zeroplate (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} zeroplate) wrote,@ 2007-09-26 23:46:00 |
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Fantastic Fest Day Seven
This was sex day. Or maybe better represented as SEKUSHI DEI!!! in my phonetic version of Japanese. We could have actually watched four movies in a row with sex as a central theme, but instead we opted only for two. We went out for lunch to a taco truck just down the road. It came recommended in the local paper and it was indeed really good, but I couldn't help but notice that it was clearly a gringo truck--a safe and presentable alternative to the really authentic and often sort of scary taco trucks we've seen everywhere. In fact, this truck might as well have been a restaurant in a building--it just seemed like the truck was the gimmick. Oh well, the food was still great and it reminded me that a 2-3 dollar taco in Atlanta is really a piece of shit compared to the same thing in Texas.
Sex & Death 101
This is the new film from the writer/director of Heathers which is a film I've always loved but which isn't nearly as subversive now as it was when it was released. It's funny how that happens. The same guy is responsible for the scripts for a number of really bad movies too, so it's not like I could count on this being a classic. Still, it had a huge amount of buzz before the festival because Patton Oswalt was here at the first screening and because, I guess, it has Winona Ryder.
I'll say this for Winona Ryder in this movie--she is clearly the best thing in the film! She's unbelievably hot in her wigs and gothy get up, and she plays a smart and confident character. I can almost imagine her character being the girl from Heathers all grown up. However, the rest of the film and the people in it didn't have nearly the same appeal.
The lead in the movie gets a list emailed to him of every woman he's ever slept with and every woman he will ever sleep with, in order. He thinks it's a gag at first but it turns out to be very real and very troubling. It breaks up his engagement. It sends him off on a massive poon hunt, and eventually, it forces him to cross paths with the possible serial killer known as Death Nell, Ryder's character.
The movie has some funny moments and most of them come from Patton Oswalt. The main character is a smarmy dick the whole movie and I think some of that owes just to the way the guy looks. There are people in this world that don't get a fair shake from me simply because I size them up as looking like smarmy assholes and this guy was one of them. I could be missing out on the best friends in the world but oh well. And anyway, I doubt it.
I would have probably loved this movie if it had been from the Death Nell character's point of view. Her story was interesting and the camera obviously loves her, but she disappeared for a big chunk of the film where we were waiting for our hero to sort his shit out. All in all I enjoyed the flick, but it's not something I'll probably see again.
Uncle's Paradise
This entry came from Japan's Pink Cinema industry. More on what Pink Films are can be found here: Pink Film. I've seen some Chinese films that are like this too--the basic premise is that the movie is sold as softcore pornography but within the context of including some sex scenes, the directors can do whatever they want. What sometimes results are films by talented or even visionary directors who couldn't finance their work any other way. As Lars the host of this screening pointed out, this is similar to the exploitation and b-movie world in the US in the 70s. Look up a list of people who directed films for Roger Corman and you'll be SHOCKED at who got their start in trashy movies.
So Uncle's Paradise is an excuse for a lot of onscreen sex, but the film is shot in such a way that the sex is almost never titilating. I can't imagine being the salaryman who rents this in Kyoto only to find that there's nothing jerk-worthy in the whole thing. Instead, the movie uses a lot of symbols and quiet character moments to comment on sex and relationships.
The central character is the Uncle, who is afraid to go to sleep because he has sex dreams about a dead woman that cause him to masturbate to the point of pain. At least that's the story he uses to bed a girl from the local pizza parlor. Uncle lives with his nephew who is involed with a local girl who has another boyfriend, so their paths cross often. For some reason, the uncle doesn't meet a woman in the whole film that he doesn't score with, but if you see the uncle not as an older pervy guy but as a standin for anyone who works like that, the story makes a lot more sense. Part of his routine when getting it on involves writing his name in red permanent marker on the woman he's with. This wound up being a really powerful and thought-provoking image that repeated and had some interesting repercussions.
Somewhere along the way we run into a giant squid, death from a giant spider, a trip to the underworld, and some melancholy reflection on the kind of malaise that seems to be driving everyone to fuck everyone else. I'm sure that most Pink movies aren't quite this artful or thoughtful, but this one was great. I'm now interested in checking out some more entries from this subset of Japanese cinema to see what other strange things people are doing.
This movie was preceded by a short about a woman who has a robotic food-processor-like device implanted through her abdomen and connected to her vagina. This short looked amazing and was creepy but not over-the-top with gore and shock tactics. I am saying that a film where a girl has a garbage disposal implanted in her reproductive tract for the purpose of eviscerating anything that goes in there (and yes, IT happens) wasn't too over-the-top. I know that this festival has severely melted my brain at this point.
The Sex Movie bonanza wasn't over. The Alamo does a thing not related to the Fest called Weird Wednesdays where they show weird old films that usually no one has seen or maybe even heard of. Tonight's film was a 1977 sex comedy (though it was mostly unintentionally funny) called The Carhops. Things like this make we want to live in Austin. While I wouldn't see myself in my normal routine making it out for a weird old 30 year old movie every time one showed at midnight, I can definitely say that stuff like this is exciting for me. I've been to a couple of the Silver Scream Spookshow events in Atlanta and they are cool too--definitely a good selection of films and a lot of effort put into the pre-movie entertainment. Still, that's only once a month and it's never going to be as out there as some of the things they do here.
The Carhops wasn't much to write home about, but there were probably a dozen great laughs that came from politically incorrect dialogue, antequated gender roles, and just bad production values. I enjoyed it thoroughly and I'll probably never see it or even hear about it ever again, unless it suddenly becomes vogue in Hollywood to start remaking these kinds of movies instead of horror and sci-fi fare. What a weird thought.
This was sex day. Or maybe better represented as SEKUSHI DEI!!! in my phonetic version of Japanese. We could have actually watched four movies in a row with sex as a central theme, but instead we opted only for two. We went out for lunch to a taco truck just down the road. It came recommended in the local paper and it was indeed really good, but I couldn't help but notice that it was clearly a gringo truck--a safe and presentable alternative to the really authentic and often sort of scary taco trucks we've seen everywhere. In fact, this truck might as well have been a restaurant in a building--it just seemed like the truck was the gimmick. Oh well, the food was still great and it reminded me that a 2-3 dollar taco in Atlanta is really a piece of shit compared to the same thing in Texas.
Sex & Death 101
This is the new film from the writer/director of Heathers which is a film I've always loved but which isn't nearly as subversive now as it was when it was released. It's funny how that happens. The same guy is responsible for the scripts for a number of really bad movies too, so it's not like I could count on this being a classic. Still, it had a huge amount of buzz before the festival because Patton Oswalt was here at the first screening and because, I guess, it has Winona Ryder.
I'll say this for Winona Ryder in this movie--she is clearly the best thing in the film! She's unbelievably hot in her wigs and gothy get up, and she plays a smart and confident character. I can almost imagine her character being the girl from Heathers all grown up. However, the rest of the film and the people in it didn't have nearly the same appeal.
The lead in the movie gets a list emailed to him of every woman he's ever slept with and every woman he will ever sleep with, in order. He thinks it's a gag at first but it turns out to be very real and very troubling. It breaks up his engagement. It sends him off on a massive poon hunt, and eventually, it forces him to cross paths with the possible serial killer known as Death Nell, Ryder's character.
The movie has some funny moments and most of them come from Patton Oswalt. The main character is a smarmy dick the whole movie and I think some of that owes just to the way the guy looks. There are people in this world that don't get a fair shake from me simply because I size them up as looking like smarmy assholes and this guy was one of them. I could be missing out on the best friends in the world but oh well. And anyway, I doubt it.
I would have probably loved this movie if it had been from the Death Nell character's point of view. Her story was interesting and the camera obviously loves her, but she disappeared for a big chunk of the film where we were waiting for our hero to sort his shit out. All in all I enjoyed the flick, but it's not something I'll probably see again.
Uncle's Paradise
This entry came from Japan's Pink Cinema industry. More on what Pink Films are can be found here: Pink Film. I've seen some Chinese films that are like this too--the basic premise is that the movie is sold as softcore pornography but within the context of including some sex scenes, the directors can do whatever they want. What sometimes results are films by talented or even visionary directors who couldn't finance their work any other way. As Lars the host of this screening pointed out, this is similar to the exploitation and b-movie world in the US in the 70s. Look up a list of people who directed films for Roger Corman and you'll be SHOCKED at who got their start in trashy movies.
So Uncle's Paradise is an excuse for a lot of onscreen sex, but the film is shot in such a way that the sex is almost never titilating. I can't imagine being the salaryman who rents this in Kyoto only to find that there's nothing jerk-worthy in the whole thing. Instead, the movie uses a lot of symbols and quiet character moments to comment on sex and relationships.
The central character is the Uncle, who is afraid to go to sleep because he has sex dreams about a dead woman that cause him to masturbate to the point of pain. At least that's the story he uses to bed a girl from the local pizza parlor. Uncle lives with his nephew who is involed with a local girl who has another boyfriend, so their paths cross often. For some reason, the uncle doesn't meet a woman in the whole film that he doesn't score with, but if you see the uncle not as an older pervy guy but as a standin for anyone who works like that, the story makes a lot more sense. Part of his routine when getting it on involves writing his name in red permanent marker on the woman he's with. This wound up being a really powerful and thought-provoking image that repeated and had some interesting repercussions.
Somewhere along the way we run into a giant squid, death from a giant spider, a trip to the underworld, and some melancholy reflection on the kind of malaise that seems to be driving everyone to fuck everyone else. I'm sure that most Pink movies aren't quite this artful or thoughtful, but this one was great. I'm now interested in checking out some more entries from this subset of Japanese cinema to see what other strange things people are doing.
This movie was preceded by a short about a woman who has a robotic food-processor-like device implanted through her abdomen and connected to her vagina. This short looked amazing and was creepy but not over-the-top with gore and shock tactics. I am saying that a film where a girl has a garbage disposal implanted in her reproductive tract for the purpose of eviscerating anything that goes in there (and yes, IT happens) wasn't too over-the-top. I know that this festival has severely melted my brain at this point.
The Sex Movie bonanza wasn't over. The Alamo does a thing not related to the Fest called Weird Wednesdays where they show weird old films that usually no one has seen or maybe even heard of. Tonight's film was a 1977 sex comedy (though it was mostly unintentionally funny) called The Carhops. Things like this make we want to live in Austin. While I wouldn't see myself in my normal routine making it out for a weird old 30 year old movie every time one showed at midnight, I can definitely say that stuff like this is exciting for me. I've been to a couple of the Silver Scream Spookshow events in Atlanta and they are cool too--definitely a good selection of films and a lot of effort put into the pre-movie entertainment. Still, that's only once a month and it's never going to be as out there as some of the things they do here.
The Carhops wasn't much to write home about, but there were probably a dozen great laughs that came from politically incorrect dialogue, antequated gender roles, and just bad production values. I enjoyed it thoroughly and I'll probably never see it or even hear about it ever again, unless it suddenly becomes vogue in Hollywood to start remaking these kinds of movies instead of horror and sci-fi fare. What a weird thought.
