Swedish Vampires, Swedish Singers and the Mississippi Delta, OH MY!

These are the things that occupy my mind at the moment.

Swedish Vampires = the film Let The Right One In

I'll being seeing this soon enough in NYC and can not wait.
The film has been getting a lot of attention this year at fests around the globe including Toronto. It is in limited release right now in the states, expanding by a few cities weekly.

So the story? Oskar, a 12 year old who's a regular target for bullies, befriends the new neighbor girl, Eli only to find out that well... she is a vampire. Blood and mayhem sprinkled with awkward adolescent love in the biting cold of the Swedish winter ensue.

Check out the trailer here.


Apparently the Swedish musician, Lykke Li is very popular. I had no idea who she was and to be frank when I first heard her I was very torn... Liked a lot of the melodies and instrumentation but wasn't crazy about what she was doing vocally. Since a day has passed I've grown more fond of her voice and debut album Youth Novels. Though sometimes lyrically trite, the songs exude an ethereal, atmospheric chamber pop sound mixed with catchy electronic beats and an Ennio Morricone edge.

Take a listen over on her myspace.

Now back to movies. Ballast from director Lance Hammer, won the awards for directing and cinematography at Sundance this year, was pretty much unanimously cited as the best film of the fest and then found no distributor. Bummer, because the trailer knocked me for a loop.
The film centers around a small Mississippi town ship and the aftermath of a suicide.
Luckily the filmmakers took matters into their own hands and the film is slowly making its way around the U.S. Check the official website for screening info and to take a gander at that trailer!

http://ballastfilm.com/

Movie Review: Bashing (2005)

Bashing (2005)

Director: Masahiro Kobayashi
Cast: Fusako Urabe, Nene Otsuka, Ryuzo Tanaka

An aptly titled film, that is for sure.

I humor myself, for what is a heavy, grim film, that leaves your stomach in knots. Almost never has the sound of the phone ringing been so agonizing or the whisper of the cold, ocean air so foreboding.

Masahiro Kobayasji's film based on actual events deals with Yuko (Fusako Urabe) a foreign aid worker who is held hostage in Iraq. Upon returning home to Japan she falls into an ostracized position as her friends, her community, her country view her actions as an aid worker, and position as a hostage, shameful and dishonorable. She is put into a media spot light (which is not focused on in the film) harassed daily and loses her job; the repercussions of all this extending the burden to her working class father and step mother (Ryuzo Tanaka, Nene Otsuka).

If one isn't familiar with Japanese culture the national attitude can seem so bizarre and frustrating. And when one thinks about that and views the positive reception the film received overseas compared to the negative or rather non existent one it received in Japan, well... one is not surprised and I would assume Kobayashi made this for his nation, wanting them to see their prejudice, but knowing full well they would reject it.
It is the power of cinema, the gift of cinema to both criticize and love the country that the film and filmmaker originate from.

Bashing is also a film which presents the Japanese psyche in a fairly accessible palette to Western culture. The reservations, customs, emotional and psychological compartmentalizing of the Japanese based around their rich history (from centuries of self enforced isolation to postwar) is all here in some way, but make no mistake this is a human story, and the film never uses the characters for some grander social or political statement. This is thanks in large part to Urabe's performance which is so earnest, seemingly one note - dejected, depressed... cold. But she is not. Her fear as she states to her stepmother is becoming cold, shut off, like everyone around her. An infinitely universal feeling and one that Kobayashi, as writer and director, quietly sympathizes with and champions.