Midday Musings

Now it's the middle of the day, and I still have a few thoughts in my head.

From the Star Online Malaysia:

18th Singapore International Film Festival. We have a competitor for the competition part of the festival- the movie 1st Time. Yeah, you probably remember right- it's the movie with the Viva Hot Babes. Aside from acting ranging from horribly bad (Myles Hernandez was terrible in her segment, as far as I can remember) to halfway decent (read: most of the supporting cast) and poorly edited sex scenes, which may have been more of the fault of censors rather than the editor, the film is technically proficient. There are definitely some good shots in the movie, and the camerawork was honestly surprising.

Other competitors from the festival include, and I quote directly from the source:
Thoi Xa Vang/ A Time Far Past (Ho Quang Minh, Vietnam)
Bow Barracks Forever (Anjan Dutt, India)
Rindu Kami PadaMu/ Of Love and Eggs (Garin Nugroho, Indonesia)
Stray Dogs (Marziyeh Meshkini, Iran)
Lu Mao Tze/ The Green Hat (Liu Fendou, Hong Kong)
Anshi/ The Hunter (Serik Aprymov, Japan/ Kazakhstan)
Yeoja, Jeong-hye/ This Charming Girl (Lee Yoon-Ki, Korea)
Sud Pralad/ Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)
Gheir Saleh/ Underexposure (Odey Rasheed, Germany/ Iraq).

I'm personally rooting for This Charming Girl. It's a great film that tells a lot without saying much - a piece of visual poetry that transcends language barriers.

Other films of note is Lav Diaz's epic Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino/Evolution of a Filipino Family which runs for 11 freaking hours. Wow. You may know Lav Diaz from another long movie - Batang West Side, which ran for around 5 hours. What can I say, the man has a penchant for long movies. I can understand why some of the judges for the MMFF went out for snacks often while viewing his film - they must have been addicted to the 1.5-2 hour format that is normally accepted everywhere. Well, except for Bollywood. Those clunkers are three hours long on average.

The closing film is Mamoru Oshii's Innocence, sequel to the anime classic Ghost in the Shell. The movie is a pure visual experience, bathed in philosphical discussions on dolls and the human image. It's based on one of the story arcs in the original Ghost in the Shell manga. The interesting thing is in the manga, this story arc that Innocence was based on appears before the Puppet Master story arc, which was the basis for the first film. Confused yet? Wait'll you see the films themselves.

That's about it. See you in the afternoon.