R: Re: more TIFF

[cecilia.collaoni3 at tin.it]

I couldn't have a pass for all the selection I'm in Tokyo just for a 
trip, but I was there for both Tears of Kitty and Beauty, I completely 
agree with Mister Davis, Tears of Kitty was a little better, but I 
found Beauty sometimes irritating, even the Kabuki performances hadn't 
the fascination I expected. Has somebody something to say about 
Nakae's" Bloody snake under the sun"? I couldn't watch it and Im 
curious to hear some critic's opinion.
Best Regards, hoping to have 
more luck at TOKYO FILM EX.

Cecilia Collaoni 

----Messaggio 
originale----
Da: rwdavisjr at ca.rr.com
Data: 25-ott-2007 2.40 PM
A: 
<KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Cc: "Massa Alice"<kingyo02 at hotmail.
com>
Ogg: Re: more TIFF

Greetings from Tokyo!

Alice Massa wrote

> I 
met Mr Wakamatsu some weeks ago and he told me the initial score Jim 
O'Rourke composed was almost totally reworked to set the kind of music 
Wakamatsu himself wanted for his film. He said: Jim hasn't heard the 
final 
score yet, but I bet he won't like it at all...!!!!!!!

That 
makes a lot of sense, as it seemed to me there were, at least in the 
second half of the film, few cues used over and over again.

This is my 
first TIFF, btw. I used my guest lecture at Waseda U on Monday as an 
excuse to stay in Tokyo 10 days and attend the fest. TIFF seems well 
organized - the small army of volunteers seems to outnumber the press 
(I got a credential because I sometimes write for American 
Cinematographer magazine) by about three to one, but the selection, 
especially of Japanese films, seems surprisingly weak.

Unlike the 
Wakamatsu film we've been discussing, "Beauty" and "Tears of Kitty" 
seem to have zero artistic aspirations. And the most exciting thing 
about "Peeping Tom" was that Kurosawa Kiyoshi was sitting (sleeping?) 
in the row in front of me. The movie I most anticipated, Kobayashi 
Masahiro's "Ai no yokan", was the incredibly rigorously executed 
"story" of the father and mother of a 14-year-old murder victim and her 
14-year-old assailant, respectively. And though the premise sounds 
promising, the film consists of a dozen or more scenes of said father 
(Kobayashi himself) eating dinner and said mother doing the dishes, and 
little else. Today I saw Miike's "Crows Zero", apparently a kind of 
prequel to the manga. Miike spoke briefly before the film. One of my 
former students, now back at Waseda, a Miike fan, sensed from the talk 
that the director wasn't that enthusiastic about the film and indeed 
the TBS sponsored film (the figure 400,000,000 Y was mentioned re the 
budget) was non-stop fighting but uninspired, not particularly Miike-
esque in any one of Miike's many incarnations. My student thought it 
was a "Blue Spring" rehash on steroids, which seems a reasonable 
capsule assessment.

For my money, the most interesting film I've seen 
in Tokyo this week was Aoyama's "Sad Vacation" which was still playing 
at Shinjuku's Musashinokan. The movie seemed to have a real voice, a 
much more mature and distinctive rhythm than any of Aoyama's previous 
work (though I should perhaps say that I'm certainly not as big a fan 
of his "Eureka" as many probably are, so ...).

Others who're attending 
the fest may have more detailed comments, which I look forward to 
hearing. Ja mata.

Bob Davis