Kaboom: Gregg Araki (LFF)

Pulled from this year's Frightfest by the director, the film tells of a bisexual college student sharing a room with a surfer stud
with a lesbian best friend at the same college. She takes him to a party where she immediately goes off with her latest desire
and he is almost as immediately approached by a girl who is sick over his shoes. While cleaning these in the men's room, he
is accosted by another girl who wants to fuck so he does. The film goes down from there with his having weird dreams, seeing the girl who was sick over him kidnapped by men in animal masks, having sex with the second girl frequently while his
best friend finds she cannot stop her sexual activities either. Brightly lit with reasonably good-looking females and an out-of-sight plot, all that can be said in the film's favour is that it is fairly short, well lit and pacy.

Biutiful: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (LFF)

A strong and inspired central performance by Javier Barden playing a hustler who is dying of cancer holds the film together.
He cares for his two children on his own while dealing with illegal African immigrant street sellers, Chinese sweatshop workers and labourers and a divorced wife with a bi-polar condition. The cinematography in the poorer parts of Barcelona add to the downbeat tone of the film which Bardem's efforts at treating the immigrants fairly fail to overcome. There is a
more coherent film to the film because it focuses on Bardem then was apparent in Inarritu's last two films 21 Grams and Babel
but this is more a film to be admired than liked.

Sunny Side Up: David Butler (LFF)

A 1929 film starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, this is considered the first musical that had a story line, albeit a rather
stilted one. It is the 4th of July and preparations for the celebration in Yorkville are contrasted with those at a house party in
Southampton where Farrell, the rich son of Mary Foster, leaves the party in annoyance at the behaviour of his fiancee.
As the Yorkville celebrations reach the evening peak, Farrell drives in and causes a ruckus though this is not his fault as he
has crashed his car to avoid and young girl in the street. He hears Gaynor sing and decides she should go to Southampton to sing at an upcoming charity concert his mother has organised with the aim of having her make his fiancee jealous in the process. He pays for her to be suitable dressed, for her three friends to join her as her servants - butler, maid and chauffeur - and rents the next door mansion for them. The plot succeeds though Gaynor has fallen in love with him so is not too happy at this. On the evening of the concert, one of the local socialites overhears two of the friends let slip that Farrell is
paying the rent next door. The whispers start and, following a bizarre routine with 36 of the local girls dressed in furs before
they appear in swimming costumes and fountains play (shades of Busby Berkeley to come), Marjorie White tells Janet Gaynor to leave immediately. Gaynor does, however, sing her song first and then goes back to Yorkville to mope. She realises she has left her diary behind so she goes off by train while her three friends try to catch up with her by road. For some reason,
White goes to the rented house, finds and reads the diary and realises she has wrongly maligned Gaynor. So it all ends
happily. What is proved without doubt is that Gaynor can neither sing nor dance, Farrell could not act and speak in the same
film and second leads in musicals then seemed to bellow! The songs are standards - Sunny Side Up, If I Had a Talking Picture of You and I'm a Dreamer, Aren't We All the main ones - and these save the film from what otherwiss would be well-
deserved oblivion.

13 Assassins: Takashi Miike (LFF)

In the dying years of the Shogunate, the council of elders decide they must act against Lord Naritsugu who is the present
Shogun's favoured successor, a position which allows him to behave as he will. They instruct a retired samurai to assemble
a team to make him disappear when he next returns to his domain. He does this even though a former dear colleague is now the head of Naritsugu's troops. His usual route to his domain is blocked by a nobleman who resents his behaviour so he
has to detour but is then persuaded to take a less direct route which throws the assassins' plans out. They go cross country
but get lost until they meet up with an outlaw who leads them over the hills to the town of Ochiai through which Lord Naritsugu musr pass. They chase the inhabitants out and fortify the town so that when he turns up with his escort of 200 men they are able to isolate them into smaller groups and mayhem ensues. During the extended fight, the assassins are
killed off one by one until only three remain though by now they are fighting near enough the same number. The lead
assassin fights and kills his former friend and then the evil lord before dying from his wounds. This leaves his young protege and the outlaw who has become the unfficial 13th assassin alive in the ruins of the town. A slowish build-up though not
without interest is more than offset by the prolonged battle in the final reels. Brilliently executed.

Surviving Life: Jan Svankmaier (LFF)

A married man dreams of a beautiful woman and goes to a psychcoanalyst to try and resolve his confusions. Following the
usual Svankmaier mix of paper cut-outs, claymation and real life action, there are a series of surreal scenes during which his
mental state is explored. Probably well up to standard but I was in the wrong frame of mind for it.

The Sleeping Beauty: Catherine Breillat (LFF)

A sort of feminist update on the fairy tale with the princess being cursed to die at 16 but three young witches, first seen in
the nude bathing, convert this to falling asleep for 100 years, being able to move around in her dreams and then for the curse to run from 6 to 16 as childhood is the boring part of life. This happens and the young princess goes through a series of
adventures, falling in love with a young lad who is taken by the Snow Queen, living with gypsies and other events until she
reahces 16 when she wakes up and meets someone she takes to be the long-lost boyfriend but is actually his great-grandson. She is now old enough to do something about the love she had as a 6 year old for a protective older boy which she does to end up pregnant - end of film. Boring.

The Book of Masters: Vadim Sokolovsky (LFF)

A fairytale princess out picking flowers with her grandmothers touches a magic stone which turns her into a Stone Queen who
is trapped in a tower for eternity so she vows revenge on all humans and creates an army of stone warriors who lay waste to
the surrounding area. It turns out that there is a resolution to the curse which involves a stonecutter remodelling the magic stone though this can, if done wrongly, give the Stone Queen the ability to end the world. A rather dopey looking boy has
followed his father's trade and learns all there is to know about stone cutting having read the Book of Masters. After a number of adventures including a beautiful young maid with whom he, of course, falls in love, he ends as the hero of the hour and all live happily ever after. The production does from time to time cut from live action to a printed page which then
comes to life to move the story on - very effectively done. A charming film.

End of Animal: Jo Sung-Hee (LFF)

A girl is travelling by taxi to her mother's home in the country and agrees to give a hitch-hiker a lift. He seems to know all about the driver and the girl as well as forecasting some sort of disaster. This duly happens and the driver goes off to find
help, leaving the girl in the cab. The stranger vanishes and the girl finds herself in a twisted loop where she is bullied by
others and gets nowhere until finally giving birth by the roadside - although her pregnancy is established early on, she does not look that advanced at the start. The stranger, who has appeared again from time to time, turns up again and takes the baby leaving the girl sitting by the roadside reciting a list of things she wants. I confess i fell asleep at times during this very odd film in which so little actually happens. The director is overly fond of over-long distance shots which make Bela Tarr come across as almost an action helmer.

Mammuth: Benoit Delepine, Gustave Kervern (LFF)

The previous two films by these directors were more than a little odd, one a wheelchair road movie and the other a mixed up revenge movie. The attraction here is the two leads - Gerard Depardieu and Yolande Moreau. They play a married couple with his retirement from the local abattoir kicking the film off. He discovers that he needs to obtain paperwork from previous employers to get a pension and the film becomes a combination of a road movie and nostalgia. The opening fe
scenes are farcical, especially the ones in the local supermarket but the film seems to lose its way though there are several
amusing sequences - and at least one very sick one. Isabelle Adjani appears as a ghost from the past with her face rather
damaged which turns out to be the result of Depardieu having crashed his motorbike while she was a passenger - he lived,
she didn't. Mammuth, incidentally, is the make of bike he rode which turns out to be worth a lot of money. A strange and
somewhat disappointing film.

La Princesse de Montpensier: Bertrand Tavernier (LFF)

Based on a story by Madame de Lafayette, this historical film is set during the religious strife in 16th century France. The
cinematography is excellent both in the outdoor and indoor scenes and the acting, particularly by Melanie Thierry in the
eponymous lead and by Lambert Wilson, her tutor, first rate. She is in love with her cousin though engaged to his brother
but is marroed off to another noble for political reasons to further her father's ambitions. Needless to say, although she tries to be faithful to her husband she has sex with the cousin she loves and also develops a strong attachment for Lambert
Wilson. The film ends in tragedy after a number of well-constructed and highly charged scenes both at her husband's castle and at the royal court. A really good film.

Two German silent films

Schlagende Wetter (Firedamp)directed by Karl Grune, is a restored 1923 film about a marriage saved by a mine explosion. The story is straightforward - a girl becomes pregnant and her lover runs away and she is kicked out of the family home.
She meets up with a miner in Sankt Anton who marries her but it turns out that the runaway father is also here and he tries to rekindle the flame though she resists. A fire down the mine results in the erstwhile lover's demise and the couple's reconciliation. The film is rather incomplete but has some solid performances and interesting effects.
Die Wiesse Holle von Piz Palu (The White Hell of Pitz Palu) dates from 1929 and has two directors. Arnold Fanck who also wrote the story and Georg Wilhelm Pabst. One of a considerable number of mountain films of the 20s, several featuring, as does this one, Leni Riefenstahl, the film is considered by some to be the best mountain film of all. Again, marriage is at the heart of the film, one current and one forming the opening sequence with the loss of the wife. The widower meets
up with the second couple and they climb the eponymous peak together only to be caught in an avalanche when the weather turns. The widower sacrifices himself to save the couple. A somewhat trite melodrama which is saved by the excellent
photography both of the panoramic scenic shots of the mountains and, particularly, of the partly underground scenes of the
resuce party's efforts, the latter being extremely well done. What is of interest in comparing the two films is the amount of
development in equipment and the techniques that this allowed in the few years that separate the two. Even allowing for the fact that the older film is incomplete, the contrast is really striking.

Krajewski, Marek: The End of the World in Breslau

A middle-aged police detective has to solve some singularly unpleasant crimes while dealing with a younger unfaithful wife.
He seems to spend much of his time eating and drinking throughout the day so that he is more often than not either drunk or
suffering a hangover. He deduces that the crimes are linked to a Russian seer who has proclaimed that the end of the world
is nigh with ancient crimes being repeated and proceeds, with others, to search through the archives to find the originals of the present crimes and then to work out which comes next. The whole story is told in flashback as a form of deathbed confession though the device seems unnecessary. A well written curiosity in many ways which evokes the underworld of the
former capital of Silesia and its inhabitants more than adequately.

Frightfest 2010 Redux

As an exercise, I thought I would post a series of short comments on the filmss seen which may or may not reflect what I
thought of them.
Hatchet 2 - bury it!
Primal - anything but first!
Eggshells - better not hatched.
The Clinic - not for hypochondriacs
Finale - at least it's over!
Wound - either coming loose or a cut beneath depending on the pronunciation
F - no... B+
Christopher Roth - not a patch on Tim
Fanboys - preferred the fan girl
13 Hrs - Went quickly enough
I Spit On Your Grave - Should not have been resurrected
Monsters - rather a harsh description of the leads
The Pack - two queens and a joker beat the rest
Outcast - should be cast out
We Are What We Are - more's the pity
Amer - a bitter pill to swallow
Buried - see I Spit On Your Grave
Video Nasties - sweet!
After.Life - needed livening up
Bedevilled - you can't bank on a banker
Red White and Blue - flagged badly
The Last Exorcism - good job there was only one!

Stansberry, Domenic: The Big Boom

The return of the large-nosed PI, Dante Mancuso, who is asked to find a former sweetheart, daughter of an old San Franciscan
Italian family. She is found dead and the novel unfolds in a series of short, sometimes, disconnected chapters with the ending of the dot.com boom as background and, as it turns out, the reason behind the girl's death. A pleasant read which
manages to convey both the breaking down of old neighbourhoods and the slump following the boom - as one character puts it: "You think abour something long enough, you imagine it, after a while it does exist. You bring it into being." He continues by saying that the aim is to hang on to centure capital until the idea becomes real and thereby hangs the motive for the various killings. Not one of my favourites but readable.

Hughes, Dorothy B.: The Blackbirder

Having read four novels some years ago in a noir series, I was curious to see how the author translated those sentiments into
a spy thriller in this book set during World War II. The heroine is American by birth though raised in France and illegally returned to the USA to escape the Germans in Paris. She is seeking her childhood sweetheart, the son of the couple who has
raised her, though she believed he was for the Free French whereas his parents were decidedly pro-Nazi. From New York where she sees an acquaintance murdered she flees to Santa Fe, in and around which the action takes place. There is a lot
of duplicity, uncertain trust and numerous twists of fate during the course of the novel. The heroine has developed survival skills during her flight to safety from Paris and she needs these to keep herself alive. Unlike the traditional noir which has a
hero beset by a faithless woman, this has a heroine who finds she has a faithless hero though the final chapters which rely
(as often is the case) somewhat on coincidence do tend to the sentimental. However, reading this has prompted me to buy
'In a Lonely Place' which is perhaps her best-known novel.