Taiwan Black Movies Part 1

Introduction:

The following is based upon an online, free-to-watch streaming festival from the Anthology Film Archive, which screened between the 2nd to the 15th December 2020¹. This multi-part review as a result, covering five films and a documentary, is as much a time capsule, a diary, to remember this event as it is a review covering these films.

Attempting to review the documentary Taiwan Black Movies (2005), a production by Hou Chi-Jan about an hour or so long about a period of Taiwanese genre films made from 1979 to 1982/3, will be difficult to review fully for me personally. Talking head documentaries for me are difficult as they are very much analytical pieces, talking to figures from this era and film critics, but it is a great guide to these films, a cultural landmark that was entirely unknown to me. Sadly, it was not appreciated and rediscovered until a time later, having to be preserved from immensely damaged materials in many cases, a hindrance in a 4k fixated world for cultural growth. Taiwan Black Movies does point out that, from first film being Never Too Late to Repent (1979), they were made as pulp, enticing with lurid content particularly in terms of female nudity, but they had much more in hindsight in their meaning.

******

 

The Challenge of the Lady Ninja (1983)

Director: Tso Nam Lee

Screenplay: Hsin-Yi Chang and Hsin Wei

Cast: Hui-Shan Yang, Kuan Tai Chen, Yun-Peng Hsiang, Yi-Tao Chang, Ying-Chi Chang, Kai-Chun Chen, Sung Young Chen, Yi-Chun Chiang

 

What, a whore can't love her country?

Contextually the first of these films I saw may seem an outlier to that introduction, as it is closer to something I am very familiar with, as The Challenge of the Lady Ninja is not only a martial arts film, but belonging to a type I have bought old second hand DVDs of countless times in my past. Not just Godfrey Ho films but the many martial arts films which have always been a huge market, made in this era not only in Hong Kong but in countries like South Korea and Taiwan. This could have easily appeared on one of those DVDs, its premise a clear one - in a period setting, in the midst of the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, the opening scene has a figure named Li Tong betray his country for the Japanese imperial army, his uncle being killed. This slain man's daughter Xiaohui, learning the gifts of the Iga ninja clan in Japan whilst this is happening, returns to her home for revenge and patriotism.

This patriotic side, where she joins the Anti-Traitor Squad against Li Tong and his four unconventional bodyguards, does develop a new meaning when you learn, as documented in Taiwan Black Movies, the Taiwanese genre films started borrowing ideas from "patriotism" films to avoid controversy in their more explicit content. Despite a lead taught magic Japanese ninjutsu, from a ninja clan who do not discriminate against a Chinese woman good enough to pass their ultimate text, and oppose militarism contrary to their country's behaviour, as a result of this tone we end up with a film very anti-Japanese at least in them being moustache twirling villains. It definitely feels out of place among a movement which pushed for "social realist" genre films, but again one has to be reminded these were still genre films to sell. The evocation of Godfrey Ho, who is held as a notorious director, is not an insult as not only are the coloured smoke bombs used through something he (and the films by his frequent producer  Joseph Lai) was obsessed with especially in his infamous cut-and-paste ninja films, but one evokes the pure manic unpredictability of lower budget martial arts films particularly from their group, the sound effects of swords clashing enough in themselves to evoke the numerous I have binged in over the years.

Xiaohu's final test in her introduction does immediate shown this - spinning to change your red ninja costume to a pink bikini to seductively win over four male ninja, only for this to be an illusion that explodes; fake hand decoys to chop off; shadow clones; even a final part which involves an actual puzzle, of acquiring the prize out of a tube too long to reach by hand. Throughout the film you can suddenly have tangents involving unexpected techniques and fights transpiring: a moment requiring someone having to be poisoned involved letting the woman tasked to the job of seducing have multiple back up contingencies and even poisoned fake front teeth, and the final fight even includes the act of spinning deep into the ground and charge your opponent under the soil like a giant mole. The main conceit as well is that, with emphasis on the men being doubtful the women are able to get the job done, Xiaohui not only disproves them by training a small band of women, including Zhi Zhi the sex worker and an acrobat, but that they are better at the job, especially after training. Said training, involving painful limb stretching exercises with ropes pulling one's limbs, to seduction training, where using editing the women can create seductive illusions of themselves that can also explode, feels just on the sane side of a type of cinema which, to use a Godrey Ho example from one of his films, where he had a lead learn to be a better martial artist by kicking mirrors.

Li Tong's bodyguards are a trope in martial arts cinema themselves, of figures with distinct abilities from a female fighter, or a man armed with a razor sharp boomerang and net, to the most prominent, a man with a sky blue scorpion tattoo that goes down from his bald head to where his eyebrows should be like they are painted on. The four even get, long after their introductions shots, out of time against black, footage showing their techniques fighting people. The film does become conventional as it goes along, which is Lady Ninja's biggest flaw but not one which does any real damage to the film, merely that there is a bit of predictability among what is the more overtly genre structured film of those I saw.

Even if set in, say, the nineteen forties the hair and the headbands are of the eighties, and undeniably this was a film made to entertain, a film that can abruptly include a fight scene between two women in an oil filled ring, which does have a kinky edge in their leotards until it gets ugly and violent, and plenty of deeply silly material trying to side with a film meant to be taken seriously as there is drama in these characters fighting a force in the Japanese Imperial Army which is all powerful. You see the tug and pull between what this movement was here as, undeniably, this production was entirely for entertainment, some of which is just lurid, but also means we have the sense of unpredictability from these martial arts films that I grew to enjoy amongst these production issues.

*******

Woman Revenger (1981)

a.ka. The Nude Body Case in Tokyo

Director: Yang-Ming Tsai

Screenplay: Chen Kuo Tai and Chen-hsiang Tai

Cast: Hui-Shan Yang, Te-Kai Liu, Sha Ma, Emily Y. Chang, Yi-Fung Lu

Woman Revenger also feels part of the films closer to pulp then this movement's shift to "social realist" genre films, belaying an attempt of mirroring a world where, when made, Taiwan was experiencing political upheavals in the late seventies to the early eighties, from the United States officially ending their relationship with Taiwan, to much more severe concerns such as protests and even the murder of Lin Yi-hsiung, a leader of the democratic movement, and his family in February 1980. for their politics. This feels closer instead to a film like Girls' Concentration Camp (1983) which, with the trailer shown in Taiwan Black Movies, sounds in premise exactly as it sounds.

To Woman Revenger's defence, it is still prominent, with the same lead Hui-Shan Yang as in Lady Ninja, how it still emphasises strong female characters even with the nudity and violence. Also with its set up emphasises the notion of many of these genre films of "de-Taiwanisation", in which the lead Lingling comes to Japan after a friend from when they were orphans at the Sacred Heart Orphangae was killed by the underworld after acquiring money for the orphanage from them. This was where these films deliberately avoided cultural symbolism or landmarks which directly evoked the country, in being based in other countries in the plot (like The Challenge of the Lady Ninja (1983)) or here setting and shooting the film in Japan, with Lingling trying to rescue her late friend's younger sister Meifeng from criminals who are after the drugs her older sister is said to have ran off with. Quite a bit of tourism on film is seen as a result, be it a scene near Mt. Fuji or live footage of a real sumo wrestling show, which makes this a vast contrast to Lady Ninja's anti-Japanese tone.  The most elaborate use, the first, is actually one of the most creative scenes when Meifeng is first being tracked down, shot in the midst of a huge real crowd of people in the middle of urban Japan, vast and as far as one's eyes can see with a cacophony of music and sound.  It is a fascinating piece of verité in what you see, from retro rockabilly dancers, young Japanese men and women dressed as American fifties bikers and in dresses performing rock n roll dancing, eighties shell suits, and four guys as a cheap makeshift KISS, with the band's makeup on, heads through a giant black cloth all of them are holding up as they have tiny little puppet bodies with instruments attacked under their heads.

I see the film actually being influenced by the Japanese films of the decade before, even if with some nuisances are missed, such as a scene of attempted hara-kiri where a gangster (played by a non-Japanese actor speaking Mandarin) just plunges the blade into the stomach (only to be stopped) without any of the ritual found in Japanese pulp films. Especially when very late on, when the lead has her eye stabbed out, this feels like the result of a film like Lady Snowblood (1973) getting imported to Taiwan, including such scenes as one in the snow, after an attempt at a kidnap while women are bathing in a small room, or how the setup for the film is the lead's friend being murdered in a giant bathhouse.  One thing that Taiwan Black Movies also clarified is that, with a set piece of Lingling winning Meifeng's freedom briefly with a game of dice, using inner strength to crack a die, is that it was surfing a trend when "piles of gambling films" by 1982 were being made, to the point that it became a concern in terms of moral indecency.

These moral guardians would have likely blushed at the nudity, or a woman being held upside down on a wooden cross, with the legs outwards, with honey and ants on the legs with the poor actress involved having real ants on her. Such moments are a reminder that a couple of these films were clearly shot for less than high minded content, which will be a concern for many modern viewers. This does become a conventional crime film with some fight scenes eventually too, about an evil prostitution ring and Lingling trying to rescue Meifeng, but I have softened to this film too as an example of unpredictable, lurid pulp. Any film where a male gangster gets a comeuppance, in the docks in one of the containers stacked up high, by having a gold snake slid under his gold thong is distinct at least. It does get interesting by the climax when you have a band of women being created to finally defeat the villains, a striking image even with the titillation when you have them with blades, wearing white bikinis closer to gauze, getting revenge on a crime leader in his lounge. Especially when it comes to the tragic ending - [Major Spoiler] when the lead is arrested for finally getting revenge, the final shot with the "End" title over a close-up of handcuffs on her wrists [Spoilers End] - alongside how it has the melancholic song playing over the images, this does get a lot right in terms of this type of filmmaking even if it is also predictable.

To Be Continued...

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1) The online festival, whilst closed, thankfully still has its introduction text up HERE.

Saving Christmas (2014)

 

Director: Darren Doane

Screenplay: Darren Doane and Cheston Hervey

Cast: Kirk Cameron as Kirk; Darren Doane as Christian White; Bridgette Ridenour as Kirk's sister; David Shannon as Diondre; Raphi Henly as a conspiracy theorist; Ben Kientz as St. Nick

Ephemeral Waves

...and I love hot chocolate!

Covering this notorious Christian Christmas film, most reviews would immediately take this time to shoot fish in a barrel. Instead, during this Christmas period where this review would be best to read this review, let us make this a morality tale, a frank ones that sometimes are still told at this time of the year, as necessary alongside the hot chocolate that keeps us warm, the good cheer needed after all the stress of the year previous, to drop a form of reality check to improve for the New Year. The moral of this tale is the dangers of lack of speaking without thinking, and the tale immediately begins in 12th October 1970, the birthday of the executive producer/lead star Kirk Cameron.

Cameron, a child actor whose biggest claim to fame in his youth was the ABC sitcom Growing Pains (1985–1992), became an Evangelical Christian in his youth and began starring in films like Fireproof (2008). He begins Saving Christmas speaking directly to the viewer in a room from a Hallmark Christmas card about his love for Christmas, "even growing out the winter beard". He definitely adores the season, just hot chocolate alone, which whilst other reviews will possible mock him, this tale I am telling is ultimately a tragedy. Of someone who clearly had a good childhood with Christmas, and is well intentioned in this curious documentary/essay/fictional seasonal drama, but also unfortunately showed so much in his character by accident, flaws and traits from the worst of human beings which include an inability for constructive argumentative work, and not responding to criticisms with the virtue that a Christian should offer his other cheek to be smote and learn from the issues raised. He also looks reminiscent, in dress sense and unshaven look, to my older brother which adds weirdness to watching the film, baring the fact that despite once being a choir boy in his youth my older brother is definitely not an Evangelical Christian.

How does one practice Christmas as a Christian? That is the main concern of the film, or should be with mind to some issues that will be raised, but you can imagine that Cameron, likely with a wide eyed naive love for the season took it upon himself, with his own studio Camfam Studios and funded by the Liberty University¹, to work on this project with his co-star/director Darren Doane. The tale of Saving Christmas is Kirk Cameron showing concern that the Christmas he adores, of roasting chestnuts and turkey, is too materialistic in the eyes of others of the same faith, alongside other concerns of whether it has pagan aspects, such as whether his beloved chocolate was invented by druids.

This does hint at a good debate to have, as fellow Christians believe Christmas has completely misinterpreted the festival, something even non-Christians can show a concern of. The animated opening credits, set to a ska version of Silent Night, offers the promise in itself of a warm, well-minded work. Even if the title sadly has a more negative weight to it than one would hope, the fantasy would be that, if this was a smart introspective debate on the subject from a Christian perspective, the title would be a more humorously toned choice similar to the title to a family film about rescuing Santa Claus.

What Saving Christmas actually is - essay, Christmas drama, religious discussion, none of the above - is a misguided attempt at tackling a much more complicated subject, wide-eyed but without greater wisdom. It surrounds Cameron trying to help his brother-in-law Christian (Darren Doane) who hates Christmas, clearly suffering through a severe depression, requiring a therapist, which has latched onto an existential crisis about being a Christian but seeing Christmas as full of "perverted symbols with hidden meaning", "needless spending" and (with more humour) "elf worship", which requires a priest. It does not need Kirk Cameron to bend his arm in the front seat of a car which they spend most of the film within, all with a calm smile on his face of confidence, unless Cameron was to turn this into It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and properly help Christian find new meaning as his Clarence. The Christmas party his wife has set up would have been expensive to decorate, which if this was ever realistic would have not helped violent depression further especially as a religious man, "a slap in the face of the true meaning of Christmas" the thing he has latched onto in what is clearly an existential "dark night of the soul" in a well thought out film.

I can see the ideal and sympathise with Kirk Cameron - wanting to be a reassurance that Christmas cheer and charity has not been lot even today - but I agree more with Christian which immediately causes problems, that "this is not what God wants" when, for the Judeo-Christian faith, Christmas usually means now spending too much and advertisements for productions which puts off even the non-religious. Christian even brings up a sad symbolism, from the sad image of a Nativity snow globe buried in the corner hidden by a giant tree, a sad image just from merely having to picture it, which does have too much power to be easily dismissed. The moment however Cameron says he is wrong, that he was "drank the Kool-Aid", is when the film becomes a tragedy of him drinking his own, a solipsist form where, in a long conversation, Cameron has some good thoughtful ideas and constructive metaphors you can work with in wisdom, such as the swaddling clothes at Jesus' birth and death symbolically connecting, but there is not enough provided to lead to the needed conclusion.

There is also the tangent which feels out of place, that the film gets into references of the apparent war of Christmas, as a couple of the people at the party are planning to protest the cancellation of crazy shirt Friday at their work place. This concern for me has always been a contentious thing in whether it actually existed, as we have in the British Isles occasionally talks of this, but at times, it has felt from my insignificant vantage point whether this is just an odd thing that happens in the big metropolises. Where did this apparent belief in the cancelling of Christmas come from? A bigger concern for myself, whether this will have note or be a completely straw man argument in its nature, is that never is it asked whether someone who is not Christian (or of a different faith or celebrating Haneka) is ever offended if someone says "Merry Christmas" to them in the street or at work, but that it apparently exists as a concern to cancel Christmas, never asking where the evidence from either those who are threatened, or those blamed responsible, comes from in terms of how regular people on the street with their own faiths or lack thereof react to the Christian holiday. As much of this belief for me, even if bias, stems from living in a working class English town which is predominantly Caucasian environment of Protestant background, whilst multi-ethic and diverse, where Christmas cards which say "Merry Christmas" are a dime a dozen everywhere at the winter season, and no one really bats an eye on the subject regardless of whether they even have spiritual faith or not. In itself, like the entire issue of whether Christmas is too materialistic, we have these debates, or whether Fairytale in New York by the Pogues has to be censored due to certain un-PC language in the lyrics for a specific example, but never does it get brought up enough whether there are really any debates to figure out the solution, instead always coming off as solipsism in that neither side ever consider the wider question.

It neither helps that Saving Christmas with this pointless digression, requiring this huge tangent in the review, seems to make this all a joke but still be fixated upon it. It is a joke, much later on, with the character of Diondre (David Shannon), a friend of Cameron's who is the most charismatic person of the film, alongside a co-worker at the party, start commenting on things like there being an Area 52, where all the Christmas decorations are hidden away? It is actually a funny joke, but what about when they start trading off between them, behind their mugs to stay secret, ideas like Chem-trails or even the conspiracy that all the burger meat in fast food is merely "pink slime" rather than the real thing? On the surface this scene, which is presented comically, would be a parody of this mentality, but tonally there is a question of what the intention is, especially with the question why the scenes and references were even made.

If this had been a subtle documentary about breaking down how to worship, including where Christmas symbolism originates from, and issues like why we celebrate Christ's birth in December, the film would have been welcomed even if it was entirely from a Christian perspective. Cameron pulls some long bows, like The Garden of Eden's stand-in being a Christmas tree lot, but sometimes his personal interpretation have something of note which is sweet, such as it better we have trees than more crosses, as Christ hung himself off one to forgive Adam taking an apple off the Tree of Knowledge. It may cause people to roll their eyes, like the one I have just included, but this is not the problem. The problem is when he presumes this is enough or makes assumptions, batting off difficult issues which need to be tackled.

Interpretation has been a huge part of Christian text, but as someone who has had an interest in religion in general since I went to a primary school where the local vicar came frequently for assembly sermons, the most profound ideas tend to not try to win an argument but offer introspection. Cameron comes off as a big kid who really had good Christmas memories, but he skips huge and dangerous amounts of detail which, even if some would still cause him grief, would have given him greater wisdom and strengthen the interesting moments of introspection if he forced himself as the executive producer to tackle them.

Even with some of the obvious ideas - like reminding people of St. Nicholas being a true Santa, not the construct in red garb by the Coca Cola Company - is not dealt with enough. Director Darren Doane goes for a grubby realism, of a man in pelts and a beard brooding, but it leads to an unintentionally funny moment which, if the film was not gun-ho at being right, would have been an amusing fictionalised and human take on the figure. One where St. Nicholas will beat up a heretical priest, for saying Christ is not immortal, then suddenly go off to give gifts to the poor with a cheese eating grin on his face. Even if Cameron had gone for the obvious, i.e. ideas which Charles Dickens did perfectly well in A Christmas Carol of charity and that virtue can be found even in the spectacle of Christmas, he would have done better, but this is all left on the table.

The added, uncomfortable detail is found in the type of language used. "Drinking the Kool-Aid" or throwing about the word "heretic". You can have your unexpected, silly hip hop Christmas dance at the end scored to Family Force 5, but it cannot be hidden how this attitude of headstrong righteousness is when this all sounds sinister. This is where the American Evangelicals in pop culture become an entity which is looked to in suspicion, and even without this, unfortunately a film like Saving Christmas has not aged well further after the presidential nomination of Donald Trump, a figure bolstered by the Evangelical right in spite of nothing in his background recommending him as a very virtuous figurehead. It is an accidental coincidence Kirk Cameron was behind Trump in the 2016 elections²; some of the aw-shucks charisma, blunt with disregard attitude to conflicting opinions the film has is the kind which has become more acceptable by the end of the 2010s and has run amok in politics in a more toxic form.

This film's issues can be boiled down into Cameron's infamous banana argument against evolution, although let us correct one detail - Cameron was merely co-hosting the television show Way of The Master with Ray Comfort, a New Zealand Creationist/host/Evangelical who was offering the argument the banana was an "ironclad argument" of God's intelligent design³. I am not here to debate the subject of evolution, when the bigger issue is how, even for someone arguing for evolution, you need to accept that a debate will not be won by bringing literal piece of fruit into the debate, or that (for the Creationist or Scientific side equally) winning the argument will reward everyone in the end when the introspection and ideas considered should be the point. Yes, the banana, even if we have generically bred them into what they are, are curiously perfect in their form just from how to open one, but even wishing to win the argument is not a goal worth striving for as it gains nothing. It would have been more profound, even if it pissed scientists off still, to just raise a banana up and ask them how on Earth it came to be, even if said angry scientists would have scientific theories to retort back. Back-and-forth debate with mind to grow on both sides should have been the point.

The problem with Saving Christmas is the same, where through less arguments but empty bravado, Kirk Cameron convinces Christian he is right rather than come to a new meaning between them, to storm into the house and belly surf the floor nearly into the Christmas tree. Kirk Cameron did not want to actually debate this subject, just go for material that is not even obvious, but ill thought out. Glossier than I expected, nothing about the film in its low budget style, like a low budget Christmas drama, or the music and casting etc. is an issue, but that as a production desiring to argue, it does not provide an argument to begin with. The sense of intellectually head butting others rather than trying to deal with the conflict is what corrupts Saving Christmas in itself entirely right down to only being eighty minutes with little friction, with a quick and frankly illogical resolve that changes Christian.

Cameron would sadly be doing this still even after the film was criticised and I have not even gotten around to the fact the film effectively celebrates the materialistic and indulgent nature of the season, and merely placates the notions of charity and goodwill. A close thing to a warning is Cameron informing the viewer to not run their credit cards to their limits, but this aspect is the most egregious. It also is where the sense of Kirk Cameron's wide eyed, child like nature coming into this, from how he perceives the subject, is ultimately his undoing, to the point that whilst Saving Christmas was savaged, he did not come back with an argument against his critics and have a debate, but say it was part of an "atheist conspiracy"⁴.

Sadly he did not use this to grow and mature, and whilst we can argue that a lot of the worse aspects of Western culture in the late 2010s onwards comes a variety of things (corruption, anti-intellectualism) also add to that list an unwillingness to accept failure, a juvenile attitude that one does not continually change and learn in the face of subjects, one that does not learn a subject cannot merely be conquered, with the knowledge it may have never been meant to be completed. Kirk Cameron sadly did not learn as, in December 2020, as an anti-mask and lockdown supporter he went to stage mask-less carol singing protests during the season, twice with mass crowds, during the COVID-19 pandemic⁵. Most reviews, if they time stamp themselves, may never consider the opinions of those on the opposite side of the argument, but this morality tale of mine, for a film which is misguided as its reputation suggests and for only the morbidly curious, is not meant to be another burial of an American right wing Evangelical either.

In fact, truthfully, I will argue the left wing are as capable of this type of ignorance and misguidedness, in a worse capacity behind moral righteousness and common sense to shout down their opponents in the same way Kirk Cameron does to Christian in the front seat of a car, their own vocabulary replacing the phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid" with a similar unwillingness to debate a subject. In mind to the likes of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens forced his protagonist and the reader to experience the cruelty of real life before there could be a happy ending. This particular morality tale does not ignore the real difficult nature of the world, particularly as this review to stamp it to December 2020 comes from a miserable era in human society. The moral however is one I feel is important, whilst also being a very simple one - that we really need, even on an amateur level, better critical thinking and debating skills. I am sure, one day, I could easily write a very long polemic about a film from a left wing perspective this ill advised and ill-thought-out, which makes this a moral I want to learn as much as any of my dear readers should.

 

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1) "Training champions for Christ since 1971"

2) An example from the 2020 re-election of this can be found HERE.

3) An article on this, though from the scientific side of the debate, can be found HERE.

4) As talked of HERE.

5) HERE.

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue (1990)

 

Director: Milton Gray, Marsh Lamore, Robert Shellhorn, Mike Svayko and Karen Peterson

Screenplay: Duane Poole and Tom Swale

Voice Cast: George C. Scott as Smoke; Jason Marsden as Michael; Don Messick as Papa Smurf; Lorenzo Music as Garfield; Laurie O'Brien as Baby Piggy / Mom; Lindsay Parker as Corey; Janice Karman as Theodore (voice); Jim Cummings as Tigger / Winnie the Pooh; Ross Bagdasarian Jr. As Alvin / Simon (voice); Jeff Bergman as Bugs Bunny / Daffy Duck; Townsend Coleman as Michelangelo / Dad; Russi Taylor as Huey / Dewey / Louie / Baby Gonzo; Frank Welker as Slimer / Baby Kermit / Hefty Smurf; Barbara Bush as Self; George Bush as Self; Paul Fusco as Gordon 'ALF' Shumway

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

Now I'm seeing ducks!

Beginning with the Ronald McDonald Children's Charity, with Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue recovered from a VHS rip, we start with an advertising where children of various disabilities and social standings smile to the camera in idyllic commercial depictions of childhood, happy and with a children's chorus evoking the ideals of charity and contributing to those in need. We forget that whatever one's opinion of McDonalds and any corporation in general¹, with this the fast food franchise's charity part of their public face, any business has to account for the world around them. This includes various attempts at charity and "community service" for a lack of a better term depending on whether they sincerely desire to help the public or if for dubious means. This is also important to think of as that charity also helped produce this curious combination of public scares and pop culture, a very odd one where, not since Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and all the hurdles to get Warner Brothers and Disney to agree to let their characters co-exist on the same screen, this is done for the sake of a fear of children getting into narcotics and done as a public health service.

Likewise, the prelude to this infamous cartoon special about saying no to drugs also includes an address by the then-president George Bush Sr. with his wife Barbara Bush, hoping this work would be advancement on the war on drugs the USA was involved in this period. It is surreal to envision or even see this piece, from a Buena Vista International distributed production; the imagine of Donald Trump, when he was president, sat on a couch with Ivanka Trump, addressing an audience like this feels a foreign and peculiar world on long ago. Baraka and Michelle Obama maybe, but what Cartoon All-Stars... is, if also a vague and misguided attempt at social consciousness, is also a fascinating time capsule that, were it not for all the rights negotiations that may be involved to re-release it, does show a period where children from the USA especially grew up with "say no to drugs" campaigning, this just one of the various ways to promote the message over various pop culture. There is even a reference to Freddy Krueger of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise in dialogue which, alongside how peculiar it was a horror villain known as a child murderer managed to be referenced even in this production, goes to show the era it was made in was a time ago. The reason why this one is known and infamous is that, for this tale of a teenage boy named Michael, an added surrealism of having this writer's name, we have the likes of Garfield interacting with the Muppet Babies to help him kick drugs. Where the evil smoke figure on the opposite should, tempting poor Michael to crack, is voiced by the legendary actor George C. Scott, and where it effectively turns into an animated version of Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945), only with the addict protagonist seeing Donald Duck's nephews rather than bats...who then start to sing.

Now the layman will be aware that the issue of drugs in modern culture has yet to be resolved. Marijuana being legalised in states in America is a huge change - where Simon of the Chipmunks is able to inform everyone what one is but it is still considered the gateway drug to worse narcotics - but instead of mocking Cartoon All-Stars... however, the bigger tragedy is that this was the work of earnestness by conservative/corporate USA, whether the people animating and voicing the film were actually earnest in the goal or not, which was inevitably going to be doomed to squareness about the subject. It actually feels like a perversity in itself, in truth, when you have these characters materialise from the toys and possessions Michael's younger sister has (the likes of the Smurfs to Winnie the Pooh), looking and sounding as we may have grown up with them, only for the harsh reality of them to have to encounter drug addiction. Even if the box hidden under Michael's bed is full of weird alien forms of narcotic tools, it feels wrong for this to have transpired, despite the many parodies which may have existed. Winnie the Pooh's obsession with honey and demeanour should raise suspicions, Garfield was always cynical, and out of all the Mutant Teenage Ninja Turtles to be included, the only one being Michelangelo the party dude feels strange unless he is a teetotaller surfer dude, but with the other characters it feels like a moral transgression if you think of how these characters have been brought into the subject where, for all the dancing around actually talking about real drugs and their effects, "crack" is actually referenced at one point.

For myself, missing this anti-drug campaigning by being too young and British, I did nonetheless grow up with some of these characters. I remember Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Smurfs, the Ninja Turtles and Garfield cartoons. Then there are figures only know in the UK in hushed voices and Simpsons references like Alf: a cat eating alien (who threatens to eat Garfield in the one darkly humorous line) who started as a live action character, got an animated work to qualify here and eventually had a cancelled talk show in 2004.  And in some cases, there are characters being used for this moralising which is actually a transgression against them rather than feeling too innocent to be involved. The rumour, which has never been substantiated and was eventually debunked², was that Jim Davidson, the creator of Garfield, did not get his permission to include Garfield which compromised future screenings. I am, however, thinking of someone like Bugs Bunny, who here with Daffy Duck was the first time someone else ever took on the role after Mel Blanc. God knows anyone who has actually seen at least one of the old Bugs Bunny shorts where Tex Avery/Friz Freleng/Bob Clampett school made him the ultimate libertine of cartoons, who dressed as women constantly and was an utter spiteful misanthrope to suckers, the kind of figure whose morally concerned version here vastly contrasts a character more likely to be on jazz cigarettes himself.

The fact all these characters, including their voice actors, were pulled together is spectacular, and the animation is not bad. Even for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which I have already referred to, it took Steven Spielberg at the height of his powers (just as a production) to be in the same room so rivals Disney and Warner Brothers would allow Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny onscreen together, and even then there had to be rules set in stone. Here, under the auspices of protecting children from drugs, more influence was found if dooming this special due to the obvious copyright issues now to deal with. In terms of voice acting, whilst there are some legendary if underappreciated voice actors here (like Frank Welker, the living zoological database for animal real or imagined), the one big gleeful discovery for a cineaste is one of the only animated roles for George C. Scott as the evil Smoke, a tempting vapour who promoted those evil nasty drugs on young adolescents. It was probably a pay day, but George C. Scott was one of those character actors who could make any production better just because he was there and he was the best thing in Cartoon All Stars... as to be expected. In fact, the Smoke character, a purple cloud of smoke in a suit, is the one intelligent aspect of the short, Smoke's temptations and threats having a weight to them with the legendary Dr. Strangelove actor voice and that the dialogue does not shy away from him still being a threat even when Michael kicks the drugs.

The message itself is vague and confused, and that is the ultimate reason anyone understandably mocks the short. It does not dare try to explain why drugs are harmful, throwing weed under the bus in the same light as crack, when they are in different categories, and depicting the damage caused by them through nightmare scenarios that feel like they are drug hallucinations themselves rather than the real grim toll they cause. From the deranged theme park of roller coasters through the brain matter and the hall of distorting mirrors, to a musical number where the song is about saying no to drugs in various ways, it never dares scare children with the truth of the harm drugs can cause. Neither does it even admit why anyone would be hooked barring some platitudes of curiosity and stress. What it does instead is just a fantasy scenario - where Bugs Bunny borrows a time machine "from some coyote" to take Michael to the past where he first took weed, all in black and white in one clever touch, before going on to a series of scenes of him suffering hallucinogenic nightmares, including a sewer full of multicoloured sludge or a carnival where a giant Miss Piggy sucks him up in a drink's straw. The many shots of what Michael will look like ravaged by drugs instead looks like a zombie, not factual accuracy to the real toll of narcotics, where animation in its exaggeration betrays the message.

If the finale of the short did not scare you off drugs, there are moments where it does completely contradict itself, not at least a father whose beer drinking is not thrown under the bus too in the one line it is brought up in. The entire scenario is the product of squares pulling their punches and being uncomfortable even trying to talk about drugs, only referencing a few and leaving the others vague which is a dangerous thing in itself, the sense that instead we will put a really ominous synth drone when crack is mentioned and that will be enough, all in a video gaming arcade when this happens to emphasis the clichés of that being a den of debauchery. The only sense of adult thoughtfulness is that aforementioned line of dialogue that Smoke, Scott's villain, promises to return at the end like the nagging potential for relapse, a detail which is an actual struggle for some addicts and the one only honest consideration. The rest is deeply silly and not surprisingly was the sort of thing dope heads could smoke pot and laugh at as was the case for Reefer Madness (1936). In terms of a cultural artefact, I do find it compelling and recommend people find this; in fact, as with any project, I wish it was legally available as, even as an animated project, contextually it is a really unique piece and, in its own perverse existence, is watchable.  The weirdness of the project in itself is enough to recommend anyone look into.

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1) I have softened to McDonalds, both because in Britain fast food stores like it, as American exports, exist in a very different way to the image I have had of them in the United States; in America, you have tomes like Fast Food Nation, where the 2006 Richard Linklater adaptation will always stick in mind for the moment about faecal matter in the burgers, or the 2004 documentary Super Size Me demonising them but in England, especially as a result of a pandemic, their banality as regular people work hard jobs in their kitchens to provide food for regular people working hard jobs has become more significant. Particularly as someone who is working class myself, seeing them as an inherently evil corporate monolith is overly simplistic as, blending in the background next to a supermarket where my closest is, it just seems a gaudy building where people on both sides of the till exist, with their individual existences. Also, whilst I prefer other burgers, I have to admit at some point, after the toil of 2020,  just binging on their menu and giving in to stuffing one's face just once would seem far less like you are selling your soul nowadays as I type this, that and their McFlurries were always good.

2) Mark Evanier, head writer of Garfield and Friends (1988-94), debunked the rumour on the Cartoon Research Facebook page HERE with the following text in October 2013:

"How about if I confirm it? Jim knew all about the special, he okayed Garfield's participation and approved whatever had to be approved.

I believe the original plan, which got all the various copyright holders to agree to let their characters participate called for limited airing."

Castro (2009)

Director: Alejo Moguillansky

Screenplay: Alejo Moguillansky

Cast: Edgardo Castro as Castro, Julia Martínez Rubio as Celia, Alberto Suarez as Samuel, Carla Crespo as Rebeca Thompson, Esteban Lamothe as Acuña

Ephemeral Waves

Castro begins with three people - an older man (with white hair so trimmed and thinning he is nearly bald) called Samuel, a younger man named Acuña, and a young woman named Rebeca Thompson, all pursuing the titular Castro, a man fleeing them in a white shirt and tanned trousers who they have run from one end of an Argentinean city to the train station to catch, even if he eludes them by leaving the train and walking on the tracks for a distance. Castro, the ellusive figure, is persued by these people throughout the film. With his salt-and-pepper hair, Castro is openly a penniless vagabond, with a tendency to sleep in closets, a novel way to get coffee for free (drinking his, stealing someone else's of a different order, and complaining he was not given the right order), and a novel way of riding buses for free (get on one, fumble in his pockets as it moves, get off when telling the driver he has no change, get on another bus afterwards). Samuel is after him for money, Acuña (for the rest of the film mostly moving on crutches) his associate tracking Castro for him alongside Willie, another of his associates. Rebeca is Castro's wife, who is still together as a divorce has yet to go through, in spite of him being with Celia, a woman who has been with Samuel (and to Samuel's mind, still should be).

I have encountered Alejo Moguillansky as a filmmaker before. His 2017 film The Little Match Girl was a disappointment for me though with hindsight its fascinating mix, very much like this, could have worked. I had to admire that in only 71 minutes that Argentinean production managed to including references to Hans Christian Anderson, Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), the extreme left wing German terrorist organisation the Baader-Meinhof Group, and opera but that was a case of a film which did not feel as surreal or as playful as it needed to be, least on that single viewing, maybe as much because I was expecting a bit more from it then what I had gotten. Least for my impression back then, it was mainly a family drama around a strained couple which was sweet but conventional in spite of its curious plot references. Here however you have something a bit more eccentric. Deadpan and shot in natural, graffiti filled streets Casto is eccentric, and the solo piano score and the fact it evokes silent cinema accompaniment feels perfect for this production, which does feel like a film where the point to why these characters are after each other is less important than the interactions themselves.

Split under chapter cards, this is a film of these figures in the midst of their search for Castro, even Castro himself in some search for what he wants as he is a figure fleeing or skinning the cat constantly. The allies after Castro are even divided, messages from Samuel suggesting everyone distrust the other, whilst Willie and Rebeca develop a relationship where they organise their sex life as much as strategy to find her husband. Even Celia, who is ultimately left by herself, pushes Castro to find work, in a world where an interview is a mechanical environment, where any interview (like with Celia's asking for measurements even of her wrists and forearms) is oppressive. When Castro does find work, he ends up with a strange (and likely illegal) package delivery group, whose elaborate method of transport, a mass of men switching cars with the person carrying the package, done in breakneck efficiency and bonnet sliding, also forces him to leave the apartment in the city he rented with Celia to stay in their hive.

The film, low key and relaxed, uses this tone to an advantage as, barring moments of rapid fire dialogue, there is a subdued mood that can juxtapose the content. The more absurd aspects stand out, such as how encumbered even as a young able bodied Acuña is trying to trail Castro on crutches through the city. The unexpected frankness of sex with some nudity, whilst chaste in comparison to other films, stands out as does the more openly ridiculous touches particularly due to the lack of quick editing, camera movement baring long tracking shots, and many scenes in plain environments. Samuel's general decline as he is exasperated by everyone else's failure to find Castro; working on interior decoration at a house in his downtime, at first he starts laying on the floor around the paint cans and ladder in misery, then eventually painting his own face red rather than on a wall where it was intended for, throwing objects at a statue in public half mad in one shot out of his whits. It is cute when, to try to trail Celia to get Castro, three of them follow her, signalling each other with umbrellas. Far less expected, and the subdued tone working perfectly, is the least expected film for a car chase to transpire in yet naturally makes sense to; logically involving the hijacking of one of the courier cars, Castro in the car ahead, the piano score by Ulises Conti with its evocation of silent films is befittingly beautifully as is the fact it ends nowhere with nothing gained.

Even the arguably melancholic finale fits as the slow building of the plot concludes with Castro being still an elusive figure beyond reach from everyone. [Major Spoiler Warning] Likely to have killed himself, all done outside the car in a long take, by driving repeatedly gently into a nearby wall, whilst a crutchless Acuña has to wander from the countryside back for reconnaissance. [Spoilers End] For myself, whilst this type of cinema has thankfully been with us for decades and into the modern day, I have always had a fondness for an era of World Cinema between 2000 to 2009, which this is just on the cusp of, an era where cinema from many nations was distributed on DVD in the United Kingdom in large amounts, and were always chimeras of genre where you had no idea what to expect from any of them. This was the rare case of one which was not released in that time, showing how many films have be produced over the decades, but it would have fit among them easily. It sadly is the sort of work that is AWOL more nowadays were it not for rare cases like MUBI making them available, even if briefly. Castro is the kind of film, if it was easily available, you could return to and find the same pleasure even over multiple viewings from, something in particular as it offers a renewed interest in Alejo Moguillansky for me to see his films if I can.  Knowing one of the producers was Mariano Llinás adds an additional touch as, the director of Extraordinary Stories (2008) with its four hours of weaving narratives, and known for his contributions in others' work in his homeland, Castro feels of a piece of that type of work if also its own creation.

To the Ends of the Earth (2019)

 

Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Screenplay: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Cast: Atsuko Maeda as Yoko, Shota Sometani as Yoshioka, Tokio Emoto as Sasaki, Adiz Rajabov as Temur, Ryo Kase as Iwao

Canon Fodder

I am going to make a wild prediction that this film will be held as an obscure tangent from the director who broke through, after an already long career, with Cure (1997) and carried on by hard work (and prolificness) gained a reputation for cineastes. I hope it is not buried under the celluloid carpet, but it was unexpected to have a very conventional "stranger in a foreign land" narrative from him with abrupt musical moments where the lead Atsuko Maeda bursts into song. If anything, I have softened my initial reaction to the film. It shows, thankfully, Kurosawa has a light side, which considering his career has tackled a lot of bleak content, might suggest other life to his creative ideas. It is also not surprising as, from pink cinema to horror, he belongs to a wave of directors from Japan, given auteur status or just admired, who came from an industry of having to continually working; this work ethic means Kiyoshi decided to take any opportunity here, an Uzbekistan-Japan co-production, commemorates 25 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries and the 70th anniversary of the Navoi Theater in the capital Tashkent¹, and at a least a try.

Shot in Uzbekistan, this is a country which is not greatly seen in cinema at all; in mind to its history under the Soviet Union, they do have a Soviet Union-era cinema history and a post-Soviet Union cinematic history in the modern day as well that would be fascinating to see. Sadly, an inherent problem with To the Ends of the Earth, whilst I will compliment the moments this succeeds, is that it is solipsistic. Following a Japanese TV documentary crew, filming the sights of the country as eccentric backwater, with Atsuko Maeda as the put upon host Yoko, it does feel like a Japanese film entirely about its Japanese characters rather than trying to engage with its environment. It has an obvious premise which can still work - with a language barrier and being forced to work with a contrived scenario, Yoko stuck in this "cute" and very empty documentary where they are not getting any decent footage - but it really does not feel fleshed out. It is to the point that, even thought Kiyoshi Kurosawa is not a director known for a distinct visual style, even the presentation feels lacksidasical especially with the potential of the environment, a sea-less world of Uzbekistan with its hilled countryside and a different culture entirely from Japan squandered.

Virtues are found. When Kurosawa is trying to analysis his environment fully a few times, he still manages some things of note. The initial project of the production crew is shown as empty; not really engaging with the locals beyond their interest in cuisine or trying to catch a fabled fish, leaving the potential for a deeper context to be found. Some of it plays as a clash of cultures even within Uzbekistan, where a fisherman suggests the fish is being scared away by Yoko as a woman being there, but the Japanese are not engaging either, as Yoko herself finds when, in her first attempt to break from the suffocating position she is in, she encourages them to buy and release a domesticated goat back into the wilderness.

The best scene is when, as much exploited by the director of the TV documentary, she is forced to ride the same theme park attraction over and over in succession, spinning her repeatedly vertically. It is to the point even the amusement park owner, despite being an older man who demandingly thinks she is actually a child by mistake, is right to be as concerned as onlookers are about the foreigners exploiting their own. It is a scene that shows Kiyoshi Kurosawa's talent, the scene that redeems a lot of the failings of the film in one perfect sequence, as with its length deliberately dragged on, to the point I wondered who (if not a fake stand-in) was forced to ride the actual machine. In its real time you see the agony of the experience as Yoko eventually has to go throw up, only to switch back on her "cute" excited female presenter character, all to pretend for a take she has only just finished the ride once, not suffered it at least three times beforehand.

The best character as well is their translator Temur (Adiz Rajabov), a local who became obsessed with Japanese culture and tries particularly with Yoko to be the most gracious of hosts to these people to his land. In fact, part of his back-story to his fascination with Japanese culture, it potentially sets up a great finale involving the Navoi Theater, part of the reason the film was made, even if Yoko has already been there before midway through, a building which was built with the help of forced labour of Japanese prisoners of war after World War II, a landmark which could have had a greater emphasis on in terms of these countries interacting for this film. What little you get of this film trying to stretch further out to the country it occupies is engaging, including when Yoko gets given a small personal camera to film whatever she finds, leading to shaky handycam footage of market stores which is engaging. Unfortunately, the film does not do this often enough.

Instead, To the Ends of the Earth feels stiff, sadly as much due to it being pivoted on the lead character Yoko, who is not that engaging at all. A stranger in a strange land, actress Atsuko Maeda does however feel like she is in her own bubble, despite large portions of the film being her character wandering around the cityscape even at night, separate from her crew in her own existential crisis. Even her plot feels thin, including a piece of a boyfriend back in Japan who is  a fireman, a random melodramatic point he may have been killed in a huge fire seen on television not fleshed out to impact.

The two musical segments are abrupt and peculiar. They are interesting if anything, for they do break the reality of the film and feel unpredictable with a burst of creativity; like Kurosawa's abrupt jump into martial arts action cinema, for the short film Beautiful New Bay Area Project (2013), what he does here offers a tantalising sense that, yes, a man most known in the West for thrillers, horror films and dramas could actually pull off a musical in his own logic and we would all wish to see it. The first is literally within a dream, in the Navoi Theater mentioned before when an orchestra suddenly materialises and Atsuko Maeda starts to sing, but the last for the final scene of the film does place itself into the musical realist world as a sudden, swift jolt with her singing directly to the camera too but more pointedly done. Does this add anything to the film however? Not necessarily, even if Yoko's original dream to become a singer is brought up for her character, and the scenes done are executed well, they feel like fragments of plot which does not use the musical sequences fully and leave them segments in their own separate reality.

I would like to see the film again, in spite of these harsh criticisms. I have become more interested in films more as art through the people who created them, so I can see myself warm to this more in spite of all these comments I have make being very true and unfortunate. To the Ends of the Earth as a result, if you envision this a gamble like rolling dice at the craps table, is a case of the director of Pulse (2001) trying but failing on this roll. It does not mean he has not succeeded before with risks, and he is capable of further risks in his career as a veteran which will likely succeed. As in the first paragraph, I will see this film quickly become an obscurity in his career to ponder over.

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1) HERE

The Bothersome Man (2006)

 

Director: Jens Lien

Screenplay: Per Schreiner

Cast: Trond Fausa as Andreas; Petronella Barker as Anne-Britt; Per Schaanning as Hugo; Birgitte Larsen as Ingeborg; Johannes Joner as Håvard; Ellen Horn as Trulsen; Anders T. Andersen as Harald; Sigve Bøe as Liten mann; Hanne Lindbæk as Vigdis

An Abstract List Candidate

 

One manufacturer's cool coral is another manufacturer's azure.

Beginning with a shot awkwardly watching a couple necking for way too long, we realise that this is transpiring on a subway platform and that the person watching them is Andreas Ramsfjell (Trond Fausa Aurvåg), who decides to jump in front of a train immediately afterwards. Structurally however, this is not the beginning, just a snippet of the strange situation Andreas is within in this deadpan satire.

After a presumed death, the afterlife he is in means being taken by a bus to an isolated outpost with a single welcome banner (a very basic one) pinned up waiting for him. Seemingly, in this Norwegian production based on a planned radio play, he has found heaven, an urban environment where he is immediately given a job in a comfortable office as an accountant, his own place and a life with the immediate sense of everything being handed to him on a silver platter, even a romance with a seller of kitchens obsessed with interior decorating.  

Things immediately raise alerts. A man in a pub bathroom laments how hot chocolate no longer tastes great or that whilst this comes up in the conversation Andreas himself is aware that he has drunk a lot but cannot get drunk. This can still be dismissed, but when a man commits suicide by falling onto spiked railings out a window below, with everyone merely walking past on the street and two mysterious men in a van carrying him off with his guts falling out, it becomes disconcerting.

So The Bothersome Man is arguably set in a very strange form of purgatory, where one is meant to be content with the ordinary life you should have only to be bored.  A place where there are no children and it is soulless in a way the best of Scandinavian cinema, especially thinking of Swedish director Roy Andersson especially, have been able to use still and grey locations to depict. This is blatantly a critique of modernity and middle class culture as being soulless. Someone certainly had an axe to grind with interior decorators as this becomes the main example for this criticism - it is the main obsession everyone has, in these minimalist grey environments, reading magazines, discussing sofa choices at lunch and constantly redecorating. Clearly, with their tennis and dinners, The Bothersome Man's target is middle class society, with the unintentional aspect of everyone (even the extras) all being white really emphasising this oppressive Euro-Western stereotype of bland neoliberalism.

It is obvious? Frankly yes, and The Bothersome Man's one potential flaw is stretching a surface level version of the premise without adding more to it, but it negates this by delighting in a satire where someone does not bat an eye to their other half cheating on them as long as they still attend a dinner at home on Saturday. That and how "go-karts" get referenced and manages to intrigue a person who has been run over by subway train over and over again, and now looks like diced mince, in a world where death is a non-entity preventing you from leaving and the tone's deadpan nature is perfectly depicted. That it can have some very dark humour, like the ill-advised attempt at suicide that leads one to being rammed along by multiple subway trains, is helped greatly by the calm state the film stays within. It even negates that the film does play the cliché of the existential ennui of a conventional heterosexual male - it does skate on ice when, deciding to have an affair with a female co-worker, he is perturbed during a fancy dinner date that she has been dating multiple people in the office, but it is aptly the moment where she is more concerned about being able to move out of a small apartment into a house with three bedrooms and a bathroom, again space and decoration, which is the straw which breaks the camel's back. When people do not like Andreas talking about his dreams, or when his boss leaves the room awkwardly when he starts lamenting the lack of children around in melancholy, is much more universal than a bland critique of modern masculinity.

The intrigue and emotional interest helps the film greatly, overcoming a potentially one note satire, as it runs with the aesthetic of calm blandness on purpose; when Andreas re-encounters the man he never saw complaining in the toilet, who found even sex and cheeseburgers no longer appealing too, he discovers he is is effectively living in a bunker in the basement where a hole in the wall he is keeping secret is a passage to another world. Said hole, where smells and sounds come from, is clearly to a place, maybe our own again, a paradise which is true happiness. It is, when see, symbolised by a countryside house with freshly baked cake and children heard, which in itself is a cliché but a cliché stemming from literature dealing with the stagnation of modernity, say, least over a century by now plus with the countryside always idealised.

And that adds to The Bothersome Man; more so as a film from the Norwegian film industry, from a country is not as talked of as much as Danish and Swedish cinema, to the long history of culture about the ennui of modern (European) society, throwing in former EU country Britain and the non-European United States in the canon. The difference here, and the joke which does stand out greatly, is that everyone is nice and pleasant, but when someone is not satisfied is when they get concerned, not with the usual dystopian attitude of disposing of them, but offering them something else to do and only then getting them to leave. They do not have a sinister evil side, or rebels who are against the world, just very concerned figures of public perturbed by someone not feeling satisfied. [Major Spoiler] The closest thing to a violent response from them is to ship the protagonist off in the luggage compartment on the bus he came in on, to a frozen environment briefly glimpsed at the end where classical music is heard during his bumpy travel which intrigues him. [Spoilers End]

The Bothersome Man is lightly surreal; close to eccentric in truth. I would not even say The Bothersome Man is about the soullessness of consumer society, of people finding symbols to represent oneself by buying a lifestyle, but that this is pleasantness and happiness boiled down to a template lacking of individualism or primary colours. You could rewrite this film to be about "hygge", the Danish lifestyle trend that became popular here in Britain at point and sold books as an attitude of pleasantness, curdled and turned into a communist state of being nice, and this idea the film had would still work, even when hygge was entirely about the rejection of the hectic modern urban society and fetishing a slow paced idealised life in the countryside. Considering here in the afterlife you get a job, with no sense of currency issues, and a nice home the moment you step off the bus, it even has a critique in itself of the utopian society where there is something for everyone, as there are no homeless people or mess on the streets baring one suicide occasionally, but a lack of personal achievement or true happiness of an individual form. That in itself is the way that The Bothersome Man intrigues and stands out.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

*Corpus Callosum (2002)

Director: Michael Snow

Screenplay: Michael Snow

Cast: Jacqueline Anderson, Berj Bannayan, Greg Hermanovic, John Massey, John Penner, Kim Plate, Tom Sherman, Joanne Tod

An Abstract List Candidate

What is the Corpus Callosum before we continue? It exists in the centre of the brain, connecting the left side of the brain to the right (hemisphere), and allowing information to pass through both. Both hemispheres of the brain, processing information such as language and movement, require physical coordination and to be able to take in complex information, thus requiring the Corpus Callosum to connect both. This is simplified, and any specialists in human brain biology who also like experimental Canadian cinema are free to educate me on the subject with greater accuracy, please feel free to comment below, but it helps to begin with this as an initial thought.

In terms of the film, it fits in how the point of the film is legendary director Michael Snow distorting reality, the Callosum as a film about the bridge between reality and illusion, made poignant as the Callosum in the human brain was said to be the centre of the soul¹. All heady material, when Snow's film on the surface is a series of absurdist vignettes, all stemming at first in front of an office. In fact, the most intriguing thing is that, after this prologue, this work for him is as much crude and deliberately exaggerated fare, the kind where reality literally knots and turns upside down, even if the structure has long tracking shots in the office scenes and a droning soundtrack which show as much its intellectual origins in breaking from mainstream cinema.

From there, a troupe of actors are literally distorted onscreen, as prominently Snow and the animators he worked with use digital effects he probably realised would be cartoonish and dated only a few years after making the film, let alone in time after. He is fascinating in the little I know of him as both a man practices a very avant-garde creativity - famously Wavelength (1967) is a forty minute work which is just a close-up zoom from one side of a room to a picture, events taking place beforehand - but he is known as much for his humour². Snow is, notoriously, against his films being shown beyond theatrical screenings, which I understand but unfortunately creates an accidentally elitism. As with other creators who feel this strongly in terms of seeing their work as theatrical or installation productions, it restricts his work being available and for word of mouth to spread on his talent, as films like *Corpus Callosum sadly are not screened in the English countryside³. This is a shame as in its profane and even crude sense of humour, and that juxtaposition to the structure, is a melding of both sides of Snow as a creator as much as be a look at his own career in itself which might intrigue the open minded.

If one accepts this as a plot less production, Corpus is intentionally comedic, crass and playful. Structurally simple with one or two tangents to mention, a lot of it is of office scenes with one or two exceptions, the cast including among them some dancers, one Snow family member and likely one erotic/exotic performer for a female part, the one figure common throughout and played by multiple women (and men) a figure created with a fake blonde wig, pink top and black skirt. It is comedic in even the digital effects being absurd (a man and woman forming into one rubber rectangle trying to both go through a door). It is crass (a giant growing penis and a ready female colleagues hunched over on all fours, or male-on-male erotic arm movements followed by whipping one with a belt to their pleasure), and it is playful, the end credits playing halfway through before we have yet to see everything.

There are other scenarios too - the most repeated is a nuclear family in a Simpsons-like living room  if Stephen "Rinse Dream" Sayadian designed a nineties children's show, with bold (borderline kitsch) shapes and ornaments, as the family changes between shape, size, clothing and even gender without forgetting the ornaments breaking or even exploding by themselves. As with the office, if more so, the cast play archetypes, and pertinently for the nuclear family, multiple people can play the same characters, such as the "wife", being obscured by the fake blonde wig and pink top, being played both a pregnant woman and men at times among others. Also of mention are two one-offs: a sweet scene, shot from a camera hung over a classroom, in which children at desks coordinate to reach it to turn the camera off; the other is, if accurate, Snow reflecting on his career, as the final moments of the film are a cinema within this world screening a short animation created by Snow from the 1950s.

As a result, *Corpus Callosum is gleefully obsessed with turning an entire ensemble into mouldable, elastic figures. Expanding in mass, shrinking, turning into rubber, giving birth to fellow cast members, regressing into babies, and much more. Even the structure, as mentioned, is played between realities literally twisting, existing within screens within previous locations, or near the end fast rewinding back through scenes already seen to the original corridor location at the beginning. The result, even if you do not wish to ascribe any greater intellectual weight, is cinema allowing for reality to literally be sculpted in any form. And Snow uses it for shock - the sight of nudity (even a male cast member wearing a female blonde wig, a pregnant cast member slowly pulling clothes back on) to the general mocking of an office environment, even moments which might be more shocking nowadays like a black and Caucasian pair of colleagues switching skin pigments in a handshake, if not as pronounced as the more playfully enjoyable "gags".

It is a shame a work like this is not easily available. Yes it means this review only exists due to a less than good copy, but anyway to encourage even more theatrical screenings or for Michael Snow to relent would be helpful in contributing to wider knowledge of *Corpus Callosum, particularly as unlike Wavelength, Corpus is a more accessible piece of experimental cinema in its bold (even brash) colours, and moments that are purely humorous, even silly and deliberately like a game with the image.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Grotesque/Playful

Abstract Spectrum (High/Medium/Low/None): High

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1) Certain Italian anatomist Giovanni Maria Lancis suggested this.

2) And for originally being a jazz musician before becoming a filmmaker, which is its entirely own unique thing to consider one day and does make a film like *Corpus Callosum more intriguing if considered through that attitude to craft he had.

3) One exception was a modified DVD release of Wavelength, 15 minutes long and WVLNT ("Wavelength For Those Who Don't Have the Time") (2003), a production I have seen as my old university kept a legitimate copy in their library I saw it one. It also, very clearly, displays Michael Snow's humour and grievances with non-theatrical screenings in one release.