Now you're reading: ‘Wellington Film Festival’ —
July 14th, 2008 film, wellingtonThe Film Festival is coming to Wellington for the next three weeks, and there are seven films I particularly want to see. Accompanied by snippets from the festival program reviews, and trailers from youtube, they are the following:
Sukiyaki Western Django
“Imagine El Topo remade by Suzuki Seijun, and you might have something like this East-meets-West, pop art-meets-psych, guns-and-swords fusion that Miike makes weirder by having his Japanese cast speak in phonetically delivered English with subtitles! The icing on the cake? A Tarantino cameo”.
Ben X
“A galvanizing portrait of autism and its profound impact on both the autistic person and their families and community, Ben X boldly melds virtual reality with live-action vérité style and docudrama to create what may be a new film grammar”.
Married Life
“Ira Sachs’ slyly ironic film noir relocates British crime novelist John Bingham’s Five Roundabouts to Heaven to the Pacific Northwest in the late 40s”.
Be Kind Rewind
“When Jerry pops into the corner video store - yes, video; the new-fangled DVD is banned - run by his friend Mike (a delightfully doleful Mos Def), his magnetised brain erases their entire stock. In order to satisfy the store’s most loyal renter, the two friends set out to remake the lost films, starting, improbably, with Ghostbusters, and progressing to Rush Hour II, The Lion King, Driving Miss Daisy and any number of turkeys and classics.”
CJ7
“Ever a champion of the underdog and the handmade, Chow, whose own childhood poverty informs all his movies, conjures a savior out of a junkyard - a strange alien who looks like a newly-hatched chick with huge eyes, a flubbery green body, Charlie Chaplin moves and an unstable relationship to the martial arts.”
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
“In a rich array of archival footage, home movies and intimate recollections, director Alex Gibney (Enron, Taxi to the Dark Side) zeros in on the frantic 60s and 70s when Thompson rose to fame and then infamy with his own brand of maverick, subjective journalism”.
Mechanical Love
“Compelling, disquieting and droll, this gaze at relationships ahead vividly illustrates the age-old need to love”.
Want to know when we plan to see these, and where they’re showing? Well, I made a calendar.
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Timothy Greig says:
Sukiyaki Western Django: "The sound of the Gion Shoja temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that to florish is to fall. The proud do not endure, like a passing dream on a night in spring; the mighty fall at last, to be no more than dust before the wind". This was quite a weird movie, packed full of 'cool' moments - great cinematography, awesome costumes, beautiful sets, very memorable characters, fancy posing. At the same time, I think we all had quite a hard time following exactly what was happening, in terms of the deeper story - mainly because of the phonetic english the Japanese cast speaks. To me, it seemed that the general theme is contained in the above quote, repeated a couple of times during the film: That powerful people (or those who strive for things) are cursed to destroy each other, and themselves in the process. I would certainly like to see this one again, but perhaps with some subtitles!
July 21st, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Hey Tim, I enjoy the film fest whole-heart-ed-lee. Last year my partner and I had the longest string of tickets you’ve ever seen, we took a photo but alas it was on a camera phone and I am not clued up with transferring stuff from digi to online.
I would personally like to see Planet B-Boy http://www.nzff.co.nz/n6289.html?region=1 : it’s a doco about break-dancing styles across the world, e.g. Japan vs US, South Korea vs France. It would be cool to see but I don’t think I will get time - dang. I would also like to see the one about sunsets across the world, mainly because it sounds so lovely. I think it was made by a guy from Aus.
I have gone to a couple (ok all were..) of random ones over the years. A paricular one about an architect called Frank Gehry springs to mind, I actually watched it in two festivals. Strange that it came back. My construction and architecturally inclined partner loved it. I recommend going to random ones. Last year we booked a doco about suicides on the Golden Gate bridge on Sunday morning and I ended up not seeing it. Bit depressing to start the sabbath day off with