Hello.
As is usual these days, my dusty blog comes briefly to life once again around November, and once again I promise myself and anyone still listening that I'll post more in the following year. It probably won't happen. Hey look, this year and the 2020's have been pretty crap so far and my optimism tank is running pretty low.
The Settlers (Arg/Chi/UK/Tai/Ger) (wiki)
It's dark and unrelenting in this depiction of the period if Chilean history, and even when the third act takes a step back, you are still reminded that for most people of the land at the time, this was a period where many never saw justice other than the convenient interpretation of the word decided on by the settlers themselves. 7.5/10
La Palisiada (Ukr) (review)
I had to give La Palisiada a lot of slack to get anything good out of it. In the beginning, which can be roughly described as a prologue, we appear to be in the Ukraine around 2010, as two families and their children spend some time together. After a number of disjointed scenes, a throwaway line uttered by teenage son Kiril as he wanders around the flat he has managed to newly acquire, filled with his dad's 'horrible' paintings, he refers to some of them as 'the worst things he has ever done', a clue as to where the film is making it's way towards.
Kiril is a spoilt, opinionated and unlikable floppy haired little git. Somehow in a relationship with Ayasel, things come to a head during an argument and thankfully we don't have to put up with him any more in the film.
Rewind to 1996 in newly liberated Ukraine, and the parents of the couple are now the focus. At this point the purpose of the film begins to coalesce, as we are shown through deliberately gritty and grainy 4:3 format the past lives of people who in the present are known only as loving fathers, taking part in what passed for justice in the newly liberated Ukraine of the mid 90's, where the habits of soviet influence still meant that so long as someone paid for a crime, that was the main thing. Someone shot one of their comrades and Bohdan, a young offender with some mental problems seemed guilty looking enough to do. Only at this point do we reflectively get some appreciation of the prologue, showing the cleaner, high-definition and relatively carefree lives of their children who, were it not for the actions of the past, may not have a tragedy of their own to deal with. If you can be patient during the first 15 or so minutes and put up with the numerous errors in the subtitles, you can find something of worth here but this new director would do well to tighten things up a bit in their next film. 6/10
Toll (Bra/Por) (review)
Eking out a living in one of Brazil's poorer areas, single mother Suellen sits in the toll booth day after day to put food on the table for her 'maybe' new boyfriend who seems to be taking some liberties, and her son Antonio, who has taken to posting Instagram videos singing along to campy classics in his disco-lit bedroom. What should be an escape from Antonio's dull existence and an exercise in finding out who he is and where his passions lay, Suellen sees as an illness robbing his child of a 'normal' existence.
When an opportunity arises to send her son to an expensive 'gay conversion' centre, she takes it without a second thought for the danger that she is putting her family in. With great performances particularly by the two leads, the film gives a view into the difficult waters of a culture steeped in religion and religious beliefs dictating who and what a person should be to be happy, and the hypocrisies we use to make them fit our actual lives. 8/10
World Animation Competition 2 (liff)
Slow Light (Pol) (preview)
In a visual style I can best describe as a Pigeon Street with modern technology, this inventive short toys with the idea that light can travel slowly through certain substances, and how at extremes, this might affect how someone sees their world. Nice but you have to leave your logic muscles at the door. 6.5
27 (Fra) (preview)
Alice is very bored and very, very horny. With colourful and flyaway imagery, we follow her through a typical day of annoying little brothers and unfulfilled fantasies, where even there the drudgery of the realities of life seem to encroach. Energetic, free-spirited and vibrant animation succeeds, often explicitly to convey the creature desperate to come out. 7.5
Remember How I Used to Ride a White Horse (Cro) (preview)
Very much one of those shorts that either pings with you based on your life experiences, or will completely go over your head. For me, it was very much the latter. A coffee shop worker, fashioned it seems from sweaty wax into a form resembling a brunette Lisa Jones from Team America, flumps around while some guy sits with his headphones on and distorted noise coming out. He does nothing, even when another man appears, lies on the floor, and then is gone again. Then there are some piles of salt, and a horse. And also a robot wood chopper chopping infinite wood. And the coffee shop is called White Horse so ... she originally rode it? Also, the actual horse was not white. The animation was wooden, the scenes abstract and nonsensical, the characters annoying and without purpose, and any message of some life unfulfilled was hidden too far behind it all for me to give a fig, and I disliked almost every part of it. 2
Suruaika (Rom) (preview)
Suffering from a similar level of message obscurity, Suruaika did at least have some good animation. In a noir world of cats where some cats are people and some cats are just cats, one taxi-driver cat avoids the strays on the street as he ferries his clients to and fro. After running one down he feels compelled to take in the strange looking orphan kitten that remains, only for it to get larger with every day, connected somehow with the exponential growth of cat cats on the roads, that he now seems to have no problems in mowing down in their thousands. Something something something rampant consumerism? I really don't know and it makes me feel old. 4
GMAN: a qixia in space (Chi) (fantasia) (cool poster)
Well. If anything was going to get us back on track it's a far-out, far-eastern parody of various western and eastern animations, as GMAN, a He-Man anime type, confronts in DBZ style, his reluctant nemesis, GHEAD, who is basically a cyclops with a tin can for a head. In super smooth but increasingly batshit fight scenes, the traditions of an anime good-evil fight are subverted as GHEAD tries to come to terms with just being sick and tired of it all. Mad. Mad as hell and I loved it. 8
Somni (Ger) (preview)
Short and simple, a baby monkey falls asleep. Quite lovely and should be on at the CBeebies bedtime hour. 7
Shackle (UK) (preview)
A tale of childlike woodland sprites, those who exist in the sun-dappled daytime who have the power to make the ingredients of the forest floor dance and sing, and those of the darkness who covet them. When the two worlds come together, a sprite finds himself in the darkness with no way back. Beautiful, magical and with themes reminiscent of Majoras Mask. 7.5
Skinned (Fra) (trailer)
As two conjoined beings eke out an existence next to what appears to be the river Styx, we see just how poisoned their unequal relationship is. Wracked by nightmares brought on by her hopeless existence, the sub-servant half is given a chance to break free but at a terrible price. The use of cloth and textile to create visceral flesh and bone is gruesomely effective, and puts a shiver down the spine. 7.5
About a Cow (Cze) (trailer)
Cows. Cows cows cows. Cows in water. Cows jumping. Cows having a wee. Cows. And a big fly. 6
Human Resources (Fra) (trailer)
Finally, a short and humorous look at how recycling could maybe go a bit too far. Cloth character models much tidier and less gruesome than in Skinned, but with the most amusingly mundane death in animation history, it provided us with an amusingly abrupt finish to our animation journey. 7.5
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