Archive for category Comedy
Amreeka
Last week, there was a mail with an advance screening ticket of Amreeka in my post without returning address. It could be any film distributor in Australia but I could not be bother to find out. We got the see the movie was the aim.
Amreeka is, more or less, related to my personal experience about culture crash. Muna, a Palestinian banker in West Bank, and her son, Fadi, won a chance of the lifetime to migrate to American. They live with her sister’s family in Illinois. The new life in the new world does not go well for them financially and socially. Especially the film is set on when the Bush Administration started to invade Iraq and the neighbour is indiscriminately paranoiac against anyone with middle-east background. Muna has to take a job at a fast food franchise and Fadi picks up a fight in school.
The Writer/Director, Cherian Dabis, reflects American suburban society in the eyes of a contemporary first generation immigrant. As a second generation, she also faces identity crisis and it shows in the film. This is another great example of how the the world in larger scale being portrayed in everyday life.
The spotlight of the movie could not be on someone else but Nisreen Faour as Muna. She plays such a universal mom which could be both naive and strong. Other cast is as well as excellent. The good thing is Dabis does not try to guide us to a provocative direction or solve any issue. It’s just life as it is.
To whomever it was, thank you for sending me that ticket. Seeing Amreeka was such a lovely thing to do on my Birthday.
His Benevolence Stilgherrian’s Christmas Message
The final video I make in 2008. I spend my first Christmas not working in a restaurant, editing this video for Stilgherrian.
The Fabulous Punch and Judy Show
Posted by 'Pong in Comedy, Performance on 16/02/2008
It’s dark, kinky and funny. The Fabulous Punch and Judy Show is the Aussie extreme adaptation of this classic puppet show. This medley of sex and murder scenes portrays the violence and turns into a cabaret as if out of this world. On the other hand, they could be found in the news everyday: wife beating, child raping, gay bashing and so on.
No wonder why I felt very intense after the first time visiting this play as a photographer on the final run-through. While I was concentrating on visions through the camera, the violence came straight into my brain without diluting with punch lines. It is comedy, anyhow. Once I saw it again as an audience on the opening night, I could laugh with its wits and outrages. Surreal tone went along perfectly with the wacky performances. Especially, the cover version of Aussie pop classic was the most adorable.
The Fabulous Punch and Judy Show is a part of Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival 2008 and currently playing at Cleveland Street Theatre until 29 February.
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Making Senses of Our Dreams
The Science of Sleep
I am a big fan of a French Director, Michel Gondry. The visions he creates such as Chemical Brothers’ Star Guitar and Kylie Minogue’s Come into My World are always astounding. His second feature film, The Science of Sleep, has all his visual tricks that go with dream-and-reality-cross-over theme.
After his father’s death, Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal), moves to France to find out that he does not get the job he was promised as an Illustrator but as a Typesetter in a calendar publisher. The escape from real-life frustration is in the journey through his dreams. Then he falls in love with a local, Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), but the girl seems so distant even though she is living next door. While he is trying desperately to win her heart, his delusions become closer and closer to reality.
So what our dreams are made of, just some random intuitive thoughts or emotional fragments of daily life? Boundary between the realms of reality and fantasy is blurred in schizophrenic patients. In this case, Stephane’s mild illusions expose his ingredients of his dreams and mix up with reality quite beautifully.
The vivid dream sequences are made of conventional animation and old-time movie techniques, at least, I do not detect any computer graphics. It is the right medium for a French romantic-comedy—I am not talking about Amelie. The down fall is that I just cannot help comparing them with Terry Gilliam’s work, only more or less Brechtian.
Paris, Je T’aime
Paris, Je T’aime: Sugar-coated Paris
Thank to the generosity’s of Australian Centre for Photography, I and Stilgherrian have a chance to see an advance screening of Paris Je T’aime. It is an interesting and challenging project—18 different love stories taking places in Paris districts from different directors. We see the diversed lives of the people in the city: lonely Parisians, grieving mother, couples in the edge of their relationship, disadvantage migrants and, of course, clueless tourists.
Nothing is new about a collaboration of directors telling different stories under one theme. The style becomes the genre itself. New York Stories is closest cousin to this film. But to line up 18 shorts together is quite an ambition. It is another hi-concept that could be the problem itself, in other words, there are too many. It is like watching SBS’s SOS with the certain theme on Saturday night but less variety of style.
Despite the big names such as, Gus Van Sant, Gérard Depardieu and Wes Craven, few of them deliver a fresh feeling of love and emotion. No need to talk about each segment, most of them are pretty much the same with the exception of Vincenzo Natali‘s Quartier de la Madeleine, Coen Brothers‘ Tuileries and Alexander Payne‘s 14th arrondissement. What puzzles me the most is the weird and dream-like segment, Christopher Doyle‘s Porte de Choisy which jumps out from all of them. He not only stamps his signature on Kathy Li‘s cinematography, but prove his strong connection to the orient.
After the screening, I have a craving for spicy food. We go to Snakebean Asian Diner on Oxford Street and have Thai late dinner there. Ironically, the food is still a bit too sweet for my taste buds.
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