Film Flam

The festival proceeds apace, marred somewhat by the fact that someone kipped the IFS cash box out of the projection booth at the art museum, sometime between Thursday night and Sunday morning. We lost about $150 and three new membership forms. Boo. Other than that, and some minor projection problems, it's all going swimmingly, and we had a number of new people show up at the IFS monthly screening tonight. Though if I see one more Stella Artois commercial before a film I may be forced to boycott their beer for life. (Apparentlly, one can grow tired even of funny European beer commercials.) Got a couple more reviews for you, whether you want them or not.

Lady Vengeance
Have you ever watched a movie, and said to yourself, "Wow, that was a great film, and I don't ever want to see it ever again"? I felt that way about Peter Greenaway's Pillow Book; it was tremendous and beautiful and fascinating, and it also made me want to barf and gave me creepy dreams for days afterwards. Chan-wook Park's Lady Vengeance was a lot like that (though not quite so much so.) It had moments of totally hilarious visual comedy, followed immediately by moments of "Dear god, that's so....wrong." It's not that it's totally gory--though there's a fair amount of blood and ick--but more just that the plot is plain disturbing. Much more so than the capsule on the link page would indicate. I don't think I want to see his other films, and while I really did like Lady Vengeance, I wouldn't recommend it if you're not in the mood for a bit of a mind fuck.

District 13
Brought to us by Luc Besson of La Femme Nikita fame, this is an action movie set in grimy future Paris, 2010. Upyernoz recommended this one to me as it got good reviews at the Philly Film Fest last month. While I'd not call it groundbreaking in terms of plot--it's kind of Escape From New York-ish--the martial arts and action sequences were beyond cool. The best I can describe it is sort of Matrix-style, but more beliveable; lots of jumps, kicks, and rolls and running up nearly sheer surfaces, all with no breaks in the movement. Each action flows into the next, it's like dance. And I'm told there was NO wire work in these sequences. If you see it, you'll find that as hard to believe as I do. I loved it.

I'm dividing my time between grading, movies, and yard work right now. Some time I need to work in painting, too, as I'm getting way behind.... Maybe next week.