Reviews

The film tells the story of Pepperminta (Ewelina Guzik), who seems to be a combination of Alice from Wonderland and Dorothy from Oz, and who exists in time both as a young adult and as a child. (Her child self is played by Noemi Leonhardt). She lives partly in the real world, partly in a fantasy, but the two are not always separate. Pepperminta's fantasy overlays reality like coloured plastic over the camera's lens changes the colour of the world the lens sees.

Pepperminta is on a quest to live without fear, to help everyone she comes in contact with to know themselves and achieve exactly what they "really, really, really want". Along the way she gains champions and partners: the fat, shy Werwen (Sven Pippig), Edna NeinNeinNein Tulip (Sabine Timoteo), and the elderly Leopoldine (Elisabeth Orth). Pepperminta helps each of them to overcome their fears and they join her and become her followers and accomplices.

The film makes great use of colour and perception, but also goes out of its way to focus on more senses than just sight: sound, touch, smell and taste also figure prominently. Special effects are generally more analogue than digital, for example, the stop motion sequences with strawberries or clothes, or the clever cutting in the "transporter" scenes when the characters travel to Pepperminta's hideaway via her bath. Still, the production values are professional – this is video art for a cinema audience – and the film's 80 minute running length does not seem too long.

It is not the most intellectually challenging of films, and I suspect some people will be irritated by the adult Pepperminta in the first few scenes. However, if you can reach the Nirvana of suspended disbelief quickly enough I think the film will charm and delight.

Unless you understand German, make sure you see a sub-titled version.

This is a retelling of the Cinderella story, updated to modern day China Town in New York. The narrator is the eponymous fish. The film begins when Yi Xian arrives in New York, an illegal immigrant, perhaps, imported to work for her 'Aunty' Mrs Su and in the care of Auntie's minder and younger brother, Vinnie. Xian is 17. Her father back in China has fallen on hard times and has sent her/sold her to Aunty to earn money. Xian quickly discovers Auntie's business is a massage parlour. In the words of one of the girls who is told off to instruct her: "First you do the back, then they turn over and you do the dick". Xian refuses to "do the dick" and Aunty gives her instead all the cleaning to do. She has a debt to work off, after all.

Xian meets another Aunty, Aunty Yaga, a fearful witch, and for no clear reason is given a fish (the narrator) to take care of. There are trials and tribulations, but Cinderella meets her prince and everyone lives happily ever after (or at least with a blessing from the fish). It's a sweet story, sweetly retold.

It is also filmed in live action and then rotoscoped to look like an animated watercolour painting. At least, that seems to be the idea. There are one or two scenes in which the watercolour motif works well, (mostly street scenes in the rain, close-ups of the fish) and the dissolve from one scene to another is effective, but much of the time you do find yourself wondering why they bothered. Especially as the rotoscoping isn't really all that well done. Some of the scenes were visually so poor I did wonder whether the rotoscoping had been done against the clock in a sweatshop like the one Aunty Yaga runs, or whether the film had been batch converted with a cheap software programme.

The story is the story: we all know it, whether it's originally Chinese (as the director says), or Egyptian (as I remember being told) or Russian (Aunty Yaga = Baba Yaga), is really neither here nor there. The actors give it their best shot and it's a pity their faces are sometimes concealed by the rotoscoping.

It is difficult to know exactly who the intended audience is though. It's not an adult movie, despite the scenes in the massage parlour (there's nothing raw, nothing even that might be called soft porn). But it's not a children's film either, just because of the scenes and talk in and around the massage parlour. It's not a documentary or a slice of real life – it's a fairy tale.

Is it intended for a teenage audience? Johnny the 'prince' is a bit of a wimp. He's a musician, true, but he plays the accordion. How much teenage credibility does that give him? And Cinderella is dogged in her refusal to "do" dicks, and in keeping herself safe and pure, but she is also very dutiful. She doesn't try to escape; she accepts her duty to pay off the financial debt she has incurred to Aunty. She still honours her father, despite what he has done to her.

I saw this at the Gothenburg Film Festival one Sunday evening, and the cinema was very full. The audience showed no great enthusiasm. Ultimately the film is sweet, yes, but a bit boring.

Dr Plonk is the genius of his nation and age (Australia, 1907). He predicts the end of the world in 2008, but no one will believe him without proof. Aided and abetted (and sometimes hindered) by his lazy, deaf assistant Paulus, bustling Mrs Plonk and his dog, Tiberius, Dr Plonk creates a time machine and travels forward in time to find proof.

This comedy is a feature-length (85 minutes) silent, black and white film with a specially composed musical score. And it is funny. The audience at the showing I attended at the Gothenburg Film Festival started out not really knowing how to take it, but first there were giggles, then there were laughs, and the whole thing ended with applause and lots of animated talk and cheerfulness.

The movie has been shot on film that has been treated to look like footage from 1907 and filmed throughout with a hand-cranked camera. An adapted modern camera -- apparently the attempt to use real antique cameras and lenses had to be abandoned as they were incompatible with the modern film that was available. The story is that the movie was conceived as a way to use up writer/director Rolf de Heer's back stock of left over film, but the effort that has gone into keeping true to the look of silent movies does not suggest that scrimping and saving is the film maker's prime motive.

The action of the film is one long list of clichés from all the silent comedies you can remember seeing, and a great deal of use is made of that silent staple, the vanishing box. Freeze the action. Cut the film. Remove the box. Start the action. Oooh, the box has gone! (The box in this case is the time machine.) The film is successful in part because it has been very well written and planned, and very well cut. Also, apparently, because making it was allowed to take a very long time. It shows a great knowledge of and love for the physical comedy of the old silent movies. It helps also that many of the actors, not just Nigel Lunghi/Martin (Dr Plonk), must have circus or acrobat training, as they are both physically very funny and their timing is meticulous. Beyond that they also play their parts very truthfully to the style they are imitating. This is a comedy, but it is a comedy in the style of silent comedies from the early days of cinema. Even in the scenes in modern Australia, the actors stay in style as well as in character.

And the dog seems to be having a whale of a time too.

It is a Frank Zappa axiom that "music journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." If you ever needed proof that musicians can't talk, this is the film for you. Repeated attempts at profundity stumble over themselves to end up in monosyllabic comments delivered in awestruck voices: "Wow." (Thank you, Idris Muhammed.) This film is pretentious but, while much of the pontificating from Youssou N'Dour and his gang of merry men (and one token woman) grates, the music saves the day.

The main idea behind the film (what I take to be the main idea, dredged out of the inarticulate commentary) is interesting. To gather a group of musicians from America and Europe and take them on a journey through the different styles of music that grew up in and out of slavery, back to their roots in the music of West Africa, and a concert in the old slave fort of Gorée off the coast of Senegal. We are treated to gospel, blues, jazz and variations of these, including some fantastic drumming both in New Orleans and Senegal. There's also a good deal of N'Dour's own compositions.

Sadly, that's another weakness. It's never entirely clear what N'Dour himself wants to achieve. To some degree, the film appears to be an exercise in self-promotion on N'Dour's part. He wants to play his own music, jazzed up to some degree and performed in the company of a bunch of musicians he admires. He's clearly a little embarrassed by this and early in the film obtains the blessings of the Curator of the Gorée museum.

The clash between the different agendas shows through in several other places. For example, somebody obviously felt that it was not possible to tell the story of black music without involving a gospel choir, but N'Dour and most of his mates are Moslems (a point made repeatedly throughout the film). The whole early sequence involving the black Christians is uncomfortable and then they disappear from the story until the close harmony group (the only black Christians who can hold a tone?) turn up in Dakar at the end of the film. (To be fair, they turn up triumphantly and perform the best piece in the film.) If the story of black music needs to nod in the direction of gospel, why not also in the direction of Latin America? Where are the black musical influences from the Caribbean and Brazil? Samba? Reggae? Then there's Europe. Here the black diaspora doesn't seem to have produced any musicians of calibre, since N'Dour chooses to draft in Austrian guitarist and a trumpet player from Luxemburg. Are they in the team just because N'Dour has played with him before? What I personally found most irritating, though, was the long sequence which tried to recreate a kind of 60s beatnik/black power/Nation of Islam cultural happening in the New York home of Amir Baraka (a.k.a. Leroi Jones). Hearing people talk about the importance of "knowing your history", and then in the next breath perpetuating ignorance. Why do so many African-Americans believe that taking an Arabic name is an assertion of their African roots? And why do they think Arabic Islam is so much more admirable than European Christianity? Who do they think established the trade in African slaves in the first place? The film doesn't have much to say about the situation in West Africa today beyond the platitude that "present conditions" are a consequence of all the brightest and best having been shipped away for 300 years. The Senegalese appear to be a poor but happy, musical gifted folk, friendly and welcoming, respectful of their elders (and not above fleecing the visiting Americans in the fish market). Is this ethnic stereotyping or just my imagination? There is no comment on the armed guard that N'Dour and the camera crew seem to need in the opening sequence as they walk through the streets of Dakar.

There is also a strong implication in the film that the slaves who were taken from Dakar came from Dakar. The similarity between the folk drumming style of New Orleans and the folk drumming style of Senegal is cited in evidence. The last thing the slaves heard before they were shipped away was the drumming of their homeland, bidding them farewell. Except, of course, that by and large, the slaves shipped from Dakar did not come from Dakar. They were captured or traded from the interior by the coastal Senegalese and sold to merchants of whichever European power currently held the Gorée slave fort. The people of Dakar are not the descendents of Africans who escaped the slave trade, they are just as likely – more likely – to be descendents of the people who sold their black brethren into slavery and exile.

The two agenda's clash again in the final part of the film. There are two separate endings. On the one hand, the concert which N'Dour and Co have been rehearsing and preparing along the way and which they deliver in the courtyard of the Gorée slave fort. The other end comes when the Harmony Harmoneers sing the spiritual "Return to Glory", in the seaward doorway of the slave fort. This is deeply moving, even if it is hard to believe the performance is quite as spontaneous as it appears.

This is a film that is flawed. Unclear of the story it is trying to tell and tugged in different directions. Irritating, confusing, beautiful and emotional by turns. Watch it (listen to it) for the music and the feeling, but don't expect enlightenment or intellectual rigour.

This is a disturbing and fascinating film. It inter-cuts original newsreel film and film made by witnesses to the atrocity, face-to-camera reminiscence by some of the Chinese eyewitnesses, interviews (apparently made some years ago) with surviving Japanese soldiers who were involved in one part of the massacre, and a small cast of mostly American actors reading excerpts from diary entries, letters and other documents written by some of the 15 Europeans who tried so valiantly to maintain the "safe zone" in the old town of Nanking during the massacre.

As a history teacher, I have taught a little 20th century East Asian history. I knew of the Nanking massacre. I have read some of the documents used in the film and seen some of the still pictures. I hadn't seen any of the film before, though. It's very shocking stuff. That said, the most powerful and emotional moments of the film for me were the interviews. Especially the accounts of the old people, children at the time, who saw their family members killed or experienced rape.

Some of the comments I've read on the message boards here question whether this is a legitimate documentary. The Europeans (and some of the Chinese and one Japanese) are portrayed by actors. They do their job very well, but there is always a problem with dramatisation. How much can we trust the actors' interpretation of their lines? And how far has the editing gone? Then also, why choose just these people to represent the European community? Where were the Danish and British voices? Also, although they had tried to put themselves into character as prim missionary, grey businessman, reticent doctor, at least three of the actors were familiar faces to me, and in the beginning I found my thoughts wandering off the topic as I tried to identify them. (Mariel Hemingway, Jürgen Prochnow and Woody Harrelson.) Contrary to some of the voices on this message board, I don't think Nanking is anti-Japanese propaganda, or simply out to shock. I think the film makers are sincere when they say (through the words of their European witnesses) that the film does not set out to vilify the Japanese as a people. (Though I note that the Chinese witnesses uniformly refer to "Japanese devils" – at least in the subtitling.) But isn't it often the case that a film made to condemn the atrocities of war is always likely to be interpreted differently depending on the prejudices the audience brings with them? If you already think the Japanese are devils, this film will confirm you in your belief. If you distrust Americans, you will find more fuel for your prejudice here. If you think all war is hell, you'll go away convinced that this film is a great contribution to the cause of pacifism.

I tend towards the latter. And I think I could use this film in class to teach history.

This is a film of a one-man-show in which Malcolm McDowell talks about Lindsey Anderson. He's backed up by a few props (a lectern a chair and a table, a reading lamp) and clips from some of Lindsay Anderson's films including (extensively) _If_ and _O Lucky Man_. McDowell, of course, was the star of both these, which were Anderson's second and third feature films. _If_ was also McDowell's first film and _O Lucky Man_ (according to McDowell here) was his original idea. McDowell says he enjoyed making _If_ so much, and enjoyed so much working with Anderson, that he suggested they make another film together. OK, says Anderson, but only if you write it.

I note that the IMDb credits David Storey as sole writer on _O Lucky Man_. McDowell acknowledges that Storey re-wrote his original script (which McDowell has Anderson describe as "Awful!") This film is fun if you like Malcolm McDowell (as I do, very much), probably more fun if you know more about the British film scene in the 1960s and 70s and about Lindsay Anderson. It's a very affectionate portrait, funny in places, moving in others. McDowell does voices very well (John Gielgud, Alan Price, Christine Noonan), he reads from diary entries and letters and he tells a good story, but it is best when he himself is involved. The film sags somewhere in the middle, unfortunately just where the whole point of the title is explained. But it picks up again and Anderson's own description (read by McDowell) of his last meeting with John Ford, dying of cancer and McDowell's own description of Anderson's death are gripping.

Not a great movie (though the cutting is good especially when McDowell is doing his voices), but probably a true record of McDonald's show. Interesting for movie buffs and anyone drawn to the British independent movie scene.

I saw this film on the evening of the 25th January as part of the Gothenburg International Film Festival.

I saw this film on video tape in the home of a friend of a friend in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1982 or 1983. I don't remember much about it - one rather heavy-handed anti-Christian scene where a character believes he has seen a saint or an angel, but where the viewer is shown in a very pedagogical manner that it is an accident (or a practical joke?) and a trick of the light. The other thing I remember is the reason why I wanted to see the film in the first place. The film is (purports to be) historical and is set in the early years of the 20th century pre-WW1. The protagonist is involved with a group of nationalist freedom fighters, operating in Turkish controlled Macedonia. They kidnap a Protestant Christian missionary, Miss Stone. ("Mis Stoun" in this cast list.) At some point, to calm the savage revolutionary beasts perhaps, Miss Stone sings them a Christmas carol, "In the Bleak Mid-winter". The interest for me was that Miss Stone was played by Christine Bartlet, ("Christin" in this cast list), who was my colleague at the 114th English Medium School. If I remember right, though Miss Stone is supposed to be an American, Christine's Glaswegian accent is very apparent. I think the song was an ad lib - and therefore just possibly a goof: "In the Bleak Mid-winter" is originally a poem by Christina Rosetti and was only set to music (by Gustav Holst) in 1906. So for the song to be appropriate, the action of the scene must fall between 1906 and 1912 (the first Balkan War). But was the song so very well known, even then, that an American missionary would think to sing it under those circumstances?