You hear that, Mr Andersen?

After a long hiatus...

I am actually still alive.

I haven't been able to find the time to read blogs for nearly a year now, and it seemed a bit rude to write one without reading other people's; but the Film Festival is coming up, and this is a good way for me to organize my thoughts, and provide a record of the many cool (and occasional naff) films that I see during this time.

Which reminds me, I should finish last year's coverage.

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Now I'm here, there are some articles that I've run across that may be of interest to people.

First is Ben Burtt talking about his work on the new Pixar film, Wall-E. Burtt is a sound designer (he made the Star Wars blaster sound by hitting a power pole guy wire with a hammer), and he talks about how he finds and creates the sounds he uses. (Be sure to click on the "Classic Ben Burtt Sounds" link!) Given the role I've ended up playing for Jenni's Angels in the 48 Hour Film Competition, it's kinda inspirational -- this year was probably the most sound-intensive we've done, and we certainly used a number of sounds out of their original context. Examples include a file folder sliding down a wooden slope and hitting the floor (used when Dr Discharge flies into the couch), a large slamming metal door (when one of them is slammed against the wall), and a straw being pulled out of the plastic top of a disposable drinks container combined with a roar (for Nick's transformation into Dr Discharge). In case you haven't yet seen our latest effort, here it is:

Unfortunately, it looks like independent film is only going to get more difficult to succeed in; the speaker whose notes I linked to talked about how 5000 movie were made last year, 603 of which were released theatrically in the US, and that there's room in the market for about 300; and that Sundance received 500 submissions fifteen years ago, but receives 5000 now, of which maybe five get a theatrical release and make money. He makes some suggestions about how to improve your odds, and points out an interesting distinction between the film and music industry -- basically, that the movie industry dropped the price per unit significantly when they shifted from tape to digital, whereas the music industry increased it. (Which has led to the weird phenomenon of soundtrack cds costing more than the movies they're from.)

In the more mainstream movie world... well, mainstream-ish, anyway... there's Studio Ghibli's Gake no ue no Ponyo, "an animated adventure centered on a 5-year-old boy and his relationship with a goldfish princess who longs to become human." Unfortunately, Studio Ghibli keeps removing the trailer from YouTube, otherwise I'd link you to it.

And finally, how could I neglect to link to "Weta's Special Effects Wizard", the marvellous Norman Cates? (I know, old link, old news. Nevertheless, *I* hadn't seen it. :)

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And because it's important to link to random things, how about Rice Field Art? Actually, it may be worth poking around that site further -- the Hip-hop Chess Federation, bizarre high voltage installations, and glacier surfing. Oh, and a festival celebrating Mike the Headless Wonder Chicken!

2007 Film Festival, Day 13

The next day started with Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. I ended up slipping in about 30 seconds late, but that didn't seem to hurt. I know that Jenni was reluctant to go to another serial killer movie, but I'm not sure that's what I'd call this; it felt more like a fable. A fairly gruesome fairytale, if you will. A boy is born is the fish markets with a magic sense of smell, but his mother is killed for abandoning him... and then death follows him in all his interactions. He becomes obsessed with preserving smells; in particular, preserving the scent of a young woman who he accidentally kills (or rather, the scent of young woman-ness).

I liked the movie; it did most of the right things, including using voiceovers well. (I wonder whether voiceovers work better in these sort of movies, where people tend to be archetypes rather than characters.) I'd watch it again, even though the end was a bit upsetting. (Not wrong, just upsetting... poor Alan Rickman's character!)

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Then it was off to the documentary that Jenni had already seen and recommended, My Kid Could Paint That. This was about the 4 year-old who was being a touted as a genius modern painter; the documentary maker started to film when everyone thought that everything was above-board, and had been filming for about six months when 60 Minutes accused the little girl (Marla) of being a fraud, and saying that the father (who maintains throughout the film that he simply prepares the canvas and the paint) at the very least actively coaches her, and may in fact "touch up" the paintings, or even do them from scratch.

After watching the documentary, what appeared to be going on? (Taking into account, as the filmmaker himself pointed out, that editing can have a profound effect on the story we see.) Well, the gallery owner came across as being prepared to do whatever it took to get money, and as having a real chip on his shoulder about "modern art". The mother appeared to be pretty much completely honest, and a bit unhappy about all the pressure and fame, even before the unpleasantness began. And the father... at a best guess, did help a bit in terms of direction, even if he never put brush to canvas; but he painted himself into a corner (ho ho) by denying that he did anything at all, and now is unable to back down.

The film-maker took questions afterwards, and was very frank about how much his choice about what footage to use would have influenced how we saw this story, and this family. It was something he agonized about, he said; but he ended up having to make choices based on what he felt was representative, and then live with those choices. I also asked the "does it matter" question, and he felt quite strongly that it did, because with a modern art piece you are buying a process and a story as much as a physical piece of canvas; and even with traditional art, buying a "Goldie" by the chap who is living in Foxton when you're told you're buying a piece of NZ history is fraud.

I thought that this was a really interesting documentary about a really cute kid. I'd happily watch it again.

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The Unpolished was a film about a girl whose family give her no boundaries (her father is a drug dealer, her mother kind of drifts, they both sleep around), and she tries to seek ways and places to fit in. She wanders into people's houses and steals pictures so she can put herself into normal family scenes; she lies about her life, about how she's the daughter of a diplomat; she does her best get into the local school, at first by just coming in, sitting down, and hoping no-one will comment.

This was an interesting film, in that it felt all over the place -- scenes often didn't end where you'd expect them to, and events that you might expect to have big consequences just didn't. For example, you see some of the layabouts throw the girl in the pool, and you don't hear her break the surface or breathing; you cut to her mother, getting up, looking slightly concerned, and you think oh ho, this is will be the "Save the girl from drowning, people get yelled at" scene. But nope, they just cut away, and look, there's the girl, and she seems fine.

I ended up liking this film, but I probably wouldn't watch it again.

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Then it was off to the Film Archive to see the doco Comrades In Dreams. I really, really enjoyed this film, though I'm not sure I could tell you why; I was smiling for pretty much all of it, even though there were other emotions too -- compassion for the American theatre owner who was doing three or four jobs so she wouldn't have to sit and think about how lonely she is, for example. Or when the North Koreans start crying when they remember the death of their Glorious Leader... I'm not sure exactly what I felt then.

Or there was the surprise when the owner of the traveling Indian cinema, when he declared that marrying for love was worse than stabbing 100 people to death in his village.

Actually, I was kind of surprised that the Indian culture seemed the most alien to me. The North Korean cinema (which we saw clips from) is a bit heavy-handed and message-heavy, but it had a leavening of humour, and I found it easy to relate to the theater-owner's life-stories. The Indian cinema, on the other hand... well, for instance, they can't show any Western films like Titanic, because, it was explained, the villagers wouldn't understand it -- they only wanted stories they know, in settings they know, so they can go home and tell the story to their family. But the situation was completely different in Burkina Faso, where the street vendor talked about how much she empathised with Rose, and her total commitment.

There are lots of stuff that I'd like to mention -- the North Korean film with the kimchi scientist, the chat that the Burkina Faso theater owners had with their wives under the tree, the wierd moments while the Indian guy discussed what things he wanted his family to look for in a woman, the American owner rollerblading, the Koreans talking about how the female theater operator got the guy together with his wife, and how she met her husband. But I can rant about that stuff in person.

I really liked this documentary a lot, and wish the makers, and all those featured in it, all the best.

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I think the reason I didn't really enjoy The Night of the Sunflowers was because I went in expecting a very different film. For some reason, I had this idea in my brain that it would be a horror, and in those films, the good guy and bad guy are pretty distinct -- you've got the good guys, who act as anchors to the camera, and have bad things happen to them; and you've got bad guys, who are gradually revealed. That was not this movie -- instead, you find out how horrible most people can be, given the right circumstances.

The story is told as a series of sections, each with its own title -- "The Competent Authorities", or "The Old Guard"; the focal character changes in each section, but it's generally someone we've met, or at least seen, in a previous section; while each section is a slice of linear time, a new section generally jumped back in time to give us context and information about the person we're following. This was used to build tension a number of times to good effect -- you knew that a certain event was about to happen, or was happening elsewhere, and you were waiting for the section to catch up so you could see what happened next.

Looking back, it was a well-made film -- I just wasn't in the right mood to see it.

2007 Film Festival, Day 12

Priceless was my first movie of the day, and as always, Audrey Tautou has an incredibly gorgeous face. It's probably something to do with the fact that her irises are so dark, so her pupils appear really big, though that's only part of it. Gad Elmaleh does pretty much what we saw him do in The Valet last year, which is act helpless and dorky around beautiful women.

The film's plot is pretty light -- a gold-digger mistakes a barman for a guest at a big hotel, and he loses his head over her; he eventually falls into her world, and she teaches him a few tricks. But is she as hard-hearted as she'd like to be?

It's fine, though nothing special; they manage to keep your sympathy for the main characters (which isn't easy when you realize that they're essentially playing on people's need to feel loved), and if you like looking at Audrey Tautou (or Gad Elmaleh, for that matter), it's not a bad movie to see.

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Cowboys and Communists was another example of "documentary maker in the middle of the movie": in this case, she was a waitress at "White Trash Fast Food", a restaurant at the bottom of a block of flats in East Berlin. It had been a place to eat since the building went up -- first, under the Communists, a traditional German place, with the occasional wedding party; then (briefly) a Chinese restaurant, right after the Berlin Wall came down. So when White Trash moved in, it already had pagodas painted on the walls and Chinese masks over the doorways; they just laid a layer of boho gewgaws over the top, brought in the mostly-naked transvestite fetishist burlesque show, and sold burgers while DJs like Peaches span the disks.

This was a bit of a shock to the system for the other residents of the building, especially the members of the Building Association from before Reunification.

The filmmaker (Jess Feast) gets some really interesting stories out of both sides, and in many ways it's the old East Germans that steal the show. The main chap that she speaks with, Horst Woitalla, was a journalist in the old regime (I think he now sells papers), and he has many interesting things to say about what life was like under the old regime for him. And you can understand their point of view: they traded having the Stasi and a really invasive State for the knowledge that they could get an education, medical care, and could even reasonably expect to holiday abroad (as long as they didn't mind going to somewhere like Poland, Russia, or Vietnam). In their eyes, they traded this compromise for the "freedom" to go hungry, uneducated, and unable to go anywhere, unless they're one of the lucky ones with money.

There is some empathy for these guys on the part of the people downstairs, too -- many of the staff (and one of the owners) feel displaced from their home in the US, because of the cultural changes there under Bush; but that's not going to stop them from doing their best to run their business.

I liked this documentary a lot, and would recommend it... although some of the floor-show is quite explicit, with one act making me feel a bit ill.

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The Digital Space... a compliation, so a mixed bag. Previously, there have been a lot more in the way of story in these shorts; this was less true this year, I think. The first short was of a mechanical snail, all clear gel and mechanical whirring and and cool blue LED glow; it would have been slow to watch if it had been a real snail; but it was sufficiently interesting to engage my attention for the duration. "Monster Samuri" was a bit of a disappointment -- it really felt like an animation test for a promising-looking short, rather than something that should be shown on its own. "NannyBot" was fun, though.

On the whole, I liked this collection, but none of the shorts were stand-out for me.

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Next was The Secret Life of Words, with a young partly deaf woman who seems to be struggling with some inner demons. She's forced to take some time off work from her job in a factory, and ends up being employed as a nurse (which she has training for) on an oil rig, to look after a burn victim until he's stable enough to move. The burn victim (played by Tim Robbins) then tries to draw her out.

This film felt quite play-like; by which I guess I mean that many of the characters had soliloquies, little rants where you could easily imagine the lights on the other characters dimming for the actor's time in the spotlight. And there were a very limited number of characters and sets. Yeah, I don't think it would be hard to convert this to a play; I wonder whether that's the writer's background?

I liked this film, but it was hard. It's not really a film I'd watch to relax; but I was moved.

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And then I met Jenni, and we went off to Noise. Basically, the police are hunting someone who killed a bunch of people on a train (sparing one girl who got on later, for no apparent reason), who may or may not have killed a young woman a short time later. Our main character is a policeman who had a fainting spell, tinnitus, and been given a doctor's certificate exempting from everything but light duty; he is posted in a caravan in the area, so that people can drop in if they see or remember anything. Someone mentioned the similarities between this film, and last year's Last Train To Freo, and I can see that; not the intense locked-room pressure, but the real interactions of the people. Things like one of the people who drop into the caravan who departs with a cheerful, "Well, off I fuck."

The pressure of the noise that the constable is hearing is portrayed very intensely. The one thing I really liked is how untidy it was -- there were a bunch of things that would, in a conventional cop story, end up being the clue that cracks the case, or at least be explained, but that's not how it works. Sometimes a gunman spares someone, and no-one finds out why. And I like how it ends, though I can see why Jenni wanted a few minutes more.

This was a good movie.