwanese teenage girl befriends a Japanese exchange student. Much mooning over unrequited crushes, as well as baking of cakes.

Nonko

Animated Shorts: Various animation techniques from different countires. The best was "The Little Puppet Boy" from Sweden. Crude claymation tells the epic three-part story of a young man and his visit from a lady friend (they watch a video and eat chips). It's brilliant.

Smash Cut: Intentionality campy horror flick about a movie director who makes unintentionally campy horror flicks (he "makes Ed Wood look like Orson Welles"). Lots of over-the-top deaths and cheesy dialogue.

Tetro: Francis Ford Coppola's first movie in forever. Gorgeous in black and white, it tells the complicated relationship of two brothers. Vincent Gallo as the tortured and moody older brother, just my type. Set in Argentina, including a trip to Patagonia.

White On Rice

Winnebago Man: I'd never seen it, but for years people have been sharing on video tape, and more recently posting on Youtube, outtakes from an eighties TV advertisement featuring a foulmouthed Winnebago salesman. One fan tracked down the man behind the myth and made a documentary about him.