hell yes.

Not much that grabs me so far apart from Your Sister's Sister

Very glad to see they're playing the LCD Soundsystem doco and the new Michael Haneke film.

gunna take some time off work and go nuts

That doco about Paul Kelly looks ace.

is anyone else having trouble registering as a volunteer? the damn thing won't take ANY image i try to upload, despite having the right specs.

stupid that a photo is even necessary. so what if i have snaggleteef?

Try using a jpeg? Mine worked. Or submit the one that worked for you last year.

I was using a jpeg. I can't even remember what photo I used last year.

stupid that a photo is even necessary. so what if i have snaggleteef?

Testing for indie-cool. Wear a knitted beanie.

the damn thing won't take ANY image i try to upload, despite having the right specs. stupid that a photo is even necessary. so what if i have snaggleteef?

You see what's going on here? Snaggletooth crackdown! But seriously, that is weird that they need a photo.

Hmm, new Herzog and Haneke, easy picks. The stuff that really interests me usually doesn't show up in the First Glance. Will we finally get Hail, ffs?? Only been waiting a year for it.

yeah, sydney never asked for a photo.

I blame Michelle Carey, ocelotl. HAIL should have been here last year. I saw it at SIFF, who seem way ahead in terms of programming. Shame, MIFF.

a bit presumptuous to blame a specific individual without knowing the full circumstances no?

She's the Artistic Director. She ballsed it up last year, and I suspect she'll do the same again this year.

Fair enough. I thought last years festival was excellent, but everyone always has varied opinions on artistic directors. Which is a good thing.

Gotta say I think it's a bit average to cast heavy negative judgements like that under the veiled anonymity of the internet, whilst applying for a volunteer position with the same organization.

i've decided not to, blackcatwhitecat. i agree with your call though, but i won't be volunteering this year.

I was a bit underwhelmed with the selection last year, but this year's First Glance selection looks promising - LCD doco, The Imposter and of course Haneke, locking those three in.

Full list of Cannes snags.

impressive. saw Amour, Holy Motors and Tabu at SFF and loved each.

woolfat, from what I heard HAIL was supposed to get a theatrical release shortly after last year's MIFF; since the amount of people who'd see it would likely dovetail w/ those who'd see it at a fest, it makes sense that Carey and co. wouldn't let it blow its load like that.

Also, it went on to play at Venice, Rotterdam, Seattle and now Edinburgh so there's no reason it won't make a belated appearance this year w/ a bit of clout accrued. It's a pretty tough sell, even for an Australian 'art film'

LIKE THE SUN BEING REFRACTED A CERTAIN WAY AFTER RAIN, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AND SPECIAL. Fo' serious.

Tonight is the last night to walk into the forum like you own the place - join us in the festival lounge tonight for a drink....

THANKS FOR CELEBRATING WITH US Y'ALL! What a wonderful Closing Night!
For those feeling a little hungover today, what better way to spend it than in the dark of a cinema? Perhaps a cinema playing a disturbing film inspired by a woman who killed her children?

Perhaps a cinema playing a disturbing film inspired by a woman who killed her children?

gee whiz!

My pettiest MIFF gripe of all is that there is still one day of screenings after Closing Night. Reinforces my view that there are two MIFFs - the public event (premieres, parties, red carpet, publicists with a caps lock problem) and the film program (actual cinema).

pretty fucken tasteless.

On the brighter side, Two Years at Sea and Hail both won prizes. I still didn't get to Hail! October, then.

I'm so pleased that Hail won a prize. Amazing film.

Still yet to see Two Years At Sea. I really should have gone to that.

woolfat said 16 hours ago:
Sonian, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Barbara. It got so many good reviews and I had a really difficult time figuring out whether or not to see it..

really want to see this, even though two guys sat behind me waiting for Our Children yesterday basically discussed the whole movie, from start to finish

goddam those Forum seats are so bad, makes me miss GU

Here's my 10 films in order:

AMOUR
BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO
THE LEGEND OF KASPAR HAUSER
HOLY MOTORS
TROPICALIA
ALPS
AVALON
SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS
GAINSBOURG BY GAINSBOURG: AN INTIMATE SELF-PORTRAIT
BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

I guess the bottom 2 were the only ones I really didn't enjoy much at all, so when judged like that, a pretty good success rate, but the middle of my list (4-7) I really could take or leave.

Good festival, for me, but I reckon I can do better next year - think I just need to research my film selection a bit better.

herbie goes bananas

(but boooo, no lilo)

does the thread vanish into the aether after the fact of the festival? :)

anyway, sunday was rather eventful. 4 films. none of them sold out sessions. matter of fact, they were pretty much sparsely attended. which meant more leg room, breathing space, and less the need to be courteous / self-conscious around people (heh) - all the comforts of misanthropy and theater space manifest in a single day :).

the first two successive films kicked off with a real bang - wakamatsu's 11:25 the day mishima chose his own fate and lafosse's our children (the original french title, à perdre la raison, would've been preferable, as it epitomises the film much much better). they were fantastic by themselves, but together, they form the perfect ''double-bill'' - a comparative twosome of sorts. connected mainly by their structural similarity in foregrounding foreshadowing the fated inevitable: we know already (for the most part and however implicit) what will happen, but then there's also all the other stuff that has to occur, seemingly, in the tensional interim. they also share a narrative sensibility, or a pathos rather, of engaging with the ambiguous nature of certain unconditional acts that cannot simply be inferred or speculated away from irrationality, senselessness, fanaticism, or extremity; not any more than from the conditions (mundane, incidental and / or reactive affairs of the world) that may have precipitated them, lest risking the trivialisation of the qualities that transcend the deadlocked impasses (even if only for a momentary reprieve from domesticity or existential crisis, or something of presumed universal import in the shape of ideological nobility / fidelity / authenticity) endemic no less to those conditions.

as an aside, but not unrelated, there was another film in the programme that worked exactly from a similar portentous register, bence fliegauf's just the wind (and to some degree, even haneke's armour). it delivered far more convincingly with its foreboding presage of atmosphere which was deceptively minimal but yet, ominously palpable. by turns, unsettling, enigmatic and revealing, without resorting to tricks and rhetoric, even the slightest / subtlest, to engender that atmosphere. interesting to know that, during the festival, fliegauf was actually in the country to work on his next project which it seems is about the tasmanian genocide. of what would be the second installment in his ''social-politico realist turn'' in addressing the ill-fated marginalised. should be interesting to see how that turns out.

the other two films of the day turned out the bigger delights. first up: girimunho was a pure visual revelation, simultaneously oneiric and real, habitual and itinerant, supernatural and natural, scenic and intimate, poetry and observation. all to their ultimate, superlative and natural conclusions / states. at the risk of sounding like a fey treehugger, it was the kind of film that you could allow everything about it to wash over and flow through you without the need to construct or formulate a thought. no need to think, just watch / see, hear ... and dream. admittedly naive to suggest that we could somehow see unadulterated without thought, the creatures of meaning and mediation that we are. but such was the nature of this film and its stunning images that the suspension of thought seemed very possible and real. there were however punctuating moments in the film that suggest some kind of overarching narrative, but largely, they recede into the background, permitting everything else or something else, a whole other world of cinema, to come to the fore and take place.

the final film for the day / evening (and of the festival) was my absolute favourite out of the bunch - hong sang-soo's in another country. a highly skewed rohmer-esque romp / tryst / dalliance / ode with / to isabelle huppert with plenty bottles of soju. a whimsical absurdist's ''rom-com'' of sorts :). typically characteristically hong -- lo-fi, erratic, jocular, unassuming, frivolous, meandering, quirky (but only in the way hong knows how to do quirk), off-beat, and above all, downright hilarious, in an irregular, mundane and dry sorta way. the endearing moxie of the film was undoubtedly isabelle huppert playing 3 different characters in the film's 3 separate suites. in essence, these 3 characters are really just variations of the same character with some traits exaggerated / amplified / highlighted ever so slightly from one variation to the other. likewise, each different suite, as a whole, assumes distinct variations and exaggerations of their own, but not in the way that would be completely self-contained, as there are overlapping and interloping qualities that tie them all together. huppert said it as much, and probably better, in a q&a session @ cannes as to the précis of the film: ''to create a sense of the same photo being taken several times, quickly, but slightly off each time''. the real clincher of the film was seeing huppert abruptly bleating / neighing off at a couple of domesticated goats under the assumption of bestial communication as a means to assuage what appears to be a personal crisis.

Barbara

i'm not normally one for narrative-driven cinema, particularly of the thespian-centric with a conspicuously linear and to-the-point pacing / editing, much less of a dramatic (as in the genre, not so much the adjective) sort - couldn't care less for it, really -, but petzold's work is starting to prove the exception. almost even coming around to the idea that drama can be a valid form of cinema :), by dint of the film being incredibly and sumptuously well made. it's like one of those of things that seem to go against everything you stand for, or care about - to be err dramatic -, like pop music, interior design, or christian boltanski (heh). but because the overall execution / presentation is such an impressive feat, you kinda
have to sit back and admire / concede just how good it is. the exceptional manner petzold
went about intricately weaving together delicate threadlike blink-n-you-miss details as they pertain to the wider context and chambered confines of the interpersonal is pretty special. which in turn renders the entire film highly unusually nuanced and complex beyond initial inspection. a tightly wound nugget of emotions, introspections, gestures, glints, understatement, language, viscera, ephemera, compulsions, desires, and... people, as it were.

Off the top of my head - a lot of the imagery was very claustrophobic, bodies forever in each other's way, I supposed the 4:3 was a means to this end.

the final 10-15 minutes of faust might just be one of my favourite sequence in all of cinema the last 2-3 years. the initial negotiation of rocky terrain, the interaction at the nebulous hotspring, the multilayering of vista, gretchen+faust, purgatory+heaven, and what have you - incidentally, this was shot at or around the infamous eyjafjallajökull volcano. some of the attempted cinematic strides cut to the metaphysical / allegorical chase not seen since the likes of bergman / tarkovsky / vlacil, and recall the visual tapestry of garrel (early zanzibar period) and jarman with their oneiric landscapist hats on. not that it's beyond sokurov himself - cf. days of eclipse, lonely voice of man, and even, mother and son -, but the evocatory bedfellowing of these landmark figures is too tempting to resist. :)

If you're interested in other Sokurov woolfat, I'd go Mother and Son first.

for what it's worth, these are my favourite sokurovs. they are what i would consider his ''isolationist films'', for want of a better way to describe them. isolationist as in exactly what it implies - the kind of stuff that evokes and accentuates loneliness, desolation, isolation, solitude, somberness, remoteness, despondence, grief, misery, despair, and every other
downcasted miserablist sentiment conceivable... he's russian after all.

1) whispering pages - unquestionably my favourite sokurov. it's like slow death rendered on the silver screen. monochromatic, ultra-minimal, foggy, sludgy, gothic, gloomy, dirgey, shadowy, lugubrious, bleak, funereal... there's a decaying and dour post-apocalyptic vibe (a la stalker, or lopushansky's dead man's letters) about it set in a sickly damaged dickensian / dostoevskian dereliction / dilapidation. (yup, them ''d''s are the coolest). a sub-sub-povera underground reality. oppresively claustrophobic and endlessly wretched.

''An anonymous man wanders through decomposing, fog-enshrouded catacombs and encounters a series of “the degraded and the humiliated,” including a holy prostitute and a Kafkaesque bureaucrat.''

bit of an aside: hadn't known about this before, but it turns out, whispering pages is apparently leos carax's favourite sokurov as well. this was the one sokurov he programmed into a curated series of films to accompany a carax retrospective @ the cinematheque francaise back in 2004. so yeah, great minds... :)

2) the second circle - the starkness of the opening scene pretty much encapsulates and sets the tone for the entire film: ''A solitary figure trudges through the inclement weather of a vast, remote Siberian wilderness. An unyielding gust of wind brings the young man to his knees as he attempts to avert the caustic, sustained force of the snowstorm, momentarily obscuring him from view, erased from the harsh and desolate landscape.''

as for the rest of the film, from the horse's mouth: ''One day every son has to perform a sad duty — to bury his father. This is the main and only event that occurs in The Second Circle and it is depicted with epic simplicity and in every detail.''

3) the lonely voice of man - melancholic hues of sepia-tone cloaked desolation of a man at the wits' end of his worth and being. set in a sequestered world of pastoral and sensuous beauty. one of the most poetic and sublime meditations on love, loneliness, life and death, you'd ever find on film.

''The story, set in the 1920s, concerns Mikita—a solitary young man who has been deeply affected by the civil war—and the torturous course of his relationship his middle-class wife as the two struggle to adapt to an unrecognizable new society and the disintegration of their moral world.''

4) elegy of a voyage - ''A solitary man's quest for art across a frozen expanse. The man is alone. He crosses snow-covered landscapes, he crosses borders, he meets people he doesn’t recognise, he attends a christening in a church and ends up in a palace without knowing how he got there.''

5) spiritual voices - imo, sokurov at his best / finest, nay, a crowning achievement. thematically, as a whole, not completely ''isolationist'' in character, but for that opening static long-take of a snow-blanketed landscape that runs for around 40 minutes... someone rug me up and be still my heart.

6) oriental elegy - ''Sokurov’s meditative journey to a small Japanese island village, where landscape, houses, objects, and people appear blurred through the mist as in a dream. His sensitive and careful encounters with lonely old people envisioning the end of their lives are complemented by the director’s own interior journey, in which aural affinities revive memories of his own country, Russia.''

7) a humble life - ''The whole work is unhurried and detailed report from an old solitary house, lost in the mountains, in the village of Aska, prefecture Nara, Japan, where an old woman, whose name is Umeno Matshueshi, lives alone. ''

8) dolce... - ''The principal narrative strand is a lyrical monologue, that of the heroine, Miho Shimao, the writer's wife. She lives on a solitary island far into the ocean, with her handicapped daughter, shunning visitors.''

(6,7, and 8 are better known as his japanese elegies, and have been packaged together into one dvd set)

9) mother and son - his breakthrough film to wider recognition. essentially (but hopefully
not too callous about it), a languid and lyrical unison of a relationship in their last days.

''The story is about an ideal human relationship — about love and deep affection between a mother and her son. Neither she nor he loves anybody in this world as much as they love each other. Their love is almost physically palpable, it is the edge, the limit of love, but only beyond it something true lies. It seems that those two are the only people on the entire Earth — no routine, no bustle, no unnecessary things, just a wooden house in the country where the seriously ill mother and her loving son lead a quiet life… ''

10) confession - nothing could be more brutally despairing and uncompromisingly spartan than the isolated lives of military / navy men undertaking a monotonous cycle of repetitious routines in the remote frontiers of the artic wherein, among other things, sunlight is at a premium and any intimation of normalcy or hope an anguishing scarcity.

''This powerful and unique documentary chronicles the lives of a soul-searching ship's captain and his young sailors as they sail the Arctic region in a Russian naval ship. Narrated mostly by the captain, the film focuses on the daily duties associated with a ship based in the Arctic, but it is also an engrossing study in human solitude and the effects of isolation.''

dzerz, the last 20 minutes of Faust were my favourite. I did note the similarity to Tarkovsky also. The film as a whole was not particularly great to me, though. I dozed off for at least 30 minutes in the first hour of it.

My pettiest MIFF gripe of all is that there is still one day of screenings after Closing Night. >Reinforces my view that there are two MIFFs - the public event (premieres, parties, red >carpet, publicists with a caps lock problem) and the film program (actual cinema).

Don't you think most punters paying 60 bucks for a ticket that includes a night of free drinks would rather it happen on a saturday than a sunday? They used to be on the sunday until about 5 years ago, but the parties have been about 10 times better since it moved.

herbie goes bananas

Haha. All the grit and glitch at the start of that made it feel like something from sixpackfilm. Your other notes make me feel like I didn't choose well this year, dammit! Ah well.

Don't you think most punters paying 60 bucks for a ticket that includes a night of free drinks would rather it happen on a saturday than a sunday?

I know, I said it was a petty gripe. Just meant it ain't closed till it's over.

maybe it's too soon, but is it just me, or is it very quiet in terms of MIFF summaries?

I keep waiting for blogs I read to publish a run-down, but nada.

Quick heads up: the Marina Abramovic doco is on ABC1 tonight, and WELL worth seeing.

berberian sound studio and laurence anyways are currently on a limited run @ acmi

Marina Abramovic doco is on ABC1 tonight

And now on iView for a week.

Looking forward to seeing Berberian again, and hearing it properly for the first time (MIFF problem, bleah).

laurence anyways are currently on a limited run @ acmi

oops, laurence anyways will play acmi come january 2013, rather.

fantastic film. was dismissive of it initially, but have come around to it. the ambition, scope and depth of the film belie the director's age (xavier dolan is 22/23). if this was in english and by an american filmmaker, a particular demograph of the affected urban set would be all over it

You jumped the gun a little on Berberian too - starts 27 Dec - but it's good to plan ahead...