“Actually our work depends on how much we can appropriate from other people’s work! Painting, music, films, literature … it’s all grist for the mill. We think of our work not as individual creativity but like a lifelong baton relay. Your work passes through your body and your life; you transform it into something, and then you pass it on to the next generation.” Hiyao Miyazaki interviewed by Roger Ebert for The Chicago Sun Times, October 1999

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Written by Hayao Miyazaki
Produced by Toru Hara
86 minutes

Picking a film produced by Studio Ghibli is like tasting sushi when you’ve been raised on a diet of meat and potatoes animation from Walt Disney or Hanna-Barbera your whole life. The world of Hayao Miyazaki is one without heroes to cheer, villains to hiss at or talking animals to cue laughter. There are families and houses. Children learn to deal with change and to assume greater responsibility. In addition, the unseen surrounds them. As the story begins, there’s a slight feeling of unease, as well as fascination as the invisible world reveals itself. No film from Miyazaki exemplifies these sublime characteristics like the first to bring him an international audience, My Neighbor Totoro. 10-year-old Satsuki Kusakabe and her bratty 4-year-old sister Mei settle into life in the countryside, where their professor father has moved them to be closer to their mother, who recuperates from a long illness at a local hospital.

The Kusakabes are both excited and disquieted to discover their new house is inhabited by soot sprites, harmless creatures which scatter from light and whisper in the rafters. While Satsuki attends school, Mei explores the yard. There, Mei encounters two forest spirits, overstuffed rabbits which lead her into a magnificent camphor tree where the girl finds an even bigger forest spirit snoozing. Offering the name “Totoro”, the spirit vanishes before Satsuzki can meet him. She gets her chance while waiting for her father’s bus in a downpour and makes an impression on Totoro by introducing him to an umbrella. The spirits return the generosity of the Kusakabes by sprouting their garden to enormous heights. The spirits are unable to heal the girls’ mother and after losing her temper with her sister, Satsuki blames herself when Mei disappears. When search efforts by the townspeople falter, Totoro and his friends step in.

For his fourth feature film, animator Hayao Miyazaki sought a return to his childhood in Sayama Hills, which was farmland in the 1950s before it became suburban Tokyo. Miyazaki’s mother spent many years under bed rest with spinal tuberculosis, a detail that worked its way into the story. Executives at Tokuma Shoten Publishing Co. didn’t feel that sketches of Miyazaki’s nature spirits looked promising, so producer Toshio Suzuki proposed that Totoro be made in tandem with an adaptation of the novel Grave of the Fireflies and released as a double feature. A modest box office success in Japan, Miyazaki’s output began attracting comparisons to Walt Disney. Reaching an agreement with Tokuma for worldwide video distribution of Miyazaki’s films, The Walt Disney Company produced an English language dub of My Neighbor Totoro in 2005 featuring the voices of Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning and Tim Daly as the Kusakabes.

Miyazaki’s compositions have fantastic depth of field, basking light on the old farmhouses, lush forests and rice fields the characters move past. To those who grew up on Josie and the Pussycats, the novelty of My Neighbor Totoro isn’t just the animation, but its spiritual depth. Respect for the natural world and an open mind toward the unseen course through the story, not as teaching points, but as an alternative to the lifestyle the Kusakabes are retreating from. My Neighbor Totoro is a bounty of both joy and imagination, as if Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are had been adapted for an Eastern audience. The girls are stricken early on with a giddiness that doesn’t cross over very well, something Miyazaki would change with his Oscar winning Spirited Away in 2001, but the pure enjoyment of the film is how different it is. Instead of catering to what the we expect, this magic carpet takes us somewhere different.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 75,711 users: 94% for My Neighbor Totoro

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“I think a lot of it has gone into comic books, and to me, in comic books, it’s all about the men — and because they were written in the ’50s and ’60s especially. It just wasn’t where it was at for those writers and there’s only so many band-aids you can put on that to make it relevant for today’s society. There are gorgeous, occasionally kick-ass characters like Scarlett Johansson in Iron Man 2, but in general I don’t think those guys were thinking about women in those ways. I think as long as Hollywood is doing that, there won’t be these amazing action-women characters.” Sigourney Weaver interviewed by Eric Larknik for moviefone, July 2011

Aliens (1986)
Directed by James Cameron
Screenplay by James Cameron, story by James Cameron and Walter Hill & David Giler, based on characters created by Dan O’Bannon & Ronald Shusett
Produced by Gale Ann Hurd
137 minutes (theatrical version)/ 154 minutes (special edition)

Sequels start out as business deals and often build a case of buyer’s remorse among audiences as soon as they drive off the lot, but James Cameron wasn’t interested in business as usual when he signed on for part two of Ridley Scott’s 1979 outer space spookfest Alien. With ideas bountiful enough for three good movies, Cameron races away with a film that laps other sci-fi, horror and war movies for a far greater prize: the mantle of epic filmmaking. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), lone survivor of the freighter Nostromo, is discovered drifting through space by a salvage crew. Revived after spending 57 years in hypersleep, the home office remains skeptical that Ripley scuttled the Nostromo because a hostile alien (with acid for blood) got on board and killed her crew. The moon where Ripley first encountered the creature is now the site of a terraformed colony which hasn’t reported any trouble. Not yet.

Plagued by nightmares of her ordeal in space, Ripley is notified by smarmy case officer Burke (Paul Reiser) that contact with the colony has been lost. Burke promises to reinstate Ripley’s flight license if she accompanies him and a unit of colonial marines to investigate. These include the green Lt. Gorman (William Hope), quiet Cpl. Hicks (Michael Biehn), cocky Pvt. Hudson (Bill Paxton), two macho gunners (Jenette Goldstein, Mark Rolston) and an “artificial person” called Bishop (Lance Henriksen). The marines find one colonist, a girl named Newt (Carrie Henn) crawling in the ventilation ducts with no sign of the others. Advancing on an atmosphere processing station, the marines with their pulse rifles and motion trackers are overwhelmed by a swarm of ferocious creatures seeking human hosts. Ripley saves what’s left of the unit, which is now marooned with her and Newt in hostile terrain 17 days short of any rescue.

James Cameron was scrambling to finance a low budget sci-fi thriller he’d written titled Terminator when he met with Walter Hill & David Giler. Cameron pitched a few ideas, none of which went over well, until the producers mentioned they were thinking about a sequel to Alien. The up and comer submitted a 40-page treatment for Alien II, which Hill & Giler developed with Cameron, who was retained to write a screenplay. He turned in only 90 pages before departing to direct Terminator, but based on what they’d read, the producers made the unusual call not to hire another writer. Armed with the prestige of The Terminator, Cameron was handed directing duties for the sequel, with his 29-year-old partner Gale Ann Hurd producing a studio film for triple their last budget. Cameron coaxed Sigourney Weaver back, survived a skeptical British crew at Pinewood Studios and again exceeded expectations in the realm of modestly budgeted sci-fi.

Cameron wrote Aliens in tandem with First Blood Part II and without Sylvester Stallone’s input, Aliens persists as an allegory to the colonial wars of past, where superior technology is overrun by an indigenous enemy. As fantastic as the tech is — the next generation power loaders from Caterpillar are beautifully designed and rendered — Aliens is Zulu in deep space. Instead of making a copy, Cameron actually gives each element from the original film sharper and deeper imaging, from the alien biology, to the culture of a maritime shipping corporation, to space travel. What makes this business so engaging are characters drawn with distinctive humor and guts who live and die memorably based on those established traits. Instead of a plot pushing her from point A to point B, Ripley’s fear of the aliens and her desire for motherhood is what drives the expansive narrative, a trick that may be the most enduring Cameron was able to pull off.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 374,363 users: 90% for Aliens

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“The studio wanted Raiders of the Lost Ark, clearly that’s what they wanted. They wanted a movie like that. ‘Can’t you just do that?’ They didn’t ever actually say that to me, but I know that’s what they wanted. ‘Xerox it.’ But I had other ideas and I thought it would have been interesting at least from my point of view, maybe nobody else’s, but to make the white lead … You know in the Tarzan films, Tarzan is white and he always saves the natives. ‘Oh, thank you, Tarzan.’ It’s just ridiculous. I was like, ‘What about if your white lead is a complete fool?’” John Carpenter interviewed by Eric Vespe, aka Quint, for Ain’t It Cool News, June 2011

Big Trouble In Little China (1986)
Directed by John Carpenter
Adaptation by W.D. Richter, written by Gary Goldman & David Z. Weinstein
Produced by Larry Franco
99 minutes

A gumbo of wildly divergent film genres handpicked from around the globe (head cook John Carpenter described his dish as “an action adventure comedy kung fu ghost story monster movie”), Big Trouble In Little China hasn’t lost its manic flavoring over the years. A generation of martial arts fantasies may not owe their existence to this production per se, but in a testament to its timeless élan, Big Trouble could be re-released and with the exception of Kurt Russell’s mullet, feel brand new. Blowhard trucker Jack Burton (Russell) rolls his rig into San Francisco on a dark and stormy night. Jack cleans the floor with Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) over a game of fan-tan and refusing to let his friend out of sight until he pays up, gives Wang a ride to the airport, where his green-eyed fiancee Miao Yin (Suzee Pai) is arriving from China.

When Miao Yin is abducted by a gang called the Lords of Death, Jack and Wang pursue the punks back to Chinatown, where they step into a brawl between the Chang Sing and their enemies, the Wing Kong. Exploding into the turf war are three supernatural warriors, Thunder (Carter Wong), Rain (Peter Kwong) and Lightning (James Pax), and their master, a 2,000 year old phantom named Lo Pan (James Wong). Jack and Wang escape and are clued by pesky attorney Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall) that Miao Yin is being held by the Lords of Death in a brothel. Before they can spring her, the three storms whisk Miao Yin into an underground city, where Lo Pan must wed a girl with green eyes to lift his curse of the undead. Out of his element as he encounters booby traps, beasts and ancient sorcery, Jack unleashes as much destruction as heroics aiding Wang and the Chang Sing in the rescue of Miao Yin.

Big Trouble In Little China was the title of a spec script by Gary Goldman & David Z. Weinstein. Set in the Old West, its concoction of cowboys and sorcerers sold producer Paul Monash, until he opted to move the story into the present. When the scribes refused, W.D. Richter was put on the payroll. The script doctor kept the legend of Lo Pan and dumped almost everything else. A USC classmate of Richter’s named John Carpenter had been developing an adaptation of Erich van Lustbader’s bestseller The Ninja and when the project fell through, accepted an offer from 20th Century Fox to direct Big Trouble. The film went into production at the same time as Eddie Murphy’s new comedy The Golden Child, which also mixed wise cracking and Chinese mysticism. To compete, Carpenter felt he needed a star like Clint Eastwood, but Fox approved Carpenter’s regular leading man Kurt Russell for the role of Jack Burton.

Aside from dismal box office returns, the distinction Big Trouble In Little China holds over The Golden Child is the mythology; even the hero’s truck has a backstory. Among the many elements in its composition, the rarest is the rapid fire repartee that brings to mind Bringing Up Baby and qualifies Big Trouble as the first of its kind: a screwball martial arts comedy. While its fight choreography has been eclipsed by the way action movies are prepared today, Kurt Russell’s redneck bluster and his commitment to playing the fool from start to finish are a laugh riot. Instead of settling for spectacle, the script goes the extra mile, building a universe before mercilessly dismantling it. In a credit to casting director Joanna Merlin and stunt coordinator Kenny Endoso, every actor from Kim Cattrall down to the stuntmen seem in sync with the film’s whimsical goofiness.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 120,473 users: 78% for Big Trouble In Little China

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“Portmanteau” is French for “coat rack”. Lewis Carroll appropriated the word in 1871 for Through The Looking Glass to explain two words merged into one; “chortle” is a portmanteau Carroll invented, while “Internet”, “blog” and “sexploitation” are three he did not. In the month of January, I’ll take a look at portmanteau films, where we find different coats hanging in the same closet, whether tailored by one filmmaker or the collaborative effort of several.

Fantasia (1940)
Directed by Samuel Armstrong (segments: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, The Nutcracker Suite), James Algar (segment: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice), Bill Roberts & Paul Satterfield (segment: The Rite of Spring), David D. Hand (segment: Meet the Soundtrack), Hamilton Luske, Jim Handley & Ford Beebe (segment: The Pastoral Symphony), T. Hee & Norm Ferguson (segment: Dance of the Hours), Wilfred Jackson (segment: Night on Bald Mountain/ Ave Maria)
Written by Lee Blair, Elmer Plummer, Phil Dike (segment: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor), Sylvia Moberly-Holland, Norman Wright, Albert Heath, Bianca Majolie, Graham Heid (segment: The Nutcracker Suite), Perce Pearce, Carl Fallberg (segment: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice), William Martin, Leo Thiele, Robert Sterner, John Fraser McLeish (segment: The Rite of Spring), Otto Englander, Webb Smith, Erdman Penner, Joseph Sabo, Bill Peet, Vernon Stallings (segment: The Pastoral Symphony), Campbell Grant, Arthur Heinemann, Phil Dike (segment: Night on Bald Mountain/ Ave Maria)
Produced by Walt Disney, Ben Sharpsteen
125 minutes (roadshow version)/ 88 minutes (general release version)/ 124 minutes (DVD version)

Like piano lessons or spinach, Fantasia wavers between arduous and unpalatable, at least for those kiddies notified that the program will be good for them. Revisiting the film as an adult is a revelation. In late 1937, flush from the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney hit on the idea of an animated short that would interpret a piece of classical music through the medium Disney’s studio was pioneering: motion picture animation. Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was selected, but the project grew from a short to a feature length portmanteau film, which Disney insisted be recorded stereophonically to mimic the acoustics of a concert hall. His engineers developed a stereo sound system dubbed “Fantasound”, but most exhibitors refused to pony up for its installation. Upon its U.S. release in November 1940, Fantasia was screened in only 14 theaters before being drastically recut for a general release.

Produced for roughly $2.2 million, Fantasia returned only $361,800 in its initial theatrical run, with World War II cutting off most of the international market. Despite winning two special Academy Awards, the picture was regarded as a failure by Disney himself. In 1969, the studio urged exhibitors to market the reissue the same way they would Easy Rider, “a special kind of trip”. Baby Boomers embraced it and today, the film is regarded as one of Disney’s milestone achievements. In essence, Fantasia is one of the boldest experiments (re: head-trips) Hollywood has ever produced. Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite is the most dazzling segment, in both the playful mystery of the music and its singular visual interpretation, with sprites putting on a fireworks display for the unseen world. The more open the imagination — or the more inebriated the cerebellum — the more stimulating the film proves to be.

Joining the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra in front of an immense canvas draped in blue light, emcee Deems Taylor introduces the first of eight classical music compositions conducted by Leopold Stokowski and interpreted by the artists of Walt Disney Studios. Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue In D Minor is a thundering trip through rays of light, cloud forms and geometric shapes. Nature is explored through Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite, with sugarplum faeries animating inanimate objects of the natural world. Paul Duka’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice tells the familiar story of magic and mischief with a mute Mickey Mouse as the star. Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is set to the biggest story in the universe, the evolution of life on earth, from its creation in the seas to its near extinction in the age of dinosaurs.

Returning after a brief intermission, our emcee employs the unsung hero of the Fantasia program — The Soundtrack — to appear and introduce several of the instruments of a symphony orchestra. Next up is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, The Pastoral Symphony, with unicorns, fawns, centaurs and the creatures of Greek myth enjoying a bacchanal, which is threatened by the appearance of Zeus and a lightning storm brought down by Vulcan. Andre Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours from the opera La Gioconda finds a ballet dancing hippo wooed by a hungry crocodile. The final segment combines two contrasting pieces; Modeste Moussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain opens with Satan conducting the armies of darkness in a booming nocturnal festival, which is defeated by dawn and the bells of Franz Schubert’s reverent Ave Maria.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 104,499 users: 77% for Fantasia

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

“Portmanteau” is French for “coat rack”. Lewis Carroll appropriated the word in 1871 for Through The Looking Glass to explain two words merged into one; “chortle” is a portmanteau Carroll invented, while “Internet”, “blog” and “sexploitation” are three he did not. In the month of January, I’ll take a look at portmanteau films, where we find different coats hanging in the same closet, whether tailored by one filmmaker or the collaborative effort of several.

Cat’s Eye (1985)
Directed by Lewis Teague
Screenplay by Stephen King, based on the short stories Quitters, Inc. and The Ledge by Stephen King
Produced by Martha Schumacher
94 minutes

Less inspired than the portmanteau horror comic Creepshow (1982) but way more fun than it needed to be, Cat’s Eye is for Stephen King fans what a trick ‘r treat grab bag is for the kiddies; no good for you, yet delectable. After working with Drew Barrymore on a big screen version of King’s novel Firestarter, Dino De Laurentiis felt that the 8-year-old was going to be a star. The producer flew to Bangor to propose that King work Barrymore into pieces that De Laurentiis held film rights to, short stories appearing in the author’s 1978 terror anthology Night Shift. King adapted two of those stories — Quitters, Inc. and The Ledge — and added an original one about a little girl and a troll. The segments would be connected by the misadventures of a cat. To direct, De Laurentiis tapped Lewis Teague, who’d shot Fighting Back (1982) for the producer and knocked out an adaptation of King’s Cujo (1983).

Cat’s Eye was filmed in Wilmington, where the economics of shooting a movie in a right-to-work state like North Carolina had enticed De Laurentiis to make Firestarter there in 1983 and convinced him to build a production facility in the town. By the time it hit U.S. screens in April 1985, nine feature films had been distributed under the Stephen King brand name and in a change of pace, Quitters, Inc. and The Ledge dispense with ghosts and goblins to showcase King’s gift for pure suspense, as well as a gleeful black wit that so few of the movies based on his work have bothered with. Whether rushed for time, or realizing that the customer needed to be served, King wheels in the freak for the third segment and the result is one of the goofiest things he’s written. Deflating an hour in, Cat’s Eye is still one of King’s more satisfying forays in Hollywood: artfully written, capably cast and most of all, a good time.

After evading a rabid St. Bernard and a cherry red 1958 Plymouth Fury, a stray cat seeks refuge in a moving van and ends up in New York City, where a man picks it up off the street. In the first of three segments, nicotine addict Dick Morrison (James Woods) visits Quitters, Inc. to help him kick the habit. Not long after meeting company president Mr. Donatti (Alan King), Dick realizes Quitters, Inc. is a mafia operated tax dodge that has adopted a few of its time honored, brass knuckled tactics to help clients quit smoking. Watched day and night, or led to believe he is, Dick’s inevitable relapse has interesting consequences for his wife (Mary D’Arcy). The cat next hops a ferry to Atlantic City, where it becomes the object of a bet between casino boss Mr. Cressner (Kenneth McMillan) and one of his men when the feline is caught in the middle of a street.

Fallen tennis pro Johnny Norris (Robert Hays) attempts to flee town with the boss’s wife (Patricia Kalember), but is intercepted by Cressner’s goon (Mike Starr) and dragged to a penthouse. Norris is given a choice: prison time for heroin that’s been planted in his white Mustang … or a wager. Cressner bets cash and his wife against the athlete’s ability to walk the outside of the building using little more than a five-inch ledge. Left with no choice, Norris is game. Once the cat escapes Cressner’s clutches, it arrives in Wilmington, where a girl (Drew Barrymore) adopts it in spite of resistance by her mother (Candy Clark), who doesn’t trust the animal. The bigger problem for our girl is the troll that lives in her wall. Emerging after dark to pinch the girl’s nose shut and steal her breath, her only hope is an intervention by the cat, which she’s named General.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 6,007 users: 51% for Cat’s Eye

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

“Portmanteau” is French for “coat rack”. Lewis Carroll appropriated the word in 1871 for Through The Looking Glass to explain two words merged into one; “chortle” is a portmanteau Carroll invented, while “Internet”, “blog” and “sexploitation” are three he did not. In the month of January, I’ll take a look at portmanteau films, where we find different coats hanging in the same closet, whether tailored by one filmmaker or the collaborative effort of several.

Trilogy of Terror (1975)
Directed by Dan Curtis
Teleplay by William F. Nolan (segments: Julie, Millicent and Therese) and Richard Matheson (segment: Amelia), based on the short stories The Likeness of Julia, Needle in the Heart and Prey by Richard Matheson
Produced by Dan Curtis
81 minutes

Like the Zuni fetish doll that appears in one of its segments and sent American kids diving behind furniture during prime time, Trilogy of Terror is a relic best left in a box. Producer/ director Dan Curtis and screenwriter Richard Matheson scored the highest Nielsen rating of all time with a made-for-TV movie titled The Night Stalker for ABC in 1972. Matheson notified Curtis that he had three stories he was willing to package for the boob tube. Matheson’s 1962 short story The Likeness of Julia had appeared in the author’s anthology Alone By Night; Needle in the Heart was published in the October 1969 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; Prey in the April 1969 issue of Playboy. At Matheson’s request, his friend William F. Nolan was hired to adapt the first two stories. Knowing he had an ace in his sleeve, Matheson held onto the third story to adapt himself.

Despite lobbying by her manager, Oscar nominated actress Karen Black had no interest in doing what was going by the title Trilogy in Terror. Black gave in on the condition that her then husband, an aspiring actor named Robert Burton, was thrown a part. Premiering March 4, 1975 as an ABC Movie of the Week, Trilogy of Terror was another ratings smash for Matheson, who’d written the teleplay for Duel (1971), the feature length debut from a promising director named Steven Spielberg. Trilogy of Terror is not engineered with much precision, a pedestrian effort by one of the more prolific genre writers of the 20^th century and reminder of a time when TV was mostly junk. Segments 1 and 2 are as thin and disposable as Kleenex, while the beloved Segment 3 is some impressive snot, at least. The kooky Karen Black is no better than the material, sadly, all leftovers.

Mild-mannered literature professor Julie Eldridge (Karen Black) finds herself pursued by Chad Foster (Robert Burton), a photography enthusiast who suddenly develops the hots for teacher. Following the advice of her roommate Anne (Kathryn Reynolds), Julie agrees to a date with Chad at the local drive-in, unaware he’s been prowling around her home. A drugged beverage and a set of amateur photos put the professor in a compromising position with her pupil, until one of them realizes they’re way over their head. In the second story, a spinster named Millicent Larimore (Karen Black) laments the wild ways of her twin sister Therese (Karen Black), who she blames for her father’s death.Millicent succeeds in warning away of one Therese’s suitors, but the evil one retaliates by ripping up the doll of a neighbohood girl.

Millicent’s therapist Dr. Chester Ramsey (George Gaynes) pays his patient a house call, fighting off the advances of her blonde twin. At the end of her rope, Millicent elects to use Therese’s own black magic against her. In the third and final story, Amelia (Karen Black) returns to her apartment with a present she picked up at a curio shop: a Zuni fetish doll. According to the instructions, spirit and doll will become one if the gold chain around its waist is removed. Distraught after a phone conversation with her mother, Amelia is tormented by noises in her apartment. Finding the doll has disappeared, her calf is slashed with a carving knife wielded by the malevolent doll, possessed in a bloodthirsty rage. Amelia barricades herself in her bedroom, until the little Zuni bastard demonstrates a troubling ability to open doors.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1,293 users: 57% for Trilogy of Terror

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

Logging in to Netflix Instant for a movie to watch is like being hungry and shown to a food replicator. It doesn’t solve my problem — it introduces one thousand new ones. Luckily, I can see which genres are rated higher in nutritional content, in this case, 4 or 4 ½ star ratings out of 5 stars. “Documentary” had a lot of those. So did “Anime & Animation”. In the month of November, I take another trip around the globe to sample recent animated feature films. Next stop: Manhattan, New York, USA.

Sita Sings the Blues (2009)
Directed by Nina Paley
Written by Nina Paley
Produced by Nina Paley
82 minutes

Like a strange brew coated with aromatic honey, Sita Sings the Blues goes down easy for anyone wary of the letters “DIY” stamped on a movie. Cartoonist and filmmaker Nina Paley was introduced to the Hindu epic The Ramayana in comic book format while living in Trivandum with her then-husband. After their long distance breakup, Paley found solace in the records of jazz singer Annette Hanshaw, whose blues Paley felt echoed the myth of Rama’s long suffering wife, Sita. Over the course of five years, Paley animated and produced Sita Sings the Blues on a Mac in her Manhattan apartment, working primarily in Flash and editing in Final Cut Pro. Lending their expertise were sound designer Greg Sextro, three friends from India who ad-libbed narration and the French band Masala Dosa, who found Paley on the Internet and contributed a song. Her production budget was practically zero.

While Annette Hanshaw’s recordings were public domain, Paley discovered that the publishing rights to the songs she needed would cost her $220,000. She managed to get legal clearances for $70,000 by making sure Sita Sings the Blues wouldn’t reap millions at the box office, giving her movie away for free under a Creative Commons license known as a “copyleft”. Screened at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2008, Sita Sings the Blues played to wide acclaim at every other film festival on the planet before being issued on DVD in July 2009. While the mission statement and means in which Paley produced her film are more fascinating than anything that really ended up on screen, Sita Sings the Blues is lifted by its abundant wit, enterprising mixture of ancient myth with jazz and its equation of modern day struggles with the centuries old mysteries scribbled down in The Ramayana.

In San Francisco, Nina (Nina Paley) and Dave (Sanjiv Jhaveri) have their relationship thrown into upheaval when Dave receives a job offer taking him to India. Three shadow puppets (Aseem Chhabra, Bhavana Nagulapally, Manish Acharya) begin a story from the Hindu holy book The Ramayana, in which Rama (Debargo Sanyal), the virtuous Prince of Ayodhya, is sent into exile on the eve of his coronation. Rama pledges to rid the forests of the raksha demons terrorizing their holy men. In spite of the dangers, his loving wife Sita (Reena Shah), who cannot live without her husband, accompanies Rama on his crusade. Sita expresses her devotion and self-sacrifice through the 1920s jazz recordings of Annette Hanshaw. Back in San Francisco, Dave departs on his journey to India, leaving Nina unsure when she will see him again.

Ravana, king of the island Lanka, seeks revenge against Rama by ordering his minion Maricha to transform into a golden deer, distracting Rama on a hunt long enough for the treacherous monarch to abduct Sita. Refusing to force himself on his captive, Ravana lets Sita decide whether she wants to become his. She remains loyal to her husband, but once rescued, Rama questions his wife’s purity. These doubts spread throughout the kingdom and Rama decides to send Sita into exile, even though she is pregnant with his twin sons. Once in India, Dave develops similar doubts about Nina. He remains distant when she arrives for a visit and when Nina travels to New York for a job, Dave breaks up with her via email. Nina finds solace in Sita, whose long and lonely exile ends when she offers to prove her purity to Rama.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 574 users: 87% for Sita Sings the Blues

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 94 for Sita Sings the Blues

What do you say?

Logging in to Netflix Instant for a movie to watch is like being hungry and shown to a food replicator. It doesn’t solve my problem — it introduces one thousand new ones. Luckily, I can see which genres are rated higher in nutritional content, in this case, 4 or 4 ½ star ratings out of 5 stars. “Documentary” had a lot of those. So did “Anime & Animation”. In the month of November, I take another trip around the globe to sample recent animated feature films. Next stop: Brussels, Belgium.

A Town Called Panic (2009)
Directed by Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar
Screenplay by Stéphane Aubier & Vincent Patar, story by Stéphane Aubier, Guillaume Malandrin, Vincent Patar & Vincent Tavier
Produced by Philippe Kauffmann, Vincent Tavier
77 minutes

If Pee-wee and his pals in the playhouse were still on Saturday morning television, A Town Called Panic would be exactly the type of entertainment they’d get a kick out of. Belgian animators Stéphane Aubier & Vincent Patar became friends while attending visual arts school La Cambre during the 1980s. For his thesis project, Aubier crafted a manic stop-motion short out of generic toy figurines — cowboys, Indians, farm animals — and papier-mâché sets. Their professors were unimpressed, but in 2000, Aubier & Patar returned to the concept, writing, directing and supplying voices for several 5-minute shorts co-written and produced by Vincent Tavier. Dubbed from French to English and distributed on Nickelodeon U.K. by Aardman Studios, A Town Called Panic was such a hit that Aubier & Patar were hooked into making a feature length film.

Aubier & Patar settled on remaking an episode titled “The Card Thief”, which juxtaposed hijinks in town with the world of Atlantis that existed underneath. Their tiny team in Brussels spent 260 shooting days putting 1,500 plastic figurines through their paces. The result is a comic jewel, rapid fire in its wit, textured in its characters and as crazy as a peach orchard boar. A Town Called Panic is probably too good to be called a cartoon. Its herky jerky stop-motion animation is charming, but it’s Aubier & Patar’s willingness to lob balls into left field — rather than cater purely to kids — that makes their work so special. Amid the madness, characters that are little more than plastic figurines with excitable voices resonate with more emotion than human beings in contemporary live action movies seem to be able to. Viewers seeking laughs and little more are likely to have a field day here.

A day in the town of Kir begins like any other. A bicycle postman delivers a package to temperamental farmer Steven (Benoît Poelvoorde), as well as a parcel to the Gendarme (Frédéric Jannin) who maintains law and order. Coboy (Stéphane Aubier) and Indien (Bruce Ellison) are rousted from sleep when Postman visits them next. Over breakfast, their roommate Horse (Vincent Patar) mentions that today is his birthday. Desperate to find a gift on such short notice, Indien hits on the idea of building Horse a barbecue. To distract him, Steven sends Horse on an errand to pick his children up at school. There, the chemistry between Horse and equine music teacher Madame Longrée (Jeanne Balibar) is palpable. Ordering the bricks to build Horse a barbecue, Coboy enters 50,000,000 units on the computer instead of 50. Upon delivery, panic grips Coboy and Indien.

Other than Steven getting angered when his wife Janine (Véronique Dumont) dances with Postman, Horse’s birthday party goes off without a hitch. After dark, Horse is awakened when the 50,000,000 bricks Coboy and Indien stashed on the roof crush their house to smithereens. Once he throttles his roommates, Horse begins rebuilding the walls of their house. Once night falls, thieves make off with their walls. Adding two plus two and getting five, Gendarme throws Steven in prison for the crime. To prove their neighbor’s innocence, Horse, Coboy and Indien stake out the scene of the crime the following evening and catch three sea monsters robbing them. Pursuing the mischievous creatures to the ends of the earth, Horse places himself in serious jeopardy of being tardy to the piano lessons Madame Longrée has invited him to.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1,811 users: 86% for A Town Called Panic

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 70 for A Town Called Panic

What do you say?

Logging in to Netflix Instant for a movie to watch is like being hungry and shown to a food replicator. It doesn’t solve my problem — it introduces one thousand new ones. Luckily, I can see which genres are rated higher in nutritional content, in this case, 4 or 4 ½ star ratings out of 5 stars. “Documentary” had a lot of those. So did “Anime & Animation”. In the month of November, I take another trip around the globe to sample recent animated feature films. Next stop: Kilkenny, Ireland.

The Secret of Kells (2009)
Directed by Tomm Moore, Nora Twomey
Screenplay by Fabrice Ziolkowski, story by Tomm Moore
Produced by Didier Brunner, Viviane Vanfleteren, Paul Young
78 minutes

Sprouting from low budget animation and growing to beanstalk heights is The Secret of Kells. Director Tomm Moore, art director Ross Stewart and character designer Barry Reynolds began scribbling the film in 1999, while Moore attended Ballyfermot College in Dublin. Their concept was a feature that would draw from Celtic design they were seeing popularized in everything from advertising to tattoos. Upon researching the Book of Kells — an illustrated 8^th century manuscript of the Four Gospels — Moore and his friend Paul Young founded a company: Cartoon Saloon. After six years, they landed financing through Didier Brunner and Viviane Vanfleteren, producers of The Triplets of Belleville. With a budget of roughly €6 million ($8 million USD), production began in 2005 under head of animation Nora Twomey and spread to 200 animators across France, Belgium, Brazil and Hungary.

Ignored in Western Europe upon its release in February 2009, The Secret of Kells became the first animated film to win the top audience prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival in July. With a storyline involving a young illustrator who struggles to complete a timeless work of art, word of mouth spread among animators, particularly in Hollywood. The result was a surprise Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature alongside Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Princess and the Frog and Up. The Secret of Kells picks from the cart that is Disney animation of the 1990s — cute animals and comedy — but the film boldly transcends formula by ignoring pop culture and dipping into the wells of mythology and imagination. Fanciful, refreshing and powerful, it conjures the feeling, if not the expanse, of The Hobbit. Bruno Coulais composed a musical score that makes vivid use of traditional Irish instrumentation.

Deep in the forests of Ireland during The Middle Ages, walls sturdy enough to repel an invasion by marauding Northmen are rushed to completion around the abbey of Kells. The young Brendan (Evan McGuire) is nephew of the taciturn Abbot Cellach (Brendan Gleeson), but far from being obsessed with defenses, the boy spends his time in the scriptorium with illuminators devoted to printing manuscripts. Seeking refuge at Kells is the illuminator Aidan of Iona (Mick Lally) who along with his white cat Panguar Ban fled his island abbey when Northmen destroyed it. Captivated by tales of the Book of Iona — whose magnificence is said to transform despair into hope among all those who gaze upon it — Brendan agrees to help Aidan by gathering oak berries that can produce the emerald green ink he needs to complete the book.

Venturing into the forest for the first time, Brendan is surrounded by ferocious wolves. Coming to his rescue is a white haired girl named Aisling (Christen Mooney), a mischievous spirit who takes a liking to Brendan. Wandering into a section of the forest he where he is not allowed, Brendan encounters Crom Cruach, a dark, sleeping spirit responsible for all the death and destruction Aisling has witnessed through the ages. Reprimanded by his uncle for leaving the abbey without permission, Brendan is further dejected when Aidan informs him that he will be unable to complete the book without a crystal that makes intricate drawings possible. According to legend, Crom guards these crystals in its cave. As Northmen advance on the abbey, Brendan returns to the forest to obtain the prize that will help bring his country out of darkness.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 3,430 users: 81% for The Secret of Kells

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 81 for The Secret of Kells

What do you say?

As days get shorter, nights get longer and All Hallow’s Eve beckons, I can say that I won’t be wandering the streets dressed as Chewbacca begging for candy. What I can’t say is whether or not at my age, horror movies still have any surprises left in them. In the search for originality, it’d be a good idea to start anywhere but Hollywood. For the month of October, I take a trip around the globe to see what’s scaring some of my favorite countries these days.

Left Bank (2008)
Directed by Pieter Van Hees
Written by Pieter Van Hees & Dimitri Karakatsanis
Produced by Bert Hamelinck, Kato Maes, Frank Van Passel
102 minutes

Cut with the same psychological straight razor that splices the great films of Roman Polanski, Left Bank unsettles like only the most powerful thrillers can. After directing several short films in Belgium, Pieter Van Hees was looking to break into features with a project called Dirty Mind, a thriller that had morphed into a social satire. Waiting for financing to fall into place, Van Hees started work on a story “that creeps up in the head of a confused young woman struggling with her relationship.” Having lived briefly on the left bank of Antwerp, Van Hees huddled with writing partner Dimitri Karakatsanis and wrote a script. Brussels-based Caviar Films — producers of commercials, music videos and feature films — had worked previously with Van Hees and raising a budget of €700,000, were prepared to put Left Bank into production ahead of Dirty Mind.

Left Bank is one of those movies that leaves a mark, not with excessive gore or sadism, but overwhelming atmosphere and characters suffering afflictions of modern living that seem almost too real. Its potent blend of sex and mystery gives the film far more weight than what usually plays in American theaters. Left Bank picks up where Rosemary’s Baby and Blue Velvet left off, with an exceptional cast, highly effective sound montage and a disquieting musical score composed by electronic group Eavesdropper and featuring cellist Simon Lenski. While Van Hees and director of photography Nicolas Karakatsanis took visual cues from movies as disparate as The Shining, The Thin Red Line and The Yards, the film swims the same currents as The Ring or Dark Water, driven not by a boogeyman but a spiritual dread that creeps in from every direction.

22-year-old Belgian sprinter Marie (Eline Kuppens) is in training for the European Championships when she meets a car salesman and recreational archer named Bobby (Matthias Schoenaerts). Going out on a date, they return to his apartment on the left bank of the Scheldt River in Antwerp and make impassioned love on the floor. Tearing the cartilage in her knee during a run, Marie moves in with Bobby for some peace and quiet while she recuperates. Her new neighbor Veerle (Sara De Bosschere) notifies Marie that the apartment’s previous tenant Hella Govaerts (Ruth Becquart) mysteriously disappeared. When an envelope arrives for the missing woman with information about the black mud the building was built on, Marie telephones Hella’s boyfriend Dirk (Tom De Wispelaere), who instructs Marie to throw the package away.

During a visit from Marie’s mother (Sien Eggers), Dirk arrives to share research his girlfriend was working on before she disappeared. During The Middle Ages, the left bank was reserved for outcasts: witches, criminal gangs, plague sufferers. The locals believed they lived near a black hole that descended into the underworld. Marie’s mother agrees that she has always felt a negative energy here and urges her daughter to come home. Conducting her own research, Marie discovers a link between a pit in the left bank with the pagan festival of Samhain on All Saint’s Day. As her health deteriorates and her athletic career is jeopardized, Marie confides to Bobby that she wishes she could just start over again. Her mother becomes convinced that an underground stream runs beneath the basement.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 254 users: 46% for Left Bank

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

Kimberly Lindbergs raves about Left Bank on her superlative B-movie blog Cinebeats.