Sydney Film Festival 2008

[Boner M]

Here's the full program (http://www.sydneyfilmfestival.org/content.asp?id=71&p=5).

EDIT - My schedule:

6th: Silent Light
7th: Of Time and the City
9th: Hunger, You The Living, Distant Voices, Still Lives, Import/Export
10th: Encounters at the End of the World, In the City of Sylvia
11th: My Winnipeg
12th: Tokyo Sonata
14th: Come Drink With Me
15th: Ballast, Chop Shop, Fear(s) in the Dark
16th: The Square
17th: Night and Day
18th: Girl Cut in Two, Sparrow
22nd: Somer's Town, Casting a Glance, A Page of Madness, Lorna's Silence

[Ezee E]

I've heard the Herzog movie is pretty sweet. Which is no surprise, but I guess it's of Grizzly Man quality.

[Sven]

Hate to sound like an amateur, but the Roger Spottiswoode film Children of the Silk Road, sounds like it could be good. Also, see the Julien Temple film, The Eternity Man.

Song of Sparrows and Jar City sound neat.


Fear(s) of the Dark (Various)

I thought you were anti-omnibus.

[Boner M]

I thought you were anti-omnibus.
I am, but a few of my friends are graphic artists, so I'll be joining them. The program makes it sound cool too.

[Ezee E]

Choke and Elite Squad are playing there. Awesome.

I also have heard that Jar City is worth seeing.

[Boner M]

I will not see Choke.

[Sven]

I am, but a few of my friends are graphic artists, so I'll be joining them. The program makes it sound cool too.

Ah. It sounds cool. But I like the omnibus format, so it didn't have to try hard to win me over.

[trotchky]

Fear(s) of the Dark is good. Seeing Charles Burns cartoons in motion is curious, and oddly compelling, kind of like how seeing Marjane Satrapi cartoons in motion was.

[Grouchy]

These I didn't see and would love to:
Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog)
Fear(s) of the Dark (Various)
Girl Cut in Two (Claude Chabrol)
Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)
My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin)
Somers Town (Shane Meadows)
Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

This I recommend:
Sukiyaki Western Django (Takashi Miike) (http://www.match-cut.org/showpost.php?p=56035&postcount=59)

This I don't recommend:
Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas) (http://www.match-cut.org/showpost.php?p=56787&postcount=62)

[Sven]

I'm hearing that Marsan (hooray!) is brilliant in Happy-Go-Lucky. That's exciting.

[baby doll]

I can't see how the Herzog would be a must, but then I'm probably the one person who didn't like Grizzly Man.

[origami_mustache]

Nice lineup...I'm jealous.

[NickGlass]

I'll go through the huge list later, but this is all I can say now:



Ballast (Lance Hammer)
Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog)


I missed these at my festival because of other obligations/being too hungover. I heard great things about both, though.



Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies)
In the City of Sylvia (José Luis GuerÃ*n)
My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin)


I've only seen these from your "must" list and they're solid picks.

[Boner M]

I'd seen Distant Voices 3 years ago and thought it was OK, but after seeing The Long Day CLoses and The House of Mirth since then and loving both, I'm pretty sure I missed the boat the first time around. I also watched it on a crappy VHS, which can never do a Davies film justice.

[Russ]

My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin)
It's gotten glowing reviews. Definitely a "don't miss". Makes a spiffy av too.

[Winston*]

Dude...Kung Fu Panda

[Boner M]

Unofficial schedule (June):

6th: Silent Light
7th: Of Time and the City
9th: You The Living, Distant Voices, Still Lives, Import/Export
10th: Encounters at the End of the World, In the City of Sylvia
11th: My Winnipeg
12th: Tokyo Sonata
14th: Come Drink With Me
15th: Ballast, Chop Shop, Fear(s) in the Dark
16th: The Square, The Band's Visit
17th: Night and Day
18th: Girl Cut in Two
22nd: Somer's Town, Casting a Glance, A Page of Madness, Lorna's Silence

A Page of Madness is a recently unearthed Japanese silent film that sounds awesome.

Still got 6 slots, considering Alexandra, Tropa De Elite, Help Me Eros, Choke (friends are Palahniuk fans), Momma's Man, Useless, Slingshot, and whatever anyone's suggested here.

[Stay Puft]

Useless is a fantastic documentary, so I will encourage you to check that out.

[Grouchy]

A Page of Madness is a recently unearthed Japanese silent film that sounds awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQiHR-mYgTM

Looks good.

[Boner M]

I've edited my official schedule into the first post; I kick off the fest tomorrow morning with Silent Light. Since I've got several essays due over the next week, I might only write reviews/comments sporadically until the 13th.

An impressive 4 titles are straight off this year's Cannes: Tokyo Sonata, Hunger, Lorna's Silence and Of Time and the City.

[Qrazy]

A Page of Madness is alright. I found it got kind of irritatingly oppressive at times but that's kind of what it's going for... worth seeing for sure.

[Boner M]

Saw Silent Light and attended the Q&A with Reygadas afterwards... he's such an eloquent and intelligent speaker that my appreciation of the film increased greatly; initially I left having been compelled by it's visual beauty, but also with the suspicion that I'd just sat through something like a Hallmark Ordet. Reygadas said that he did have that film in mind but was more influenced by the story of Sleeping Beauty, as well as altogether more primal emotions. I asked him if the film was in any way a conscious attempt at moving away from the transgressiveness of his previous two films (which I haven't seen), and he answered compellingly. He also went off on a tangent bashing No Country For Old Men for reasons that seemed to me like a willful misreading of the Coens' methods, but overall it was an insightful session.

[Grouchy]

Saw Silent Light and attended the Q&A with Reygadas afterwards... he's such an eloquent and intelligent speaker that my appreciation of the film increased greatly; initially I left having been compelled by it's visual beauty, but also with the suspicion that I'd just sat through something like a Hallmark Ordet. Reygadas said that he did have that film in mind but was more influenced by the story of Sleeping Beauty, as well as altogether more primal emotions. I asked him if the film was in any way a conscious attempt at moving away from the transgressiveness of his previous two films (which I haven't seen), and he answered compellingly. He also went off on a tangent bashing No Country For Old Men for reasons that seemed to me like a willful misreading of the Coens' methods, but overall it was an insightful session.
I also had a Q&A with him after the movie and I asked him how exactly he'd done the first and last shots of the movie. After walking around it a bit, he said he didn't feel like answering that type of technical question. I bet he doesn't know how he did it, it's the DP who's a genius.

[Boner M]

I also had a Q&A with him after the movie and I asked him how exactly he'd done the first and last shots of the movie. After walking around tit a bit, he said he didn't feel like answering that type of technical question. I bet he doesn't know how he did it, it's the DP who's a genius.
Yeah, he dodged some of the technical questions at my session too, which way a bit annoying... not decoding symbolism and messages for the audience is fine, but if he claims he really is all about 'purity' of art through an acknowledgement of its artifice, shouldn't technical issues be part of the focus? I'd also guess that he didn't know.

[Qrazy]

Why would you think he didn't know versus wants to keep it a secret? Many filmmakers like to keep their formal innovations to themselves.

[Boner M]

Why would you think he didn't know versus wants to keep it a secret? Many filmmakers like to keep their formal innovations to themselves.
It wasn't so much formal innovations in this case though, just simple technical details. Although that's a whole 'nother debate.

Anyway, I just got back from Of Time in the City. Rapturous, for lack of a better word. There's something I love about this 'city symphony' type of documentary; cities tend to bring out the poet in every filmmaker, and in Davies' case that means this is cinematic lyricism of the highest order, a consummate combination of reverie and history. And it's really funny, too! I'll be lucky to see a better film in the fest.

[Boner M]

I've also added Johnnie To's new film Sparrow to my lineup. It sounds awesome.

[Grouchy]

Why would you think he didn't know versus wants to keep it a secret? Many filmmakers like to keep their formal innovations to themselves.
The opening and closing shots were so obviously a clever visual trickery he shouldn't be amazed people asked about it.

It was all in the way he disliked the question from the start. It was one of the few questions that didn't offer him a fucking soapbox.

[Qrazy]

The opening and closing shots were so obviously a clever visual trickery he shouldn't be amazed people asked about it.

It was all in the way he disliked the question from the start. It was one of the few questions that didn't offer him a fucking soapbox.

Fair, not being there I'll just take both of your words for it.

[Qrazy]

I've also added Johnnie To's new film Sparrow to my lineup. It sounds awesome.

Sweet, let me know... grown to be quite a fan and more so of his contemporary work.

[Boner M]

Sweet, let me know... grown to be quite a fan and more so of his contemporary work.
Will do.

I've just realised this thread will be less a potential area for discussion, and more a chance for me to show off the awesome films y'all haven't seen yet. So be it, I guess.

[Boner M]

Whoa boy, what a day at the movies. Will have to save comments for later due to being in the midst of essays. All I can say now is that I predict Hunger will be match-cut's favorite movie of either this year or next, whichever one it comes out. Don't miss it.

[Ezee E]

Whoa boy, what a day at the movies. Will have to save comments for later due to being in the midst of essays. All I can say now is that I predict Hunger will be match-cut's favorite movie of either this year or next, whichever one it comes out. Don't miss it.
What's Hunger?

[Boner M]

What's Hunger?
Multiple synopses and reviews. (http://daily.greencine.com/archives/005999.html)

Trailer. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmVPCX0LxN8)

[Boner M]

Some brief thoughts on the last few days:

In the City of Sylvia - I have the nagging suspicion that I'll pull a complete U-Turn on this film in a few days, but for the meantime I remain impressed yet curiously unaffected. I'm all for the whittling down of narrative and character motivation, in favor of concentration on things like gesture and the organisation of space, but I'm also unsympathetic toward films that only leave room for the viewer to contemplate ideas of the gaze and looking, which are areas of film theory that I couldn't care less about for the most part. Often masterful, but too much an academic exercise for my liking.

Encounters at the End of the World - It occurred to me while watching this that few directors have a better schtick than Herzog. Fundamentally, this is just another collection of otherworldly shots of the natural environment interspersed with some interviews with a cast of adorable eccentrics, with Herzog's adorably portentous narration waxing about insanity among penguins, etc. But it's gorgeous to look at and Herzog's presence never fails to charm.

Import/Export - Though this becomes less gripping as the narrative starts to meander near the end, conversely it also becomes richer and more resonant as it's increasingly clear that Seidl isn't going to arrive at some sort of fatalistic conclusion, or have his two separate story threads intertwine. That the dichotomy between the two central characters isn't as strong as it appears to be is entirely the point, and it's the inherent altruism of Olga and Pauli that puts them at odds with the doldrums of capitalism that Seidl is depicting. A gruelling film, which makes its moments of tender humanism are all the more piercing.

Distant Voices, Still Lives - Pretty sublime for the most part, but I still find The Long Day Closes works the same approach to greater effect. Slightly marred by a projection breakdown during the last reel, redeemed by two elderly (and presumably) Liverpudlian audience members singing one of the songs in the film while things were being fixed up.

You, the Living - Pretty much the same film as Songs From the Second Floor, albeit funnier and doesn't outstay its welcome.

[MacGuffin]

In the City of Sylvia - I have the nagging suspicion that I'll pull a complete U-Turn on this film in a few days, but for the meantime I remain impressed yet curiously unaffected. I'm all for the whittling down of narrative and character motivation, in favor of concentration on things like gesture and the organisation of space, but I'm also unsympathetic toward films that only leave room for the viewer to contemplate ideas of the gaze and looking, which are areas of film theory that I couldn't care less about for the most part. Often masterful, but too much an academic exercise for my liking.

I like this movie a lot. I think it contains a quiet beauty that is rare to many movies. Not only does it have that, but those early café scenes were absolutely hilarious. Also, the lady in the red dress is more mysterious than any character of recent memory; she's also really attractive.


You, the Living - Pretty much the same film as Songs From the Second Floor, albeit funnier and doesn't outstay its welcome.

I couldn't get into Songs From the Second Floor, so it's good to know someone approached this the same way I might. Cool avatar by the way (it's from Import/Export I imagine? I'll have to see Dog Days and his other stuff first).

[Boner M]

Cool avatar by the way (it's from Import/Export I imagine? I'll have to see Dog Days and his other stuff first).
Yup, from I/E. When that shot appeared I instantly thought "AV!" I haven't seen any other Seidl films, although most sources I've read say this one's his best.

[Rowland]

I can't wait to read your thoughts regarding Tokyo Sonata. As a Kurosawa uber-fanboy, I'm so excited to see his latest garnering such positive reactions. I hope it brings him more of the recognition and respect he deserves.

[Boner M]

Tokyo Sonata - Why this film works as resoundingly well as it does has been nagging me since seeing it two days ago, but I'm suspecting it can be chalked up almost solely to Kurosawa's strengths as a director. It's been finely written by Australian ex-pat Max Mannix (who, oddly enough, wasn't able to attend the screening while Kurosawa and the film's producer were) but as it plays out, some blatant contrivances in the narrative, especially near the end, feel completely organic. This is mostly because of Kurosawa's meticulous framing and compositional sense, which creates a certain distance between the audience and the film's dramaturgy that lends a troubling sense of discomfort and ineffable strangeness to even the most conventional dramatic tropes - the style is Ozu via Tati, but Fassbinder is a better reference point as far as the emotional timbre goes. Indeed, the ending would be ridiculously schmaltzy in most contexts, but the very final shot shifts it's meaning so that it's both unnerving and deeply moving at once. Like Imamura, Kurosawa also proves to be a master of tonal shifts that ensure a discordance that's always true to the messiness of human experience, even when the screenplay favors neatness. It's a film is so close to being a standard family-in-crisis melodrama, but under Kurosawa's fascinatingly contradictory approach, the result is sublime; a perfect alchemy, if there ever was one.

____

I should also mention Kurosawa himself was also present for the Q&A session afterwards, and even with a translator doing the A's, he retained a sly sense of humour throughout. Most of the questions were from people who loved the film until the 'problematic' third act; Kurosawa gave deliberately vague answers that showed a certain annoyance with people asking him to explain what they were supposed to be feeling, so when someone finally asked a question about the lighting, he made mention of what a great question the man had asked. :lol:

[Raiders]

Awesome.

Also awesome is your rating for Shyamalan's new film.

[Sven]

Saw the new Herzog film today and loved it beyond belief, but I guess that's a given at this point. The bit with the penguin stirred me, my eyes wet with tears of humor and fear and curiosity and compassion and awe. Classic Herzog.

[Qrazy]

Saw the new Herzog film today and loved it beyond belief, but I guess that's a given at this point. The bit with the penguin stirred me, my eyes wet with tears of humor and fear and curiosity and compassion and awe. Classic Herzog.

Nice, good to hear.

By the way now that I've seen both, I agree with your brief comments about The Year of Living Dangerously versus Parallax View. I preferred the former as well.

[Boner M]

Saw three films today, starting with Ballast and Chop Shop. Both slices of American 'poetic realism', both very much under the spell of the Dardenne brothers, ala a lot of recent American indies (Keane, In Between Days, Choking Man, etc). The former sorta rubbed me in the wrong way for the first 1/2 hour or so; if I had to be cynical I could write the film off as a white guy's attempt at opportunistically painting a 'different side' of the African American experience, through everything he learned from Killer of Sheep and George Washington. I was about to instantly write it off completely once we're given a shot of a TV playing wacky, colorful cartoons, serving as a contrast to the bleak and dour surrounding environs and characters. That cliche needs to end NOW. But for all Hammer's student film pretense, he does exhibit an extraordinary feel for place (the opening shots are stunning), and compassion seeps from every frame. Also, Tarra Riggs gives one of the best non-pro performances I've seen since... well, Emille Dequenne in Rosetta.

Chop Shop, on the other hand, feels undoubtedly more sincere in it's depiction of marginalized characters/milieu in American cinema, but somehow it doesn't resonate as much as Hammer's film does. I was gratified that it doesn't become as melodramatic as it threatens to once the narrative kicks in, but even then I somehow craved more drama. Maybe it's cos I saw it directly after such a stylistically similar film. I dunno. The final shot, however, is quite perfect.

Fear(s) in the Dark - Yay, an omnibus I can get behind! In this case, the four separate stories are so cohesively interwoven that it doesn't feel like patchwork. Varying quality between the four, but the final haunted house tale is awesome... I know nothing about graphic art but I'll definitely be investigating into this fellow (still haven't looked up the names).

[Qrazy]

Did you see Sparrow yet?

[Boner M]

Did you see Sparrow yet?
Next few days.

[Boner M]

At 145 minutes and featuring not a whole lot in the way of drama, Hong Sang-Soo's new film breezes by pretty quickly and is consistently pleasurable even if I can say exactly why. Feels less Rohmer-esque than Woman on the Beach and more like Rivette or Rossellini ca. Voyage to Italy. I have to say I didn't really 'get' it, and I think I need to see some of Hong's previous films and see how he's progressed in order to know exactly where he's coming from... nonetheless, it's peppered with enjoyable and sometimes trenchant observations of emotional foibles, and some haunting little anecdotal details and symbols (hummingbirds, dogshit, origami boats) that are sure to stick in my mind for a while.

[Boner M]

Just found out Hunger won the Grand Jury Prize. Good choice. The Official Competition was WTF:

Happy-Go-Lucky
Hunger
In Bruges
Lake Tahoe
My Winnipeg
Quiet Chaos
Rain of the Children
Silent Light
The Square
Stop-Loss
Three Blind Mice
Tokyo Sonata

Also kinda pissed off that I opted for The Square (a handsomely made and watchable, if rather generic and forgettable neo-noir) over Three Blind Mice as my choice of token Australian film on my schedule; the latter is being hailed as one of the best Australian films in a while, with comparisons to Altman, Ashby and Cassavetes.

[Boner M]

Sparrow might be just a playful one-off opportunity for To to exercise his inner Demy/Donen, and it doesn't have much dramatic weight, but it's also a formally impeccable whirlwind of graceful motion, and my favorite of his so far. Really left me smiling, which few recent films can lay claim to.

A Girl Cut in Two is pretty meh, but I set my expectations low and just enjoyed Chabrol's requisite icy-cool vibes & the sight of Ludivine when credulity started to get stretched.

[Boner M]

Somer's Town - This will probably just turn up as a DVD extra on Meadows' next 'major' film, but for my money it's his best work to date; simply for the reason that he zeros in on the natural, beautifully observed character interactions that has always been his greatest strength, without forcing any semblance of narrative onto the precedings. Maybe there have already been one too many testaments to the hopes and dreams of the working class, but when they're this funny and bittersweet (and obviously taken from real experience), I'm not complaining. Thomas Turgoose also proves This is England was no non-pro one-off; he's a natural comic actor with a huge future.

Casting a Glance - I was initially gonna give this a lower rating for the mere fact that I admit to fighting a losing battle - for much of the film's duration - against the urge to put on my headphones. But even after I tried to give the film my own musical score, it didn't take long to realise how much purity was lost without the film's soundscape of lapping water, bird calls and other accidental sounds (the happiest of which is "Love Hurts" blaring from a nearby car boombox). I'm in no mood to speak insightfully about something this utterly abstract, but it's perhaps Benning's ultimate coup that the film retains it's interest even after the knowledge that '37 year span' this same location was supposedly filmed over was in fact a fabrication - really it's just two years, with (mostly) arbitrary inter-titled dates suggesting otherwise. It's something of a sly joke, as well as the source of the film's conceptual boldness; the cynic could say that Benning is trying to win over the unconverted by faking a degree of effort and persistence that comprises the film's sole points interest, but rather he's taking for granted that the viewer only cares about the images in front of them. Anyway, rocks are pretty, so are mountains symmetrically reflected in crystal clear water, nature is transient, etc.

Lorna's Silence - Kinda have to echo the collective 'it's good, but coming from the Dardennes...' sentiment. Though it isn't so much that they've 'lost their touch'; the Cannes-winning script is mostly a model of gradually-revealed plotting, making things more intricate than usual without feeling 'writerly', and the last 10 minutes almost hits the emotional highs of their first three. I think it's mainly the lead performance that's the film's central drawback as well as a reflection of the film's general shortcomings; she's adequate and believable without suggesting the kind of inner fire and steeliness that made Gourmet or Dequenne and their respective films so compelling. As result, the sense of kinship between actor and director even extends to the film's mise-en-scene; this is their most visually blah film to date, with none of their usual eye for striking offhand compositions or kinetic forward motion. All this said, the film is mainly satisfying for where it ends up, and I'm certainly not fretting over the Bros' future.

Also...


A Page of Madness is alright. I found it got kind of irritatingly oppressive at times but that's kind of what it's going for... worth seeing for sure.

This.

[Boner M]

Everything I saw, ranked.

Orgasmic:

1. Of Time and the City (Davies, 2008) 91
2. Tokyo Sonata (Kurosawa, 2008) 88
3. Hunger (McQueen, 2008) 85

Excellent:

4. Somer's Town (Meadows, 2008) 82
5. Import/Export (Seidl, 2007) 81
6. My Winnipeg (Maddin, 2007) 80
7. Distant Voices, Still Lives (Davies, 1988) 79
8. Sparrow (To, 2008) 77
9. Silent Light (Reygadas, 2007) 76

Really good:

10. Ballast (Hammer, 2008) 75
11. Encounters at the End of the World (Herzog, 2007) 75
12. Come Drink With Me (King Hu, 1966) 74
13. Casting a Glance (Benning, 20087) 74
14. You, the Living (Andersson, 2007) 73

Good:

15. Fear(s) of the Dark (various, 2007) 69
16. Night and Day (Hong, 2008) 69
17. Chop Shop (Bahrani, 2007) 68
18. Lorna's Silence (Dardenne, 2008) 67
19. A Page of Madness (Kinugasa, 1926) 65

Mixed feelings/average:

20. In the City of Sylvia (Guerin, 2007) 61
21. The Square (Edgarton, 2008) 59
22. A Girl Cut In Two (Chabrol, 2007) 54

Not a stinker in sight. Definitely my best year yet.

[Winston*]

Gonna try and see a couple of these films next month. I think Somers Town and Hunger will be that couple.

[Boner M]

Gonna try and see a couple of these films next month. I think Somers Town and Hunger will be that couple.
Just a couple? I think you will find Tokyo Sonata and Of Time and the City appealing too.

[Winston*]

Just a couple? I think you will find Tokyo Sonata and Of Time and the City appealing too.
Not playing at my ff. Neither's the Herzog. :sad:

I'm interested in nu Maddin and Dardennes too, might check them out if the times are good. Might take my little brother to that Fear(s) of the Dark also. I dunno, I'm not one for ff schedules.