Perfect Anime | PERFECT BLUE (1997)

Will the real Mima please stand up?

dir. Kon Satoshi

This psychological thriller anime from Kon Satoshi delves groundhog-day-style into the nature of reality, plumbing the depths of the mind of protagonist Kirigoe Mima aka Mima-Rin, a pop starlet trying to make the difficult transition towards being taken seriously as an actress.  As she and her management navigate the perilous waters of her exploitation-filled debut on a drama flick, Mima becomes the target of a psycho killer triggered by her change in career and the subsequent besmirching of her formerly innocent image. 

Utilizing the gorgeous trappings of the anime medium, graphically gory scenes (icepick stabbings, say) are interspersed with rounds of depressing beauty (the commuter train making its way through the dreary, night skyline of impersonal, overcrowded Tokyo).  There are also moments of shocking sexual violence (an enacted rape scene filmed for the movie foreshadowing an almost "real" rape) and demoralizing nudity (the skin-shots Mima poses for then later regrets).  Also the motif of reflections, most realistically executed, brings added dimensions to the exploration of dissociative disorder and the pliable nature to perception and reality.        

Kon masterfully weaves the tale of mental breakdown, causing viewers to question the nature of the events being depicted.  What part is reality, What is the film, and What is merely a figment of Mima's imagination?  All elements build towards deliberate confusion that works to unsettling effect with the reveal of the killer's identity.

A haunting, J-Pop drenched odyssey, PERFECT BLUE presages Kon's 2006 release PAPRIKA in terms of theme and in the use of mesmerizingly creepy musical compositions, specifically "Virtua Mima" written by Ikumi Masahiro. 

Super cute is the novelty that the World Wide Web presents to the reality of the anime's characters, with websites and browsers being a relatively recent arrival revolutionizing the world of Gopher and Unix protocols.            

Get it while it's up: PERFECT BLUE

Panama Indie-Film Gold | GREED (2013)

Colorful, captivating GREED.

dir. Maria Isabel Burnes

Shot in New York, GREED is a 2:46 short directed by Panamanian-born Maria Isabel Burnes, one of the vanguard of up-and-comers in the fast-expanding indie-film scene just now taking off in the Republic of Panama.  

Burnes' 2nd piece, GREED placed first in the 2013 Honduran COR3 Film Festival in the Central American category while at home she won her category in the Hayah Short Film Festival sponsored by L'Alliance Française for which she'll represent Panama in the upcoming Trés Court International Film Festival.

Her third short SCREWDRIVER, an 80s exploitation film shot in 35mm and 16mm,  is just now in the can and soon to be released.  MI COMANDANTE, Burnes' fourth short done entirely in 35mm and shot on location in Panama has just wrapped production and is slotted for release sometime next year. 

For your viewing pleasure: GREED

Charlie's 1st Talkie Packs a Wallop | THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940 )

"Gesundheit!"

Written, directed, produced, and scored by Charles Chaplin, THE GREAT DICTATOR is a slapstick-filled take on the tragedy of the WWII master-race bombast.  As his first talkie it not only carries such a prescient message, it's a well-established classic in the history of the cinematic arts.

Though the predictable switcheroo set up in the duo-role of dictator/ barber inhabited by Chaplin himself can be seen from miles off, the two-hour long journey through still presents an enjoyable ride. The ever-present Keystone cop stormtroopers, sequences of Chaplin's Bugs Bunny barber shop antics, and Hynkle's iconic world domination dance with the globe-balloon are part and parcel of the genius' mind at work.

The charming Hannah, played rough and tumble by Paulette Goddard, is the idealized, strong-willed counterpoint in the role of romantic interest. Herr Garbitsch (Henry Daniell) and Herring (Billy Gilbert) are the perfect comic foils to Dictator Hynkel's hi-jinks. When fellow dictator Napoloni (Jack Oakie) is added to the mix, all hell breaks loose.

This over-the-top humor--reading very much like golden-age Looney Tunes--allows one to approach the grotesque reality being evoked. All of it serves as an entry point for a real sense of humanity and serves as a climactic build to one of the most heartfelt, moving speeches in the history of movies.

THE GREAT DICTATOR

Sexy Turn-of-the-Century Science | THE SECRET OF NIKOLA TESLA (1980)

I said 'Free Energy!'

dir. Krsto Papić


A cryptic 1980s film of exquisite period costuming and driven by strong characterizations, TAJNE NIKOLE TESLE (THE SECRET OF NIKOLA TESLA) comes to us out of space and out of time from the former Yugoslavia.  

Starring the smart Petar Božović as Tesla, the film adroitly jump-cuts through highly dramatized stages of the inventor's life, covering the quiet, contemplative youth he spent in Lika to his immigration Stateside seeking work with Thomas Edison (Dennis Patrick), and his later associations with George Westinghouse (Strother Martin) and JP Morgan (Orson Wells), ending where the film begins, with the lone genius in his solitary New York City hotel room where he languishes in obscurity, a literal shadow of his former self. 

Theatrics aside, a lot is done right here, like the sweet relationship between Tesla and the gorgeous but married Catherine Johnson (Oja Kodar -Well's real life companion in these, his later years).  A poignant complement is served up in Tesla's relationship with his mother (Ana Karic), illustrative of his early childhood, providing clues to the unplowed depths of his emotional life as an adult.  Though readable as overwrought, her death in his arms is a moment of cinematic poetry.  Inclusion of notable celebrities to Tesla's various demonstrations like Mark Twain and Enrico Caruso are added points of joy.   

Well-emphasized is the enmity betwixt him and Edison and their classic battle over AC and DC technologies.  The contrast between the two highlights Tesla's detached coolness of character. 

Creepy references of Tesla's talking to ghosts--allusions to his spirit box--and the time he received mysterious signals from space (for which he was publicly ridiculed for) help flesh out other side of the elegant man of science, known for obsessive-compulsive tendencies also explored in the film.

His lack of concern with money and pure-hearted motivation for benefitting the the whole of humanity paint Tesla as rather saintly.  Clearly, the purpose of the film is not to be historically accurate in all respects, but to draw inferences of how history might have turned out differently had the men of power been more enlightened in this crucial era of the industrial revolution. 

Cars on an 1980s Los Angeles freeway tell the rest of the tale, with their smog-filled, air-clogged vistas, prognostications of the fear in Tesla's eyes when he hears pronouncements of Einstein's theories giving rise to atomic sources of energy; what the visionary "discoverer" saw as dooming our species' fate.

Watch THE SECRET OF NIKOLA TESLA here:

WWII Meets the 80's | THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT (1984)

"Jimmy, she's gonna blow!"

dir. Stewart Raffill

THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT is an example of cheesy eighties aesthetics at its best, from the title credit's font down to the de rigueur presence of arcade games--even the parts that take place during WWII are not immune from its all-encompassing touch. The story follows the fictionalized account of the infamous Philadelphia Experiment held in the Philly naval ship yard in 1943, where the destroyer escort Eldridge is subject to a radar-cloaking invisibility test that goes horribly wrong.  On the ship are affable buddies David Herdeg (Michael Paré) and sidekick Jimmy Parker (Bobby Di Cicco) who jump overboard as things get wonky, billows of smoke and neon glow surrounding them, inadvertently catapulting headlong into a time warp and landing in the Nevada desert, year 1984. As David and Jimmy start cluing in to what's transpired, they're hand is forced into kidnapping innocent bystander Allison Hayes (Nancy Allen) at a middle-of-nowhere roadside diner where she is filling up with gas. The police soon catch up and land them in jail and hospital, where Jimmy suddenly vanishes into the ether and Allison begins exhibiting a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome.  Hilarity at the hospital ensues when the Keystone cop MPs get on the case, causing the young couple to go on a cross country help-seeking spree while the military scientists responsible track David down in the hopes of fixing the "wrinkle in the continuum" they've created (which has disappeared an entire town in the process). 

Master of horror John Carpenter executive produces, a good pairing with director Stewart Raffill.  They turn out a well-paced, fun-to-watch movie where the the story just flows.  The mostly-cute B-movie denizen Michael Paré gives a good turn with a Joey-from-'Friends' performance while the lovable, quintessential 80s-girl Nancy Allen (Robocop I, II, & III) provides ample lightheartedness for a role in which her character believes so much in her man one questions her sanity.

To watch THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT is like unearthing a forgotten episode of V (original series) just without the aliens.  Not to be missed are Jimmy and David hurtling through hyperspace 80's-bound, the generous-with-her-cigarettes drag queen filing her nails in jail, Jimmy's rocket-man return-trip space suit, or the bodies of random sailors half-fused into the metal frame of The Eldridge!

Get it while it's up:

There's a Riot Goin' On | SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID (1987)

dir. Stephen Frears (DANGEROUS LIAISONS); screenplay by Hanif Kureishi

Can you pass me the human rights violations, please?

The writer/director team that brought the gay classic MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE (1985) swings out a doozy of a film that encapsulates the street rage of Thatcher-era London, festooned with the sexual and class identity politics of the time, couching the story of a couple on the brink, the touching open-relationship romance of the title characters Sammy (Ayub Khan-Din) and Rosie (Frances Barber).  They are put to the ultimate stress when Sammy's father Rafi (Shashi Kapoor), a human-rights-violating Pakistani head-of-state, moves into their South London flat to escape assassination.  This precipitates by virtue of a tapestry of juxtapositions a delicious comedy of errors served by a well-scripted dialogue abounding in very British fashion with loads of witty banter and brainy quips. 

Also copious, the fantastic music, a soundtrack of background and in situ selections that showcases the times (the mid-80s fascination with American hip-hop music and street style) and the place (imports from the colonies like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Jamaican reggae cuts).

Fine Young Cannibals lead singer Roland Gift turns in a fine performance in his first movie role as Danny/ Victoria, bravely lending his ass as a curvy counterbalance to the opening scenes of white girl booty, the one famously tattooed with W's on each cheek (guess what it spells when she bends over?).  That's just one of the pairings that frames the film, others being a couple of unrelated suicides, and two Thatcher overdubs ringing contemptuously out of touch with the images of an economically depressed and socially disintegrating London.  

Unmissable are Frear's rendition of the Brixton Riots, Virginia Woolf's portrait in flames, the omni-present ambulant  street band of urchins, and the disfigured ghost of a cab driver (Badi Uzzaman) portentously milling about town.

With so much being bandied about, SAMMY AND ROSIE could have been a very disjointed piece.  Instead Frears renders an artful, intricate construct, delivering a multifaceted layer of readings and a rich tapestry of situations in a film that truly utilizes the tropes of its medium to the utmost end.

Fair warning:  This Youtube upload literally pauses to a blue screen for a bit at 22m and at 1h:25m there's some VHS-style glitchiness.  Still,  SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID is such a hard-to-find movie that it's worth getting through these petty issues which do nothing to diminish the glory of all its juicy details.

So get it while it's up at:

Crash Course in Misbehavior | MONDO TRASHO (1969)

How do you say Divine?

With the flair of a silent film gone bad, director John Waters brings Divine into the national spotlight with his 1969 first full-length MONDO TRASHO.  Fair warning: you may feel like taking a shower after partaking in this cavorting of excess.  It's a lo-fi, 16 mm project that opens with a Medieval-cum-S&M chicken executioner and returns full-circle to the farm with some commendable death throe maneuvers in pig shit.  Throughout,  Divine's sparkle space outfit truly shines, despite the pants half which keep falling.  

Water's world is populated by freaks of all kind, from the city park to the looney bin to the mad doctor's office--and everyone's got an angle.  Divine might be crass and déclassée, a flat out criminal even, but while she shoplifts with panache and holds up a cabbie by knifepoint, it's all for a good cause, the rectifying of her running over the grittily beautiful and frail-ish waif The Bombshell (Mary Vivian Pearce).  Divine's desire to right her wrongs shows her heart's in the right place.  She's the least nutty of all the Baltimore crazies, and the most devout of the fallen prostrate at the Virgin Mary's periodic interventions.

The soundtrack is consistently jarring, a loud hodge-podge of doo-wop, mo-town, rock, and classical often taking the place of dialogue in this one-and-a-half hour venture into non-synch sound where voice-overs happen rarely.

MONDO TRASHO lives up to its name in spades, and is a seriously disturbing albeit comical journey that sways more towards experimental art piece than a traditional film.  The now-classic verbal exchange containing a litany of foul-language barbs between the two suburbanites waiting on their bus is certainly worth making it to the end.

Catch the insanity while it's up for now:  

A Tale of Two Gay Movies

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's seminal FOX AND HIS FRIENDS (1975), is a German production set in Munich in times contemporaneous with the production, and follows the tragic rise and seemingly inevitable fall of Franz/ Fox, played by Fassbinder himself, a not-so-bright carny whose impulsive impetuousness is matched only by the swift riptide currents of his very life.  

FOX's titular friends represent Germany's social milieu--high class and low--a whirlwind of interested parties surrounding Franz, himself the unexpected recipient of a financial windfall that sets the movie's action into motion.  Some of his friends--sister Hedwig, the carnies from the circus, and the seedy, gay bar denizens--hail from Fox's same social class.  Ordinary in every sense, alcoholically-minded and with money problems to boot, they are ultimately reflections of Fox's psyche, matching his crudeness and mean-minded ideals.    

The new friends on the scene are the wealthy and snobby Munich elite, arriving into Fox's life as a result of his newfound riches.  Fox eschews his former working class set for the new affluent one, a change in social settings that reveals the more pitiable aspects of everyone involved, with Fox remaining the same debauched, uneducated scoundrel of the outset, a lack of evolution that leads to his doomed fate.  

  

On the flip side there's CHRISTOPHER, AND HIS KIND (2011).  Directed by Geoffrey Sax, this is a lush BBC adaptation of the 1976 autobiography by Christopher Isherwood, covering the period the author spent in Germany between World Wars, having been drawn there from England to the mecca that was the gay Berlin of the late 20s/early 30s.   

Superficial at best, the film can be distilled to a fastidious preoccupation with its set-design, theme music, and costuming.  Sadly, the only reason CHRISTOPHER works it that the cast is terribly cute, and the sex is surprisingly frank and gorgeously depicted.  As a whole, the work falls just shy of cloying, being a few tweaks too perfect in its construction.  It's as if Disney teamed up with Merchant Ivory in the style of Hercule Poirot on PBS, especially lagging when transparently contrived emotion is attempted to be garnered through obvious and overhanded scoring.       

FOX AND HIS FRIENDS was released one year prior to the 1976 publishing of Christopher Isherwood's book CHRISTOPHER, AND HIS KIND.  Products of their time, both the German film and the English book ride the current of the then new modern-gay-liberation movement, emboldened with the self-confidence to candidly depict a heretofore denigrated lifestyle.  Both films, in showing situations of defiant openness on the one hand, and of persecution and hiding on the other, contain experiences that ring true and speak to us today, the good and the bad coexisting and overlapping in ways reflective of the complexities of actual life.  

The older of the two films, FOX AND HIS FRIENDS is inherently the more rewarding film to watch.  Despite what might be perceived as FOX's shortcomings in terms of its look as compared to CHRISTOPHER, AND HIS KIND, the latter, as stated, often gets lost in its production values, not delivering much more than what it can provide at that level.  While a thoroughly well-depicted romp is appreciable by any means, any gains CHRISTOPHER makes are quickly lost when periodic, mechanical pulling of heartstrings occurs.  FOX, with its story of vulgarity, breathes a little more easily, less bogged down by the merely visual elements.  While CHRISTOPHER's saving grace is the sheer Britishness of its production, its irrevocable schmaltziness pushes one to opt for crass-filled FOX, the story in which the guy dies at the end. 

Fox and His Friends | Trailer  

Christopher and His Kind | Full YouTube