Day 11

• Absurdistan

30 minutes late, the Easter holidays are definitely over. Anyway being late was definitely a shame, as this movie perfectly illustrates vectorial psychology in (in)action.
Far away is Absurdistan, a village with no water. Everyone would like this issue to be solved, but is too busy to tackle it: the men are drinking and the women complaining about rampant alcoholism. They go on a sex strike, hoping for some changes. Let's just say that the
village sheep have it real bad from then on.
A romantic comedy about intentions & motivations. Nice and dandy.

• Let the right One in

A two hours long Swedish vampire flick. The gimmick here is that the protagonists are 12.

• Passengers

An hour late.
Good music.
I see dead people. And a dumb scenarist...

• Trailer Park of Terror

A few good (sick;-) ideas. Adequate Z.

Day 9

• Rage

A murder story presented as a vlog about a fashion show. A few good character vignettes, even though most of them are caricatures really.Interesting form.
While the form is interesting and the plot somewhat funny, it is nonetheless incredibly boring.

emotionally undone

And I do not know why.
Still, I have a guess ;-)
Time to move on boy.

Let's face it: this situation is of your own doing, its conclusion is what you hoped for, and everyone is agreeing with you on that one. Still, you cannot escape the feeling that things could have been better, and you wish for a second chance. And, at the same time, you know that it would be a bad idea, because this is not what you want to do, just what you believe is expected of you, and that even though it looks good on paper, you do not want to be stuck with the end result. You would like to go through the moves because you like it, but you will not want what you will be building.
Solution: otherness.

Day 8

Day 8... I am hitting the wall: I cannot remember what I have seen yesterday, or four hours ago, without looking at my notes, and even then... Sometimes, it seems that do not even register some scenes, or interpret them badly.

• Les Dents de la Nuit

French vampire comedy.
Funny all around.
Quite good.

• Last House on the left

Efficient, good rhythm, not a bore.

• Children

Good ideas, fair pace, nice ambiance that owes too much to short plans sequence and too little to character development. Something about the pace is stil bothering me, but I cannot find exactly what.
Not excellent, but quite good..

• Mum and Dad

The tale of a functional & perverse family.
Disturbing, slow, oppressive, nice, concisely and precisely shot.

Perfectionnite

The trouble with being a perfectionist is that you tend to forget about how to make messes. Of course, you may very well create the perfect mess to suit your purposes, but you have forgotten how to make a mess of your life, and how to deal with it. You were so busy plotting, so successful in your schemes, so complacent in your victories that you have forgotten how not to be the prime mover in your life. And now it is payback time: you can no longer deny that you have missed a few steps.
So, what will you be doing about that? Well, do as usual: at first stop being overwhelmed, define the process that is bothering you, then back to your plotting routines, with a shorter cycle, like when you are learning, because this is exactly what is happening. And make messes, even if you are not supposed to, or if it hurts your pride, and learn from them.
You are so used to being right or, more appropriately, not to be wrong, that you have forgotten that yours game is not the only one in town.
Go learn it, play and have fun.

Day 7

• Before the Fall

Impending doom and the disintegration of social fabric that ensues. That pretty much sums up the first 15 minutes or so, then it goes downhill fast, and becomes quickly boring before the second story kicks in. Well shot, artsy, great ambiance, a tad too long.

• 8th Wonderland

Good questions, good theme, but neither a thriller nor a fantastic film nor exactly SF. All in all a good picture of how virtual communities usually work, and of the kind of disaster they might bring on should they become more than virtual.

• Shrill cries of Summer

First in BIFFF sleep...
A Japanese family moves to a beautiful village, faraway in the mountains. In Japan like in say, Tasmania, Switzerland or Argentina, the hillbillies have secrets, deadly secrets.
Nice photography, nice plot, 45 minutes too long.

• Dead in 3 Days 2
  

The first opus was more than bearable, because of its plot. Here, the scenario seems to revolve around happenstances, Deus ex machina and
Dumb, long.

• Walled in

From some Brussolo novel. Nice setting, boring plot, adequate ambiance, but far too long. Better as a book. If you can stand Brussolo...

• One eyed Monster

A film crew goes in the mountains to film a pr0n movie. Then, something from beyond possesses the main actor's dick.
Nice and funny.

Day 6

A quiet day, except for the monumental fuck-up due to the no cellphones policy during the Star Trek movie. It involved a frisk, possible deposit, then a retrieve, this added to the moronic BIFFF policy of using the less direct way to the exit meant that everything went on an hour late. I'll tackle the miserable inanity of copyright, DRM and un-real rights in another post, I am too tired for a rant.

• Star Trek

Quite good, for a Star Trek. Better than the last ones at any rate, which isn't saying much.
Nothing else to say really. I guess there is more if you are a Star Trek fan, which I am not.

• Flawless

A reverse Thomas Crown.
Adequate, great casting, obvious plot.

• Death Bell

Another teenagers trapped in school movie. Lacks knee high socks and killing beams.
While this movie is fair enough to me, it is quite culturally specific: it has to do with a foreign school system, with its own customs and idiosyncrasies. Furthermore, most of the plot revolves around language oriented enigmas, so it is no surprise that most of them were lost on the audience, despite an adequate English translation (except that I suspect that most people do not know what a PTA is), and a fair but not good enough French translation (which I suspect to be a translation of the English translation itself).
Well made, but doesn't bring anything new and quite boring, mainly due to the cultural gap.

• Deadgirl

Your usual dumb and sex-starved teenagers find out a chained woman in the local abandoned psychiatric hospital cellar. With such a beginning, things cannot go wrong. They may have been better, but it was good enough.

Day 5

• Missing

Your usual ghost love story with nice underwater shots. Then the tables are turned and it goes downhill.
Blond ghosts are dumb as fish sticks.
Well shot, pointless and boring. Especially once the ghost story ends.

• Candidate

A lawyer is being blackmailed. Between his blackout, his father's murder and funny practices and so well-intentioned associates, he has a few pickles to tackle. Good classical and predictable scenario, I liked the way it has been shot, and while paying respect to the genre it avoids its worst clichés. Worst being the key word.

• The Stranger

Not a single word during the first half hour. At the 45th minute, we learn that the main character is mute. Something like 20 minutes or so later we learn in very concise 25 minutes that his mother has a lover, and our eyes are kept riveted on the screen by a horse daring escape and the thrilling pursuit that ensues. 15 minutes later, wow, the cast is suddenly doubled. Luckily, things get back to normal 5 minutes later.
An hour and a half on, the story reaches its turning point.
A short 15 minutes after, our hero eructs something.
Beautifully made and not slow, more like lethargic, hibernating or just plain dead. Yes, that's it: the first undead movie. A serious contender for the Agnes Cecilia trophy.

• Outlander

Vikings meet ET with survivor/guilt complex.
Efficient & well made, except for some cheap FX.

• Red

A meaner, less prejudiced and somewhat morally simpler Gran Torino.
A tad too long.

• Embodiment of Evil

Emphatically stupid, gratuitously violent, wilfully disgusting, undeniably funny.
A good Z movie.

Day 4

I should really trust my feelings. Today, Easter Monday, I was busy reading the latest Hamilton when my pager reminded me of the 1600 movie (yes, I am a compulsive scheduler). At first I thought that it was laziness that was compelling to stay home to finish my book, so I stupidly went against it.
It was not laziness: it was premonition.

• 4 Bia

10 minutes late.
Four shorts.

Happiness

SMS dating with the dead.
Nice ambiance.
Bad final montage.

Tit for tat

Teenage dumbasses somehow manage to get harassed by something supernatural.
A well known story, well made and fun, sometimes.

In the middle

Four teenage dumbasses go rafting somewhere in the wilderness. Same as above.
Taking a leak takes a whole different meaning.
A few laughs and that's it.

Last fright

A flight attendant becomes beds the wrong man and has to fly his wife and then the wife 's body. Total high altitude w00tage. Complete with a long haired puking corpse.
Not that good.

• Grace

Psycho mom, lesbian nature freak obstetrician, a helpful cat and the undead baby meet the absent father and the scheming step mother from hell. Remind me of this again when I'll consider having children.
Kinda interesting, a few messages, but should have been kept as a short.

• No-Do

From the Franco era state-sponsored newscasts.
A woman wakes up nowadays after having spent the last 60 years or so in a coma. Which is far more interesting than what may or may not happen to the depressive paediatrician who moves in with her baby in the woman's bishop's haunted house. Unfortunately, her antics make most of the film. A weak scenario recounts your classical Spanish Catholic guilt story, dumb, long, boring, with obvious plans and bad FX. Uninteresting.

• Visions

Overly dramatic music and sound effects, bad and/or over acting, classical cut and camera work, nice lights (well, ambient really, and the Sun is rarely wrong...), obviously what is lacking here is proper direction, a better familiarity with the format and a scenario. And a plot. And some less ridiculous gimmicks. And less laughable montages. And proper casting. And dialogues, not just clichés. But there are quite a few good gratuitous FX (as well as many bad ones that may have had some purpose) and funny moments, happenstances I presume.
It is so consistently ridiculous, it so valiantly plods through its own ineptitude that it becomes laughable. And the end montage only brings the thing to a whole new level of miserable inanity.
Suspension of disbelief occurs when you have to acknowledge the painfully real fact that someone actually wrote that thing, someone else produced it, still someone else directed it, and that you are actually watching it. Sometimes, reality can be painful without having the good grace of being enjoyable or even meaningful.

• I'll never die alone

Argentina must be a country somewhere between Tasmania and Switzerland where everyone acts like in Stoic.
Talking about stoicism, it takes some to watch this till the end. Let's cut it short: beyond the gratuitous violence, the inane filming, this movie may be safely said as being devoid of any quality whatsoever. Feeling very generous, one might say the scenery is nice, kind of, the first five minutes of it, then, after half an hour...
It may have reached legendary status if only it had more longer static plans on some innocent dumb objects. Like the scene when a girl is changing clothes in a restroom, well, it may have been improved by a few minutes of closeup on a dirty piece of used soap, or an empty roll of toilet paper, hanging alone, depressed, on a shitty wall where even flies refuse to land. It may have added some emotion.

The art of being implicit

It must be a fad, a trend, or more like a plague really.
In the past few weeks, I have met more than a few people who seem to believe that communication is mainly implicit. I won't get into information theory, promised. Let's just take a simple example: if communication was mainly implicit, they would not be able to read this post, as any education process would be doomed to fail. You do not believe me? Be my guest, try your hand at Rongorongo or Linear A.
The trouble with what is implied is that the beholder has to grasp the implication. And, with a poor signal to noise ratio (oooops, sorry for that;-), it may very well be that your beholder has not perceived enough information to find clearly and precisely what is being implied. Furthermore, you, as the message source, should be aware, and most probably are, that your communication mode is ambiguous at best, because, mainly, what you are relying on is interpretation, and not even your own at that... I may have been drilled too well, but, to me, interpretation needs confirmation.
While the lack of a basic understanding of the importance of subjectivity in the communication process is worrying, it still bothers me less than what leaving the heart of a message unsaid implies. This is of course only my interpretation, but I cannot escape the feeling that leaving things unsaid is close to hypocrisy, especially when leaving things unsaid is done to preserve ones own comfort. Not that it is not important, just that you have to keep your priorities straight: when you communicate, you do it to tell something, be it some witticism, what you want or what you will. So, basically, you are communicating because you have to, following your own motivations. And communication is action. And you do not act to loose or against yourself, do you?
Of course, this does not mean that you may not be subtle or manipulative, matters that I intend to tackle in "The art of being a gracious bastard, or how to make little girls cry without clubbing baby seals" ;-)

Day 3

• From Inside

Animation for adults.
Original in form & content.
A pregnant woman train travel through memories, feelings and post apocalyptic landscape.

• Queen of Langkasuka

Most ridiculous ending so far.
Long, Asian and, surprise, not boring.
Quite entertaining.

• Nightmare Detective 2

Three Japanese high school girls, complete with uniforms and knee high socks are supernaturally bullied by a fourth one. One of them goes for help to the local weirdo.
A dream within a dream within a dream. Nice dreamlike sequences, and some original content somewhat reminiscent of Gozu.

• The Uninvited

A well made remake of "A Tale of Two Sisters".
From what I recall, it seems that the focus here is more on thrill than on horror when compared to the original.
Anyway, I enjoyed it even if the story was known to me.

• Stoic

Strangely enough, Boll's last opus is not an adaptation of Aurelius's Meditations.
Kinda great, in a hard gritty way. Uwe Boll goes over the top once again. May he stay there (and never come back).
As a side note, in 20 years, I have never seen so much people leaving a BIFFF movie.

• Wasting Away

From the eyes of a White trash zombie we are all weirdoes on meth.
Has its funny moments.

Day 2

• Sleep Dealer

I came one hour late. And I haven't lost much, as I was able to figure out the plot, themes and gimmicks quite easily. It is quite nice, contrasting sunny landscape with dark future, where drones make war cleaner, where there is a Flick'r for memories. I liked the themes, I liked the genre, I liked the gimmicks and I liked it without the first hour.

• In Love with the Dead

Some guy's girlfriend is slowly dying of cancer. She practices puke eating as therapy.
Still another Asian film where something seems to be built very gradually, the trouble being that I have been unable to figure out what exactly. It's not really tension, nor the plot. Anyway, it makes for a damn slow movie, but still not really boring, as you keep on guessing.
One hour into the film, the tables are turned: they are both dead. But, wait, this has already been done. So let's turn the tables once again. Bingo, instant novelty! Not.
Given the premises, this film is not funny. At all.
So, it's classical, well made, not original, not boring but not really interesting or captivating either, and it is slow.

• Humains

A French movie... Well, it was not that bad in the end, no reason to fear it, at all.
It goes on the "degenerated hillbillies" track with some flair. A good movie, not exceptional but really good.
Sympatoche.

• The Chaser

Some Korean thriller about a pimp investigating his prostitutes disappearance. The scenario gets somewhat confused, I suspect that it has to do with translation. Not great but nice enough.

• Cold Prey 2

Very classical and extremely efficient.

Day 1

• The Gene Generation

Perhaps was I expecting too much, or perhaps was I so eager to see this year first film that I was bound to be disappointed.
So, let's try to be objective and start with the basics. The image was bad. At first, I was thinking that it was some bad, on purpose FX supposed to add a gritty touch, then I began to wonder whether or not it was a technical issue, I mean, at this point maybe the tech staff was not up to speed yet. Then, I noticed that the sound was terrible too. Now, mistakes happen, one may have troubles with unfamiliar equipment, strange formats and/or resolution, so the image can be bad. But it takes some kind of concerted effort to screw the sound too. So, I guess that I have seen this movie as it was supposed to be shown. It was horrible.
On top of that, the scenario is as waterproof as the Titanic ; actors are either not acting or acting too much and usually the wrong way ; FX are bad, even the dark tones are not enough to mask how bad they are ; the soundtrack rarely fits the action, and transitions are ... special, for the lack of a better word. I could go on like this for hours, and it still wouldn't be enough to describe how awful this movie is.
The good point is context. Seeing this film at the Bifff allowed me to actually see it. Had I to see it at home on DVD, I wouldn't have gone past the first ten minutes.
Like a friend said: this movie is like cassoulet: you may not enjoy eating it, but the excretory part is always welcome. So, except if you have strong coprophiliac tendencies, avoid, at any cost. It really hurts.

• Cyborg She

Temporal paradox anyone, painstakingly explained again and again and again? Happening in a sweet romantic comedy spanning a hundred years or so? A cat named Raoul? Sometimes funny, honestly made, somewhat boring: passable work, nothing splendid, but nothing really awful.

• Dream

Let's play the association game.
Dream.
Sleep.
Bored.
Did I say boring? Yes, I said it. There are one or two funny self mutilation scenes, apart from that, well, even the premises are boring.

• The Mutant Chronicles

Steam powered helicopters? A classical plot revolving around a fight between good and evil, and a quest? Sounds like Lord of the Rings under a steampunk mask. Well, not quite, but close. Nothing to write home about.

• Dying Breed

Delivrance, Descent, The Hills have Eyes, ... I like those films, so I may be biased here. Let's just say that this is good, honest work, exploiting the genre while still managing to be both surprising and thrilling. The evening's best movie, by far.

• Yoroi: Samurai Zombie

Need I say more? Good for a laugh, or two.

Opening

• Coraline

Henry Selick, The Nightmare before Christmas, blah blah blah... this could go on for hours, and, remember, we are not here to talk about intents.

I may be old fashioned, but, to me, animation films are mainly targeted at children. Nonetheless, I have been known to enjoy some gritty animes, that were made specifically for an adult audience, so I am not biased against the form per se.

While Coraline tells a good story, I cannot escape the feeling that its scenario's shortcomings are supposed to be downplayed by its format, as if going by the assumption that children are not supposed to be this logical. Furthermore, the themes being explored are quite adult, and while not being strictly grown-ups subjects, they are disturbing matters. I would be curious to see how this story would look as a proper movie specifically made for an adult audience, instead of an animation film whose scenario is too weak for adults, and content is too strong for children.

Best lolcat ever

Supper's friend 2

Maybe, just maybe, perhaps should I avoid posting while sailing three sails to the wind.

Archimagisms

The man behind the Archimago is my friend. He likes his French styled, and his words well played. Here are his top three catch phrases, that I can remember.

Top 3

3 - Consulting: "Tout ce qui te paie mieux te rend plus riche."

2 - Geek sex: "Ils downloadent des mangas de cul pour savoir comment on fait, et puis ça donne 'Ce soir, c'est toi qui fait le gros monstre bleu.'"

1 - French litterature: "Si Proust avait été hétérosexuel, on l'aurait appelé pet vaginal."

Supper's friend

Funny how you may be favourably surprised when you are not busy screening and deflecting.

Bis repetita...

Maybe, just maybe, there is something more to this attitude. Maybe, just maybe, perhaps am I more at ease when I am confident that I have nothing to loose and nothing to win. Maybe, just maybe, perhaps am I afraid of what I may want. Maybe ;-)