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Author Topic: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts  (Read 561904 times)

Teproc

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2510 on: November 13, 2018, 09:19:33 AM »
As a fan of this bracket, HIMYM and pixote's reviewing style in general, this was quite the fun read. ;D

Didn't "arthouse ponce" originate in this bracket too ? I remember reading it in some round 1 review, and I don't think I've encountered it elsewhere.
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MartinTeller

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2511 on: November 13, 2018, 03:11:38 PM »
The Hole should be screened annually on April Fool's Day as part of a nineties Arthouse Ponce double feature with Todd Haynes' Safe.

Seeing as both of these films are in my top 100, I'm feeling like I should be offended....

pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2512 on: November 13, 2018, 04:09:03 PM »
I trust your opinion today more than I trust my own from nine years ago. :)) Crumby matchup but I ain't mad at the decision.

Haha, I would trust your 2011 self on this one. I suspect you'd still enjoy The Road Home, but The Hole would more likely inspire a post in the Caught 10 Minutes Of thread, lol.

As a fan of this bracket, HIMYM and pixote's reviewing style in general, this was quite the fun read. ;D

Thanks!!!

Didn't "arthouse ponce" originate in this bracket too ? I remember reading it in some round 1 review, and I don't think I've encountered it elsewhere.

Yeah, that's a reference to Thor's first round review of The Scent of Green Papaya (which was subsequently resurrected by me, making it through to the final bracket).

Seeing as both of these films are in my top 100, I'm feeling like I should be offended....

Ha, yeah, sorry about that. I normally try to avoid that sort of tone, but I was feeling aggrieved and feisty. In fact, I originally said something to the effect or, "I hope even MartinTeller can enjoy this How I Met Your Mother reference (Barney's play), even though I'm bashing on a favorite of his." I was also tempted to soften my tone and express gratitude that a film like The Hole exists, together with regret that I'm apparently not among those that can fully appreciate it. But I decided there was no real fun in that.

I'm less apologetic about The Road Home, even though it's the more watchable of the two films. This bracket has really taken a lot of the sheen off Zhang Yimou — not in a complete the-emperor-has-no-clothes way, but along those same lines, I guess. It remains to be seen how Raise the Red Lantern holds up for me.

pixote
« Last Edit: November 13, 2018, 04:26:44 PM by pixote »
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BlueVoid

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2513 on: December 06, 2018, 03:26:41 PM »
Too bad you didn't enjoy The Hole more! It's one of my favorites from this bracket. Happy its moving on though.

Sidenote: I've had my matchup done for about a year, and have re-watched them since in attempt to get my verdict up-- but I've just been busy. Hope to get it up soon though!
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ProperCharlie

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2514 on: January 02, 2019, 10:24:54 AM »
耳をすませば/Mimi wo sumaseba  (Yoshifumi Kondô, 1995)
 aka Whisper of the Heart

 


 
Round 1 review by FifthCityMuse
Round 2 review by tinyholidays
Round 3 review by smirnoff
Round 4 review by BlueVoid
Round 5 review #1 by oldkid
Round 5 review #2 by Teproc

 

A schoolgirl falls victim to an elaborate, targeted dating scam involving library books, cats and communal singing.  Facing a terrible decision between her studies, her love and her career, can she make peace with herself before it’s too late?

It’s always good to see a positive portrayal of (male) library work.  He wasn’t even wearing a cardigan!

Confession.  I am a librarian in real life.  I know, I know.  It’s not really a profession, more an excuse not to have a profession, but still everyone loves librarians and secretly wants to be one, because, well, books are wonderful aren’t they?  If only you knew.  We still have performance appraisals.  And meetings.  And sales targets, deadlines, and more meetings.  In organisations we’re treated as a luxury that raises no income and only appears on the wrong side of the balance sheet.  Always the first department in the firing line.  Because we only do books, don’t we…?  Suffice to say that if you want to be wealthy or work with books, never become a librarian.  I would like to point out that the basic plot of this film raises red flags in an age of GDPR enforcement and reader history privacy.  It feels like it’s from another world; anachronistic, nostalgic even when it was made.  Books and libraries may feel safe and wonderful and romantic, but they’re underfunded, public-facing, multi-tools that are constantly under attack.  Have fun with your career choices.

Perhaps that’s why I can’t help feeling that this film has an unbearable lack of cynicism about its story.  Writing is seen as a wonderfully romantic life choice, and as long as the protagonist works hard and is passionate, she will succeed.  Well, maybe if she’d chosen technical writing and instead of fantastical accounts of cats, written a clear concise guide to fixing the photocopier…  The alternative version of ‘Country Roads’ used in the film had a much greater degree of cynicism regarding nostalgia than the film did about it’s own nostalgic view of what it takes to succeed. 

OK.  That’s my personal disconnection with the film out of the way.  Lets look at the positives.  This feels like a modern-day Bronte novel for teenage girls, coming-of-age in a hard and unforgiving system that expects them to follow specified pathways in life.  That’s a rarity and it should be treasured.  It’s a positive, heart-warming, juggling of romance, career and duty to forge a new path.  The animation is great, especially on attention to detail given to the urban interiors.  The main family home was cluttered and disorganised, but the look of it alone told so much about the warmth and life of the central family. 

If I had to pick one adjective to describe the film it would be warm.  Heart-warming.  A warm bath on a rainy day. One to watch when the world is full of edges.  It puts an overwhelmed and confused girl’s agency to the forefront and asserts that she can thrive and create her own special place in it.  And more than that, there’s help out there, even if you can’t see it.  I wish this was so much more.  It’s doing the right thing, but I’m left feeling unsatisfied.  Hmmm.       
 

 
 
阿飛正傳/Ah fei zing zyun  (Wong Kar-wai, 1990)
 aka Days of Being Wild

 


 
Round 1 review by sdedalus
Round 2 review by tinyholidays
Round 2 resurrection review by pixote
Round 3 review by BlueVoid
Round 4 review by Sandy
Round 5 review #1 by oldkid
Round 5 review #2 by Teproc

 
 
A good-looking man drifts through life buoyed by his charm and driven to avoid his big fear: Rejection.  Whenever he senses its stealthy approach, he ensures he strikes first, leaving his friends and the authorities to clear up his mess.  Inevitably his journey leads down a very long road to his ultimate nemesis.  Will he prevail?

The first of a loose trilogy in which WKW indulges his passion for colonial influences on fashion and society in 20th Century China.  Decadence, decline and the death of the family. But it looks amazing.  It’s a 19th century European saga of cold German passion, opulent Italian classicism and inevitable Russian tragedy. With lots and lots of smoking.

Another WKW obsession is thoroughly horrible male protagonists.  Irresponsibility jostles with purposeless, boredom and barely concealed anger at women, the world and whoever is talking to them at any given moment.  He likes them rather too much.  Grown man-children, aka ‘playboys’, who end up being forgiven, being healed or given a romantic-sounding philosophical excuse involving single-use birds and a traumatic childhood.  I’m starting to see the limits of his worldview through the nostalgic grime he paints with.

Speaking of which: Cinematography.  The colours of a three-day old bruise.  Once livid now fading.  It’s not a surface you want to touch in case it still hurts, but it’s hard to resist. 

Yes. 

It still hurts. 

There’s something insubstantial about the setting.  As if this isn’t a film you’re watching, more a dream you’re remembering.  With discomfort.

Picking at the scab of love again, trying to reveal the truth but never quite getting there.  Trying to preserve the mystery when perhaps it’s not all that mysterious.  It’s all attachment and hormones and going cold turkey on the latter when the guy-ropes of the former are severed.  All done wonderfully obviously but tainted with an overtone of self-importance and satisfaction with its own insight.  The overall mood of dissociation, time and place is great.  It’s the motion through that world in terms of plot and character development that’s lacking.  Great at ennui, disconnection and discontent, not so good at resolution, change or insight.  He likes to wallow in a stagnant past.  Icky.  But I did love the Andy Lau/Maggie Cheung arc.

   
 
 Verdict:
Whatever I choose, it’s inevitable some of you are going to be unhappy.  With seven previous reviews, Days of Being Wild must be one of the most watched films currently in the bracket.  It’s divided opinion.  Whisper of the Heart has established more of a consensus in that it’s lesser Ghibli but it’s still Ghibli and it’s only one behind with six reviews. Do I plump for uncynical wholesomeness or uncynical weltschmerz?

 The truth is I don’t want to put either of them through.  Although they’re both good films, I’m finding both of them problematic.  While Days of Being Wild indulges in a characters and stories that are troubling and recycled in numerous other offerings from the 80s and 90s, it does so with with Wong Kar-wais increasingly confident and rich style, capturing a 94-minute long mood magnificently.  Even if it’s more of a painting than a film.  Whisper of the Heart is a much rarer and more necessary film, but is let down by its refusal to make its world as harsh as it should be, even for a film from 1995 whose natural audience is teenage girls.  It’s actually this dishonesty, that almost decided it for me.  But I must defend the more essential of these two.  Whisper of the Heart goes through by the skin of its teeth.  Got to side with the librarians.

oldkid

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2515 on: January 02, 2019, 10:07:03 PM »
I honor you.  I think that is the right choice, although a difficult one.
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smirnoff

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2516 on: January 02, 2019, 11:58:25 PM »
Oh man, great review. A thoroughly enjoyable read. I ain't mad at the verdict either. ;)

ps. any time you want to talk more about librarian stuff I think it's super interesting! :)

Sandy

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2517 on: March 22, 2020, 05:35:37 PM »
Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997, Japan)  vs  Moving (Shinji Sômai, 1993, Japan)




Princess Mononoke




A more apt title would be Ashitaka the Liaison. And, it's a thankless job. All he wants is for everyone to get along. Is that too much to ask? The humans are acting beastly and the animal gods are acting all too human. To top it off, Ashitaka is having troubles of his own. His cursed arm keeps getting in the way of his negotiation skills and the girl he is falling for thinks she's a wolf.

Thanks Ideathy for a super dictation! I'm still visualizing the costumes and creatures.

All in all, this reminds me of the complexity of our journey and the people we come in contact with. Are we treading lightly and taking the time to comprehend others' perspectives?

Nine years ago, Ideathy dictated this to me for the MDC Fantastical Unreality thread. I'm guessing she was around 12 at the time, so I wrote my review short and sweet, so as to not bore her. :) This time around, I could write for days about the music, the voices, the beauty and the too-close-to life-cautionary tale, but my words faulter as they come out as a "whimper, not with a shout." ("Pity the Child lyrics" from Chess. Funny how that song came to mind just now for this movie, when it's more aptly applied to Moving, the other film I'm reviewing here. I'll use something from it then too, I'm sure.)

Going back over old posts, looking for this review, I'm struck with how different my life was back then. I had faulty convictions of things I had no understanding of and opinions which really don't matter at all. Life is humbling, if we allow it to be. This movie is the same. It can be as remote as a cartoon fantasy, or as personal as confronting any hatred I let fester in my own heart. If I allow the film in, it overwhelms me with the scope of its message. But we are in a time of overwhelmed-ness, so no time like the present to sit in the space and ponder on it all.



Moving (Ohikkoshi)



Pity the child with no such weapons
No defense, no escape from the ties that bind
- "Pity the Child"

I was hoping to not like this one, in order to move Princess Mononke easily along, but it caught me and threw my emotions about. Children, so vulnerable, so resilient. Being a child is a constant game of catch up, figuring out who the players are and why they don't play by the rules. Words say one thing, but language was never just about words, in fact words can be the most unreliable. Actions and faces, now there's where truth lies. It's when things get quiet and the words and actions are finally in agreement, where understanding takes hold. Smart girl, Renko. Take all the time you need to sort everything out and make sense of it.



Fear not, filmspotters! Princess Mononoke must move forward. It gets my vote.
« Last Edit: March 23, 2020, 02:19:32 PM by Sandy »

Beavermoose

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2518 on: March 23, 2020, 06:58:08 AM »
Woo!

Teproc

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2519 on: March 23, 2020, 07:34:48 AM »
More like Pity Mononoke's opponent. ;D

It's not advancing yet though Sandy's pithy summary should be enough to convince anyone. I hate it when my girlfriend thinks she's a wolf, it's such an annoyance.
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