Movie reviews
Aug. 4th, 2005 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexxkayLast night was low key, but fun. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rufinia stopped by for a bit, and gyzki for longer. Had pizza. Saw one and a half Very Odd movies.
Channel surfing, I came in about half way through The Vampire Effect, and got drawn in enough to stay to the end (with various interruptions for answering the door, dealing with pizza, etc.). Joss Whedon has said that Buffy owed a lot of inspiration to Hong Kong action movies. Well, this movie returned the favor. Tough asian babes, fighting (and sometimes dating) vampires, with alternating wackiness and angst, overlaid with cheesy english dubbing. The secne that grabbed me was when Jackie Chan (in a small role as an ambulance driver), after failing to defeat a pair of vampires with his kung fu skill, disabled them by drumming rhythymicaly on the back of the ambulance. Apparently, vampires are so funky, that they cannot prevent themselves from gettin' down and dancin' when the beat is on. Also features some nifty vampire-hunter gear: small wooden cylinders that seem related to Minbari battle staves -- press a button and it turns into a wooden katana! It can turn into additonal cool ninja weapons as well.
For those of you reading this who will get the reference, it was very much a "KitchenCon movie". Recommended for fans of silly martial arts and/or silly vampires.
kestrell had picked up a version of Faust by Czech film maker Jan Svankmajer. I've heard lots of interesting things about him, but never actually seen any of his work before. The text (when there is any) is taken from a variety of theatrical versions of Faust, but large sections of it have no speech. You know that scene early in Baron Munchausen, where a stage set turns into reality without it being clear how the transition happened? This movie does that trick a *lot* -- very surreal. Sometimes it's set in Prague, sometimes in a theater set, sometimes in some undefined pastoral location, and which of these the setting is can change several times over the course of a single scene. The theater itself is sometimes doing opera, but mostly doing marionette shows. The marionettes sometimes seem small, sometimes human-size, and sometimes gigantic -- scale as well as setting is fluid here. Puppetry, claymation, and various other animation techniques are all used at various points.
The high point of the film, for me, was the summoning of Mephistopheles. One of the most interesting depictions of magic ritual I've ever seen. One gets the strong impression that Mephistopheles *really* doesn't like to be summoned, and that most people who try get either scared off or killed in the course of attempting it.
Recommended for fans of surrealism, and/or strong visual imagery.
rufinia stopped by for a bit, and gyzki for longer. Had pizza. Saw one and a half Very Odd movies.Channel surfing, I came in about half way through The Vampire Effect, and got drawn in enough to stay to the end (with various interruptions for answering the door, dealing with pizza, etc.). Joss Whedon has said that Buffy owed a lot of inspiration to Hong Kong action movies. Well, this movie returned the favor. Tough asian babes, fighting (and sometimes dating) vampires, with alternating wackiness and angst, overlaid with cheesy english dubbing. The secne that grabbed me was when Jackie Chan (in a small role as an ambulance driver), after failing to defeat a pair of vampires with his kung fu skill, disabled them by drumming rhythymicaly on the back of the ambulance. Apparently, vampires are so funky, that they cannot prevent themselves from gettin' down and dancin' when the beat is on. Also features some nifty vampire-hunter gear: small wooden cylinders that seem related to Minbari battle staves -- press a button and it turns into a wooden katana! It can turn into additonal cool ninja weapons as well.
For those of you reading this who will get the reference, it was very much a "KitchenCon movie". Recommended for fans of silly martial arts and/or silly vampires.
kestrell had picked up a version of Faust by Czech film maker Jan Svankmajer. I've heard lots of interesting things about him, but never actually seen any of his work before. The text (when there is any) is taken from a variety of theatrical versions of Faust, but large sections of it have no speech. You know that scene early in Baron Munchausen, where a stage set turns into reality without it being clear how the transition happened? This movie does that trick a *lot* -- very surreal. Sometimes it's set in Prague, sometimes in a theater set, sometimes in some undefined pastoral location, and which of these the setting is can change several times over the course of a single scene. The theater itself is sometimes doing opera, but mostly doing marionette shows. The marionettes sometimes seem small, sometimes human-size, and sometimes gigantic -- scale as well as setting is fluid here. Puppetry, claymation, and various other animation techniques are all used at various points. The high point of the film, for me, was the summoning of Mephistopheles. One of the most interesting depictions of magic ritual I've ever seen. One gets the strong impression that Mephistopheles *really* doesn't like to be summoned, and that most people who try get either scared off or killed in the course of attempting it.
Recommended for fans of surrealism, and/or strong visual imagery.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-05 01:39 am (UTC)I always had the impression that it was supposed to be hard to do (that is, Mephistopheles wants it to be hard to do) because if you try it and fail, M. gets to eat your soul right away, instead of having to serve you first. But I do agree it was one of the most interesting summoning rituals I've seen on film.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-05 01:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-05 03:16 pm (UTC)I presume Kes found it at Amazon. It's certainly available from there.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-05 06:41 pm (UTC)