The best film in Cannes this year was DAI NIPPONJIN (Big Japanese Man) by comedian Matsumoto Hitoshi that screened in the Director's Fortnight. Unlike some of the dreary and pretentious films in the main competition (in particular Sukhorov's ALEXANDRA and Kusturica's PROMISE ME THIS which surely represent low points of Eastern Euro art cinema - as if we cared) DAI NIPPONJIN was a crafty, intelligent deconstruction of the Japanese monster movie, and Japanese masculinity.
The movie is shot like a TV documentary (in particular the insistent almost desperate Japanese TV documentary with its inane commentary) but to call this a "mockumentary" is to limit its scope. It centers around a slacker, has-been super hero who lives in a dump of a six tatami mat apartment, and whose TV ratings have been falling. Just what kind of super hero he is is soon revealed when some strange elastic monster attacks Tokyo. Our super hero is connected to the electrical grid which pumps him up to Godzilla-sized proportions. In this configuration he sheds his slacker outfit and appears like a giant sumo wrestler wearing only a pair of purple underpants. His unkempt hair stands up straight on end, like that Kid'n Play guy in HOUSE PARTY. He struggles with the monster, stomping on a few freeways and talk buildings in the process.
But the fact that he is successful is boring for his TV audience. In between bouts with these eccentric and intensely surrealistic monsters, we learn more about our superhero. He has tried to live up to his father and grandfather's standards (both were super heroes as well) but he feels something of a failure. Ironically it is when he is a demonstrable failure - when he is beaten around by another invading monster - that his TV ratings go up and interest in his appearances revives.
The end of the film is stunning - in a sudden switch of gears, the film is propelled into a sardonic and caustic take on Saturday morning TV shows in the genre of MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS as appropriated by Bushite America.
Its depiction of a world created and perceived by TV as a reality show (isn't that our world now?) but inhabited by larger-than-life characters, DAI NIPPONJIN falls into the anarcho-surrealist animus of the society of the spectacle. It captures perfectly our contemporary aesthetic propagated by reality TV - the humiliation of the Other. It's a trait of puritanical societies to humiliate in order to purify - why else did the most successful late 20th century reality TV shows originate from the Endemol production company in the Netherlands, the home of Dutch puritanism which then crossed the Atlantic to the United States? DAI NIPPONJIN understands this from the Japanese perspective with that country's equally puritanical aesthetic.
The most interesting strain of Japanese cinema is thus established - it is a line that runs from singing frogs in the 1960s, to the social struggles of the tournament ring in CALAMARI WRESTLER, finds its purest expression in EXECUTIVE KOALA and is cleverly matched in DAI NIPPONJIN. This aesthetic of anthropomorphism can be traced back to the fox myth in Japanese culture but it is also, in the past few years, a strong riposte to the inanities and mediocrity of 3D animation and those awful Miyazaki cartoons.
In the Hello Kitty society of Japan, films like EXECUTIVE KOALA and DAI NIPPONJIN, are in the forefont of resistance.
Jun 19, 2007
Sep 28, 2006
A Quick Trip to Bangkok
Scenes from a Bangkok premier of METROSEXUAL
I make a quick trip to Bangkok to watch some movies. I don't know Thai cinema. I know some of the early films by Restan Pestonji - one of the greats. And I recently learned of the work of Euthana Mukdasanit - generally unrecognized. He made two musicals in the 1970s, ambitious constructions inspired by a re-reading of Hollywood. Today he is back in theater, running an acting workshop in the tradition of Stella Adler et al. A great force in Thai theater (he staged "Kiss of the Spider Woman" in Thai) and cinema, he is yet to be confirmed as one of the masters of cinema. I go to his theater and interview him for CINEPOD. More on him later.
With filmmaker Jim Shum, I go to the premier of a new film METROSEXUAL, a comedy about a gay guy that is a sharp commentary on contemporary Thai society. The premier takes place in a shopping mall somewhere in Bangkok. Neither Jim nor I speak Thai so we struggle with the taxi driver as we cruise up and down long roads. We make it in time for the opening ceremony and catch director Yongyoot. He's a bouncy filmmaker, probably best known in the US for IRON LADIES, a movie about transvestite ball players. The permier is buzzing and crowded with a mixture of fans, onlookers, shoppers and just plain curious - and Jim and I who wander among the Thai crowd - the only non-Thai media in this completely local event. The film is good, and the experience is unbeatable.
Coming up on CINEPOD
We have been working on the new episodes.
Look out for :
The Blossoming of Filipino Indies
"THE BLOSSOMING OF MAXIMO OLIVEROS" is the most successful Filipino indie film ever made. It has won prizes at international film festivals including Berlin. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and opened in the US on September 22.
Reviews have been glowing.
"The story revolves around a young boy's spiritual -- rather than sexual -- coming-of-age. Eleven-year-old Maximo, who is already out and proud, hustles a living on the street life with his father, a small time gang boss, and his two cheerful brothers. Manila's streets are rife with police corruption, so everyone's taken aback by the arrival of Victor, a clean-cut and principled cop. Maximo immediately develops a crush on Victor, who befriends the boy. But a police crackdown brings Victor into conflict with Maximo's criminal father. "Blossoming" doesn't concern itself with the child's sexuality. It wholeheartedly accepts his sexual orientation from the start, then gets on with the story. As with many Filipino films, it is mainly concerned with family relationships and how these are unexpectedly destabilized by the arrival of an outsider." - Richard James Havis, The Hollywood Reporter
We sat down with Raymond Lee, producer and Auraeus Solito, director of the film. CINEPOD on "The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros" will air on October 14 at 8 p.m., October 15 at 7.30 p.m., and October 18 at 6.30 p.m.
Look out for :
The Blossoming of Filipino Indies
"THE BLOSSOMING OF MAXIMO OLIVEROS" is the most successful Filipino indie film ever made. It has won prizes at international film festivals including Berlin. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and opened in the US on September 22.
Reviews have been glowing.
"The story revolves around a young boy's spiritual -- rather than sexual -- coming-of-age. Eleven-year-old Maximo, who is already out and proud, hustles a living on the street life with his father, a small time gang boss, and his two cheerful brothers. Manila's streets are rife with police corruption, so everyone's taken aback by the arrival of Victor, a clean-cut and principled cop. Maximo immediately develops a crush on Victor, who befriends the boy. But a police crackdown brings Victor into conflict with Maximo's criminal father. "Blossoming" doesn't concern itself with the child's sexuality. It wholeheartedly accepts his sexual orientation from the start, then gets on with the story. As with many Filipino films, it is mainly concerned with family relationships and how these are unexpectedly destabilized by the arrival of an outsider." - Richard James Havis, The Hollywood Reporter
We sat down with Raymond Lee, producer and Auraeus Solito, director of the film. CINEPOD on "The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros" will air on October 14 at 8 p.m., October 15 at 7.30 p.m., and October 18 at 6.30 p.m.
Sep 6, 2006
Cinepod Announcement
PRESS RELEASE
CINEPOD FINDS HOME ON BAY AREA'S PERALTA TV
A new program on movies is included in Peralta TV’s Fall line up of original programming.
CINEPOD a weekly half hour program on the movies will debut on Saturday September 16 at 8 pm on Peralta TV.
CINEPOD is the creation of Executive Producer Roger Garcia. The program is a journey through cinema, following Garcia as he attends film festivals around the world, and also interviews various filmmakers, critics and talents. To round out the series, Garcia will also profile filmmakers and review their works.
The first episodes of CINEPOD are being readied for the mid-September start. The first episode is Garcia’s report on the Berlin International Film Festival which took place earlier this year. Garcia covers Michael Winterbottom’s controversial film THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO, and encounters OLD BOY Korean director Park Chan-wook making a one-person protest at the festival. He also talks to Film Comment magazine’s European editor Olaf Moeller, and upcoming Malaysian filmmaker Woo Ming-Jin. Subsequent episodes feature an interview with Japanese cult director Takashi Miike (ICHII THE KILLER); the soldier-artist turned Oscar nominee from China, Shui Bo-Wang; and one of the founders of modern European film culture Ulrich Gregor.
“Cinepod is an exploration of cinema through the people who make it, think about it, and promote it,” says Garcia, “it is not your usual superficial sound-bite entertainment fetish about Hollywood celebrities. It’s more a dialogue about cinema, and gives voice and focus to what cinema is really about – the human experience. I wanted to create a program about cinema that is different from the way that movies are usually treated on TV – for example, people on TV rarely talk about film criticism, film theories or historical films in a way that is alive and immediate. And yet these are the aspects of movies that have shaped the way we see the world.”
An important aspect of CINEPOD is its breadth, from commercial films, through exploitation movies, to art films and experimental works. “I think I am a cinephile,” says Garcia. “I am prepared to watch anything – and in general I have watched anything! The cinema is not just a story, explosions, or movie stars making out. A real movie is one that has captured or glimpsed the truth – a movie that bears witness to genuine experience.”
Future episodes promise to be wide ranging – from portraits of classic masters of cinema; through reports on film festivals in India, Korea, and Italy; to conversations with French film critic Max Tessier, Director of the Venice Film Festival Marco Muller, and emerging filmmakers Auraeus Solito and Raya Martin from the Philippines.
Garcia is producing the CINEPOD programs with Associate Producer Chanel Kong, and Los Angeles Correspondent Philip Chung, a screenwriter, columnist and playwright and director of the Lodestone Theater Company.
Roger Garcia was previously director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival. His writings on cinema have been published by Variety, Film Comment, Cahiers du Cinema, and the British Film Institute among many others. As film producer he has made box office hits in Hollywood, and independent films in Asia. He has been involved in many film festivals including Berlin, London, and Locarno. He is currently program consultant for San Francisco International Film Festival, Torino Film Festival and Udine Film Festival in Italy. He recently curated a program and published a book on a retrospective of Asian musicals in Italy.
More about Cinepod on the website:
www.cinepod.net
CINEPOD FINDS HOME ON BAY AREA'S PERALTA TV
A new program on movies is included in Peralta TV’s Fall line up of original programming.
CINEPOD a weekly half hour program on the movies will debut on Saturday September 16 at 8 pm on Peralta TV.
CINEPOD is the creation of Executive Producer Roger Garcia. The program is a journey through cinema, following Garcia as he attends film festivals around the world, and also interviews various filmmakers, critics and talents. To round out the series, Garcia will also profile filmmakers and review their works.
The first episodes of CINEPOD are being readied for the mid-September start. The first episode is Garcia’s report on the Berlin International Film Festival which took place earlier this year. Garcia covers Michael Winterbottom’s controversial film THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO, and encounters OLD BOY Korean director Park Chan-wook making a one-person protest at the festival. He also talks to Film Comment magazine’s European editor Olaf Moeller, and upcoming Malaysian filmmaker Woo Ming-Jin. Subsequent episodes feature an interview with Japanese cult director Takashi Miike (ICHII THE KILLER); the soldier-artist turned Oscar nominee from China, Shui Bo-Wang; and one of the founders of modern European film culture Ulrich Gregor.
“Cinepod is an exploration of cinema through the people who make it, think about it, and promote it,” says Garcia, “it is not your usual superficial sound-bite entertainment fetish about Hollywood celebrities. It’s more a dialogue about cinema, and gives voice and focus to what cinema is really about – the human experience. I wanted to create a program about cinema that is different from the way that movies are usually treated on TV – for example, people on TV rarely talk about film criticism, film theories or historical films in a way that is alive and immediate. And yet these are the aspects of movies that have shaped the way we see the world.”
An important aspect of CINEPOD is its breadth, from commercial films, through exploitation movies, to art films and experimental works. “I think I am a cinephile,” says Garcia. “I am prepared to watch anything – and in general I have watched anything! The cinema is not just a story, explosions, or movie stars making out. A real movie is one that has captured or glimpsed the truth – a movie that bears witness to genuine experience.”
Future episodes promise to be wide ranging – from portraits of classic masters of cinema; through reports on film festivals in India, Korea, and Italy; to conversations with French film critic Max Tessier, Director of the Venice Film Festival Marco Muller, and emerging filmmakers Auraeus Solito and Raya Martin from the Philippines.
Garcia is producing the CINEPOD programs with Associate Producer Chanel Kong, and Los Angeles Correspondent Philip Chung, a screenwriter, columnist and playwright and director of the Lodestone Theater Company.
Roger Garcia was previously director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival. His writings on cinema have been published by Variety, Film Comment, Cahiers du Cinema, and the British Film Institute among many others. As film producer he has made box office hits in Hollywood, and independent films in Asia. He has been involved in many film festivals including Berlin, London, and Locarno. He is currently program consultant for San Francisco International Film Festival, Torino Film Festival and Udine Film Festival in Italy. He recently curated a program and published a book on a retrospective of Asian musicals in Italy.
More about Cinepod on the website:
www.cinepod.net
Aug 28, 2006
From Blog to TV
CINEPOD is now extending from a blog into television and internet broadcasting!
We begin our weekly series on:
Saturday, September 16, 2006 at 8 p.m.
on Peralta TV in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Here's the line up for the first month -
September 16 - "Die Berlinale"
Berlin International Film Festival report - join us at one of the top film festivals in the world. See Michael Winterbottom's discuss his controversial film at the "The Road to Guantanamo" press conference; check out why Park Chan-wook, the Korean director of "Old Boy" is making a one-man protest; and check out why Berlin has always been in love with the movies.
September 23 - "From Mao to Oscar"
Growing up in China, Shui-Bo Wang really wanted to join the Peoples' Liberation Army. He became a soldier-artist but is now an Oscar nominated filmmaker. His latest documentary is "They Chose China" a fascinating story of the American GIs who stayed in China after the Korean War. We talked to him at the San Francisco International Film Festival.
September 30 - "Friend of the German Film Archive"
Ulrich Gregor is one of the important makers of European film culture. Presiding over the Arsenal Cinema in Berlin, and the Forum program section of the Berlin International Film Festival, he has influenced the course of new cinema and helped introduce Asian cinema to Europe. He sat down with CINEPOD in Berlin.
October 7 - "Looking for Miike"
A portrait of Takashi Miike, Japanese cult movie maker - we look for Miike in Tokyo and track him down in Italy where he's showing his controversial English language film "Imprint" from the Masters of Horror series. We sit down for a chat with him.
CINEPOD Webisodes will also start streaming on the internet in October. These will be short reports from festivals, meditations on cinema, and reviews of films and filmmakers that we like (or hate).
Check all of this out at our website www.cinepod.net!
We begin our weekly series on:
Saturday, September 16, 2006 at 8 p.m.
on Peralta TV in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Here's the line up for the first month -
September 16 - "Die Berlinale"
Berlin International Film Festival report - join us at one of the top film festivals in the world. See Michael Winterbottom's discuss his controversial film at the "The Road to Guantanamo" press conference; check out why Park Chan-wook, the Korean director of "Old Boy" is making a one-man protest; and check out why Berlin has always been in love with the movies.
September 23 - "From Mao to Oscar"
Growing up in China, Shui-Bo Wang really wanted to join the Peoples' Liberation Army. He became a soldier-artist but is now an Oscar nominated filmmaker. His latest documentary is "They Chose China" a fascinating story of the American GIs who stayed in China after the Korean War. We talked to him at the San Francisco International Film Festival.
September 30 - "Friend of the German Film Archive"
Ulrich Gregor is one of the important makers of European film culture. Presiding over the Arsenal Cinema in Berlin, and the Forum program section of the Berlin International Film Festival, he has influenced the course of new cinema and helped introduce Asian cinema to Europe. He sat down with CINEPOD in Berlin.
October 7 - "Looking for Miike"
A portrait of Takashi Miike, Japanese cult movie maker - we look for Miike in Tokyo and track him down in Italy where he's showing his controversial English language film "Imprint" from the Masters of Horror series. We sit down for a chat with him.
CINEPOD Webisodes will also start streaming on the internet in October. These will be short reports from festivals, meditations on cinema, and reviews of films and filmmakers that we like (or hate).
Check all of this out at our website www.cinepod.net!
Jun 8, 2005
Conversation with Lav Diaz, Part Two
In Part Two of our conversation with Lav Diaz, he discusses his entry into the commercial Filipino film industry and the pito pito films he made for Regal, and his attempts to make films with Dostoyevskian themes, and a consciousness about the Filipino psyche, the schism in the Filipino Left within the action and "bold" genres.
Duration: approximately 20 minutes
Format: MP3
Duration: approximately 20 minutes
Format: MP3
Jun 7, 2005
Conversation with Lav Diaz, Part One
In Part One of our conversation with Lav Diaz, the Filipino filmmaker discusses his early formation and influences, and his activity as rock singer and work as journalist.
Duration: approximately 12 minutes
Format: MP3
Lav Diaz - an introduction
Lav Diaz has emerged as the leading filmmaker of the new Filipino cinema. Although he began in commercial scriptwriting for television, he started shooting an independent documentary when he arrived in the US. Still unfinished, he put that film on hold when he returned to Manila in the mid 1990s when he started making "commercial" films for Regal Studios. His first movie, BURGER BOYS is ostensibly a teen comedy of four guys, but becomes a self-reflexive film on the nature of the genre. His second film CRIMINAL OF BARRIO CONCEPCION is a parable of Filipino society told through the investigation into a kidnapping and murder. Made as a "pito pito" movie (seven day low budget film) for Regal Studios' Good Harvest film division, Diaz continued with NAKED UNDER THE MOON, supposedly a "bold" movie (featuring Claudia Koronel as a naked sonambulist) but in reality a discourse on the nature of faith, both spiritual and political. With these three films, Diaz established himself as a distinctive voice - maverick, articulate, intelligent. Not your usual hack filmmaker in a genre driven industry.
Diaz then went on to make BATANG WEST SIDE as an independent. Shot in the US, the film deals with the Filipino community in Jersey City. It features an impressive performance by Joel Torre as a Filipino working in the Jersey police force investigating the murder of a kid (Yul Servo in a noteworthy debut as the "batang") found on the streets. Diaz paints a portrait of a community eroding under drugs (shabu) and hidden skeletons from the past. At five and a half hours, the film becomes novelistic in nature, describing a state of mind as well as a state of the community. Diaz marked another return to the Philippines with a renewed attempt at "commercial" cinema with HESUS REBOLUSYONARIO, a film about dissent set in the not too distant future.
Most recently, Diaz has made EBOLUSYON, a 10 1/2 hour epic about a rural family in the Philippines as they struggle through the martial law years of Marcos to the People Power revolution of Cory Aquino. Diaz finds strength in the women who suffer and struggle, the grandmother and her daughters who represent the soul of the Philippines as the men drift into crime and degeneration. EBOLUSYON is the first masterpiece of cinema produced by the Philippines in the 21st century.
Listen to the conversations with Lav Diaz on this blog-site.
Diaz then went on to make BATANG WEST SIDE as an independent. Shot in the US, the film deals with the Filipino community in Jersey City. It features an impressive performance by Joel Torre as a Filipino working in the Jersey police force investigating the murder of a kid (Yul Servo in a noteworthy debut as the "batang") found on the streets. Diaz paints a portrait of a community eroding under drugs (shabu) and hidden skeletons from the past. At five and a half hours, the film becomes novelistic in nature, describing a state of mind as well as a state of the community. Diaz marked another return to the Philippines with a renewed attempt at "commercial" cinema with HESUS REBOLUSYONARIO, a film about dissent set in the not too distant future.
Most recently, Diaz has made EBOLUSYON, a 10 1/2 hour epic about a rural family in the Philippines as they struggle through the martial law years of Marcos to the People Power revolution of Cory Aquino. Diaz finds strength in the women who suffer and struggle, the grandmother and her daughters who represent the soul of the Philippines as the men drift into crime and degeneration. EBOLUSYON is the first masterpiece of cinema produced by the Philippines in the 21st century.
Listen to the conversations with Lav Diaz on this blog-site.
Jun 1, 2005
It's all about movies
CINEPOD is Roger Garcia's unique look at the world of cinema. Join Roger as he travels the world to film festivals and film archives both on and off the beaten track from Berlin to New Delhi to Italy to Manila.
Sit in as CINEPOD reporters talk to the people who make films amd film culture - filmmakers like John Woo, and Nicolas Winding Refn. Follow Roger as he explores film archives from Torino to Thailand.
Sit in as CINEPOD reporters talk to the people who make films amd film culture - filmmakers like John Woo, and Nicolas Winding Refn. Follow Roger as he explores film archives from Torino to Thailand.
Check out reviews, filmmaker portraits, and fascinating glimpses into film history and see why CINEPOD is like no other program on the movies!!
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