Valerie and her Week of Wonders

Nearly a year ago, my friend Pam wrote about a 1970 Czech film called Valerie and her Week of Wonders. I had forgotten all about it until I was going through my shared items in Google Reader, and her post about it showed up.


I watched it last night, and Pam's description pretty much sums it up:

It is a bizarre coming-of-age reverie, consisting of a young girl who lives with her mysterious grandmother, lusty old vampires, magical earrings, burgeoning sexuality, ripe romance, hundreds of dripping candles, lacey dresses, oppressive religious figures, sick chickens, sun-dappled fields, dusty piles of books, and the list goes on.

The plot is a bit confusing (maybe in part due to the translation?), though I got the general idea. And it doesn't even really matter in this case, since I realized not too long ago that my favorite movies are the type I could easily watch on mute and still enjoy.



And boy, was this one beautiful. The lighting, costuming, and even the creepy characters were nice to look at (I like that a lot better than the current Hollywood torture gore trend that just won't go away). It's not a shiny movie, either: if you check out a larger version of a still, you'll see that it's pretty grainy and faded, which just adds to the entire movie's mood (whether intentional or not).



Check it out if you're into that kind of thing (Netflix has it); you can also watch the whole thing (in parts) on YouTube if you want to just poke around.

body as art

A couple of weeks ago, I found a clip of my absolute favorite part of Big Bang Love, Juvenile A. This happened within the first 20 minutes of the movie.


Does anybody know what this is? It made me think of capoeira, which is a Brazilian, dance-based martial art. I don't think this is capoeira, though. Something traditionally Japanese, I would imagine. Whatever it is, it's beautiful. Imagine the colors about 40% more saturated (think vermillion) and on a huge screen. It was stunning.

EDIT | Here is a capoeira montage. It's definitely not the same thing, but slightly similar.

Dasepo Naughty Girls

The Korean musical Dasepo Naughty Girls is playing one more time during the NY Asian Film Festival - this Friday [29 June] at 6.50pm. I highly recommend this movie. During the Q&A with director E. J-yong last weekend, I found out that the film was voted one of the worst movies of the year in Korea. How sad! I adored it, and so did everybody else there. When asked about the radical difference between Dasepo Naughty Girls and his previous masterpiece, Untold Scandal, E. J-yong expressed that Dasepo is much more his style. He also told us that we should expect another musical from him soon, similar in campiness level to Grease.

More about the movie. First, watch the trailer:



The movie is exactly how you would expect it to be, based on that. This is what I told one friend...

It was a musical about kinky but very cute schoolchildren. There was a hermaphrodite, a cyclops, a poverty-stricken nerd who became a star overnight via an underground sex den and crossdressing publicist /agent... there was also a sub-plot about a medusa-like monster who tried to become a dragon via doing good deeds (this was a very weird part) in the form of re-virginizing the schoolgirls. I loved it. The colors were wonderful. The girls were cute. The GUYS were cute. It was just... it was great.

The synopsis on the NYAFF site is much more articulate and intelligible than my silly little description here, but you will probably get the gist of it either way. Go see this movie! You'll leave smiling.



[This post is dedicated to Charles Frith. Happy Birthday!]