michele

executive koala was my fourth movie of the film festival and my second asian film. following along with princess raccoon’s utter bizarre-ness, EK’s gesture in the direction of the bizarre was to have some of the characters be animals. or at least humans wearing gigantic animal heads with visible zippers up the back and large furry gloves. this sounds hilarious in print, but after 2 hours of it you begin to develop a feeling that just having the main character in a koala suit does not a movie make.

oh, EK tried to have other filmic qualities. there was a murder mystery, for starters, and some kung fu masters with special powers from korea, but mostly it was just a koala. the guys behind me seemed to think this was all that was necessary to make the film hi-fucking-larious. if their ongoing loud laughter was anything to judge by. and the behemoth escaped from a hagrid audition in front of christine seemed to swell as the night went on. this had nothing to do with the film itself. except for how he blocked my view of the subtitles. technically, i didn’t often need the subtitles since they spoke in some very basic japanese a lot of the time. however, i still cling to subtitles like a crutch and was bobbing and weaving all over the place trying to garner as many letters out of a word as i could. my end result would be something like, “s-, – -m con—-ed t-at the –ala —led his -ir–riend!” and i’d be like, ‘why the fuck are they laughing? how is that funny? murdering your girlfriend is no laughing matter, people! even if SHE JUST WON’T DIE!’

much like princess raccoon again in this respect, the female character had a hard time accepting death and moving on with her afterlife. she just kept coming back with her crazy kimchi kung fu mastery of resusciation.

the movie ended on a lovely note of, “please, baby, come back to me and i promise i’ll never hit you again.” yeah, right crazy koala wife-beater. just put on your minimalist white tank top and show off some more of that hairy costume suit so the guys behind me can have a good laugh at how YOU’RE A KOALA.

i actually enjoyed this movie a little more than my angry diatribe is suggesting. parts of it were genuinly amusing. though not watching the koala’s eye’s blink red while he wavered back and forth in front of the camera for 5 minutes before killing someone (in a dream sequence). which was old halfway thru the first time it was done. sadly they did it like 6 more times. the korean kimchi producer guy was ok. though momo (‘peach’) his squirrel companion stole the fucking movie. and i kind of enjoyed the song and dance at the koala’s trial (dream sequence). the police officer also had his moments. and the office ladies were, at times, delightful.

i’m going to completely steal what i already wrote in an email for this movie’s review. totally cheating, but i am doing several of these in a row and it is 3am.

it was fucking bizarre. it would do these weird jump-cuts and it made no linear sense. it was all sort of staged like a kabuki/no play too and so it was all these big stages that looked like stages, with set design and everything. and then they would sing and then it would turn out to be magic or a dream and they’d be back where they were before but not really there either. and the princess tanuki kept dying and being brought back to life by this “frog of paradise” who sang in a high pitched girl-voice, “riiiiiiiibbbbbbit! riiiiiiibbbbbbit! believe in kanon!” so while there it had some boddhisatva action going on it also had italian and portuguese catholics at other parts.

odd? yes. zhang ziyi singing in japanese? not so believable. joe odagiri, the male lead, though is adorable. he was also just in this ninja movie i bought on ebay, ‘shinobi’, which is excellent and he is awesome in. ninjas!

jason and claudine fell asleep during it though. my friend candy and i kept looking at each other going, “what the FUCK is going on in this movie? was that really funny? i just don’t know.” and rachel was giggling at parts that i could tell she thought were funny but which i was suspicious of. possibly it was more parts where zhang ziyi was inexplicably speaking in chinese, and rachel is chinese so understood those bits. the italian and portuguese catholics spoke in italian and portuguese and no one understood them.

on the whole though, i enjoyed it. it was very pretty visually and it was odd enough to hold my attention without being too odd to make me irritated.

the first half of art school confidential was really good. the second half was predictable.

plot: boy goes to art school to meet the model of his dreams. boy meets girl. girls falls for more jock looking boy. boys make art. girl models for art. people get murdered. art students get lambasted. wacky string of coincidences occur (not so wacky because by this point it’s predictable) and boy takes the fall. girls decides she loves boy after all. jock-boy goes back to his wife. presumably. it all turns out to be a movie within the movie. sort of. well, that part’s lame.

i really liked the first half. it was funny. i dislike how zwigoff lives in san francisco and daniel clowes lives in berkely and neither of them came. lame-asses.