quiet trickster

You can probably tell that I’m flagging, right? I couldn’t think of anything to write about the World Animation 2 selection, and by the time I got through today’s four films, I was only able to write about two of them. Oops…

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: More pure Hollywood froth from Anita Loos - ably aided, this time, by Hawks (always my favourite Hollywood golden age director - responsible for just about all my favourite Hollywood films, in any genre).

It’s quintessential Marilyn, of course, with sterling support from Jane Russell (Hawks actually appears to have preferred brunettes, himself, over the years). It’s also the second film in as many days to feature Olympic hopefuls in swimming trunks - entirely improbable set dressing as Russell sings ‘Ain’t Anyone Here For Love?’

Tekkonkinkreet: Being anime, I came away full of remarkable visions and very little clue as to what’s going on. Being anime, perhaps knowing what’s going on is not quite the point.

It’s a softer visual style than I’m familiar with from things like Studio Ghibli’s work - but with the same riotous detail. It’s a fully realised world, although whether it’s on Earth, or somewhere else entirely, is never quite defined.

It starts with a relatively low key story - street urchins, street thugs, yakuza, slum power struggles, with orphans Black and White at the centre. It gets stranger with the arrival of creepy Mr Snake and his apparent supermen assassins, but… you really want me to attempt to explain it?

The names of the central character kind of clues you into what the story’s about - simple, eccentric White is seemingly oblivious to the hardships they’re experiencing, and troubled, violent Black is torn between protecting White and establishing his supremacy in the squabbles with rivals over the slum they live in. As the various elements of criminality are taken out, the film becomes a dream-world battle between Black’s darker side, the Minotaur (astrology and the zodiac are a theme touched upon but never fully developed w.r.t. this bull…), and the balancing force of White.

There are nice touches along the way - each level of thug or criminal is revealed as more human - the thrusting young yakusa worried for his pregnant girlfriend, the aging yakusa resigned to being out of step with the times.

Weirdsville and The Counterfeiters have kinda gotten a rough deal here, as the last two films I saw: Weirdsville deserves it, but The Counterfeiters is pretty good, for, y’know, a depressing film about barely surviving the Holocaust…

Not a bad start to my festival, but not an entirely auspicious one either - a fair amount of pretension, topped and tailed by more entertaining stuff. I should check the catalogue to get more information, and if I remember, I’ll look up the filmmakers, but first impressions:

Started with a very cute, high-end texture & 3D CG animation, Hum, which worked well in itself, although short films about little lonely machines that construct other little machines for company, and variations thereof, are becoming very familiar. I should check, maybe it’s one guy being very prolific. I’m not complaining, but it suggests that the criteria for selecting these shorts is dominated by the animation, not how they stand up as stories - as films in their own right.

The second, a slightly Matrix-y SF piece, Glitch, seemed to be betraying small screen origins, but was probably more hamstrung by the three lines of dialogue that could have been left out - the sound mix seemed shaky with the dialogue, oddly, and it had a simple enough story with a nice (visual) payoff.

The next, Down The Road, had the opposite problem - it could have been quite a neat two-hander as a live action short, with good enough actors and less semaphoring of the plot twists, but died a death within the confines of some distinctly lo-fi animation better suited to comedy than a thriller.

Canvas had some very strong stop-motion model-work. But unless there was something going on about commenting on how artworks will revolt against pretentious artists, just plain pretentious.

My Love, an atmospheric Russian animation, with a dreamlike sensibility, but either that or something missing from the translation resulted in a slightly uneven narrative - it always kind of felt there was a scene missing. I’m not sure if it expected you to know the source (if there was a source).

The last short, a Canadian production, while neither visually nor narratively original or stunning, was funny, in a straightforwardly daft surrealist way, with a very cartoony style. See, I’m shallow - I always like the laughs over the pretentious noodlings over the nature of the creative process.

So, now I have 4 more tickets, and no longer need to feel guilty about Anita Loos. This brings the number to 27, which doesn’t count the number of films I’ll see in the animated shorts screenings.

Hey, it is my holiday.