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.

by far the best movie of the international film festival that i've seen.

plot: a violent neo-nazi ex-con gets sent to a church for some rehabilitation time after serving time in jail. the church priest is demented and has a brain tumor which he should be dead from. also at the church are 2 other ex-cons: one who kidnapped and raped women and one who steals regularly from the statoil gas stations. the story follows adam, the neo-nazi, as he attempts to fulfill his rehabilitation project--baking an apple pie from the apples in the tree by the church. this is made difficult by 1) his generally violent behavior, 2) some old testament plagues, and 3) his ex-employers coming around and shooting people.

likes: the humor, the innovative story, the backstories, and the character development. really those last two go along with the second one.

dislikes: the cat gets shot. really, really violent movie. much more so than i was ever expecting.

conclusion: maybe i need to see more european films at this festival and less asian films.