2/09/2012

"Animated cinema made at home"

Title: Selkirk, el verdadero Robinson Crusoe (Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe)
Year: 2011
Genre: Animation, Adventure
Director: Walter Tournier
Writer: Walter Tournier
Runtime: 80min
Produc.: Maíz Producciones, Patagonik, Cineanimadores, La Suma CineTV, Tournier Animation
Budget: $1,2 million approx.

Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe tells us the story of Alexander Selkirk, who joins Captain Bullock´s crew to embark toward the South Seas in the search of treasures. Finding no enemy threats in the way, the pirates entertain themselves by betting their money and Selkirk himself ends up being the lucky winner of each bet. Thus, no sooner they sight land and descend to stock up, Selkirk is abandoned as a revenge in the solitude of the island while the others take up with the journey.
After many decades filling the movie theaters of our country, either against films such as Peter Pan (1953), The Lion King (1994), Ratatouille (2007) or Puss in Boots (2011), now hits uruguayan theaters what is coming to be our debut in the category of animated feature film, and it could not have started in a worst way.
Walter Tournier, already known for his work on Los Tatitos, has been commissioned to write and direct this project, which I was able to inform myself about, would envolve an investment of something over $1 million dollars. As a curiosity, it is worth mentioning that Selkirk was not to be developed by the more traditional techniques, the hand drawing or the latest digital animation. In the case of this film it would be subject to the called stop motion animation or animation “frame by frame”, where puppets of 20 to 30 centimeters in height, of metallic internal structure and covered in silicon would be handled by different animators, a total of 10 and divided into two shifts, to obtain (based on the rule of 24 frames per second) an average of between 15 and 20 seconds of film per day.
With Selkirk, Tournier brings to the big screen a story inspired by Alexander Selkirk, real character whose circumstances later inspired the english Daniel Defoe to write his acclaimed novel Robinson Crusoe.
To analyze this film is important to be divided into two parts: on the one hand to what concerns to the animation, and the other, to its script. Regarding the first one, I can only say that the performance of all the team bore good fruit, as this production has nothing to envy to the U.S. animations of the same style, such as The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Jim and the Giant Peach (1996) and Corpse Bride (2005). As for the second point, it is due to a very bad scripted, that we must agree as to that the uruguayan animated cinema "has started on the wrong foot."
It turns out that Tournier's script is so very bad, as to probably leading many to want to leave the movie theater after 20 minutes. As we all know, today´s animated films are mainly characterized by its sense of humor that appeals to both children and adults, and the sad truth is that there are count with the fingers the jokes that we can see here. To make matters worse, the dialogue is so flat and lacking of spark that bores at all time, besides being one hundred percent explanatory.
Another quite significant flaw is in the handling of the scenarios, since is much more the time that is devoted to the adventures of Selkirk on the galleon, than what is given later, to the island. This is precisely where it should have been the strengh of the story, as it is the problem of this shipwrecked man that interested us all, and not his social life with the other pirates.
The narrative poverty is also recognizable in terms of the score, in which there is little to actually call "soundtrack", as there are only a couple of little songs with some rhymes, but lacking any possible appeal.
Further more, there was also an element which, by the end of the movie caught my attention. I mention this because it is not a detail that will reveal anything too important on the plot. This happens when, in the end Selkirk is rescued, boards a boat and says something like: "From now on I will not be anymore Selkirk, and I shall be called Robinson Crusoe." It's amazing and unfortunate that the director had made use of a phrase so graceless and fetched, to explain how his character changed his name, as well as completely unnecessary, as the story he invited us to see is the one about Selkirk, not Robinson Crusoe. In short, Selkirk is just a silly little tale without emotion or surprises.

My rating: 2/10



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2/07/2012

"Revenge can change people"

Title: La Piel que Habito (The Skin I Live In)
Year: 2011
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Writer: Pedro Almodóvar, Agustín Almodóvar (collaborator), Thierry Jonquet (novel "Tarantula")
Runtime: 117min
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Jan Cornet, Marisa Paredes
Produc.: Canal+ España, El Deseo S.A., Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO), Televisión Española (TVE)
Budget.: $13 million approx.

In The Skin I Live In Antonio Banderas plays Robert Ledgard, an excellent surgeon, who after the rape of his daughter Norma (Blanca Suarez) decides to kidnap Vicente (Jan Cornet), boy responsible for the act, to get revenge. 
Prior to this film the truth is that I had it hard getting into the so particular universe of Pedro Almodóvar. Given some comments that had come to me from people who were not liking this artist´s movies, there was a time when I finally ended up rejecting it, for creating myself a baseless prejudice to a director whose work I had not even bothered to see as to judge. 
In the end I ended up seeing three of his latest features in a very short period of time. I saw All About My Mother (1999), Bad Education (2004) and Talk to Her (2002). The first showed me a transvestite father and a nun with AIDS, in the second I was told the story of the homosexual love between a priest and a child, and in the third one I was told of a male nurse who after raping a comatose woman left her pregnant. So this spanish director had an affinity for movies with erotic content and somewhat twisted, and a certain attraction to the rather macabre arguments, which could make you feel rejection. On my part I did find this films to be somewhat outlandish but not less interesting, since Almodóvar had shown me to have the ability and sufficient talent to make his stories compelling. 
Later, when I learned of his last and most recent foray into the cinema, then I decided to check out of curiosity what average raiting would have people given to it on the IMDB site. The truth is that, today February 7, 2012, The Skin I Live In has a 7.7/10. Not bad, really. 
Finally I watched this film, lacking any notion of its subject. The picture then began quite rare, with Robert Ledgard watching a beautiful girl, her name Vera Cruz (Elena Anaya), through a giant TV screen, while she occupied a large room from which at no time was she seen getting out. Meanwhile, Robert and Marilia (Marisa Paredes), his employee, were presented as the warders in charge of the girl within her isolation to be comfortable, of that nothing to be missing for her, but also of her not to have chances of escaping. And here everything was a mystery. Almodóvar would never hurry when it come to gradually revealing the details of the story, each in its time and in the order in which he knew, would be the most accurate. 
The plot of the movie then began to unfold from a shot with a comical approach, in which a bald young man, Zeca (Robert Álamo), and dressed in a tiger costume crossed the street to look for Marilia, his mother, with whom he had long time been without seeing. Once inside the house would see Vera thanks to a TV in the kitchen, then would immobilize his mother, gagged and bound her into a chair, and quickly proceed to find Vera. Is in this way that, thanks to Robert Álamo is that Almodóvar would shows us much of the erotic content of the film, which would not make as wait too long. 
However, it would not be until Robert agreed Vera to leave her confinement that Marilia would give herself the time to put up the girl with the dramatic events concerning the past lived by Robert, first with the death of his wife and then with the tragedy of his daughter Norma (Blanca Suarez). From here the film would turn into a constant of flashbacks and returning into the present, getting as to know in detail the circumstances that had led to the rape of the girl, her subsequent staying in a clinic and the wrath of a vengeful father, suddenly changed into a masked hijacker capable of anything. Almodóvar manages to put into images in an impeccable way what must be the pain of a father who has been violated, hurting him where it could hurt him more, a suffering even bigger than if he had had some bones broken, for Ledgard to bring out the worst in him as a man. 
Without getting to much into matters that would be better for one to know, not by some criticism, but through the film itself, I can say that Robert will leave it clear to what extent he has been developed as a surgeon and how remarkable is his knowledge of the human body. 
In The Skin I Live In we get to know the very disturbing link that unites Robert with Vicente, and then, to Robert himself, but with Vera, whom he retains in a sort of Big Brother. 

My raiting: 9/10


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"Meeting the masters of the night"

Title: Vampires
Year: 2010
Genre: Comedy
Director: Vincent Lannoo
Writer: Vincent Lannoo, Frédérique Broos
Runtime: 88min
Cast: Carlo Ferrante, Vera Van Dooren, Pierre Lognay, Fleur Lise Heuet, Julien Doré, Batiste Sornin
Produc.: Left Film Ventures

In the way of a false mockumentary Vampires takes us to Belgium, where a film crew accompanies a family of vampires in their daily lives. Here we have Georges (Carlo Ferrante), the father; Bertha (Vera Van Dooren) the mother; Samson (Pierre Lognay), the son; and Grace (Fleur Lise Heuet), the daughter. 
From the hand of director Vincent Lannoo comes to us this product that takes the daily life of the bloodsuckers for the comedy and black humor. As in many other cases, here it starts from the idea that we are supposedly watching a real documentary, which is, obviously, not true. It is also very clearly stated that it is a real privilege for us to have access to this material, since three where the times the crew tried to get into vampire territory, failing in the first two: they were attacked. 
Within the fiction of this documentary, it is understood that the film crew finally reached an agreement so that, once inside with the enemy, the predator would attempt, at least for this time, not to attack them. 
The idea of ​​a fake documentary, nowadays already very seen, is combined with the vampire genre, which in turn, at least I have no memories of it having been approached like this before. So we have something different, and facing a community of undead with very interesting customs, who like Dracula himself, they sleep in coffins, fear the sunlight and crucifixes and can not mourn, love or reproduce. They also have conflicts between neighbors, as well as laws of coexistence. 
Yet, I would say that the most striking aspect is the ease with which they behave, since they face their problems and concerns (for us, very rare; whereas for them, pretty standard) in a way that it does not seem that the documentary were false, because every situation we see happens with total authenticity. There is a very good example, when Samson being in class (and considering his appearance, a first glance the boy must be enrolled in high school) has to learn to bite the humans jugular, practicing with a doll on a table. No matter how hard he tries, Samson fails to satisfy his teacher, who angrily reproaches his inability to follow directions. Samson's incompetence plus his teacher´s anger could perfectly remember our primary school days, with those teachers who were unbearable and that made us a hard time. 
Despite such originality, Vampires falls into a structural problem. From the moment the documentary crew arrives at the unknown environment, the film results into us attending their various social spaces, but without bothering to establish for us a specific argument. So, on one hand we keep track of their lives, while on the other hand, we can never know where it is intended to lead us, as it lacks a firm basis, a specific conflict from which to develop everything that follows. Precisely, at some point one would have probably become tired of knowing these people and want some new problematic to be solved. What happens is that we tend to look in every movie for a beginning, a development and an end, that here are not very well specified. As a mockumentary, this product has good intentions, but ends up staying on that and being also too slow. 

My rating: 3/10


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