Random Movie Report: The Cat Returns

O hai. I've been meaning to post something here, and this is as good a time as any to start.

Back in 2002, when Disney released Hayao Miyazaki’s magnificent SPIRITED AWAY in America, it kicked off a nice business partnership between the two companies, a side effect of which has been the release of several Studio Ghibli films on DVD here. THE CAT RETURNS is a particularly interesting entry
in their collective body of work, both tying in loosely to a past film and marking a young director’s debut. It’s very cute, whimsical, and imaginative, and fits into the Studio Ghibli tradition nicely while not being a total retread. You sort of know what to expect, but there are surprises along the way.

Our protagonist is Haru (voice of Chizuru Ikewaki), a girl in high school going through all sorts of problems. She’s habitually late, not very popular, and hopelessly swooning over a boy who’s already got a girlfriend. Typical teenage girl drama, until she saves a cat from being hit by a truck. The cat stands up and thanks her, and later that evening an entire procession of cats arrive with their king in tow, informing her that she has in fact saved the prince of the Cat Kingdom. The cats start sending her gifts, and promise that as a capper they will take her to their kingdom to marry the prince. This, needless to say, freaks Haru out, but a mysterious voice and a fat white cat named Muta (Tetsu Watanabe) lead her to the Cat Bureau, a miniature house inhabited by a handsome catman named Baron (Yoshihiko Hakamada). He promises to help her avoid her fate, but a herd of cats quickly bears her off to the Cat Kingdom, and Baron and Muta have no choice but to follow her.

This film is technically a follow-up to WHISPER OF THE HEART, a 1995 Ghibli production which introduced the characters of Muta and the Baron. Apparently the original idea was to revive them for a short film for a planned theme park, but when that didn’t go through the Studio decided to expand the story into a feature and use it to test out the directing skills of animator Hiroyuki Morita (by this point Hayao Miyazaki was eager to find a potential successor, though judging from the IMDB his retirement still has yet to arrive.) Once again I have not actually seen the important preceding work and so can’t make any comparisons.

I will say that this is a very sprightly picture, never dwelling too long on one thing or in one place. This is a blessing and a curse; the film can never develop any one aspect in a lot of depth, but at the same time it never gets stuck exploring something uninteresting. It’s light fare, of course, never very serious in the way some Ghibli films can be, and this again has its ups and downs. On the one hand, it makes the film less memorable, on the other,
it’s a film about a kingdom of cats and there’s only so much gravity you can get out of that to start with.

Cat lovers will get a kick out of the film, that’s for sure- though many of the cats here stand on two legs and talk and wear something resembling clothing, they’re not anthropomorphic to the degree most cartoon animals are. They are, in their mannerisms and even dialogue, cats, and their kingdom- originally conceived by author Aoi Hiragi as a kind of kitty heaven- is a weirdly farcical land where the sun is always at its peak and the tyrant king (voiced with great enthusiasm by Tetsuro Tamba) defenestrates subjects who displease him. This is pretty much how a cat civilization would be run, and the combination of cuteness and insanity is appealing.

Like many Ghibli films, THE CAT RETURNS deals with a spirit world separate from our own, and interestingly enough briefly raises the concept that objects that an artist puts his or her heart and soul into gain a spirit of their own (this explains how Baron manifests in this world, sort of.) This, of course, plays off the animism and spirit worship that has long existed in Japanese culture, and as in similar films the spirit world serves as a place where the protagonist can work out her emotional and developmental issues. In this case, Haru is suffering from a lack of identity- she doesn’t know who she is, or believe in herself that much, and in the Cat Kingdom this is particularly dangerous; there she runs the risk of losing herself altogether and actually becoming a cat. It’s an interesting conflict, and Haru is a charming enough character that we enjoy her development.

All in all, a solid first venture for Morita as director, and as such a good sign for Studio Ghibli’s continued success whenever the older guard finally steps down. Parts of it border on forgettable, but it’s entertaining and something I wouldn’t mind watching again. A lesser entry in this particular studio’s body of work, but that’s not saying a lot. By a more objective standard, this is a darn good time.

Adapted from a comic by Aoi Hiragi
Screenplay by Reiko Yoshida
Directed by Hiroyuki Morita

Grade: B+

The Band's Visit

This is an Israeli film about an Egyptian police ceremonial band invited to play at an Arab cultural center in Israel. By accident they end up in the wrong town and are forced to find accomodations somehow, because the last bus in this quiet outpost has left for the day.

The film attempts to emphasize the common humanity between Arabs and Jews, and there is not much about the movie that is controversial, but it has been banned in Egypt anyway. I think the censors felt uncomfortable with the kissing parts, but you can make up your own minds as to why.

Anyways, there is this awesome song played in the closing credits following the piece the band plays to close the film. Enjoy:

Richard Widmark

More bad news: Richard Widmark has died, aged 93. He left a couple iconic roles - Tommy Udo, one of the screen's great villains; Skip McCoy, the pickpocket caught in international espionage, in Sam Fuller's great Pickup on South Street... and he was good everywhere, livening the screen when he appeared on it.

It reminds me of the last I saw him in - a reel of Two Rode Together - a John Ford western featuring Widmark and Jimmy Stewart rescuing white captives from Comanche.... it was shown as part of a program of "pink films" - color films gone bad.... this film had washed out to pink, but left patches of other colors - a green lamp; the yellow in Widmark's lieutenant bars - that pushed those objects out of the screen - it looked like an Ozu film! Anyway - I don't now if the film itself is any good - it looked like there was going to be a lot of forced banter and conflict between the leads, with no one believing a word of it... but I wish I had seen the rest, just to watch Widmark and Stewart together in a John Ford film.

Two for Easter

Jesus Christ Superstar (Norman Jewison, 1973)

Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006)

Green Mountain Film Festival

The only magazine subscription I have is Vermont Life. One reason is because it only comes out quarterly, so being the pack rat that I am, I don't have a lot of issues piling up fast that I have to not throw out. But also I get them for the stories, and--the pictures. Oh, the pictures.

I found in the latest issue a story pertinent to the conversation here. At this moment the Green Mountain Film Festival is going on in a small town in Vermont--their state capital--at the Savoy Theater (their single-screen art house) and the City Hall Arts Center. They have about 38 or so films showing for its duration, about half of them documentaries. The thing runs from March 21-30 this year.

















A couple things I find interesting about it:

They don't give prizes or rank the films, for the organizers of the event view it as a distraction. They feel anyway that such a thing seems kind of arbitrary. I like how they think!

Also there is no open call soliciting films for each year's festival, and there's no application fee that other festivals often use as a source of revenue. Rather, a committee scours the world for films. It is a curated festival. And, they don't do themes. They just want the best (mostly current) films they can find, plus give a nod to local talent.

The centerpiece of their festival is the film critic event. They get notable film critics like Kenneth Turan to attend by convincing them that Montpelier is the place they want to be at the end of March. I don't know how they do that exactly... This is also the perfect time for Vermonters to attend such an event, because as most other places have four seasons, Vermont has five--spring, summer, fall, winter, and mud. Things are just starting to warm up, and people are getting out more after the long winter--but it's a bit messy for outdoor activity, so this event comes at about the right time.

Wolfman's Got Nards!

In his recent round-up of L.A.'s current glut of fantastic revival screenings, Dennis Cozzalio covered just about everything going on in the Southland that could make a film lover drool. But he missed one very special double feature that made my heart leap.

Last night, at the New Beverly Cinema, the marquee looked like this:

When I was a young lad in the Philadelphia suburbs, the local cable service included a channel called Prism. It carried all the Philly sports games, concerts recorded at Philly venues and just about every movie I recall fondly from childhood. (Remind me to tell you one day of the epic arguments my childhood friends and I still have to this day about which Mannequin movie is better. It's the first one, just so you know.)

My sister and I recorded The Monster Squad from Prism, and probably wore out the VHS tape watching it so much. Here was a movie where little kids cussed, read Stephen King, and fought monsters by kicking 'em "in the nards". It seemed designed specifically for me.

Before last night, I hadn't seen the film in a good fifteen years. I was worried. I didn't want to end up realizing this fond childhood memory is actually a terrible, terrible piece of shit.

Thank God, it's not. That feeling when I was ten years old -- that the movie was designed specifically for me -- came about because it was designed specifically for me, and all the wide-eyed, movie-loving youngsters like me. For those who don't know, the movie's about a group of monster-obsessed grade-schoolers who are somehow pitted against the "forces of evil", embodied by just about every famous movie monster ever:

I'm embarrassed to admit that I got a little choked up at some of the film's sentimental shots. The best among them involves one character watching a drive-in horror movie through binoculars from the roof of his house, munching on popcorn with his father. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a screen grab of that one, but I did find this one, which illustrates every young boy's wildest dream:

I wasn't the only one looking for a trip down memory lane. The show was sold out, something I've never seen before at the New Beverly, though it's easy to see why: not only were they showing the only 35mm print of the film known to exist (loaned by a private collector, they said), but the director of both films on the bill, Fred Dekker, was in attendance for a Q&A between screenings. Dekker was good-humored and friendly, and provided an interesting look at someone who didn't have great success in the industry. After making the two films from last night, he directed Robocop 3, which he described as "a film everyone hated." Though the audience clearly had great affection for The Monster Squad, the reality is it was a box office flop. "If these movies had done bettter," said Dekker, "you would've seen a lot more from me."

Then, as if someone had scripted a scene illustrating the tenuous nature of Hollywood relationships for our amusement, the moderator announced that the co-writer of The Monster Squad, Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), was in the theater. He waved to the crowd and to Dekker, who proceeded to give Black shit (in a jocular way) for not returning calls about appearing on the DVD of The Monster Squad. He told Black that Sony wanted to do a Blu-Ray of the film, which would include an extra where a box appears in the bottom corner of the screen, in which one sees Dekker and Black discussing the film. "I'll talk to you about it after this," said Dekker. The moderator asked for questions from the audience, at which point Black walked down the aisle and said to Dekker, "I've got a question: what's your goddamned phone number? I have to leave." Dekker said he'd give it to him after the Q&A. Later, Dekker called out to Black for help answering a question. Someone from the back of the theater shouted: "He took off!" Awkward!

After all this mayhem, it was time for Night of the Creeps, which I'd never seen before. It's missing the nostalgia and sentiment of The Monster Squad, but it's still a funny little zombie B-movie with intentionally corny dialogue. During the Q&A, many audience members made pointed references to James Gunn's movie Slither being a rip-off of Creeps. It's possible -- the alien slugs slithering along the ground and leaping into humans' mouths did seem awfully familiar -- but Dekker tried to be kinder about it, mentioning that there was a TV show in the 70s called The Monster Squad that featured Dracula, Wolfman and Frankenstein's monster that he'd never seen.

I think it's ideal to see Night of the Creeps in an environment like last night's -- 300 rowdy movie lovers wildly applauding every inane moment, such as a gold-hearted sorority girl strapping on a flamethrower to battle a swarm of undead fraternity boys.

Last night was a reminder of the giddiness that comes about from the shared experience of movies that are just plain fun. I know we all love films that aspire to be more than just a good time, but out with it: what are some movies that make you feel like a kid again?

My Most Anticipated 2008 Film...

Hey yall - I wrote this on my own blog. Thought I'd share...
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Lee Daniels is probably the only black director/producer taking risks and bringing different kinds of stories to the big screen. I admire his ability to transcend the limitations of the studios, making great, yet flawed indie films about black life...well somewhat black...which also seem to be marketed to a wider audience. And he is a marvel at bizarro casting. Take a look -

Monster's Ball
Billy Bob Thorton/Halle Berry/Mos Def/Heath Ledger/Diddy

Shadowboxer
Cuba Gooding Jr./Helen Mirren/Macy Gray/Joesph Gordon-Levitt/Mo'nique/Darnell Williams

The Woodsman
Kevin Bacon/David Alan Grier/Eve/Kyra Sedgewick/Benjamin Bratt/Mos Def

now in 2008 we have -



starring -

	Mo'Nique	...	Mary
	Paula Patton	...	Ms. Rain
	Lenny Kravitz	...	John
	Sherri Shepherd	...	Cornrows

and many, many other black actresses I have never heard of before. At least they will get to work in this flick!

For those unfamiliar with PUSH, it's bleak tale about a fat ghetto girl who gets pregnant with her father's child. It's sad and hopeless, written in a style reminiscent of Zora Neale Hurston. Lee Daniels seems to dig dreary stories, so I can't wait to see what he does with Sapphire's book. Mo'Nique does her best work in dramas. I find her to be terribly interesting when she isn't doing comedy. And Lenny Kravitz...the actor??? Can't wait.