http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Mon, 22 Jan 2007 02:27:42 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/01/22/022742.php MaximillianI've persevered with Kazuo Umezu's Horror Theater partly out of curiosity about this oddball manga artist. Japan regards "Kazz" fondly as someone roughly equivalent to Roald Dahl, but he's a writer who can draw his own illustrations - a one-man Dahl and Quentin Blake combined. Kazz's manga have been published in Japan for over 50 years now, mostly in shoujo manga (manga for girls). Children experienced the vivid intensity of emotions and horror situations of his comics. Maybe this is the reason the comics made such an impression that they haven't been forgotten.This widescreen TV series attempts to visualize some of his stories. It has a fairly low budget and a shot-on-video look, but they are at least original, thought up long before the current clichés in the Asian horror genre came along. Volume 2 contains two stories where each director has attempted to closely follow the visual style of the original manga comics, rather than reworking and modernizing them. Presumably these are two of Kazz's most famous.The first is called "Snake Girl."Yumiko is a young schoolgirl getting hate-mail e-mails. After witnessing a particularly nasty murder at school, she is sent away to the country to stay with her indifferent aunt and uncle. They seem to be obsessed with snakes. Yumiko finds it easier to befriend their two daughters. After meeting an old local mystic, she gets a nasty snakebite - not from a snake, but a snake creature. Also, local people are getting bitten. It seems that ever since Yumiko arrived in the village, there has been an outbreak of snake problems.I was keen to see this story in order to discover if it had anything in common with the 1968 Japanese movie adaptation, Snake-Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch. The spine of the story is the same (same skeletal outline and some of the same incidents - like Yumiko discovering snakeskin in her bed one morning), but the ending is very different and this is far less claustrophobic. Kazz has also updated it with an Internet sub-plot. I'm still more impressed with the old movie because of the higher production values and the successfully nightmarish mood.The lead actress is outstanding and the snake creature is imaginatively designed and portrayed with an excellent CGI 'money shot,' though some of the close-ups are too close (I think you can see the actress' white teeth visible behind the yellow fake teeth).The narrative is rather confusing - like the zombie villagers thrown into the mix. They are so lackluster and unthreatening that it only adds to the 'bad dream' feeling, but a little girl's bad dream is hardly strong enough stuff for the rest of us. Compared to the extreme gore of a later episode, this almost feels like children's television.The director goes to great pains to repeatedly re-enact the stylized 'screaming face' tableau - hands raised to the side of the face, just like the original illustrations. This is a careful homage, but really doesn't work in live-action especially because nothing else in the film is as exaggerated.Together with a slack ending and a very poorly staged transformation scene, this story is more of a grim fairy tale than horror. I will revisit it rather than watch the similarly themed Thai horror Snaker any day, (that had a great cover of a girl with snakes for hair and nothing else - just a cast that looked like a small-town theatre group with a video camera). The best snake-girl on film is Jacqueline Pearce in the Hammer horror The Reptile (1966) - some really horrendous snakebites in that one. Director Noboru Iguchi must have done something that Kazz liked, because he's now made a movie based on another Kazz character from The Cat-Eyed Boy (the Japanese is Nekome Kozo).The second story in Volume 2 is called "The Wish."This time there is a schoolboy at centre stage. He's friendless and locks himself away at home, building a human-sized puppet out of wood, and wishing he could will it to life with telekinesis. He loses interest in the project when he actually meets a real friend, but then his wish comes true.This simple rambling tale is helped enormously by the horrendously hideous puppet creature. It just has to sit in the room to creep you out. Even though the story looks very much like video, it makes a good naturalistic impression despite some fake-looking sky effects.Again the director has taken pains to recreate the original tale, making for a short film that's underdeveloped, but it's suitably creepy and packs some unexpected shocks. A limited but startling use of digital effects helps enormously in the climax. If you thought the clown doll in Poltergeist was scary, perhaps you shouldn't see this.The DVD has some useful behind-the-scenes interviews, promotional trailers for the two stories, and intros from Kazuo Umezu himself. Every scrap of information helped me understand the stories better, but I'd still love to see more pages from the original comics. With them, these adaptations would make much more sense. Video58479@blogcritics.org Mon, 22 Jan 2007 02:27:42 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/01/07/205904.php MaximillianThis movie was also known as Beyond The Fog and Horror on Snape Island, but it could easily have been called Don't Go In The Lighthouse!A quintessential teen horror movie and an almost perfect case study as a link between the old and the new - the rules of old Hollywood haunted house films, and the US slasher cycle that hadn’t yet started. This film adheres to the formula of sending a small group of unprepared youngsters into a haunted house cut off from society - The Old Dark House (1932) is an early example.But while sticking to a simplistic well-worn premise, Tower of Evil did its best to cram in as much nudity, sex, and violence as possible. It could easily be a template for the influential Friday the 13th and Halloween films - the famous ‘have sex and die’ slasher films. Many of the horror movie ‘rules’ spelled out in Scream hold true for Tower of Evil, even though it was made back in 1972 in the UK.The immoral are punished for having sex (or smoking too much pot). The characters think it’s a great idea to leave the women behind (in a room where the murderer was last seen) to explore the island. They also think it’s a great idea to split up when roaming around!Tower of Evil is fast-paced and entertaining, full of solid performances (with one hulking exception) and shocks. It also has many cheesy moments that undermine the atmosphere, but in an enjoyable way.I still can’t forget the laughs in the audience when I saw this supporting a double-bill in the seventies, particularly when the fake head makes the sounds of a fake head as it rolls down some fake stone stairs, capped with a shot of the actress’s head poking through the floor of the set -- a stupidly obvious effect that was stupidly still considered a good enough idea to be used in Alien (which also got laughs when it was first shown in London in 1979).Add to this the variable and awful American accents being attempted by British actors, and you may think that this is a negative review. But it’s not. Just a warning that you have to take the rough with the smooth.Some of the effects are very good. The aforementioned decapitation effect has an opening shot that I still can’t quite work out. Before the head rolls down the stairs, there’s a wide shot of the body of a naked girl, found with her head turned backwards. As someone touches the head, it parts from the body, leaving a headless corpse. This is either a superb fake body, or the actress’s head has been painfully bent back and hidden beneath the floor of the set, pre-empting the similarly stunning effect that Tom Savini used on a mortuary slab zombie in Day of the Dead (1985).The story is fast moving and tries its best to confound the audience until the very last moment. The film delivers up front, opening with two local fishermen arriving on the island to discover the aftermath of a massacre. Already we are hit with several shocks, mutilation, murder, and frantic nudity.A survivor is taken to a strange white room for a very unorthodox interrogation, involving regressive hypnosis induced by disco lights and injections of prescription drugs. This is presented as being okay if the police use them, but bad if you use non-prescription drugs and find your own disco lights.An expedition sets out to discover the island’s secrets, to find the killer and look for some ancient gold. The team includes two couples involved in a love quadrangle (even more complex than the usual love triangle). They are in for a night of murder, mayhem, and sexual shenanigans. It’s like a dry run for The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but without the songs.There are red herrings, bloodlettings, bouts of madness, explicit sex scenes, and the extended use of fast-cutting, with subliminal shocks, accompanied by a woman screaming. If you want to put an audience on edge, make them listen to screaming for a whole minute – it’s nerve-shredding. The subliminals interestingly flash forward as well as back, looking towards the spectacular climax.As I've said, you have to take the rough with the smooth. The island and lighthouse are admittedly stage-bound, but they are still impressive sets. The boat that brings them to the island shows off back-projection at its worst, but as I’ve said, other effects prove to be more successful and mystifying.The contemporary use of skin-tight flared jeans leave little to the imagination – and that’s just the men. The extended nude scenes show off both topless women as well as fit young men, a rarity in the genre. One of the actors, John Hamill, was also in the opening scene of Trog, which also starts off with an unusual half-naked hunk-fest. One nude sex scene is all the more explicit because of the lack of bedclothes, unlike a similar scene in the first Halloween.Tower of Evil has an unusual cast for a British horror film. Many of the cast have done one or two horrors but none could be considered regulars. Jill Haworth (Haunted House of Horror, It!, The Mutations), and Bryant Haliday had brief stabs as horror icons (The Devil Doll and The Projected Man). Familiar support comes from Jack Watson as the boatman, who appeared as a vengeful ghost himself in From Beyond the Grave, but usually played stalwart police and army men. Dapper Anthony Valentine usually played villainous smoothies, here plays the interrogator – his other main horror role was in Hammer’s last horror To The Devil a Daughter, though he also proved how vicious he could be in Performance.Two faces hard to take seriously in this, because they usually played comedy, are Robin Askwith, who later made his name in the bawdy sex comedy series that started with the infamous Confessions of a Window Cleaner, and Derek Fowlds, already known then as the straight man to TV glove puppet funny fox Basil Brush, and later became Nigel Hawthorne’s sidekick in the long-running political sitcom Yes, Minister.Director Jim O’ Connolly certainly makes a great effort to lift Tower of Evil above the cliches. It certainly improves on his earlier horror, the circus-bound Beserk! (1967). Connolly may be best known to you as the director of cowboy dinosaur epic Valley of Gwangi – one of Ray Harryhausen’s classic special effects films.The Elite Entertaintment DVD seemed well-restored, taken from colourful sources that didn’t look their age – it is presented 1.85 widescreen, but non-anamorphic. The letterbox crops off some nudity and feels too severe compared to the 4:3 VHS that I’ve become used to over the years. Even in the cinema, I remember the boat scenes being unconvincing because we could see how far out of the water the boat was, without any waves being seen, so it probably looks more convincing this way. All in all, a great film for a crowd of friends on a Friday night, or a horror fan whose tastes hover between the old and the new. Video57920@blogcritics.org Sun, 7 Jan 2007 20:59:04 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/01/07/181129.php MaximillianI’m bored by police procedurals. We’re shown a crime, now let’s watch the police solve it. These dramas are usually cliché-ridden and full of red herrings. Writers seem to be bored with trying to intelligently perplex the viewer, resorting instead to cinematic cheats like not showing you all the clues, or outrageously plotted cheats that you could never guess. Or they’re too simple and you guess it right away. I’ve lost patience over the years. So now, I avoid movies and TV series in this genre. There’s an awful lot of them to avoid.I didn’t know quite what sort of film Memories of Murder was going to be. I was half expecting a psycho-on-the-loose thriller. I wanted to see it because I’d already seen the director’s next film, The Host, which broke box office records in South Korea last summer. Having enjoyed that so much, I had my hopes set pretty high. I didn’t know I was getting a police procedural movie. I also didn’t know I was going to enjoy it so much.It could have been because of the faraway locations, but this movie felt worlds apart from the usual murder mystery. Besides enjoying the story, I was learning about the quirks of living in South Korea in the mid 1980s, when the country was under military rule, with the public enduring regularly staged curfews and air raid drills.The central characters are detectives in the local police force who are trying to catch a serial rapist who also murders his victims. Under-equipped and under-staffed, they try methods both fair and foul, and follow hunches that are both unlikely and even unscientific.I was wrong-footed by the opening announcement – many thrillers and horror films open by saying that ‘the following is based on a true story’. Opening statements, like in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Picnic At Hanging Rock, duped me for years into thinking the stories actually happened, which makes watching the films almost mind-blowing. When I found out that it was just a dramatic ploy, it’s both a relief (for the victims) and a realization that I’ve been duped. Rather than be fooled again, I chose to ignore the opening statements, and assumed it was pure fiction.But this film actually is based on a real case, back when the country suffered its first ever serial killer. Director Joon-Ho Bong studied the case carefully and wanted to examine the story from the police’s angle. And like in The Host, he doesn’t like Hollywood endings.Despite Memories of Murder only being his second film, this is remarkably assured filmmaking, marked by confident character-driven storytelling, immaculate cinematography, a very visual narrative -- it's very beautiful to watch. The grim subject is leavened with black humour, and by the bizarre behaviour of the increasingly desperate detectives.The acting is uncanny. I’ve seen some of these actors before, but they convincingly become their characters, drawing me completely into the story. Several actors went on to star in The Host, notably Kang-Ho Song and Hie-bong Park, here playing cop and boss, rather than son and father. Sang-kyung Kim plays the detective who's brought in from the capital city to help the country cops.It’s an enthralling and impressive film, sometimes grim and tragic, but always gripping. Now that I know it actually was a real case, watching it again is going to be even more harrowing. But obviously I’d still like to know more about the actual events. Video57904@blogcritics.org Sun, 7 Jan 2007 18:11:29 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/12/05/173807.php MaximillianThis is the first in a series of Japanese horror films released under the banner J-Horror Theater -- a projected run of six movies, each with different directors, linked by the same production team.Infection begins in a small run-down hospital in the middle of a crisis. Too many patients, supplies running out, staff not paid... you almost think that the infection in the title is already overrunning the city outside (which we never see).Of the remaining staff and patients, each one has a different preoccupation. One of the nurses is having trouble giving injections (she keeps missing the vein), two patients have fallen out of their beds and injured themselves, and one patient sees people in mirrors who aren’t in the room.For the busy doctors, torn between an operation that's going badly and an ambulance trying to leave a seriously ill patient in the ER, things start going very wrong. As an unknown infection turns the new patient into green slime, everyone in the building suddenly finds themselves at risk of a fate worse than death, as the hospital dissolves into chaos.The film cleverly distances itself from TV medical dramas with a ‘look’ that’s not quite right for a hospital. It’s not quite ramshackle or dirty, but maybe has a few too many dark corners. The cinematography achieves an unusual visual style – a crystal clear image, but with queasy, green-edged shadows.A sense of unease and uncanniness is quickly established that soon put me on edge and creeped me out. The many storylines that are established with each of the characters, slowly start to pay off. For a long while I wasn’t sure just which direction the story was going to go, which made it even more intriguing.Despite melting patients and glops of green goo, there’s still much that is left unseen, which would certainly have been shown in an FX-fest if this were a western horror film. There are still some excessive scenes, but the director wisely chooses to leave some extreme moments to the imagination. He achieves a fine balance of being subtly gory.When one of the doctors notes that the hospital is having a very bad day, the film verges on black comedy. This appears to be intentional though, and it gives the tone just enough distance from the more mundane atmosphere of pain and death of hospital dramas, or indeed hospitals.An ensemble cast – almost everyone gets equal screen time – is lead by Koichi Sato, who was similarly impressive in Rasen (1998, the very first sequel to Ring), and the spectacular Antarctica (1983).The director chosen to kick off the J-Horror Theater series is Masayuki Ochiai, who previously made the enjoyable and gruesome The Hypnotist, Parasite Eve and the best segment in Tales of the Unusual (2000) about a snow ghost. This is an unusual Japanese horror movie, not as extreme or frightening as many others, but certainly gripping and darkly entertaining. Just don’t ask me to explain the ending.The DVD only has two trailers for extras. It's 16:9 anamorphic with good English subtitles. I also feel that the original Japanese publicity artwork was more stylish and intriguing than that of the US DVD release.The second film in the J-Horror Theater series is Premonition (or Yogen) which is also out on DVD. The third, Reincarnation (or Rinne) is directed by Takashi Shimizu of The Grudge series. It has yet to be released on DVD in America, though it's available in the UK. It's a shame about the delay because it's the best film in the series so far, and I even reckon it's Shimizu's best film to date. Video56660@blogcritics.org Tue, 5 Dec 2006 17:38:07 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/11/14/093044.php MaximillianAfter the success of Ring-derived ghost stories like The Eye and Shutter, horror films from Thailand are getting more international attention. More often than not, their poster art is more grisly and better produced than the films themselves - like Art of the Devil, where the poor acting and lacklustre cliches are less likely to impress a western audience.The country obviously has an up-and-coming movie industry, so I keep checking out interesting looking films hoping for hits rather than misses. Zee Oui has got a DVD release under the title The Man Eater and it's professionally enough made, but the subject matter is difficult to enjoy. Thai horror films are currently trying hard to compete by literally out-grossing American ones.Li Hui, a Chinese farmer, arrives in Thailand in 1946 and gets renamed 'Zee-Oui' by a short-tempered immigration official. His uncle finds him a job, but the new name has to stick because it matches his work visa. Zee Oui soon discovers that being a foreigner means getting bullied by everyone, even children. He works hard, but suffers poor health - a constant cough that he thinks is asthma. After much bad luck with his jobs, and as we learn more of his harrowing life in China, he resorts to murder. The subject of the story here is problematic to say the least - a serial child-murderer who eats the hearts of his victims! It's especially tricky for western audiences to enter the fray with this particular filmed version of an infamous true-life murder case. It's apparently been portrayed many times before in Thailand, but this version is a more revisionist version of events, showing the murderer in a more sympathetic light. Zee Oui, you see, is apparently a boogey man in Thailand - his trademark cough and cannibalistic traits make him a monstrous figure to threaten naughty kids with. His case is also used as a justification for xenophobes to fear foreigners. Presumably, the two directors of this film were trying to redress the balance.As a viewer completely unfamiliar with the case, the opening scene unfortunately gives away the conclusion to the story, before going into a feature-length flashback. Without a good grasp of local history (like the war between China and Thailand) and Thai geography, I was at a disadvantage in following the fractured timeline of the plot - not always realising when the story had shifted backwards in time. But this is something that other films manage successfully, despite cultural differences (I'm thinking of the back-and-forth structure of The Grudge films, for example). Crucially, a brilliant scene where bullies cause Zee Oui to visibly 'crack' is positioned after we've already seen his murder victims. Whether I misunderstood the order of events, or whether the directors were saying that he was being blamed for murders he did not commit, I'm still not certain. Lead actor Long Duan almost succeeds in an impossible role, to make us sympathise with this man, but we're obviously constantly distanced from him by the brutality of his onscreen crimes. The directors intend for us to better understand his motivations - but besides listing the possible causes of his serial killings, many other political points are clumsily made about racism, sexism, and government cover-ups. Overall, the naive script and convoluted timeline undermine most points they want to make.While this may be award-winning material in Thailand, it's a difficult film to recommend to an international audience. The tone veers between over-the-top depictions of child murder and simplistic drama. The performances are sincere enough, but are undermined by sloppy plotting. Shortcuts taken by the script keep the story moving by using unbelievable coincidences. Moving the detective story along a little slower could have made for more intrigue and suspense, which are lacking.So, without a strong story, and with glimpses of gore at the murder scenes, this can only be placed in the horror film section, presumably on a shelf with the other real-life murder cases that were turned into insensitive horror films.Even so, despite the sensationalist subject, I didn't find the film nearly as shocking as it should have been. The crimes in The Untold Story (Hong Kong, 1993) also managed to produce sympathy for a cannibalistic child-murderer, but were far more effectively portrayed, and with a much lower budget. I guess also that Thai audiences may be just as horrified by the desecration of holy sites, such as a Buddhist shrine.Technically, the film looks very good, with a large scale that convinces us of the many locations and periods depicted. If anything, the art direction looks too good - for instance Li Hui's early job slaughtering chickens takes place in a beautifully lit, colorful backyard, sending out mixed messages about what's occurring - is he in a good or a bad place? If it's such a nasty job, why does the place look so picturesque? The Man Eater is an interesting film, entertaining even -- it's certainly not dull. Technically it's one of the best movies I've seen from Thailand, and the lush locations have rarely been seen before. While it certainly isn't aiming for an obvious 'horror film' formula like many other Thai films, it doesn't succeed as a drama or a reliable version of what really happened. I'd hesitate to recommend it to fans of Asian cinema or Asian horror - it's too gory to be taken seriously, but not horrific enough to be frightening. But if you want to see a good example of a new film from this beautiful country, you could do much much worse. Video55779@blogcritics.org Tue, 14 Nov 2006 09:30:44 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/11/12/110533.php MaximillianThis is one of an eight-movie set called The Hammer Horror Series, released by Universal in their Franchise Collection. They were all produced by Hammer in the early 1960s, a time when the studio were trying out each of the classic monsters for the first time. Having made Dracula, Frankenstein, and Mummy pictures, The Curse of the Werewolf was next.Casting a young Oliver Reed as a werewolf was, in retrospect, a genius stroke. He soon earned a reputation as a boozy wildman, but gained critical attention in leading roles for fellow boozy wildman director Ken Russell (in The Devils and Women in Love). Reed started off doing bit parts, and horror films for Hammer, like Paranoiac and These are the Damned. Famously, he ended his career on the job, causing havoc by passing away halfway through the production of Ridley Scott's Gladiator.In its heyday, Hammer was trying to match Universal Studios' successful gallery of monsters, but had to carefully avoid copyright problems. They wanted a werewolf, but couldn't copy the make-up design of The Wolfman. They couldn't even call it The Wolfman because that was an original script written for Universal. Instead, they bought the rights to Guy Endore's The Werewolf of Paris, written in 1934. The werewolf itself is visually unique. Decades later, other werewolves made memorable impressions due to extensive special effects rather than performances. Part of the success of Roy Ashton's make-up is the way we can still see most of Oliver Reed's face. He looks part wolf, but importantly we can still see he's part man. Together with Reed's acting, the glimpses we get of the werewolf are electrifying. His contorted, snarling face, blood dripping from his mouth -- it's startling and effective.However, it's a film from a different era. The 1980s werewolf movies -- like The Howling and An American Werewolf in London -- would still play today, providing a rollercoaster of blood, shocks, and in-jokes. Hammer films of the 1960s play more like costume dramas. Curse of the Werewolf is so traditional, it even refuses to veer from a linear narrative by using flashbacks. The story of young Leon and his unfortunate conception is so involved that we don't actually get any scenes with Reed until the film is halfway through.Amusingly, when he does appear, adult Leon is soon working in a winery, surrounded by bottles of alcohol. Note also that, at the time, Oliver Reed was much more likely to get romantic leading roles, because he had yet to pick up the huge trademark scar down his left cheek. After being 'glassed' in a pub brawl, the young actor thought his film career was over. He was wrong, and the disfigurement rarely meant that he was consigned to baddie roles.The rest of the cast is quite fascinating -- I'd forgotten how many familiar faces were in it, and not all the usual Hammer crew either (Michael Ripper, notwithstanding). A couple of James Bond regulars appear -- Desmond Llewellyn has a bit part here as a butler, just before he became typecast as Q in almost all the Bond films. Also, Anthony Dawson is the lecherous, disintegrating Marques, a successfully over-the-top portrayal. The actor was a baddie in the first Bond, Doctor No, and was also the shadowy Blofeld in From Russia With Love and Thunderball. Though his voice was dubbed, he was the unseen presence behind the blinds in the famous Spectre meeting room, where the chairs are all wired for electrocution -- a key scene referenced in the first Austin Powers films.Richard Wordsworth gives an extraordinary performance, ranging over two decades, from abused beggar to feral man. Both touching and frightening, he had been similarly effective as the man/monster in Hammer's first horror film The Creeping Unknown (U.K.: The Quatermass Xperiment).Bizarrely, Peter Sallis, instantly recognisable as the distinctive voice of Wallace, from the hugely successful Wallace and Gromit animations, appears here in his prime as the town mayor. I didn't see anything in the publicity for Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) to exploit the fact he'd also appeared in The Curse of the Werewolf.Besides enjoying the film again, I was also checking that Universal had delivered a correct widescreen aspect, generously framed at 1.85, and that the print used was also uncut. For years, I thought the pace of the story dragged in places, but that's because British movie and TV censors had snipped away the distasteful and violent scenes. The climax of the film even includes an early use of squirting blood -- probably a hidden syringe effect -- which was popularised by its excessive use at the end of the decade by director Sam Peckinpah in The Wild Bunch. But in 1961, blood in colour was still a cinematic shock; the previous year, Hitchcock opted to make Psycho in black and white.The film has a unique werewolf mythos, a unique performance from Oliver Reed, and an atmospheric, standout soundtrack from Benjamin Frankel. Admittedly it's more of a violent melodrama than a horror movie, but I hope I've demonstrated that it's watchable for many reasons. Video55695@blogcritics.org Sun, 12 Nov 2006 11:05:33 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/11/12/100125.php MaximillianThis is a welcome release of the animated Japanese TV series Gakko no Kaidan, which literally translates as 'School Ghost Stories'. Although it's set around a haunted school, this anime isn't connected to the four live-action films called Haunted School (1996 to 1999).The series takes its inspiration from Japanese urban legends and scary stories that are told about schools. It features a likeable gang of young ghostbusters, centred around Satsuki, a young schoolgirl, and her little brother. Satsuki's mother has recently passed away, but the mother bequeathed her a notebook with descriptions of neighbourhood hauntings and how to calm them down. Satsuki and her friends like to investigate hauntings and ghostly occurences. These either take place at the school, directly affect schoolchildren, or just happen locally. Thankfully, the action in the series doesn't spend too much time in ordinary schoolrooms, like so many anime series seem to. However, it also doesn't spend as much time in the old haunted school building as I would have liked.The troubled spirits are all pretty spectacular, ranging from murderous dolls and giant killer rabbits, to the more traditional snow ghosts and vengeful demons (one of whom possesses the family cat!). If they're not big, they're usually creepy, many of them with murder in mind.The series is intended as family viewing, but would be too much for younger viewers. It's like a Japanese Scooby Doo, but with actual ghosts. When it wants to be scary, it even verges on the intensity found in current Japanese horror films! The interplay within the gang is played for laughs, but they often end up terrified, with Satsuki's little brother spending a lot of the time crying, like a real toddler would in the same situation. The storylines touching on Satsuki's late mother also add a poignant depth to some of the episodes.The animation isn't as carefully detailed as most recent anime, evidently being produced using electronic animation (as opposed to painted hand-drawn cels). It also uses many electronic effects and backgrounds instead of animated ones. This works well for the most part, and there's some interesting point-of-view computer-generated animation too.The director of the series was Noriyuki Abe, who is now working hard on the very successful anime Bleach, which has topped 100 episodes and just spawned an animated feature film. Bleach is also about schoolkids fighting unseen demons -- but this time it's teenagers, and they use samurai swords and magic powers to save lost souls. It's action-packed, but again has well-designed characters and plenty of humour. Coincidentally, the central family is also missing its mother.Ghost Stories is one of the few anime productions I've enjoyed that has an uncut subtitled release -- all 20 episodes are on DVD, released over five volumes, with optional Japanese audio and English subtitles.There's been controversy over the English language track on the DVDs, due to the dialogue being pepped up with inappropriate sexual references and American in-jokes. This is, of course, at odds with the young ages of the characters and the obviously Japanese setting.If that's not a problem, or you can cope with reading subtitles, I'd recommend this to anime fans and students of Japanese yokai spirits. Video55678@blogcritics.org Sun, 12 Nov 2006 10:01:25 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/11/01/185337.php MaximillianLike many fans of South East Asian cinema, I'm more than impressed with director Park Chan-Wook's 'vengeance trilogy' — Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2004) and Lady Vengeance (2005). So while I’m waiting to see his next film Cyborg OK, I watched his earlier Joint Security Area, the success of which enabled him to embark on the trilogy that has made him internationally famous.Joint Security Area isn't as outrageous stylistically or narratively as Oldboy or Lady Vengeance, being a fairly straightforward murder mystery. But there are directorial flourishes and an offbeat dark humor that point to the extremes he would soon take. Also it’s an unusual setting — the neutral no-go area between North and South Korea. A shooting incident leaves two soldiers dead and two wounded survivors, one from each country. A Dutch investigating officer, fluent in Korean, is brought in by the neutral peace-keeping forces to determine exactly what happened. In prolonged flashbacks, we learn about the lives of the men in the months leading up to the fateful night, a scenario the authorities hadn't anticipated.Director Chan-Wook manages to play to both sides of the audience here, delivering a violent, occasionally bloody, wartime thriller while demonstrating an anti-violence theme. The film also attempts to counter the demonization of North Koreans as seen by the South. After recent real-life events though, this may becoming an increasingly tough job.For an international audience, there's enough exposition to get everyone up to speed, with a brief history of the country's post-WW2 division. Other Korean films that have braved the subject, like Kim Ki-Duk's The Coast Guard (2002), expected the audience to already know their recent history.The main strength of the film is the performances — the leading members of the cast all returned to appear in Chan-Wook's subsequent films. The investigating officer in Joint Security Area is played by Lady Vengeance herself, Yeong-ae Lee. She’s a strong presence here, but she doesn’t get to shine here as she did in Lady Vengeance, as she’s only expected to serve as a listening post. The North Korean survivor is played by Song Kang-ho, who went on to play "Mr. Vengeance." He’s become a familiar face in many recent quality Korean films such as Memories of Murder, and this year's Asian blockbuster The Host. Other soldiers in the "incident" are played by Shin Ha-kyun, who sported green hair in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and Lee Byung-hun, the lead in Chan-Wook's contribution to the short story horror film .The only distraction in the film were the weaker western actors who have English-speaking parts, but thankfully they are not in many scenes. The film is otherwise very satisfying — beautifully shot, cleverly constructed and maintaining quite a grip throughout. We know where the story is leading, but not how it happened. It's hard to categorize precisely in terms of genre. Different scenes could be from war, mystery, comedy, thriller, or drama films. I recommend this now, because of its currently hot subject matter, hot director and cast. But it's a shame that it’s only going to be seen by those who can cope with reading English subtitles. Video55189@blogcritics.org Wed, 1 Nov 2006 18:53:37 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/11/01/073029.php MaximillianModesty Blaise was pretty much a female James Bond, but using her many talents to financially criminal ends. The character started out in a daily comic strip in a London evening newspaper in 1962, but soon gained international popularity. It was lavishly adapted as a comedy action film in 1966.I really wish it was good and I even re-watch it, thinking I must have been wrong before, but it always disappoints. It fits into two sub-genres of '60s movies I really enjoy. The first, lightweight comedy spy flicks – the ones Austin Powers movies reference – like Our Man Flint or Casino Royale (1967) and secondly, comic strip adaptations. Back then, they were a more varied bunch than the endless Marvel Comics franchises twe’re choking on at the moment – like Batman (1966), Barbarella (1968), or Danger: Diabolik.Unfortunately, Modesty Blaise is the least watchable in both camps, despite having enough talent to have made it the best of the bunch. With the acclaimed Joseph Losey directing, one would expect something daring and gritty. The Servant, King and Country, and Accident (all also starring Dirk Bogarde) are all heralded British films critics agree are the work of an auteur. But they forget to mention Losey’s disastrous lapses in the same era, Modesty Blaise and Boom! (often called Elizabeth Taylor’s worst movie).The cast is high calibre and game for a laugh. Monica Vitti as Modesty uncannily looks the part of the comic strip heroine, and is also devastatingly glamorous and a natural comedy actress to boot, despite performing for the first time in English. She'd previously only starred in Italian films, including the highbrow L'Avventura (1961) for director Michelangelo Antonioni. Modesty's sidekick, Willie, is played by Terence Stamp, also at his sultry sexiest in the late sixties. Dirk Bogarde almost manages to rein in his campiest ever performance, as blond arch-villain Gabriel. Clive Revill has a dual role as a bookkeeping henchman and an Arab sheik.To digress for a second – it’s sad when talented actors are hot one moment and then dropped the next. For instance, Clive Revill was great in comedies, often playing Russians, and could hold his own as a lead (The Legend of Hell House) but disappeared from cinema to do occasional American TV parts, where he still does high-profile voiceover work in animation. I guess his turn as the voice of the Emperor in The Empire Strikes Back changed his career.Michael Craig, too, here playing an MP being twisted around Modesty’s little finger, was a familiar face in '60s movies. He led the castaways in Mysterious Island (1960), but his film career was buried alive with Vault of Horror (1973), and he’s been working on stage and TV ever since.So, Modesty Blaise – the cast is good. So what’s wrong with the film? I’d say the director appears to be extremely condescending about “comic strips”. So much so, that he refuses to take the characters or any of the action seriously. He chooses to keep reminding the audience that Modesty is only a comic strip heroine, rather than try and flesh out her character. Most of the fights are played for comedy, especially the climactic battle. Losey seems to lose interest whenever the plot has to develop, instead pushing the camera toward close-ups of pop culture fads, fashions, and furniture, while making in-jokes, most of which we don’t get.Losey’s humorous touches would have been warranted if they’d actually been funny. But only the occasional black comedy works, and it’s especially sadistic, even for the likes of James Bond. Gabriel’s ‘wife’, Mrs Fothergill’s silent torture of a mime, and the use of a dead hanging body to counterweight a rope escape down a cliff, are both grimly amusing.Also, apart from Johnny Dankworth’s larger than life theme song, the music is ill-chosen and rarely complements the mood or the action, instead being used to amuse. The monk serenading Gabriel on the church organ, as he arrives on his island, seems to go on forever. The cacophony of barrel-organ music during the Amsterdam knife fight is totally distracting. The songs Vitti and Stamp are required to sing are just embarrassing.Maybe with different music and a tighter edit (it's too long at two hours), this could have been – should have been – a whole lot better. As it is, I can only say that the groovy sets and fashions make this an excellent choice to play at a party, but with the sound turned down! An odd recommendation, I know.The film's main locations were shot in Amsterdam, Naples, and, particularly spectacular, Gabriel’s clifftop monastery hideout (in Sicily, I believe). The unexciting car chase goes up and down the winding roads of Mount Vesuvius.The DVD release has absolutely no frills or even notes, but is presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.85) for the first time on home video. Both the mono and stereo audio options sound a little dull, which is very apt, considering. Video55158@blogcritics.org Wed, 1 Nov 2006 07:30:29 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/10/11/223816.php MaximillianLike many fans in the west, my interest in anime really started with Akira. But the anime that followed were sold primarily on the basis of sex and violence. For a short time, this strategy worked but the marketing had a negative effect. It quashed the possibility of getting a wider audience for subsequent releases of anime feature films or TV.Public consensus still misunderstands anime as being dominated by half-naked schoolgirls and extreme violence, whereas in reality it is as varied in tone as any fiction-based, live-action TV. Besides anime for the very young, there’s sci-fi, horror, romcoms -- all genres for all ages. The controversial stuff was only in a tiny minority of releases.Akira (1988) did lead to an interest in what else Japanese animation had to offer, with a focus on other adult sci-fi anime series. But this didn’t rise above the level of ‘cult’ and enter into the mainstream. Subesequent releases like Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) didn't cause the same stir as Akira.Recently, some of the most intricate, ground-breaking animated movies in the world have had terribly half-hearted cinema releases, and been overlooked by critics. Astonishing films like Appleseed, Ghost in the Shell 2 - Innocence and ironically Steam Boy (director Mamoru Oshii’s first feature since Akira) have snuck out into cinemas without finding an audience. These are titles with challenging plots, predictive sci-fi, hugely entertaining action -- that are often dumped straight onto video.Admittedly, the west has got a lot of readjusting to do – in Japan the adult consumption of manga has removed the stigma of ‘cartoons’. At least we’re finally appreciating the films of Hiyao Miyazaki. Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle herald a new wave of anime that has finally found a mainstream audience. This has lead to a demand for the twenty year back-catalogue of animated films from Studio Ghibli. Indeed, in France, these older films are getting re-releases in the cinema, not just on DVD.Enough ranting, here I am still working my way through Miyazaki’s older films. The latest I’ve seen is The Castle of Cagliostro, now available on a Special Edition DVD. This 1979 feature film was the first to be directed by Miyazaki as he was moving up from TV work.For copyright reasons, it’s been obscured that the film is all about the characters from the long-running Lupin III series of manga and TV. Arch-criminal Lupin is the grandson of Arsene Lupin of French literature, here embarking on an epic adventure with his usual accomplices, somewhere in Central Europe.After raiding a casino, Lupin notices that rather than being incredibly rich, he merely has a carful of counterfeit cash. He decides to pursue the fake notes back to their source – the royal castle in a small duchy - Cagliostro. As he gets near, he encounters a very young bride trying to escape the castle, and his mission suddenly becomes far more complicated and dangerous than he had ever imagined.Even in 1979, Miyazaki has to walk a precarious tightrope between providing a family film, and being faithful to the bawdy violence of the original manga, which portrayed Lupin as a ‘ladykiller’. While there’s action, a little slapstick, and some exaggerated face-pulling to please younger viewers, there’s also a little blood, lots of gun-play, a little swearing, an under-age wedding, and several characters smoking like chimneys! Like Spielberg begging the censors not to cut Jaws and the Indiana Jones movies, Miyazaki has to push boundaries to keep both audiences happy.Miyazaki and his crew also try to achieve the best animation they can. They never shy away from ambitious 'camera moves' – like point-of-view shots, or complicated tracking shots. Complex three-dimensional objects like the auto-gyro or the workings of the clock-tower would have to have been realised without the aid of computers. The result is so successful that it's hard to guess what year it was made, the animation looks so advanced.The story could equally have worked as live-action, and has been ‘laid out’ as if it were. The famous car chase, early in the story, is shot as if photographed from 'camera cars'. It’s an exciting scene, as well as amusing for using tiny little French cars, rather than flashy sports models.I was also very impressed with the the endless inventiveness in the castle buildings’ many hidden secrets. Lupin has to face underwater traps, impossible wall-climbs, crowds of ninja assassins, and high tech defences. The look of the various background layouts also indicate that Miyazaki’s team must have at least done extensive picture research of Central Europe - I wouldn't be surprised that they actually made a visit.This Manga Entertainment DVD release is notable for a spotless transfer that makes the film look brand new. Only the occasional, original animation faults (like a frame shift, or slightly rough-edged drawings), date the animation at all. The picture aspect is 1.85 anamorphic, like its original presentation.There’s a 5.1 mix for the English soundtrack, as well as the original Japanese audio (which is what I listened to). The English subtitles take great pains to translate the jokes and the slang. My only criticism of the set is that the Japanese mix isn’t 5.1, just stereo, and that the cover art doesn’t do the beautiful and intricate art of the animation any favours at all – it makes it look like a soppy romance, rather than a gothic James Bond adventure.This is a flipper disc with the entire film on one side and special features on the other. There are storyboards, and an interview with the animation director (who also worked on the first Lupin III TV anime), and a trailer for the original Japanese movie release.If only we’d had Miyazaki films in the west 25 years ago, when they were released in Japan. He’d have given anime a good name. Video54274@blogcritics.org Wed, 11 Oct 2006 22:38:16 EDT