You hear that, Mr Andersen?

I Had A Little Drink About An Hour Ago

I now have the lovely, lovely internet back. How I have missed you, cable connection!

Unfortunately, I still haven't finished tidying my room, and in order to clear space for the cable guy, I had to pile a whole lot of junk on my bed. (And some boxes in Margie's room, which Margie was very understanding about.) Aaaand - I've got to get up early tomorrow, to take the car into the garage. And I messed about watching Homestar Runner and catching up on some webcomics I enjoy.

Darn it, and now I've just spent another twenty minutes doing it. Okay, I promise to have more interesting an insightful (or possibly just longer) notes on the Film Festival and some of the stuff I've seen at the Festival, but for the moment, I'll just mention Zatochi, a great samurai slapstick comedy that should be seen for the traditional Japanese tapdancing number if nothing else. Actually, I was chatting to someone I've met at the festival (a secondary-school teacher, I believe), and they mentioned that they'd travelled to Hawaii several times to judge band competitions, and that the Japanese groups would almost always have a cabaret number. Those of you who've spent time teaching in Japan - did you notice an unusual preponderance of song and dance numbers?

Oh, and Coffee and Cigarettes misses out "Cellphones" as one of the essential components of many of the shorts. It's been parodied in several places - early Angel springs to mind - but cell-phones make an enormous difference to the kinds of stories that are believable, and the ways you can alter the narrative flow. Which would be an excellent segue into One Missed Call, which I really enjoyed despite being, perhaps, a bit too predictable given his other films - but as I said, I need to clear my bed and go to sleep.

More tomorrow, I promise. :)

Posted by svend at July 27, 2004 12:11 AM