Film -- The Wind Rises

Miyazaki's latest farewell to his directorial role is a love letter to early aviation, the sort of thing that has appeared in many of his other films -- Porco Rosso, Laputa or even Howl's Moving Castle -- now given free rein in the story of the designer of the Zero fighter, admittedly one that elides the war years entirely. It manages to both retain the usual Ghibli quirkiness, while yet being a sober and mature work. Simply the best movie I've seen in years.

It also co-opted his most notorious protégé, Hideaki Anno, as both key animator (getting to draw the Zeros), and in the speaking role of the lead character, in a part which involved a small amount both French (the poem of the title) and German (sung) at times. Hence the little shout-out to Anno's major work in the telling of how the casting must have gone.

Film — From up on Poppy Hill

The new(ish) Ghibli movie, only a couple of years in arriving on these shores, is a great improvement over Goro Miyazaki's previous endeavour.

Surprisingly for an afternoon performance at the local independent cinema, we actually got the subbed version; though the subs did tend to take some liberties in terms of localization by overstating the obvious at times e.g. when declining a lift rendering "It's OK." as "We'll walk."

Now having seen the trailer ahead of other films, I had expected it to be focused mainly on ships and the harbour; but instead I got a plot that combined Manabi Straight with a touch of the Ore no Imouto's.

It's 1963, Japan is preparing for the Olympics that gave us the girls' outfits for Gunbuster, and Umi is a highschool girl of about 17, managing the domestic side of her grandmother's boarding house, while her doctor mother is away in the States (and her father was lost at sea in the Korean War); between that, the colourful inhabitants of the house and her habit of running signal flags up each day to guide her father back home, you'd think there was enough to be going on with. But it turns out that at school, the boys' club house is going to be torn down as part of the modernisation -- and they aren't happy.

So, in the protests, Umi meets a boy at the school that somehow she's never noticed before, and they start to get fond of each other, while Umi is leading the girls into a massive clean-up and redecoration of the club-house which theyd never 'before entered. And then it turns out the two of them both have copies of the same photo of Umi's father and two shipmates -- and that he handed a baby registered as his son to one of the other men for adoption after they'd lost their child; and that baby is now Umi's crush...

She doesn't seem too bothered about this, even though he is, but at the last minute... I must say I'd never expected to get a going to the wire "but it turns out they're not blood related after all" romance in a Ghibli movie!

Oh, and the clubhouse gets saved, of course.

Overall — slight, but with way more of the Ghibli charm than Earthsea managed.

Film — Blancanieves

Blancanieves is a silent black and white film self-referentially retelling the story of Snow White. In c1910 Spain, Carmencita's mother dies giving birth to her, the same day her famous wealthy toreador father is crippled in the bullring. A gold-digging nurse fills the role of the wicked step-mother who proceeds to ease both her new husband and later the unwanted stepdaughter off the mortal coil. However, in delegating the latter task, the deed was not carried through properly, and Carmencita, now amnesiac, is rescued by a troupe of half a dozen bull-fighting dwarfs.

After she displays the skills her father taught her, the troupe rebrands as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (including a scene where you can see some of them counting and head-scratching), and heads towards a confrontation in the same arena where her father was brought low.

A silent film with English inter-titles (and occasional subtitles when print material was being shown), it had much of the style of the original silents, but without the scratched and deteriorated media -- or their necessary brevity : there are several pieces that establish mood or setting that go on just that little bit too long for what they need to do.

Film — Pacific Rim

Super-robot on daikaiju action? Of course I'm going to see that, even if it has been whitewashed -- it was heavily Anglospheric, with only token Japanese flavour -- after all, outside Mako's flashback, it looked like the kaiju had a lousy sense of navigation, and managed to keep missing Tokyo! What self-respecting atomic monster would go to Anchorage or Hong Kong instead? OTOH, definitely a case of "Let's hear it for the Aussies!", even if they did have to play second string to the Americans.

That aside, it did have genre feel -- the necessary "You leave me no choice. We'll have to use THAT!" and pulling out the effective attack only when on the ropes, for example. That may have been dumb in, say, Voltron, but here it's a nod to genre, so gets a bye.

The nerdy comedy relief scientists were not really necessary, apart from satisfying current day Hollywood stock casting requirements (in the same way the commanding officer is always black). At least it was unconventional in lacking an obtrusive romance sub-plot to get in the way of the action (or at best provide opportunity for a comfort break mid-movie a-la-Armageddon)

In sum, a pretty decent summer popcorn SFX movie.

Film — Akira

I filled in a gap in my viewing by catching the 25th anniversary screening (subtitled) of Akira as a late show last night (and actually Tuesday will be 25 years after the opening scene of the movie). It was frenetic enough in that wacky 1980s anime style that it generally distracted from the general all-over-the-place nature of the narrative (there's a neat idea -- let's add it to the mix!).

I can see why it would have been a popular event back in the day, because of the concept scatter-gunning and ultraviolence; but as a mix and match of what were standard 1980s anime/manga themes -- neon dystopia (e.g. GitS, Bubblegum Crisis, ...) + psychics (a number of forgettable titles, in a manner of which Shinsekai Yori was a descendant) -- it was hard at this remove not to feel somewhat jaded by it.

Film — A Field in England

After a long drought, the local arthouse advertised and then actually showed* a film I thought worth going along to see, just to give an economic signal.

That film was A Field in England, which mixed arty experimentalism c1970 (black and white, "am I ominous yet" music, fragmented narrative and playing with crosscutting and overlays) with spaghetti Western sensibilities in a Civil War** setting. An alchemist's manservant hunting a magus who stole books from his master falls in with a number of deserters from a battle and finds his quarry camped in the eponymous field where the only sustenance to be found is a fairy ring of magic mushrooms. So after a while the "they're all tripping balls" effect leads to the arty stuff and an "I don't have to explain anything that goes on" approach to the narrative.

When it doesn't have its head up its fundament, and lets the (perhaps unintentional) spaghetti Western tropes surface, it's quite good; but on balance the "so edgy I could cut myself" approach gets the better of it.

*Back around Easter they'd put Dragon in the printed programme, but come the week it was supposed to show, nada, and no sign that it even came around earlier than expected.

**That's the 1640s, of course.

Once More with feeling

And it's time for the Cambridge Film Festival again, this blog's original raison d'être. So, I checked out the features program on-line.

It may be the way that the puff-pieces are written, but once again I'm underwhelmed, and am left thinking in some cases "Why would anyone make that film?". Can't see myself making the effort to go to any of them.

Eastwood's Unforgiven, which I saw on late night TV while on holiday back in May will probably be the only film I see this year at this rate.

Film -- The Adventures Of Tintin: Secret Of The Unicorn

Last cinema visit of the year, catching the holiday re-run of the film.

Not having read any of the source material in decades, I didn't worry about anything that might offend purists, but enjoyed the cartoony inter-war era high adventure in the style of what I did recall.

We will know that the CGI medium, especially in its 3D expression, is mature when they stop showing off gratuitous mirrors and lenses.

Cambridge Film Festival

I pretty much started this blog as as a home for "My Cambridge Film Festival film reviews", however much my blogging has mutated over the years. And this weekend, the programme for this year's CFF is out -- and even more than last year, I'm feeling underwhelmed by the torrent of gritty and edgy features, right-on documentaries, and the usual run of "there's adultery in it, so it must be artistic". It's like it was all set out with a ground rule of "No fun allowed, SRS BZNS ONLY". Oh, and they're exhuming and showing the totally abysmal Silent Running (down there near the nadir of my list of the worst movies I've watched). Twice.

I suppose I could go watch The Seventh Seal and The Day the Earth Caught Fire again; but apart from being in two minds about this locally produced film, Dimensions (which could be another Time Crimes, but could equally well be artsy tosh with a few bits of stage dressing like non-genre writers generate when thinking they're doing SF), the new material singularly failed to catch my eye.

July wrap-up

Well, it's been a busy month, hence quiet on the blogging front, starting out with:

A summer holiday

While Karen was in hospital last year, I noticed a flyer for Vitalise respite care holidays in amongst various papers, and thought "Let's do this next summer."

So we did.

We chose the first week of July at the Netley Waterside centre as a part of the country neither of us had been to for many years, went through all the paperwork about care requirements and doctor's reports, and crossed our fingers about how well we would get on.

In the end, it was wonderful.

It started off a bit fraught, though; as on the outward journey on a too hot and bright day for comfortable travel, as we were going past Tring, I realised that amongst the things I'd forgotten to pack was my wallet. So I just unloaded Karen and all the other bits, and turned around, to drive down again the next day with all the stuff we've forgotten (doing in two days way more miles than I drive in the average month).

Going back home in the heat was not much fun, especially when combined with stumbling into special traffic arrangements for the Henley Regatta just as everyone was heading home for the evening. But at home, I was cheered to get a phone call from Karen, who was enjoying being able to choose her own bed time.

Second time around I was actually able to find a parking space (as holidays run Saturday to Saturday, the first time there were arrivals and departures jostling for space), freshen up and join the Sunday chill-out.

The centre is really on the water's edge

with the gardens sloping down to the path that runs along the sea wall, though the path is only wheelchair accessible in one direction.

Monday, we opted out of the excursion to the Sea Life Center, and after I'd scouted out the area, we went along to the local (the Prince Consort) and took advantage of the ramp up to the beer garden at back. to just sit, enjoy a pint and the summer weather, the two of us on holiday together for the first time in years.

But that was the end of the good weather; cooler, windier and wet was the order of the day for the rest of the week. Tuesday's expedition to the Hawk Conservancy Trust at Andover was dampened by the rain arriving as we did, and continuing at varying strength until we left; but despite the weather, the display was spectacular, with sometimes a dozen birds in the air.

We did manage to miss the rain for Wednesday's visit to Marwell Zoo, which we only manage to see less than half of; Thursday started wet, so the planned trip to Winchester became a shopping center trip, which we opted out of; and the Friday was an official at-leisure day where we took the opportunity to slope off to the pub (using the industrial strength ramp for the front step) for lunch.

And so, home.

For the holiday, there was the inevitable fact of separate hospital beds for sleeping; the food all home cooked, if unadventurous, with a very early 18:00 dinner time, with breakfast being as much a main meal as that in the evening.

Karen really enjoyed the comparative freedom to choose a bed time -- including at well gone midnight on Thursday, when it was party night.

And for me -- well, when I helped Karen with chasing the last morsels of a meal around a plate, I was told off, that one of the volunteers should do that while I enjoyed a break!

The volunteers are a key part of the operation -- a cheerful, enthusiastic and cosmopolitan crowd from all over the globe, working for bed and board, to just take over much of the step-and-fetch level care, from simply getting a cup of coffee, to pushing manual chairs while accompanying otherwise unaccompanied guests.

So, we'll be back, though next time, assuming I don't have to do the trip 3 times in quick succession, we may opt out of scheduled trips and do our own at our own pace (without being caught up in the half hour or more loading and unloading process).

Trivia -- at just before 10pm on Monday the 4th, I observed a 60-hour old nail-paring crescent moon setting over the port, the sun having set 40 minutes before.

30 years on

And today has been our Pearl wedding. Doesn't time fly!

Logistics being what they are, celebration was lunch, at the recently refurbished Carpenters Arms at Gt. Wilbraham. Being a Sunday, that meant roast, but by being so standard, allowed a like-for-like comparison : big chunks of roast, huge selection of veg, and the best Yorkshire pudding I've eaten in years.

Film — Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

I this up picked up now it's out here on DVD, having heard of it some months ago.

The film is pure hokum wire-fu, and about as faithful to any of the source material as most movies (about on the level of the wartime Sherlock Holmes vs. Nazi spy films) but entertaining enough for an evening's viewing.

While van Gulik is in the writing credits according to imdb, I saw nothing of what he did by way of exhuming Chinese detective stories (except possibly the fact of popularising Judge Dee in the west) made it into the movie.

Film — Arietty

Seeing this after lunch today, we caught the UK theatrical dub (separate UK production team mentioned in the end credits, and some English regional accents -- most noticeably for the rat catchers -- amongst the cast).

It's been a long long time since I read the original (I have slightly more memories of Adrift and Aloft than of Afield), but the adaptation felt right, though one wonders if it wasn't the speech about the Borrowers dying out that attracted Miyazaki, something to slide in as a soapboxing scene.

Overall, the best thing out of Ghibli since The Cat Returns.

2010 in media

Film

A very disappointing year, with a totally dismal Film Festival, and otherwise only the Chaumet/Tati L'Illusioniste really standing out enough to tempt me to the cinema. I would have gone to see The Story of Kells as part of the festival had it not been in a no-unaccompanied-adult showing; but wasn't motivated to see it when it came around later. And similarly, previous commitments and bad weather relieved me of having to decide whether to make the effort to fit in Rare Exports.

Books

I actually read a few this year that weren't software related. Excluding the holiday reading potboilers (Lindsey Davis' latest Falco, some by the numbers sci-fi,...)

• Miéville's Un Lun Dun was a young people's Neverwhere -- some nice ideas, but it didn't quite cohere in the end. And I'm sufficiently bourgeois that the mundane London in the book was a more alien world than Un Lun Dun itself.
• Also by Miéville, The City and the City is the first Hugo winner I've read before the award since A Fire Upon The Deep. An interesting conceit of cities wrapped around a police procedural.
• Reynold's Terminal World was a vast improvement over his previous House of Suns, being a fairly straightforward adventure yarn in a setting where Vingean Zones of Thought happen on a scale of miles rather than kiloparsecs.
• I also finally got around to Nahoko Uehashi's Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit -- and was surprised quite how much the anime had expanded upon the rather short and sparse narrative.

And while I'm here, probably worth warning people about the two weakest of the computing texts I picked up this year, both in the Wrox Professional series:

• Professional Iron Python was a very strange book, and it did cover some obscure points of .net/Windows programming; but for IronPython, not good. It read like a draft that had been put together while the language was still in its pre-beta stages and then hurriedly given a Visual Studio 2010/.net 4 gloss. In particular the author repeatedly makes the incorrect assertion that IronPython statements cannot span multiple lines -- which leaves me dubious as to the rest of the content I've not independently verified. Get IronPython in Action instead.
• Professional F#2.0 just approaches being content free. It covers very little of the language (no computation expressions, let alone anything like quotations), giving more emphasis to the imperative rather than functional aspects where it does. Get the O'Reilly Programming F# instead.

Anime

2010 was the year where Crunchyroll reached a sufficient point that -- whatever the sordid history of the operation might be -- it was possible to watch a fair selection of series without resorting to fansubs. A few series that I might have watched, or at least sampled (House of Five Leaves, Tatami Galaxy) were streamed by Funimation -- but they don't seem to have cottoned on that the world is more than just Japan and the US.

Going by the metric that "/a/ doesn't talk about good anime" -- where it is obvious whether a title that is not talked about is good or bad -- House of Five Leaves, from a manga by the same author as Ristorante Paradiso is the only one that I feel any regrets about missing.

Apart from titles already blogged, I still have the last episode of Virgin Pomegranate Monster to watch, as well as the concluding cours for Letter Bee REVERSE and Super Robot Wars OG : The Inspector.

And of course no discussion of 2010 in anime would be complete without a mention of the new GAINAX series, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, a title that I watched just enough of to feel I could add it to my MAL dropped list (i.e. more than one episode).

A combination of all that is wrong with American cartoons multiplied by "LOL, Japan!", this was the disappointing result of giving a studio of talented animators full freedom to have fun and do what they wanted. Alas, what they wanted to do was act like retarded 12-year-olds -- so if you've grown out of finding messy bodily functions funny, or haven't seen any of the stuff that they're lampooning, and don't get your jollies from hearing cute Japanese girls swearing a blue streak, it ends up by being the saddest waste of talent I've seen in many a year. And another case where I ignored the implication "it's being talked about, ergo it isn't very good", because I couldn't believe it was really that bad.

Alas, it was. In fact, watching the audience reactions as they were trolled mightily at every turn with misleading hints about forthcoming episodes, and desperately tried to make it all make sense, all the way up to the sudden ending with "To be continued in next season" (when Gainax have never done a second season of any of their original anime) was far, far more entertaining than the series itself.

Film — True Legend (Su Qi-Er)

Woo-Ping Yuen's latest chop-socky film about Beggar Su, the master of Dunken Fist wu-shu had its UK première here this evening.

It was almost solid martial arts mayhem, with just a few pauses for breath; however the structure of the film was a bit of a mess -- the intrusive 'now put on your 3D glasses/OK take them off again' around the training arc and what looked like it was going to be the Boss Fight didn't help (nor did the 3D itself where the actors often seemed to be floating detached from the rather washed-out scene around them.

The story itself seems to be a fairly direct one about Su and his adopted brother Yuan who spurns the generosity of his adopted family, and cue two-way revenge tragedy -- then just when you think it's all over, a long coda culminating in the real Boss Fight out of nowhere.

Clearly it must be following the high points of a well known tale -- but it ends up feeling unresolved because of the broken narrative rhythm, whereas stopping at the tragedy of the 3/4 mark would have given closure (if you don't ask too deeply why a martial artist of Su's calibre would dig a box out of sandy ground with his bare hands, rather than using some one-inch-punch technique to break open the lid in situ).

In all, not entirely satisfying popcorn fare.

Film — Henri Quatre (Henry of Navarre)

Added to the Film Festival programme after the program went to print, a competently done edited-highlights costume drama (German production, dialogue in French with some Italian and Latin) of the life and turbulent times of the eponymous French King.

Not something I would have gone out of my way to see, had I not already earmarked this week for the festival, but equally not something where I felt I'd wasted the afternoon.

Film — The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec

For someone who announced his retirement a few years ago, Luc Besson remains remarkably active...

The 30th Cambridge Film Festival opened with his latest film, an adaptation of a 1970s bande dessinée about the eponymous Adèle, who is an Edwardian Lara Croft, with a touch of Tintin, in a turn of the century Paris, populated mainly by bumbling gentlemen with florid moustaches and ghastly haircuts. And, for reasons that become apparent as the film progresses, a rapacious pterodactyl which serves as the maguffin.

For a comedy adventure, the humour is uneven, sometimes leaden, some gags are over used (the rule of three is callously disregarded at times), sometimes a little too knowing (in the form of a certain quip about a change in the Parisian landscape that post-dates the original publication), but in the main, works.

Two strikes against the film -- an anachronistic attitude to tobacco (fixable by tweaking one line of dialog), and two uses of bullet time.

Oh -- and you do have to stay through the credits for this one.

Film — L'Illusioniste

A new feature directed by Sylvain Chaumet (Triplettes de Belleville) to a 1956 screenplay by Jacques Tati. This 100+ minute animation is very clearly a Tati film -- it's almost done in mime, an absolute mimimum of dialogue -- with a strong air of melancholy under the veneer of humour (an example of the mood being the scene where the girl, who has attached herself to the middle-aged, slightly past-it stage magician of the title, serves up rabbit stew to him, and some of the other stage acts who share their digs, while he is surreptitiously looking for where the obnoxious creature which he pulls out of hats has gone). Although the CGI leaps out at you in a slightly obnoxious fashion in a couple of shots, for the most part it could be line and watercolour after the style of Oliver Postgate.

Its evocation of Britain (some London, a lot of Scotland) c1960 rings very true, both in the looks -- I'm sure there were photographic references underlying the scenery -- but also the cultural references, as the old music hall acts are elbowed out by the new rock'n'rollers exemplified by Billy Boy and the Britoons. And there are some more knowing, more contemporary, jokes embedded in some of the signage (it's very worth reading all the text, like the menu at the chippie, and the pawnbroker's hoardings).

And look out for the actual Tati to make a brief appearance, as well as the namesake central character.

Likely to be the best film I see all year.

Cambridge Film Festival

An even more dreary and schlocky or right-on selection in the program (though the list on the printed program differs slightly from what are listed on the web-site) this year; down to only 2 that caught my eye

• The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec -- which is Besson not retiring again
• True Legend (Su Qi-Er) -- 3D chop-socky

Let us hope that neither is a disappointment, since the generally tawdry, often cheap and nasty looking, selection of films definitely is. (Clearly no money or enthusiasm available for anything like Miyazaki's Arietty.)

Review catch-up — Films seen recently

Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

The state of the art of SFX is such now that he can do in CGI/live action what he was doing with paper back in the Python days; and it managed to carry off the multiple actors filling in the gaps in Heath Ledger's role in a smooth and unobtrusive fashion (were it not for the fact that Ledger's Australian accent stood out from the understudies).

But (and you were waiting for the 'but') I found the supporting characters grating and unsympathetic, and the inclusion of "socially relevant" elements made the story lurch back and forth too much. Inclusion of the sordid nature of contemporary London for contrast with the pure world of the imagination, yes; but the mood swings were a bit too violent and "am I relevant yet?" in nature.

His Munchhausen was better, IMHO.

Once upon a time in the West

Reissued, remastered, very much of its time, a fairly archetypal "Man with No Name" western, where, with Charles Bronson as the revenge driven guy in the white hat, there are really only shades of grey.

District 9

This savage black comedy is the best new movie I've seen in a long while, with hints of Python and early Peter Jackson in a mix that savages so many stereotypes.

Film festival -- after action

• From Russia with Love... -- filling a gap in my viewing with this relic of a more innocent age : "Mr Bond, this suitcase contains a throwing knife, a tear-gas grenade, a folding sniper rifle, twenty rounds for same and 50 gold sovereigns. Your mission is to get this onto your flight to Istanbul."; and cut to new scene rather than spending many tedious minutes in fumblings and gaspings.
  
  So, even though Bond is the fairly archetypical faceless and sketchy eroge self-insert protagonist, Connery pulls it off with style, and fires his Checkov guns with panache.
  
  
• Our Hospitality -- slapstick and Keaton playing with trains. As time goes by, I start to wonder how the mix of drama and knockabout was intended to be received by the contemporary audience.
  
  
• Vampyr -- An interesting contrast to the previous year's Dracula. That was a narrative film with rubber bats.
  
  This, by contrast, is a pure SFX movie, making much more effective use of available technology. Alas, like all SFX movies, the trickery cannot completely hide the weakness of the other elements -- there is all the narrative coherence of a dream, and only sometimes, the atmosphere of one, as we move from one little set piece to the next. Even the conclusion, with the ingenious demise of the enabler doctor comes out of nowhere -- Chekov's gun is never displayed here before use.
  
  Taken as a mood piece, quite effective -- would that modern SFX movies would use some of the quieter restraint like this!
  
  
• Thirst -- For anyone wanting to see Park Chan-wook (Oldboy etc.)'s vampire movie, I'll spoil it for you -- the punchline is
  
  It's an over-long, rambling, jumble of a film. While it starts off promisingly, and seems to be going to invert and subvert genre clichés (a priest begging to be turned into a vampire; the vampire snacking happily from hospital supplies), after what seemed to be about to be the climax (and was probably only 60% of the way through the film) it then wanders off into an entirely different genre
  
  All the cinematographic style in the world could not save this train-wreck of a movie.
  
  
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- After the above, I was in no mood to sit through 2.5 hours of Swedish cinema, so gave it a miss.
  
  
• The Ipcress File -- I'd seen this nearly 40 years ago on TV in black and white, and remembered only a couple of fragments (the tape, the nail); so not only was the colour a welcome surprise, but so was the length and complexity of the lead in. Palmer -- for all his little pretentious quirks -- is so much more an accessible character than the adolescent fantasy that Bond represents. Well worth the rewatch (my festival pick)
  
  
• Ghosted -- a German lesbian take on a Chinese style love/ghost story. Cleverly done with video intercut as well as outright flashback as we find out how everything unfolded. The brief sex scene was orders of magnitude less tacky than the stuff I've had to sit through for a long time -- would that a hetero scene be as tastefully done. Overall : mostly harmless, but not something I would have gone out of may way to see (e.g. if it were not on during a week I was taking off to watch films)
  
  
• The Third Man -- What the hell? I mean, seriously, What The Hell!? How did this piece of solid idiot plotting get the reputation it did?
  
  The emperor has no clothes, is bare-ass naked as a jaybird, nude, sky-clad, in the buff, totally starkers!
  
  Welles wanders on briefly, acts, surprisingly, as one of the least unsympathetic of the characters (by the time you are supposed to consider him a complete blackguard), the sewers scene provides yet another counter-example for that silly "Why are manhole covers round?" interview question, but, just like with Thirst, style could not save this one. At least its age means that it is short and we were spared having to sit through any sex scenes.

My Film Festival picks

• From Russia with Love...
• Our Hospitality
• Vampyr
• Thirst -- Korea does vampires
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- Swedish thriller
• The Ipcress File
• Ghosted -- German/Taiwanese ghost story
• The Third Man -- filling a terrible gap in my record

Otherwise, see below...

29th Cambridge film festival

The program is out -- and this year I could barely get into high single figures for things I'd want to see. So much stuff on offer is reflex leftist narrative, anti-intellectual (but I repeat myself), implausible relationship drama, miserablist, schlock or some combination of the above. The bulk of what I'll be putting down for is from the various revival strands, the few others all foreign, including a Korean vampire movie.

They seem to have stopped doing any anime -- when I would have expected either Ponyo or Rebuild 1.x to have been on the program -- and the only animation is one claymation and a series of shorts.

All in all, my conclusion is "Son, I am disappoint."