Venice awards

[Davide Gualandi]

Dolls is definitely a complex movie. I won't get into a proper review since
I'm pretty sure I need to see it again to have a real opinion about it. What
impressed me, is the reaction of colleagues and professionals in Venice. I
haven't seen any mixed reaction, the flick was acclaimed by most of the
crowd and the votes on the daily newspapers (there were two publications
reporting votes from the most important critics) were so high. It scored a
few 10 if I remember.

Since Kitano won in Venice with Hana-Bi and since japanese cinema is still
an unknown ground for many professionals, I think very few people actually
had anything bad and convincing to say about the movie (talking about
italian media here). I can't believe everyone liked it, it's such a hard
flick to go through. It can definitely inspire many connections with
literature and tradition, so anyone with an avarage culture can go through a
raving review pretty easily, but still, I don't think the movie can provoke
this overdose of emotion. This will sound pretty hasty, but I was checking
the time on my watch every now and then, I never really got into the movie.

Maybe I'm just malicious, but it seems that italian critics are pretty
scared to give out a simple opinion about the few japanese flicks presented
at our most important festival. Everything, from "A Snake Of June" to "Mizu
No Onna" by Hidenori Sugimori has been praised by people that wasn't
supposed to enjoy them so much, like everything japanese is cool anyway.
Anyway, this can be pretty cool, I know of people who'd like to grab rights
to bring A Snake Of June on video with subtitles for the italian market
(don't take this too seriously)...

Davide


----- Original Message -----
From: "mark schilling" <0934611501 at jcom.home.ne.jp>
To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 7:40 AM
Subject: Re: Venice awards


> My own review of Dolls, now online at the Screen Daily site
> http://www.screendaily.com/ is more on the "cheap orientalism" side.
Kitano
> has been slipping ever since "Hana-Bi"  -- and "Dolls" is a final plunge
> into a self-absorbed, literal-minded sentimentalism. The third act was
like
> "Way Down East" in a Japonesque mode, complete with an interminable trudge
> through the snow, but no heart-stopping leaps across the ice floes. D.W.
> Griffith could at least evoke pathos; Kitano in "Dolls" is the director as
> technician, who is more concerned with costumes and cinematography than
the
> story he happens to be telling. He's jingling the strings expertly
enough --
> but there's no life in his puppets.
>
> Mark Schilling
> schill at gol.com
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Aaron Gerow" <gerow at ynu.ac.jp>
> To: "KineJapan" <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
> Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 1:01 PM
> Subject: Venice awards
>
>
> > The official awards at the Venice Film Festival were announced and the
> > only Japanese film to be awarded seems to be Tsukamoto Shin'ya's
> > Rokugatsu no hebi (A Snake of June), which won a special jury award from
> > the Controcorrente (Upstream) Jury.
> >
> > The Japanese papers reported that reaction to Takeshi's Dolls was quite
> > mixed, with some calling it a masterpiece and some cheap orientalism.
> >
> > Any news from the scene?
> >
> > Aaron Gerow
> > Yokohama National University
> > KineJapan list owner
> > For list commands: send "information kinejapan" to
> > listserver at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> > Kinema Club: http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Welcome.html
> >
> >
>
>