Krispy's Blog

Well, I seem to have survived the festival. Although I feel lousy and exhausted on the moment. After the last screening yesterday I stayed at the party at Cinerama way to long (4.30h am., which made I had some difficulty getting out of bed for my morning shift (9.30h am) at the Volkskrantdag. But I made it in time 🙂 I just found out Turtles can fly has won the Audience Award, so again I haven’t seen it. And also I’m not good in predicting which movies will get a high Audience ranking. I’ve attended about 40 screenings in twelve days and staying. Now their is just the party for crewmembers left tonight, I should be able to survive it… 😉 After that it’s back to normal again 😦 List of movies I have seen since the last post:

• Like old times: combined programme, containing: the Cure. Which I didn’t like, so I walked out. Friday wasn’t my day for movies.
• Le dernier jour: predictable movie about a nineteen-year-old student (Simon) who returns to his parental home in Brittany to spend Christmas with his family. He brings along a girl he just met, who spends more and more time with a childhood friend of Simon. The start of the movie is good, with some nice sidelines. But the plot turned out to be very predictable after an hour. This took away much of the suspense and drama for me, left after falling asleep.
• Nemmeno il destino: one of the three Tiger-award winners of 2005. The movie tells the story of two secundary-school friends, living a dead-end live in a decaying industrial city. It was a painfull portrait of their friendship in a hostile and harsh environment. I liked the editing, but as most pictures the feature length was to long, or the speed of the story to low. Cutting out 10 till 20 minutes would have given a more powerfull movie.
• Three… Extremes: three short horror movies (but way better) from three directors: Miike Takashi, Park Chan-Wook and Fruit Chan. The first about a Chinese woman who wants to get younger. A lot of suspense, and some bloody mess. The second one about a horror director who gets in trouble with one of his former actors. He comes for revenge, and does so in style. Beautifull art-direction and light. The last one tells the story about a succesfull writer. Her twinsister died long ago, but seems to be back for revenge. Lots of suspense and a wonderfull twist in the plot at the end. Just as Keep Left I didn’t seem this ending coming.
• Bin-jip: from Kim Ki-Duk; the director of Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (2003); is a lovely fable about a man who breaks in to peoples houses, not to steal but to clean up their mess, water the plants and repairs broken clocks. One day he comes by a house with photos of a model on the walls, but she is at home covered with bruises. A love affair evolves. The rest you should see for yourself. This lovely fable is told in a slow and gentle way, which fittes the story very well. A nice feel-good movie to end with.
• Following Sean: A documentary from Ralph Arlyck. In this documentary Arlyck returns to one of his first subjects. He does a follow up on the boy Sean that apparently shocked the USA in 1969 in a black-and-white short, by telling he smoked marijuana at the age of four and a half. But the follow up seems to be an excuse for the real subject: what happened to my life and ideals? A genre which has become popular among baby-boomers the last couple of years. With movies like La Megliu Gioventù (2003), which told the story of Italian baby-boomers. And Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei fitts into the same exploration of old ideals as well.
  Following Sean is a nice documentary, with a lot of old footish. It leaves you with good feeling and it contains no real heavy stuff.