Monday, November 12, 2007

WORLD FILM FESTIVAL BANGKOK 2007

FILMS I SAW IN THE WORLD FILM FESTIVAL OF BANGKOK 2007

IN PREFERENTIAL ORDER

1.PHANTOM LOVE (2007, Nina Menkes, A+)
http://www.myspace.com/phantomlovemovie
http://filmsick.exteen.com/20071109/phantom-love-1


2.EGG (YUMURTA) (2007, Semih Kaplanoglu, Turkey, A+)


3.FALLEN (2005, Fred Kelemen, Latvia, A+)
http://filmsick.exteen.com/20071109/fallen
http://www.fredkelemen.com/html/filme/krisana_pictures.html
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2195/1984502356_4eeb2bcfb6_b.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2089/1984502318_728ecb6d34_b.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2158/1984502296_48e7fa4cbb_b.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2052/1984502268_89c8023a2d_b.jpg


4.VILLAGE PEOPLE RADIO SHOW (2007, Amir Muhammad, Malaysia, Documentary, A+)


5.THE MURMURING COAST (2004, Margarida Cardoso, Portugal, A+)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0406669/


6.SAVIOUR’S SQUARE (2006, Joanna Kos-Krauze + Krzysztof Krauze, Poland, A+)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0488027/

Krzysztof Krauze also directed THE DEBT (1999), which is available as DVD.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51WEH73KD3L._SS500_.jpg

Acquarello wrote about THE DEBT in the link below, and compared THE DEBT to the films of Bela Tarr, Sharunas Bartas, and Darezhan Omirbaev:
http://filmref.com/journal/archives/2005/02/debt_1999.html


7.ALICE (2005, Marco Martins, Portugal, A+)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0459072/


8.GARDENS IN AUTUMN (2006, Otar Iosseliani, A+)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0494239/


9.THE CALIFORNIA (2006, Jacques Fieschi, A+)


10.4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, AND 2 DAYS (2007, Cristian Mungiu, A+)


11.THE MAN FROM LONDON (2007, Bela Tarr, Hungary, A+)


12.DEMENTED (2006, Laurent Achard, France, A+)


13.BAMAKO (2006, Abderrahmane Sissako, Mali, A+)


14.ANTONIA’S LINE (1995, Marleen Gorris, A+)


15.IMPORT/EXPORT (2007, Ulrich Seidl, Austria, A+)


16.THINGS WE DO WHEN WE FALL IN LOVE (2007, James Lee, Malaysia, A+)

17.DRIVING WITH MY WIFE’S LOVER (2006, Kim Tai-sik, South Korea, A+)

18.CELESTE (1981, Percy Adlon, Germany, A+/A)

19.JELLYFISH (2007, Israel, Shira Geffen + Etgar Keret, A+/A)

20.THE SONGS OF EH DOH SHI (2007, Supamok Silarak, Thailand, A)

Wise Kwai wrote about this film here:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/journal_view.php?journalid=100000335&entryid=458345&view=public

21.HELP ME EROS (2007, Lee Kang-sheng, Taiwan, A)

22.STEVE + SKY (2004, Felix Van Groeningen, Belgium, A)

23.SALMONBERRIES (1991, Percy Adlon, A)

24.THE BAND’S VISIT (2007, Eran Kolirin, Israel, A)

25.FLOWER IN THE POCKET (2007, Liew Seng Tat, Malaysia, A/A-)

26.THE MOSQUITO PROBLEM AND OTHER STORIES (2007, Andrey Paounov, Bulgaria, A-)

27.POSSIBLE LIVES (2006, Sandra Gugliotta, Argentina, A-)

28.SIAO YU (1995, Sylvia Chang, Taiwan, A-)

29.MOTHER OF MINE (2005, Klaus Haro, Finland, A-)

30.DALLAS AMONG US (2005, Robert Adrian Pejo, Hungary, A-/B+)

31.881 (2007, Royston Tan, Singapore, B+)

32.FOREVER AND EVER (2001, Raymond To, B+)

33.THE PLANET (2006, Linus Torell + Michael Stenberg + Johan Soderberg, Sweden, B+)

34.THE QUEEN OF SHEBA’S PEARLS (2004, Colin Nutley, Sweden, B+)

35.THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND (2006, Kevin Macdonald, B+)

36.AND IF TOMORROW (2005, Giovanni La Parola, Italy, B)

37.MISS PHYLLIS (2004, Clemens M. Schonborn, Austria, B)

38.IT WILL STAY BETWEEN US (2004, Miro Sindelka, C-)


-----------------------------------


DESIRABLE ACTOR
1.Nuno Lopes (1978) -- ALICE
http://european-films.net/component/option,com_rsgallery2/Itemid,117/catid,22/

2.Filipe Duarte (1973) – THE MURMURING COAST
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1379813/

3.Radivoje Bukvic (1979) – THE CALIFORNIA
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1366568/

4.Pascal Cervo – DEMENTED



FAVORITE ACTRESS
1.Jowita Budnik (Beata) – SAVIOR’S SQUARE
2.Nathalie Baye – THE CALIFORNIA
3.Anamaria Marinca – 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS
4.Eva Mattes – CELESTE
5.Sarah Adler – Jellyfish
6.Ekaterina Rak – IMPORT/EXPORT



FAVORITE ACTOR
1.Daniel J. Travanti – SIAO YU
2.Nejat Isler (Yusuf) – EGG
3.Nuno Lopes -- ALICE
4.Severin Blanchet (Vincent The Minister) – GARDENS IN AUTUMN
5.Miroslav Krobot – THE MAN FROM LONDON
6.Paul Hofmann – IMPORT/EXPORT



FAVORITE SUPPORTING ACTRESS

1.Monica Calle (Helena) – THE MURMURING COAST
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0130385/
She also played in HERE ON EARTH (1993, Joao Botelho), CASA DE LAVA (1994, Pedro Costa), FADO MAJOR AND MINOR (1995, Raul Ruiz)

2.Ewa Wencel (Teresa) – SAVIOR’S SQUARE
She also played in WEISER (2001, Wojciech Marczewski, A-).

3.Mylene Demongeot (Katia) – THE CALIFORNIA

4.Agi Szirtes (Mrs. Brown) – THE MAN FROM LONDON
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0844142/
She also played in A VERY MORAL NIGHT (1977, Karoly Makk), WE NEVER DIE (1993, Robert Koltai, C+), and THIS I WISH AND NOTHING MORE (2000, Kornel Mundruczo).

5.Dominique Reymond – DEMENTED

6.Florence Giorgetti – DEMENTED
She also played in THE LACEMAKER (1977, Claude Goretta, A+), VIVA ALGERIA (2004, Nadir Mokneche, A+), STAIRCASE C (1985, Jean Charles Tacchela)

7.Maria Hofstatter – IMPORT/EXPORT



FAVORITE SUPPORTING ACTOR
1.Nikolai Korobov (Alexei) -- FALLEN
2.Vlad Ivanov (Bebe) – 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS
3.Istvan Lenart (Inspector Morrison) – THE MAN FROM LONDON
4.Michael Thomas (Stepdad) – IMPORT/EXPORT
5.Michel Piccoli – GARDENS IN AUTUMN


FAVORITE ENSEMBLE ACTING
1.GARDENS IN AUTUMN
2.THE CALIFORNIA
3.ANTONIA’S LINE
4.JELLYFISH



FAVORITE CINEMATOGRAPHY
1.Fred Kelemen – THE MAN FROM LONDON
2.Christopher Soos – PHANTOM LOVE
3.Ozgur Eken – EGG
4.Carlos Lopes-- ALICE
5.Georges Diane + Philippe Van Leeuw -- DEMENTED
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0224782/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0887375/













3 comments:

HarryTuttle said...

That's a loaded festival you've had, lots of films to watch, and lots of great films too.
So you liked Yumurta? It's like a Nuri Bilge Ceylan film, or even an Iranian film.
You saw a James Lee film too? How was it?

celinejulie said...

--Yes, I like YUMURTA a lot. I think I even like YUMURTA and ANGEL’S FALL (2005, Semih Kaplanoglu) more than the three films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan that I saw—CLOUDS OF MAY, DISTANT, CLIMATES. I like Ceylan’s films very much, but the main characters in YUMURTA and ANGEL’S FALL fascinate me more than the main characters in Ceylan’s. I think the character “Yusuf” in YUMURTA is enigmatic to me. I couldn’t guess anything about him when I was watching this film. I didn’t know if he was a psycho, a man with deep secrets, a man with tortured soul, a man with a broken heart, a man with a past or without a past, etc. Kaplanoglu gave us so little information about the characters, and the characters in YUMURTA always restrain their expressions and emotions. And when I face characters like this, my imagination tends to run wild. At first I guessed some evil things would surely happen in YUMURTA, like the sexual crime and murder in ANGEL’S FALL, so I felt quite relieved when nothing evil really happens in the film.


--In my opinion, I like THINGS WE DO WHEN WE FALL IN LOVE very much, though a little bit less than BEFORE WE FALL IN LOVE AGAIN (2006, James Lee). I think BEFORE WE FALL IN LOVE again is weirder, more original, more minimalist. THINGS WE DO WHEN WE FALL IN LOVE, for the most part, is like a naturalistic film about stale love relationship. I felt great when I was watching this film, but it doesn’t make me feel as if I was watching something “new” as in the case when I was watching BEFORE WE FALL IN LOVE AGAIN.

One reason why I love both films very much is because these two films seem to portray love or relationship in a bad way. After I saw these two films, it’s hard for me to believe in love, the eternity of love, the sincerity of love, or something like that. These two films seem to portray the other side of love relationship, the side which most romantic films intend to ignore.

My most favorite scene in THINGS WE DO is the scene in which the main couple was sleeping in a bed, then the woman (if I don’t remember it wrongly) woke up and seemed to be troubled by the sound of water dripping in the bathroom. I don’t know if this scene symbolizes anything or not. This scene is surely not important at all to the plot of the film, but I like this scene very much because it seems like a small detail in our daily life, but this small detail in life is rarely portrayed in films.

Though most parts of THINGS WE DO are as naturalistic as French films about human relationships, there are two unnaturalistic scenes in this film which are very interesting to me. First, it is the scene in which the hero suddenly found himself wandering in a barren landscape. The use of surreal barren landscape in this scene somehow reminds me of some Indonesian films of Faozan Rizal. The second scene is the scene in which the hero danced in front of his car. This scene reminds me of some stupid Thai films in the 1980’s. If this scene appeared in old Thai films, I would have thought the scene was very ugly and stupid. But when this scene appears in this film and seems to be totally different from other scenes in the film, I think I like this scene for its craziness.

HarryTuttle said...

thanks for your thoughts on James Lee, I'm looking forward to discover his films one day. I liked Yumurta for its personal and contemplative atmosphere, but I thought it wasn't as accomplished as Ceylan's comparable films. In my opinion it's still an "imitation" of Ceylan, a good one, original in its own way. But the mystery, the unspoken secrets of these characters don't hide as much depth as the characters in DISTANT. Though it might be closer to CLOUDS OF MAY, which was more "superficial" in a way (I mean mundane, face-value, less existentialistic).