Yesterday I got to see Takashi Miike’s new film Big Bang Love. It was one of his more beautiful films. It was almost a love story between two murderers in prison, although they don’t express the love in any physical way. The film deals with one gay inmates struggle in prison and another inmate who protects him for seemingly no reason. The protector is murdered at the start of the film, with the gay inmate confessing. The rest of the movie is spent in flash backs with detectives trying to figure out what really happened. There are several unreal sequences when the characters discus freedom and death using rocket-ships and pyramids as metaphors. It was very surreal and probably the best of the films I have seen at the Asian Film Fest. This movie is playing again in a few days at the Japan Center and will probably get a wider release later this year. I highly recommend you checking it out.

The IFC is doing an Asian film festival right now and I plan on seeing maybe 6 of the films over the next week or two. The first I saw was Park Chen-Wook’s I’m A Cyborg But That’s OK. I didn’t really know what to expect from a romantic comedy from the guy who directed three of the best revenge films I have even seen. The answer of course was attempted suicide, a cyborg with guns for fingers, a world ending bomb and lots of people brutally murdered by aforementioned gun fingers. The story basically is about a girl who thinks she is a robot who has a grandmother who thinks she is a mouse and is in love with a boy who thinks he is inviable. The movie makes about as much sense as that plot description, but it is very pretty and very enjoyable. It is playing again this week, so check it out if you can. I plan on seeing movies on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday so expect more write ups and weird trailers soon.

Czech Dream is playing at the IFC movie theater in New York.  I had the chance to see this on its first run in the Czech Republic a few years ago.  It as finally made its way to the states and it is unbelievable.  These two filmmakers got a huge grant for a movie from the Czech government and they spent their entire budget creating an ad campaign for a fake shopping center.  The Czech Republic is still recovering from Communism and things like cheap WalMart type locals are a big excitement for them.   They interview people doing marketing research and things like that.  At the end they film everyone running out to a fake store only to find that there is nothing there.  It is really fantastic.  This was a big deal in Prague where I was staying because everyone had been tricked just months earlier.  There were still a few ads for the center that had not come down yet. I actually ran into the film makers on the street once while I was there.  You have to see this movie, go to the IFC now.  It is on 6th Ave and 3rd St.

Also, I accidentally woke up at 6:30 PM and I have to leave my house in 30 min, so no updates today probably.  I have photos from The Factory and Six Six Sick to go up soon, but they aren’t that great anyway.  I will get them up tomorrow.  I will be at High Voltage tonight if anyone wants to come hang out.

Here is part 2 of my write up on the Herzog films I saw at Film Forum last week. For more info, part one is available here.

Pilgrimage (2001) – 35mm
An artistic, more experimental look at the way different cultures pray to god.

Jag Mandir (1991)
Jag Mandir is the documentation of a parade/festival put on in India as a way to document their dying culture. The film was less a documentary and more of just a way to capture this amazing festival.

Echoes from a Somber Empire (1990)
This was probably the film I liked the most of the 14 I saw. The movie follows a journalist who was held captive by Jean-Bédel Bokassa in the Central African Republic. Bokassa 13 years as leader of the CAR were extremely bloody. He cut the ears of thieves, killed and imprisoned many people for no reason and actually ate the flesh of some of his victims. An amazing story and an amazing film.

Wodaabe – Herdsmen of the Sun (1989)
This movie was about the Wodaabe tribe. From what I saw of it, it looked very intense. These people had amazing make up and looked completely out of control. They are a desert people and think everyone should be. Unfortunately, I got some important phone calls during the movie and I missed half of it to deal with some serious drama.

Huie’s Sermon (1980)
This film was just a document of a sermon given by one of the most intense men I have ever seen. He sung, danced, screamed and prayed to his congregation. He just walked around the room in a fury getting everyone excited and riled up under the love of god. Very powerful. He evoked a lot of James Brown. The money shot of the film is footage of a baptismal pool that pulls back to reveal that it is 50 feet in the air above the preacher. Amazing.

God’s Angry Man (1980)
Along with Somber Empire this was really the highlight of the films. It is a documentary about controversial televangelist Gene Scott. Originally the film looks to attack Scott, which would have been very out of character with a Herzog film, but eventually you really feel for Scott and are just really amazed by all the things he has accomplished. He really tells his side of the story in this movie. In many of Herzog’s documentaries he holds the camera just a bit too long on the subjects, creating small awkward moments of silence. This is turned on its head a bit in God’s Angry Man when Scott refuses to speak for a full five minutes. One of the best parts of the movie.

The Unprecedented Defense of Fortress Deutschkreuz (1966)
This is one of two fiction films in the retrospective. It is about four men who find an abandoned castle and start to believe that they are there to guard it. They dress up a as soldiers and try to defend the castle from invading farmers. Very strange, very pretty.

No One Will Play with Me (1976)
This was the other fictional film, although when dealing with 7 year old actors, there is sort of a blurred line. The touching story is about a small boy who is not accepted by his friends because he is poor and smells bad. He eventually befriends a girl who plays with him because he has a pet raven. He appreciates her friendship he gives her the raven, the only thing he has in life. The crowd applauded when it was over. Very moving.

The Flying Doctors of East Africa (1969)
A film about a group of doctors who fly all over East Africa performing medicine on sick people. They fly in, do surgeries for a few days and then fly back. There is so much sickness and fighting, it was amazing that these people could keep doing this day after day. Another Herzog film filled with amazing people.

Handicapped Future (1971)
This movie was about children dealing with handicaps in Germany. They interview children and their parents about the problems they face. One woman was extremely embarrassed of her child and basically hid him from the world. It was tragic. The film pointed to the United States as a place much more tolerant of the handicapped. It showed a man living an almost normal life in the United States. Although 35+ years later I still see so many problems for the disabled in our society, I just can’t imagine how bad things were in Germany in the early 70’s.

Werner Herzog is my favorite director.  Since 1962 he has made 52 films on a wide variety of subjects.  He has made feature films and documentaries, often blending the two.  Until very recently he was most known for his film Fitzcaraldo although after the recent success of his documentary Grizzly Man he might be more known for that.  Many of his subjects feature driven people that go after something so obsessively they may seem insane.  Of all of his subjects, he might be the most interesting of all.  He literally moved a huge ship over a mountain, he threatened to kill one of his actors, he was shot during a TV interview, he walked thousands of miles across Europe because he thought it would cure a sick friend, and he once ate his shoe on film because he lost a bet.  Over the last few weeks Film Forum has done a retrospective of his non fiction films, as well as some documentaries that he loves.  They also showed several documentaries about him.  In three days I saw 12 of his films and two documentaries about him.  I am going to give little short reviews of each film I saw.  Of his 52 films I have now seen all but 13 of them, but Herzog just released a 6 disc set of his short films for sale on his website so I should get that number down very quickly.   

I Am My Films (Erwin Keusch & Christian Weisenborn, 1979)

Of all the films I saw this had the least amount of value to me.  Most everything covered in this documentary I had known from my readings on Herzog and other documentaries I have seen about him.  I did enjoy seeing footage of him as a younger man, and at times the film was very emotional.
Portrait Werner Herzog (1986)

A short self portrait.

The Ball Is a Scumbag (Rudolph Herzog & Christian Weisenborn, 2000)
Herzog’s son documents a conversation between soccer coaching legend Rudi Gutendorf and Herzog.  Gutendorf is an extremely interesting man and his conversations about soccer and life are wonderful, however some of my favorite parts were when he remembers actor Klaus Kinski, Herzog’s close friend and sworn enemy. 
Ten Thousand Years Older (2001)

This was the only film that I saw that I had seen before.  It was part of a collection of shorts called The Trumpet.  It documents one of the last civilized tribes 20 years after they first came into contact with white men.  Many of their tribe were wiped out by the chicken pox and they are now all wearing baseball caps and Disney tshirts.  The best part of the film is the interviews with tribesmen about having sex with white women.

Part 2 to follow soon.  Check below for the amazing footage of Herzog being shot while doing an interview.

Man.  That movie was way better than I thought it was going to be.  It opens so brutally.  The first 10 minutes are 10 of the best I have seen in any horror film or zombie film.  It is still not technically a zombie film, but as a fan of zombies, I am glad what the 28 films do for the genre.  I love fast zombies.  Still, theses monsters are not undead, so I don’t think they really count.  The thing I love about the Romero zombie films, is that they all made political statements.  Race, consumerism, aids, etc.  This is what the remake of Dawn Of The Dead missed.  Yeah, it was still set in a shopping mall, but it was really just a generic action film.  I enjoyed it, but not on the level of the original Dawn.  28 Weeks later is all about the US Army stationed in Iraq.  The “zombies” are the Iraqi insurgents.  The troops in this film are forced to kill civilians in order to wipe out zombies.  It gives the film a second level that some recent zombie films have lacked.  Anyway, the movie was extremely violent and amazing.  I loved it and it ends well.  Go see it now.

For weeks I had been trying to see the Host, and I kept not doing it.  I heard about this Korean monster movie and it sounded very cool, but I just couldn’t make it for one reason or another.  One time I actually went to the theater and I got the time wrong and it wasn’t showing.  Another time I stopped by, but it wasn’t playing until much later that day.  Luckily, I got a chance to see it before it left theaters.  It was beautiful, fucked up, and unlike any movie I have ever seen.  The movie is about a mutant fish monster who steals a small girl because he wants to eat her later.  Her father is trying to save her, but the government is at him because he may or may not be infected with a SARS like virus that he got from the fish monster.  This movie is funny and violent; the two most important things in any movie.  I think you should see it somehow.  If you live in NYC it is playing at the Sunshine and is well worth the $11.  If not, go see it when it comes out on DVD.  I know I am going to buy it and force all my friends to watch it.  Get on it.

Three different people in the last month told me to read the Tucker Max book.  They all told me I reminded them of Max. This is not a good thing.  I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell is a collection of Tucker Max’s articles he wrote for his website.  I actually ended up getting the book on the advice of another internet writer and friend of mine, Maddox.  The book is just story after story of Max getting drunk and doing something insane.  Some of them are funny, some of them are amazing, but a lot of them were things that are real similar to things I have done and really that is sort of depressing… considering I don’t drink at all.  I had been thinking about writing a book like this for awhile, but evidently it has been done.  Max is sort of a jock asshole and the type of person who I spent most of my private school education avoiding.  That being said, he can tell a good story and I laughed out loud at least once every 20 pages, which is pretty impressive.  As much as I love Maddox, I actually thought it was funnier than his book.  A lot of the book is just Max doing sleazy things, bragging about sex, and being an asshole to strangers for no reason… but that pretty much sums up my life.  The most impressive thing in the book is that he got into a fist fight with a hocky mascot.  When questioned by the cops he told the officer (I am paraphrasing) “I am now in the elite group of people that has been in a fist fight with a professional sports mascot, and you sir are not in that club.”  That is brilliant, and probably the best reason for doing something I have ever heard.  Below is a video of him telling one of his more unbeliveable stories on the Opie and Anthony show.  See if you can figure out who the biggest douche bag in the room is… I can’t. 

So being a huge Sean Of The Dead fan, I was very excited to see Hot Fuzz. It did not disappoint. The film was very funny all the way through and had some of the best comic violence I have ever seen in a movie. I liked Sean Of The Dead more, but I am a much bigger zombie fan than an action fan. Both films are directed and co written by Edgar Wright, co written and starring Nick Frost, and starring Simon Pegg. Now these three also worked together on the TV show Spaced, which you can see a lot of on YouTube. Infact, that is what I am doing right now. So, instead of doing an actual review of Hot Fuzz, I am just going to link the first episode of Spaced. So enjoy it, I did… although I am looking forward to more Simon Pegg in the upcoming episodes.