Invisible Waves, Review. The last of the HIFF

Tadanobu Asano. I don't think I have to say more, but of course I will.

I got a call about this film as the first showing did not go off well. The festival's copy apparently was "hung up" in customs. A copy was located on island and and when it was shown, it had no English subs. Between the first showing and my showing a copy was located on the Mainland and flown in. It was not a good copy. There were a lot artifacts, macroblocking and noise, BUT it had English subs. I ran into one of my friends after and she said it was way too slow. Well, yes, I have to agree, it was slow, but there was Tadanobu Asano, so I can't complain.

He plays Kyoji, a chef in Macau. He is having an affair with his bosses wife, and then his boss has him kill her for him. He has to go by boat to Phuket to lay low, and Lizard is his only contact. It turns out Lizard, the karaoke hitman, has been sent to kill him.

Asano excels in playing these odd, detached characters. I remember him from last year's flick Funky Forest where he played one of the Guitar brothers. They all go on a picnic to meet girls. They are such losers, that no girls show up.

Anyway, Kyoji meets a young woman on the boat who has a baby. She is full of energy and life. When he gets to Phuket, things start to go wrong. I can't really say more without giving it away.

Well I will rate this one 2.5/5 acorns. Of course its because of Mr. Asano. It had some offbeat humor in it and a message that made me think.

Holly, Review

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I considered skipping HOLLY as I was thinking there was no way a movie about child prostitution in Cambodia could be upbeat. I was not wrong. Holly is sold by her parents at age 12 and smuggled from Vietnam to work in a brothel. She commands a high price as she is still a virgin. An American dealer of stolen artifacts ends up at the brothel when his motorcycle breaks down. Of course he is offered the girls and even Holly. He is touched by her plight and learns her story. She want's very much to work so her little sister will not be sold and because he is kind to her, she wants him to be her first "yum yum". Child prostitution is against his morals and he is never swayed. He becomes obsessed with saving her even though he is warned that Holly belongs to the "mafia" and that his life is worth less then $5 dollars on the street. A tough story to think about and hard for me to rate. I wonder how "real" it is. I'm not going to think anymore about and I will not rate it. I'm just going to get LOST! I will say though that Guy Livingston is great as the American and Thuy Nguyen is very pretty.

Heh, when the going gets rough.....RUN!!!

I broke down and got Season 2 of LOST. Now to find some time for the marathon.

Severence, Review

I stayed up to watch this movie which started at 10:15pm. My last film was really crowded so I thought I would go a little early but it wasn't too crowded. This is a comedy/horror movie that gave me a few jolts. Danny Dyer is the male lead. I haven't seen him in any other movies as he is from UK and has done a lot of TV there. The announcer compared this movie to Shaun of the Dead, or The Office meets Evil Dead. I never saw The Office, so I can't comment. It has its campy humor like Shaun of the Dead but no zombies :(

It was more of a spoof. The scenary reminded me of Deliverance. A group of workers go off for a team building retreat to Hungary and get lost taking a short cut. They should have known better! There are a lurkers in the forest with really big knives! I'm not sure what drives them but the company makes military weapons and somehow that is connected to the reason.

I will give this movie clives for sure, and 3/5 acorns. I was yawning when it started but I'm wide awake now!

The Machinist, Review

Christian Bale was the American Psycho. He couldn't fool me as Bruce Wayne. He looks cachectic in this role of Trevor Reznik, a man on the verge of of madness, or perhaps already consumed by it. He hasn't slept for a year. He can barely tell which people in his life are real. Memento is mentioned as a comparison for this movie. Both are very dark, and difficult to follow. I will have to think about this one for awhile, and try to sit through it again one of these days. I will give it a tentative 3/5 acorns and a little clive as well.

The Guardian and The Departed, Reviews

A coworker said The Departed was the best movie he'd seen so far this year. It has has a star studded cast-Leonardo deCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin and Martin Sheen. Vera Farmiga, unknown to me, was great as the girlfriend/psychiatrist and pretty much the only female in the cast. It has a fair amount of violence in it. It is set in Boston. The acting is superb. The story complex and intriguing. It follows the lives of two policemen, one clean, and one dirty. It's hard to see through Matt Damon's charm. DeCaprio plays a tormented spirit without going overboard. I will rate it 4.5/5 acorns and half a clive.

The Guardian is a Coast Guard story. Kevin Costner is an aging "swimmer" who has sacrificed everything, even his masrriage, to his job which is saving people. He works out of Kodiak, Alaska. Clancy Brown is his boss. After losing his best friend and getting some severe injuries, Costner is sent to be an instructor. He meets Kutcher who is a hotshot swimmer out to break all Costner's records at the academy. It follows the Top Gun and Officer and Gentleman formula. It was exciting and well done. Kutcher shows another side of his acting, besides the cutie that he is. Costner was quite good I'm happy to say. It was hard for me to forgive him for The Postman. I will rate this movie 3.5/5 acorns.

Tuesday at HIFF

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BALANDA AND THE BARK CANOES is a documentary about making a movie TEN CANOES in a rural native community. The Balanda, or white man, is invited by a friend to make a movie about his roots. The elders died with their secrets and to recreate a story about bark canoes, the director/writer must rely on phots taken by Donald Thomson, an anthropologist from the 1930s. I don't know if I'll make it to the actual movie. The making of was quite interesting. The people feel that telling this about a young man who covets another man's 3rd wife, in an authentic manner will give connect them with their past and bring them pride in who they are.


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TIME AND TIDE grew out of an interest in a story the directors read on the Internet about Tavalu, one the newest and smallest nations in the world. It is a group of nine islands near Fiji. An American business bought the country's URL, DotTV. They visited Tavalu and became interested in the natives concerns about the rising sea due to global warming and the changes brought by globalization. They advertised for people they could interview and were invited to join and Malaga, a group of Tuvalu expatriates living in New Zealand. The elders are saddened by the changes progress has brought to the islands of their childhood, and the younger generation is bored and want to return to McDonalds and movies.


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The Host

is a comedy sci-fi movie that is advertised as the biggest box office hit in Korea. It is a fun movie about a mutant that turns up in the Han River. The monster is a big fishlike creature that is very agile, has a very big mouth and ain't too cute. It gobbles up a bunch of people including the daughter of the convenience store family. The dysfunctional family -dad with his bleached blond hair, grandpa, the college graduate uncle, and the olympic archer aunty, unites to rescue her. If they can survive working together, can they save her? I'm not going to tell.

I will rate Baranga 4/5 acorns, Tuvalu 3.5/5 acorns and the Host 4/5 acorns with 1 clive. I'm taking a day off from the festival tomorrow, but maybe will see a mainstream movie like The Departed.

Day One HIFF

The World of Animation Short Program
BALLYVAUGHAN STORY (Sara Pocock, USA, 2006, 7 min) tells some tales told to the writer by his mother of the Irish War of Independence in 1921
BICYCLE MESSENGERS (Joshua Frankel, USA, 2006, 5 min) sings praises of the highly focused "super" bike messengers, uban pony express.
FOLKLORE RESTAURANT (Tomoko Oguchi, USA, 2005, 14 min) looks like animation of torn paper figures and share fox legends from different countries.
GUIDE DOG (Bill Plympton, USA, 2006, 5 min), a sequel to GUARD DOG, cracked me up. A funny, clueless little dog, tries hard to be a guide dog. Too bad for his clients.
MINOTAURAMAQUIA, PABLO IN THE LABYRINTH (Juan Pablo Etcheverry, Spain, 2004, 10 min) Pablo Picasso desperately escapes from the Minotaur's maze.
SAUL GOODMAN (Jim Connell, USA, 2006, 28 min), A complex, talky story of two men who miss their train with a political message.
TOILET STORY (Isaac Finkbeiner, Myanh Lu, Troy Hieda, USA, 2006, 3 min), If our bathroom accessories could talk, what would they say?
MISSING PAGES (Jerome Olivier, Japan, 2006, 24 min) a short movie shot entirely with a digital still camera. The photos were manipulated using a technique lovingly dubbed "fotomation" and took 14 months to make. A scientist develops a time machine for peaceful applications, but in the end it leads to apocalypse.
ROLLING DOWN LIKE PELE explores the world of traditional Hula and Chant.
THE WRAITH OF COBBLE HILL (Adam Parrish King, USA, 2006, 15 min) is a dark story of a boy who finds some sort of redemption in his world of poverty and hunger.


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Arctic Son is a documentary filmed in the native village of Old Crow, which in in Canada, inside the Arctic Circle. Junior has believes his mom did the best he could raising him in Seattle. He likes to party and drink and seems destined to a short life of addiction and early death. His father invites him to spend time with him and reconnect with his roots. They go fishing and hunting in the unforgiving wilderness. The funniest line in this to this Hawaiian anyway is always, "Boy, it's hot!".

Yo-yo Girl Cop is a live action film based on a Japanese anime. It is implausible and slow in parts but fun. I was expecting more. I almost fell asleep as it was a late movie, starting late and getting out at midnight.

I rate the animations 3/5 acorns, Arctic Son documentary 5/5 acorns and Yo-yo Girl Cop 2/5 acorns.

Rinne, Kagen no Tsuki, and Spider Forest Reviews

Kagen no Tsuki, Last Quarter is as ghostly love story. Although it stars Chiaki Kuriyama, from Juon, Azumi2 and Kill Bill, vol.1, there is very little violence or blood, and no sword fighting :( Her character, Mizuki, has issues as her mother committed suicide because her father had an affair and she has to live with her father, the new wife (former "other woman") and her new sister. That would no doubt mess anyone up. On her 19th birthday, her best friend shows Mizuki a picture of herself in bed with Mizuki's boyfriend. As she is running away from the situation, she comes across a mansion with a very familar melody coming from it and goes in to explore the source. It is a song she dreamed in her childhood and tried to play on the piano, but could never finish it. Also no one else seemed to know the song. Hideto Takarai is playing this song on his guitar and says he wrote it for her. He is distressed and says she left him before, so she promises they will always be together. As the moon moves into its last quarter, he says he has to leave, and she begs to go with him. He says to meet her and she runs to him across the street and is hit by a car, only to be left in coma. She wanders in the woods and comes across as girl calling for her cat. After this movie drags some, but has lovely costumes and Hideto Takarai :).



Rinne or Reincarnation is another Japanese ghost story. There are many people who are having gristly dreams about a hotel. A young woman has been having the same dream for years but her parents tell her she never visited that hotel. Hello...the name of the movie! Anyway, she answers a casting call for a famous horror director who is making a new movie about a mass murder that occured years earlier at that very hotel. After this movie I am not for reincarnation. It seems that there is never a chance for redemption and that evil will live on through all generations and if its in you, you can just give up the idea of ever being well-balanced and fulfilled. It was a pretty creepy movie and has some clives attached to it as there is rarely a movie made with mass murder in that has no blood or sharp objects.



Spider Forest is a Korean movie that I have a sneaking suspicion I've seen before. I watched it all the way through and while parts of it looked familiar, I'm still not sure whether or not I've seen it. A man comes up to a house in the forest and finds two people slaughtered inside. One of them is his former boss and the other is his wife. She supposedly was on a business trip but the plane crashed and he thought she was dead. He chases a man he sees outside and ends up getting hit on the head. When he comes too, he wanders through a tunnel and gets hit by a car. What a bad day he is having! He wakes up in the hospital after surviving a code. A policeman friend of his gets called and they go up to the cabin and start investigating the murders. Our man with the concussion escapes from the hospital to try and figure out the mystery himself. He has many flashbacks about his past as he tells his policeman friend his story. He had gone to the Spider Forest to get a story from a woman who runs a photography store since he works for Mystery Theater. She tells him the Spider Forest is haunted and that the souls of forgotten people become spiders and have no memory of their past. If they are remembered, then they can move on. This is a confusing movie and at the end I have to say I don't get it. I won't say more as I don't want to be a spoiler.

I will rate Kagen 2.5/5 acorns and no clives, and Rinne 3.5/5 acorns and a clive, and Spider 3/5 with a clive also.

Angel Egg and Epsilon, Review

No pictures today, blogger is not sucking them up. Wonder if I hit my quota?

Angel Egg is a Masaru Oshii early work. Some of his works include the classic Ghost in the Shell and JinRoh. Angel Egg is very beautiful, cryptic anime. A nomad comes a cross a young girl with a mysterious egg who's secret she guards. They travel together through strange and ethereal landscapes. The plot escapes me. The visual journey is captivating. I will rate this one 4/5 acorns and no clives. It is a must for anime lovers.

Epsilon is an Australian ecology fairy tale. Ulli Birve plays "She", and alien visitor who shows up nude in the outback and hooks up with a surveyor. She is disgusted by the pollution and destruction of natural habitats. She is able to travel through time and space on earth with "The Man" and they work on a relationship, although she is really hoping her people will come for her. It would have helped this movie a lot if she turned out to be a cyborg and went on a killing spree, or really looked like a giant octapus. The scenery is gorgeous. It certainly is worth saving. I will rate this one 2/5 acorns because of that.

I went to the company dinner the other night, the night before the Earthquake , and spoke to a couple of guys that retired already. They were unanimous in opinion that I should keep working and that things are actually rougher out in the private sector, so I should stay put. They also found they wanted to keep working a few days a week.

On the work scene the rearranging of people and changes in work flows are frustrating for everyone. Sigh.

This and That

Dusk...Run! I think this when all the vampires come out (wink)
This is tonight's sunset over Ala Moana. I wonder how to take pictures of the sun with a digital camera?
I went to a meeting about headaches tonight and learned that just improving sleep can reduce chronic daily headache and make migraines more manageable. So, here are the tips on improving sleep.
1. Sleep for 8 hours
2. Avoid music, TV, stimulation of any kind before bedtime.
3. Don't nap during the day
4. No eating for 4 hours prior to bedtime
5. Use visualization (such as walking on the beach and observing, without any words to yourself) to help induce sleep.

I really believe the part about not eating. It must be dreadful not to be able to sleep. I always think it's like breathing. If I think about it too hard, I can screw it up.

And just in case anyone else makes this mistake, Mariah Carey's song, It's Like That is not the Cat Chow Song, it's, "that y'all (that y'all)". I thank my son for setting me straight. Presbycusis is a bad thing.

Komyo ga Tsuji, Episode 31

Last weeks episode was very sad as Yone, the only child Kazutoyo and Chiyo will ever have is killed in an earthquake.
In this weeks episode, Hideyoshi is trying to make Ieyasu come to Osaka to form a truce and actually has his sister Asahi, divorce her husband and marry Ieyasu. According to the Hiragana Times Asahi was actually Hideyoshi's half-sister. She was a happy farmer's wife until her husband is killed helping Hideyoshi rise to glory. Hideyoshi later forces a low ranked samurai to marry her and they are quite happy. In this episode, Hideyoshi and his wife Nene conspire to have the divorce come about, telling Asahi and her husband that the other wants the divorce. Asahi has Chiyo write a moving goodbye letter to Asahi's husband but it looks like he actually committed seppuku. Bummer. I hope they leave this part out of the series.
Asahi goes off as "hostage" at age 43 to marry Ieyasu, and he finds her "cute" and cherishes her.
I better not say much about what happens next. I couldn't wait and read ahead. I do that sometimes, read the end of a book I'm reading. Impatient, heh.



As a digression, I was surpised to learn that the actress playing Chiyo, Yukie Nakama was also in G@me and Ring 0 the prequel the creepy Ringu the original creepy, drippy, long stringy black hair scary movie. I didn't recognize her.

Hmm, she was also in Love and Pop with Tadanobu Asano...I'll have to find a copy of that somewhere to watch.

On the work front, after a quarter of a century of having my own office I am now sharing with two other people. Rearranging the office to squeeze these bodies in and getting used to thinking while other people are talking has been a challenge. I threw a lot of stuff away. Whole books, "plop" right in the trash. I don't miss them. I still have a lot of crap. Oh well.

Fearless, Review

Fearless is billed as Jet Li's "final" martial arts masterpiece. It is true life story of Huo Yuan-jia, a turn of the century martial arts guru of the Jin wu Sports Federation.

The story is a familiar one in this genre. As a child and young man, his careless lifestyle and desire to be number one bring him the ultimate personal tragedy. He rises from the ashes of his life and brings honor to himself and China. Since he was already nearly the best fighter before his fall having learned from is father, there is no martial arts mentor. His epiphany occurs in a beautifully filmed country village, where he is nurtured body and spirit by a blind woman.

He returns home to rebuild his family honor and ultimately represents his school and country in an international competition. The fight scene are quite good. There are some gravity defying scenes, but keeping these to a minimum helped keep this movie from being too fantastic or corny.

It's hard not to think of Jackie Chan when I think of Jet Li. It seems a natural comparison since they are both so big in the Kung fu genre. Jackie Chan has such a natural apptitude for comedy while Jet Li is always so much more serious. They are both awesome performers of their martial art. I wish they would have made a couple movies together along the way.

I will rate Fearless 4/5 acorns, and no clives.