Seattle Film Festival

Hero - I was really looking forward to this film shot by Chris Doyle, with Jet Li and Tony Leung and the young girl from Crouching Tiger. The previews looks amazing and the film does look amazing. Visually, it combines Braveheart, Crouching Tiger, and the Last Emperor and adds some interesting coloration throughout the film. It's a huge movie, pretty much equal to anything Hollywood can produce in terms of production value. Fight scenes are great for the most part, but I'm getting a little bored with the rope tricks these days. The big battles are pretty cool, although it is usually one side kicking ass. Any scene with arrows is awesome.

All that being said, the story pretty much sucks ass. It's all narrated to us by two characters recounting versions to us. I kept going, come on, come on, let's move this plot along here. The movie seemed to be made just for the visual orgy it was.

I wonder how this movie was financed? It wouldn't surprise me if it was by the Chinese government to demonstrate China's ability to compete with Hollywood. It's been done before, the Italians and Germans tried to do it in the 20s-40s and bankrupted themselves in the effort. But this movie should make money, although for some reason, it's tough to see over here. It was made in 2002 and hasn't found much of a release over here, I don't think. I had to see it at a festival.

Bottom line, Crouching Tiger blows it out of the water, as does Braveheart, two movies that seem to have influenced it. So there you go...

Playtime - Tati's magnum opus, shot in 70mm was playing at the Cinerama Dome (biggest theatre in Seattle, Hero was there also). I had seen Mr. Hulot's Holiday, and been introduced to the lovable Mr. Hulot bumbling around into adventures. He is in this film as well, bumbling around, but not as well as in Holiday.

The film is tremendously boring thoughout the entire 1st hour. Nothing happens. Hulot tries to get an appointment, we follow some tourists through an airport. There are supposed to be gags, but they aren't funny because Tati shoots in wide shots, with tons of stuff going on in front of the camera, but you don't know what to pay attention to. Unfortunately, the secret is: all the shenanigans going on amount to nothing of interest. It's as if all these little gags are happening, but the gags aren't funny and rarely tie together. Finally, towards the end, we get to the restuarant party scene. The entire scene introduces us to many new characters and feels like one big out of control party, which it is. And it's fun. But it's not nearly worth the wait...

It is only during this scene where some of the gags are good laughs, but then he overuses the same gag over and over. Tati gambled all his money on this film and it failed miserably in france. It couldn't even get an American distributor. He never made a movie again. Yipes. All he needed was a producer to tell him it was ASS, but that's the problem with ego...

More later on my rejection from the Iranian film I went to see.