Day 4: I Come From The Land Down Under

Uneventful day - only 3 films. Well. I had 4, but I bailed on one on account of a) fatigue, b) it wasnt getting good reviews and c) it might have caused me to be late for my next film.

For my sins, I got dragged up and down Queen St W., looking for this mythical wool emporium.

Palimpsest

Polish psychological thriller, which I claim was evocative of Jacob's Ladder, an observation which elicited hails of derisive laughter. The film itself was only so-so, but the score was quite compelling - really served to keep the tension jacked up for most of the movie.

The Q&A for this one was quite helpful, given the confused looks that P-Giddy and I were shooting each other after the film ended.

The Silence

Originally produced as a 2-part miniseries on Austrialian TV, The Silence is a tight little piece in the mold of an ep of Cold Case. Decent writing and acting. Nothing much to complain about.

The Scottish Play.. Err.. Movie

Its bad luck to mention the name of that play set in Scotland, dont you know. I guess I'll have to dance around that.

Anyways, one of those modern restagings of Bill's stuff, in which all the dialog hews to the original text. Or some elided version thereof. In this case, we've fast-fowarded to modern times, and the clan of murderous Scot nobility has been replaced with a clan of murderous Scot crime nobility.

You can see how difficult the task of the contemporary director is.

One of the more - shall we say intriguing - aspects of these remakes is seeing how the director integrates the two story lines together. Inevitably, they've got two stories to tell - both Bill's, and their own. The trickiness is that their story has to be told only through physical evocation, or by piggy-backing on the original text.

You wind up with these long stretches of action in which nothing is said, but people waving their hands about madly, "acting".

I liked the take on King Lear that I saw at the Festival several years back. But I'll give this one its due:

Any film which portrays the 3 witches as smokin' hot redheads with a penchant for clothing optional scenes will elicit a kind word from me.

Word.