Posted by Skrud at Thursday, August 3rd 2006 at 7:43pm
It’s already been a couple of weeks since Fantasia 2006 came to a close, and I haven’t blogged about a single movie (and I went to 25 of them). So here are my thoughts on this year’s Fantasia in the order of my ticket stubs. (I bolded my favourites).
- Tokyo Zombie was very disappointing. It was mostly boring, but the last 10 minutes were gloriously amazing. Unfortunately they were too little too late. I wanted a ridiculous and funny zombie movie, but what I got was … well I don’t know what it was but it was boring.
- A Bittersweet Life is easily one of the best movies I saw this year. It was a Korean movie, but a gangster movie in the same vein as John Woo’s The Killer with Chow Yun-Fat. While it doesn’t offer anything original in the way of story (it’s pretty run-of-the-mill John Woo), A Bittersweet Life distinguishes itself by being beautiful. It was well shot, masterfully directed and so well executed that you kind of just lose yourself in the world that the movie creates for you. It’s much, much more than just a gangster movie.
- Princess Aurora was a pretty interesting Korean serial-killer flick, instead of being purely senseless and violent, it was violent and very entertaining. It also has the most awesome website I’ve ever seen (make sure to enable popups before going).
- Shinobi is kind of like Romeo & Juliet but with ninjas. Actually, it was a lot more than that, and it was a pretty awesome movie, too. Excellent fight scenes, beautifully shot… While it was based on a manga (called Basilisk) you can tell that the movie only covers one aspect of the whole story.
- Hell was a very disappointing Thai horror movie. Basically a bunch of people go to Hell, and the rest of the movie is spent with them trying to come back. It wasn’t scary, and hell, it wasn’t even interesting.
- Necromancer is another Thai horror movie. It was even worse than Hell. There are basically these Necromancers with magic-like powers … but they don’t really _do_ anything. I think one of them was a cop or something… Anyway, the movie had no discernable thread. Nothing for the viewer to follow, and no characters to rally for or against or anything. And it kept doing this irritating thing where it would show you a scene that has nothing to do with anything, and then an hour later it will show you the rest of the scene (and by that time you’d forgotten the beginning since it had nothing to do with anything). The only good thing was the music, which was loud and triumphant and great. But the music’s greatness only made the movie look even duller by comparison.
- SARS Wars was another Thai movie. This one is a parody of every zombie movie ever made. An hilarious parody. The premise: the SARS Type 4 virus turns people into zombies, and a hero, and old guy, a sexy doctor and schoolgirl (as well as her would-be kidnappers) have to fight their way out of the zombie-infested building. This movie made fun of everything from Night of the Living Dead to Star Wars.
- Black Kiss wasn’t nearly as weird as I’d hoped. It was still a pretty interesting movie with compelling enough characters that make you constantly wanting to know more about them … but it kind of flopped at the end.
- My Scary Girl. There’s something about Korean romantic comedies that I like. I think it’s because they’re some of the funniest movies ever made. While the classic My Sassy Girl had a deeper love story, My Scary Girl was almost pure laughs. It’s like the Korean version of 40-Year-Old Virgin only instead of the girl being a grandmother, she’s a serial killer. I’d recommend this movie to anyone. (Holy fuck, Hollywood is remaking My Sassy Girl. Please don’t see it; whatever you do.)
- A Chinese Tall Story’s trailer made it look like China’s answer to Godzilla: Final Wars. Unfortunately it was nothing like that. The movie had awesome special effects, but I think the horrendous translation did it the most harm. I don’t know why Cantonese movies are so badly subtitled, but I had no idea what the hell was happening the whole time (and I’m no n00b to Chinese cinema). The special effects and action were great, though.
- Funky Forest almost deserves an entire post of its own. I think it was the most absurd movie I have ever seen (I don’t recommend it if you’re a lightweight of Asian cinema). The movie had three directors and took the form of many sketches involving a lot of the same characters. Kind of a like sketch comedy … There were a few episodes of “GUITAR BROTHER” which were these random sketches of Tadanobu Asano with a guitar and a kid that couldn’t speak Japanese. There was also this weird school with a funky homeroom teacher and aliens and a band that only plays music in your dreams and these weird ExistenZ-like creatures. I loved this movie, but I don’t think you’ll enjoy it if you’re a stranger to absurdist movies.
- Lost In Wu Song was a movie about making a movie about the Chinese mythical hero, Wu Song. The movie focuses on the director as he tries to find the perfect actor to play “Wu Song”, and he often tells stories about Wu Song to his friends at the local eatery. It reminded me of Of Mice And Men only it was good. (I hated that book).
- Executive Koala (from the same director as Calamari Wrestler) is about an executive at a large food company… who happens to be a man-sized koala. Other than that he’s normal. Well, the company’s president is a giant albino rabbit and the clerk at the 7-11 is a frog. The movie itself would probably have been pretty lame had it not been for the inclusion of giant animals. But because we had the giant koala there to constantly remind us that the movie is for entertainment purposses only, it was pretty enjoyable. Think about how many more movies would be improved by a giant animal? (Think of Superman, if Clark Kent were really a walrus or something, and then when he takes off his glasses he becomes Superman, and still nobody can tell that Clark Kent is Superman… even if he’s the only walrus. That would be awesome.) Executive Koala also deserves recognition for the line “There’s nothing wrong with you! You’re a perfectly decent koala.”
- Strange Circus was strange and disturbing. Yet for some reason I liked it. I don’t know why I liked it, but I did. I’m not even sure what it was about, but it was certainly interesting.
- All Out Nine: The Field of Nightmares. Japan certainly knows how to make a damn good baseball movie. And I normally hate sports movies. But All Out Nine isn’t so much about baseball as it is about overcoming adversity. Indeed, the word adversity is constantly flown across the screen, sprouting out from the ground or falling from outer space. This movie had just the right amount of ridiculousness and absurdity to make it entertaining and thoughtful.
- Arthouse Ultraman was four episodes of the recent Ultraman MAX TV Series, each directed by a famous (and artsy, hence “Arthouse”) Japanese director. In fact, two of the episodes were directed by Takashi Miike, known for his insanely messed up movies. Two of these episodes were extraordinary (one of them by Miike, the other by … some other famous guy whose name escapes me). The other two were okay. One of the awesome episodes (not the Miike one) was actually pretty deep. The other one (the Miike one) was hysterical.
- Vampire Cop Ricky followed the more-or-less typical Korean formula for action/comedies. There’s no one named Ricky in this movie. There _is_ however, a cop that turns into a vampire – but only when he’s horny or extremely angry. Hilarity ensues.
- Sukeban Boy was one of the most wildly fun and entertaining movies ever. It was a short film, but it was all about boobies. Gratuitous booby-shot after gratuitous booby-shot. Not a single chest was left covered. There are fights, and boobies that turn into cannons, and a boy that turns into a girl (more boobies!). You can read a real review here. So … many … boobies.
- The Idol was another short film that showed with Sukeban Boy (boobies!). This one had more depth and was more interesting. It was a very good movie, especially as far as short films go. Basically there’s a doll that gets passed on from planet to planet sucking up people’s emotional highs and lows… it was very well done (especially on such a low budget).
- Negadon was an entirely computer generated (and fucking beautiful at that) tribute to 50’s sci-fi flicks. It’s a little slow going, but it’s only 25 minutes long and the animation and action (once you finally get to it) more than make up for the slow intro.
- In Samurai Commando 1549 a platoon of modern day soldiers accidently end up in the year 1549 and start screwing with Japanese history, so another troop is sent to bring them back. It wasn’t particularly great, but it was entertaining. And there was a guy named Yoda.
- Red Shoes was a Korean horror movie about these shows (they’re pink, not red) that kill whomever wears them. But it wasn’t very scary, there was too much forewarning (the music) to the would-be scary scenes. I found it hard to sympathize with the main character, since I didn’t really like her very much at all. The whole movie took the idea of the red shoes (which had potential) and fizzled it.
- The Glamorous Life Of Sachiko Hanai was one of the more interesting movies this year. It might have been a softcore porn, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t intelligent. On some level, at least, you can read into things. Sachiko is a tutor (the dirty kind of tutor) who gets shot in the head and ends up becoming super smart. She starts really teaching things as the movie goes on. Eventually the world is destroyed. I liked it a lot. (And not just because of the boobies).
- Reincarnation is Takashi Shimizu’s latest. Takashi Shimizu has directed Ju-On about 30,000 times. There were at least two Ju-On made-for-TV movies, and the two feature length ones, for example. Reincarnation more or less proved that he can’t escape it, since it was almost just like Ju-On in every respect – except a lot less scary. That’s not to say it was bad… I actually liked it, but it could’ve been much better. Too many scenes from Reincarnation were almost identical to ones in Ju-On.
- Zombie Self Defense Force was a low-budget Japanese zombie/comedy movie. It was simple and fun and had a female robocop kick some zombie ass.
- Death Trance was a fucking good action movie. Post-acopaclyptic yet over-the-top enough to be amusing. Fantastic fight scenes and some ass-kicking soundtrack. Not to mention it combined sword fighting, gun fighting and bazookas in a way so rarely seen in theatres.
- Seven Swords was freaking long. A lot longer than it should’ve been. I mean there were whole side-arcs (read: “useless time wasters that contributed nothing to the plot nor character development”) that took like, 20 minutes of fucking “sending the horses off” … Argh. I could’ve done without that. … But the action was great. Some awesome people in this movie: Donnie Yen, Lau Kar-Leung (the old guy from Drunken Master) among others. There were some great action scenes … but all things considered I’ve lost faith in Tsui Hark. (Actually, I lost faith in him after seeing Black Mask 2, with Rob Van Damme. There’s a reason you never knew they made a Black Mask 2.)
And there we go. That’s Fantasia 2006 for you. I might have accidently left out a couple of movies but I think that’s just about all of them. I was disappointed that there were no Godzilla movies this year. Hopefully there’ll be a bigger, better one next year. (I can’t wait to see them try to top Final Wars).
Tags: 2006, events, fantasia, festivals, japanese, movies | 3 comments
Posted by Skrud at Tuesday, June 13th 2006 at 7:08pm
I went to see both Jem Rolls and Uncalled For last night at the Fringe Festival. It was my second time seeing Jem Rolls and the third time seeing Uncalled For.
Jem Rolls is unbelievably awesome, it’s just impossible to accurately describe what he does to anyone who hasn’t seen him perform – even then, I don’t think you could accurately describe it. If poetry and cunning linguistics were turned shoved into a blender with Reese Pieces, you still wouldn’t have Jem Rolls. Technically, it’s a performance poetry, but that term doesn’t do justice for Jem’s act.
Unfortunately, Jem Rolls does not do any recordings – there are no CDs, DVDs or movies for you to get a sampling from – which only makes it that much more difficult to describe. Suffice it to say that if you even have a remote appreciation for hearing the English language used in peculiar, original and interesting ways you should definitely, definitely check out Jem Rolls before the Fringe is out.
Uncalled For is usually my favourite performance of the Fringe. They’re a wildly entertaining improv troupe that not only performs hysterical sketch-improv comedy, but experiments with it, too. Every Fringe show is completely different – and not only because of audience participation: they’re trying a different experimental approach to improv comedy each night. When Guillaume saw them on Sunday they did everything ”backwards”. When I saw them last night, they tried to show how Stalin was connected to Big Bob from Alberta through degrees of separation (Stalin and Big Bob were both audience contributions). It sure was hilarious, but slightly weaker than last year’s tunip (sic) patch, prison inames, Norway and siamese twins story. :D
I’m going to try to hit Uncalled For at least one more time this Fringe, but I doubt I can make any of the other showings.
Tags: 2006, comedy, events, festivals, fringe | 5 comments
Posted by Skrud at Wednesday, June 7th 2006 at 1:47am
The Montreal Fringe is always one of my favourite festivals. Ever since I saw the One Man Star Wars Trilogy a couple of years ago, I’ve been hooked. Here are the shows I’m planning on checking out this year, and the times. Feel free to join in!
- Jem Rolls Off the tongue is considered “performance poetry”. I saw Jem Rolls perform at my first fringe experience, and it was amazing. He not only tells poetry, but acts it out. It’s not nearly as artsy-fartsy as that sounds, and it’s pretty damn awesome. Update: We’re back to seeing Jem Rolls Monday, June 12th (that’s tonight!) at 6pm.
- Uncalled For 4: For Forever!. Uncalled For is always my favourite of the Fringe. This improv group is ridiculously funny, and I certainly won’t miss the opportunity to see them again. (Monday, June 12th @ 8pm - Subscribe with Google Calendar)
- My German Father. I don’t know much about this one, except that it’s based on a Just For Laughs act, and looks like it’s going to be hilarious. Harley pointed it out, so we’re going. (Thursday, June 15th @ 9pm - Subscribe with Google Calendar)
- The Sketchersons: Sunday Night Live On Tour! looks like another excellent improv comedy show. I’ve never seen nor heard of this group before, but that’s no reason not to check it out. Unfortunately the timing is a little tough to work out (11:45pm to 1am on a Thursday night) but that’s not going to stop us! (Thursday, June 15th @ 11:45pm - Subscribe with Google Calendar)
If you can only make it to one Fringe show, the choice is easy: Uncalled For. You can read my ravings on last year’s show if you’re not convinced.
Tags: 2006, comedy, events, festivals, fringe | 5 comments
Posted by Skrud at Sunday, November 6th 2005 at 7:04pm
Last night was the awe-inspiring second night of the Arcadia Festival, Montreal’s first gaming convention that’s open to the general public. The festival spans 3 days and 2 nights, with the night events being restricted to people aged 18 and over (i.e., no little kids to kick your ass at the video games).
With blasting trance music and really sweet video screens placed all over the venue, we started off in the Retro Room, cleverly placed right near the entrance, where Harley destroyed me in a game of Pong. We also discovered a Sega Saturn with Virtua Fighter 2 and played a few rounds, then a Panasonic 3D0 with the original Need For Speed on it. Good stuff. There were a number of Atari Flashback 2 systems available complete with old school looking TVs and couches. We played some Missile Commander, Asteroids, Battlezone … and Harley destroyed me at Pong again. We also found an old school Bejeweled:
On to the XBox room. There was an XBox 360 available for playing, with some unrecognizable game that looked like fun, but there was always a massive line-up so I didn’t bother. The highlight of the XBox room was a racing game coupled with a completely ostentatious driving chair. Watching Leilani try to play it was a spectacle in itself. The Scooby-Doo game was a lot of fun, and there was a perplexing “urban” game where it seemed that the objective was to spraypaint the entire city. I really couldn’t tell what to do with it so I ignored it. (Arcadia was really bad at letting you know which game you were playing, and pause screens and title menus are extremely uninformative). There were a few King Kong systems set up as well as a 4-player Halo LAN, which looked cool.
The Playstation room was a little more exciting. Crowds formed around the people playing Flow: Urban Dance Uprising and the EyeToy games. The same Scooby-Doo game from the XBox was also present. I had a lot of fun with Ratchet & Clank and Sly 3. I was really disappointed with the severe lack of Guitar Heroes. Clearly this would have been an awesome crowd-forming fun game to play. What with the built-in Symphony of Destruction and all. But alas, no Guitar Heroes. :( There were some PSP’s apparently, but I think the Playstation animators had to hold them for you because there were no stands.
The Nintendo room completely stole the show and utterly squashed the competition. Who knows how they managed to jam so much stuff into one small lot. There was an entertaining Mario DDR game which always had a crowd. The centre of the room was lined with Nintendo DS systems and Gameboy Advanced hooked up on stands with tons of different games on them. Gamecube stations had so much more variety than any of the other rooms could even hope to offer. Most impressive was Super Mario Strikers, in which one could play against some Nintendo presenters to win giant fuzzy Nintendo dice as well as girlie T-Shirts. (I kept the dice and gave away the shirt :P). The game was so entertaining that it monopolized the giant screens all over Arcadia, even in the background while the bands were playing. It’s kind of like Mario Kart, because you can even throw shells and drop banana peels while running around the soccer field. I also played some Viewtiful Joe 2 which was really cute, amusing and highly entertaining. Simple and fluid gameplay with lots of cool little moves and effects. Nintendo also had what I would call the most addictive game ever: WarioWare, Inc.; the Gamecube Party Game version. WarioWare, Inc. consists of loads of micro-games. I say micro, because mini games would be much longer. You have to play each game in less than 5 seconds, and then it speeds up!!! If ADD could be embodied in a video game, this is it. A seemingly infinite number (really there are only about 200) of tiny little games that get your reflexes into overdrive… and they’re weird: Dodge a box, throw a hammer, catch a baseball, match a square, find a bug, brush teeth, pick a nose, squash a bug … Clearly it wouldn’t be as much fun if you were sitting there by yourself in your darkened room, but at a party surrounded by friends - I bet it would be awesome.
Needless to say I have a new-found love for the Nintendo Gamecube, which I never thought would have been possible. It seems that while the other game companies have been trying to outdo each other by upping the graphics and violence factor in all their games, Nintendo has been off doing their own thing, creating simple, fun, and enjoyable games. It’s kind of like how people fell in love with Katamari Damacy for it’s simplistic, fun and addictive gameplay. (It was also something that was missing from Sony’s Playstation room).
But that’s not all - there was a whole LAN set up for gaming which appeared to have Call of Duty 2 and some other games. … Mind you this was less interesting than the other console games. :P
Then, the concerts started. Members of Generation 8-bit performed, followed by Minibosses and Junkie XL. There’s nothing like live music to pwn a good game convention. We left sometime during Bubblyfish’s performance (which was some pretty cool Psy-Trance-like stuff) to get some food and returned in time to catch the tail-end of Nullsleep’s set. Nullsleep plays remixed Nintendo theme songs. It sounds fucking awesome. Like MIDI gone wild. Even better, all his music is available under a Creative Commons license so that you can download, share and copy it all you want, for free.
Following Nullsleep, the infamous Minibosses took the stage playing classic NES rockified. Like Castlevania II, Megaman 2, Goonies… and tons of others. Even though I couldn’t recall all the games their music was from I certainly recognised the familiar tunes. I don’t even think they had a set list, it seemed they just chose at random which song to play next. Totally. Awesome.
Finally I went to go play some more GameCube games before we had to leave. (I wasn’t paying attention to whether or not Junkie XL was playing or not … but the music was still kick ass).
I will be there next year. For certain. Definitely.
Tags: festivals, games, geek, music | 2 comments
Posted by Skrud at Monday, June 13th 2005 at 9:41am
We weren’t sure what to do last Friday night, then I asked when the Fringe Festival starts. Guess what? It started last Friday night. How convenient!
Harley and I headed down to the plateau to check out A Brief History of Warfare… an interesting look at well, warfare, from a completely skewed point of view; dancing girls included (to the Stalingrad song…). Stopping at their outdoor headquarters to pick up tickets. There’s always live music and beer and plenty of fun stuff going on around there, too. One of the great things about waiting in line at the Fringe Festival box office is that the person in front of you can just turn around – while you’re discussing which shows you want to go to – and hand you fliers for their show. In this case, it was Erin Leahy plugging Freak Out Under The Apple Tree. We decided we’d check that out, too.
(Before the show we went and sat in Cafe Pi, which was nice except for all the smoke – a huge turnoff.)
During the show, host Ivan Penaluna showed slides about war, made fun of Americans, and displayed letters which he sent to the British Ministry of Defence requesting that they name two new Aircraft carriers the “Death Star” and the “Millenium Falcon,” because they are much more intimidating names than the “H.M.S. Splendid”… he also showed the replies he got from the Ministry, because they reply to every letter. All in all, a pretty amusing show.
On Saturday we decided we’d hit the Fringe again, this time meaning to see Freak Out Under The Apple Tree and This is Uncalled For. (Two years ago, we saw Uncalled For at the Fringe with Ed and it was the most hilarious improv show… ever.). We ended up going to Baton Rouge to celebrate Terrel’s birthday instead of going to the first show (thanks for the reminder, Mel!)… and the whole Baton Rouge staff is worthy of entirely unfavourable rant that I probably won’t go into.
Uncalled For was in a totally uncalled for location. Pun intended. The venue was far norther on St-Dominique than we ever thought St-Dominique went – a good 20 minute walk from the rest of the festival. Still, the show was amazing. Somehow four completely improvised scenarios based on audience queues were amalgamated into a final completely improvised scenario. There were tunips (sic), prison gardens, rapidly aging twins and Norwegians. I want to go back and experience it again, when it will be a completely different show. If you only see one Fringe show this year, definitely make it Uncalled For. :)
Tags: 2005, festivals, fringe | 1 comment
