Category Archives: Video

Saturday Matinee: 2081

Posted on by
Reply

Source: Wikipedia

2081 is a 2009 science fiction featurette which premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival on May 29, 2009. It is directed and written by Chandler Tuttle, based on the 1961 short story “Harrison Bergeron” by author Kurt Vonnegut. The cast is led by James Cosmo, Julie Hagerty, Patricia Clarkson, and Armie Hammer. The story paints a picture through the use of hyperbole of a future in which a powerful, dictatorial government goes to extreme measures to ensure that absolute equality exists between all individuals.

Saturday Matinee: Spiritwalker

Posted on by
Reply

Spiritwalker (2021) Review

Director: Yoon Jae-Keun
Cast: Park Yong-Woo, Lim Ji-Yeon, Park Ji-Hwan, Yoo Seung-Mok, Lee Sung-Wook, Seo Hyun-Woo, Baek Do-Gyum, Woo Kang-Min
Running Time: 110 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

Source: City on Fire

It’s fair to say the body-swap plot device has been a recurring theme in cinema over the years. While more often than not the gimmick has been used for comedic purposes, thankfully there are filmmakers out there who have been willing to apply it to further afield. Movies like the 1998 thriller Fallen spring to mind, in which Denzel Washington attempts to catch the spirit of a serial killer who can take over people’s bodies, as does the pulpy Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, in which the spirit of everyone’s favorite hockey mask wearing psycho takes on similar abilities. Joining the ranks in 2021 is Yoon Jae-geun’s Spiritwalker, which sees the director and writer returning to the screen for the first time since his debut with 2010’s Heartbeat.

Opening with Yoon Kye-sang (The Outlaws, Poongsan) slumped against the door of a recently crashed vehicle and nursing a gun shot wound, things seem amiss when the reflection he sees of himself in the car window isn’t his own, and to confound matters further he has no recollection of who he is. Embarking on a mission to uncover his identity, matters aren’t helped by the fact that whenever it hits 12:00 (both noon and midnight), his spirit shifts into the body of someone else. The loss of memory and 12-hour body swap cycle make up the crux of what keeps Spiritwalker propelling itself forward, and it’s easy to imagine the Blu-ray cover containing the quote “The Bourne Identity meets The Beauty Inside!” Taking the amnesia plot device of the former, and the timed body-swapping gimmick of the latter, Jae-geun has created one of the more unique entries in Korea’s recent pool of action thrillers.

While the concept of Spiritwalker could easily result in confusion onscreen, especially when it becomes apparent that the bodies his spirit goes into are one’s we’re also familiar with, Jae-geun does a good job of translating it into cinematic language without insulting the audience’s intelligence. While during the first half he uses the trick of switching between showing Kye-sang and the actor of whoever’s body he’s in, by the latter half he trusts the audience to know whose body Kye-sang is supposed to be in, letting the actor take centre stage in the movie that’s billed as being his starring vehicle (something I’m sure he was thankful for).

Unfortunately as is the case with many high concept thrillers, the concept requires a lot of attention to execute and not stumble over its own logic, so much so that in the end other areas suffer. Kye-sang has a likeable screen presence, and I’ve enjoyed most of his performances since he first came on my radar through watching Poongsan at the time of its release in 2011. He left a considerable impression as the villain who faces off against Ma Dong-seok in 2017’s The Outlaws, however here his character feels underdeveloped and lacks personality. Surprisingly, considering how important it should be for a character to be well drawn in a plot that hinges on said character inhibiting other characters bodies, this doesn’t prove to be detrimental to the overall plot. As a central protagonist to root for though, through no fault of his own Kye-sang doesn’t really connect on any deeper level other than being a cipher onscreen. 

A bigger issue is the narrative that’s been constructed around the body-swap device in order to explain it, which also feels undercooked and leaves several questions unanswered. It’s a shame, as the actual act of changing bodies every 12 hours is handled well and sets up a brisk pace maintained for the almost 110-minute runtime, so it feels like somewhat of a let down when the explanation for it all only feels half baked. Such criticisms point to the fact that Jae-geun clearly wasn’t looking to create an in-depth character study here, musing on the meaning of one’s identity and how deeply it’s connected to our physical appearance. For that, I guess we have The Beauty Inside. To enjoy Spiritwalker it’s best to take it at face value (pun intended), which is a body swap-thriller involving a guy with no memory being chased by a shadowy corporation who he may or may not have used to work for.

The 12-hour framing device instils a welcome sense of urgency into the narrative, and as predictable as it may be, Jae-geun does an admirable job of coming up with a variety of either life endangering or desperate situations that always happen in the closing minutes before Kye-sang’s spirit swaps into another body. Spiritwalker is at its best when playing around with the body-swapping device, such as when Kye-sang’s spirit is transferred into one of the lackeys he’s just threatened by pushing a pen into his neck, and then finds himself having to deal with his own self-inflicted injury. The unpredictable nature of both Kye-sang and the audience not knowing whose body he’ll go into next offsets the expected crises that crop up whenever 12:00 approaches, and keeps things engaging.

Clearly banking on its action credentials as much as its sci-fi leanings, Jae-geun has enlisted martial arts choreographers Park Young-sik and Jung Sung-ho to put together a sprinkling of grounded action scenes. Young-sik is a veteran of the Korean film industry, having lent his martial arts prowess to a countless number of productions since the early 2000’s, including being the martial arts director on the likes of 2008’s A Frozen Flower and 2010’s The Showdown. While Sung-ho has been around almost as long, he also comes with bragging rights of being part of the stunt team for the Netflix series Squid Game, which bagged the Best Stunt Ensemble award at 2022’s Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Recalling the grand tradition of Korean action thrillers made in that wonderful era during the early to mid 2010’s, a time when it seemed like they could do no wrong, the best action scene in Spritwalker takes place within the confines of an apartment (see also The Berlin File and No Tears for the Dead for reference). While in his best friends’ body (played by Lee Sung-wook – Collectors, Microhabitat) Kye-sang’s character finds himself in his girlfriends apartment facing off against a pair of assailants who want to track him down. The ensuing one on one fight against Seo Hyun-woo (The Man Standing Next, Believer) is expertly filmed, even going so far as to seamlessly switch between Sung-wook and Kye-sang without the use of CGI, a true testament of the action experience that’s behind the camera.

The ending also recalls the heyday of modern Korean action cinema, as Kye-sang conveniently finds himself in a character’s body decked out in a sharp black suit (which means he’s also now decked out in a sharp black suit). While fans of Korean cinema will likely recall Won Bin in the finale of The Man from Nowhere, the use of guns rather than blades inevitably brings to mind the John Wick franchise, and its influence is hard to deny. Kye-sang’s performance feels a little more gung-ho and frantic than Keanu Reeves, as he flings himself over tables and through wooden dividers, giving the scene a more frantic feel than Wick’s precision point and shoot technique, however the influence is clearly still there. While the finale gets suitably bloody and desperate, it somehow feels like it stops short before really ramping up, and there’s an odd decision that frames the whole movie to look like a tale of divided lovers which simply doesn’t work.

As a director and writer Yoon Jae-geun is one of those enigmas who seem to occasionally pop up in Korean cinema – defined by the fact that they were once active in the film industry, then drop completely off the map, before re-appearing more than 10 years later with a new movie out of the blue. As a sophomore feature Spiritwalker doesn’t necessarily indicate we can expect to wait less than 10 years for another movie from Jae-geun, however it is an entertaining action thriller that executes its novel premise with aplomb, let down by the fact that everything that surrounds it feels so slight.

Watch Spiritwalker on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14986537

Saturday Matinee: All Light, Everywhere

Posted on by
Reply

Film Review: “All Light, Everywhere” — Darkness Visible

By Neil Giordano

Source: Arts Fuse

Do you trust what you see? How can you? Our eyes are no longer the primary way that we see; they have been swapped out for the filters of screens and technology. The suspicious mediation between cameras and our perception of ‘reality” has never been more ubiquitous — or more insidious. Perhaps what we don’t see, however, is at least as important as what we do see. But how can we become aware of what we don’t see?

These questions lie at the heart of the fascinating new documentary All Light, Everywhere, an entrancing blend of neuroscience, metaphysics, and technological history that has the smarts to apply some sly, subtle social commentary to its elusive subjects.

At first, the film seems to flitter among semi-connected topics: A marketing campaign that is testing its volunteers’ reactions to visual images; a tour of Axon Industries, the #1 maker of police body cameras, with its corporate spin doctor as our guide; an aerial composite-imaging system that was used secretly by Baltimore police to surveil the city. Interspersed into these “storylines” are narrated forays into the history of early photography along with B-roll of ordinary people preparing to view the 2017 solar eclipse with their own cameras (and eyes). This unrelenting focus on the production and consumption of visual imagery transforms the film into an almost fractal experience. It becomes a bit too much: the sheer ubiquity of people looking, eyes looking, images to be seen and consumed and interpreted, examinations of the various technologies serving up new pictures to be mediated. The unsettling point of this unconventional documentary seems to be to distort rather than clarify the subject at hand — and that may be just what director Theo Anthony wants.

The underlying political relevance of the film is transparent. We live in a surveillance society, consenting (though not always consciously) to being filmed, watched, and recorded by corporations hoping to sell us products based on the data they gather. The government snoops in the name of crime prevention and law enforcement. The value of the latter has been hotly debated in the last few years: George Floyd’s murder being a prime example. Here the police body cameras showed us what we believe to be an “objective” record of events, footage of police brutality and murder. But body camera images have been weaponized by both sides, each seeking to prove something that will help their case. What Axon Industries sells to police forces (and to the general public) is that they are confident their cameras will tell the “truth” about any police action. Accountability is promoted as their product’s best feature. But it is more than that — “behavior will change ” because of the presence of cameras, that they will inhibit bad behavior.

But what do body cameras actually show us? Are these videos an authentic record of reality? The documentary examines, abstractly at first and then far more concretely, how there is always bias. Where is the camera located on the body? Does its wide-angle lens distort our understanding of action? How is this data interpreted and by whom? There are so many levels of interpretation that “objectivity” has turned into a myth.

The film’s looks back into the past are also illuminating, unsettling illustrations of how camera technology has almost always been co-opted for violent and authoritarian uses, whether it be the American military tracking the enemy on the battlefield or in the early experiments in composite imaging used by police to profile criminals. The latter presages the now rampant use of facial recognition technology, its marketed value undercut by its practical limitations as well as ethical muddiness.

The irony is not lost that what we’re looking at is itself a film, another visual entity that requires us to watch and to mediate. The film’s meta-commentary confesses that its stochastic manipulation is by design. Highly kinetic editing leads our brains to make connections in ways that excited Eisenstein at the dawn of film a century ago: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The mind demands order, so the juxtaposition and collision of images generates meanings that did not exist in individual images.

Anthony draws on history to help us make sense of a visual world that is increasingly fleeting and fragmented. The film is reminiscent, in style and subject matter, of the works of Errol Morris. This goes for its sometimes desultory exposition, as well as its approach to epistemology. (Morris explores these issues in all of his films, as well as in his essays in his books Believing Is Seeing and The Ashtray.) In the third act of All Light, Everywhere, a well-placed quotation from Frederick Douglass summaries the central issue: “We all feel that there is something more. That the curtain has not yet been lifted. There is a prophet with us forever whispering that behind the seen lies the immeasurable unseen.” The “immeasurable unseen” may not be possible to capture on cameras, no matter how many we use or how hard we strive for an elusive objectivity. Perhaps it is more important for us to understand that urge for “something more” should lead to examining how, why, and for whom the image was made.

Watch All Light, Everywhere at Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/12333392

Saturday Matinee: Gloria’s Call

Posted on by
Reply

Source: GloriasCall.com

From the cafés of Paris to the mountaintops of Samiland, a scholar’s life is foreverchanged through her friendships with the women artists of Surrealism.

In 1971, graduate student Gloria Orenstein received a call from Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington that sparked a lifelong journey into art, ecofeminism and shamanism. The short film, Gloria’s Call, uses art, animation and storytelling to celebrate this wild adventure from the cafes of Paris to the mountaintops of Samiland. The film is produced by artists Cheri Gaulke (director), Cheryl Bookout, Anne Gauldin, Sue Maberry and Christine Papalexis .

Gloria’s Call was born in October of 2016 during a presentation by renowned scholar Dr. Gloria Feman Orenstein at the Southern California Women’s Caucus for Art (SCWCA) Surrealist Tea in celebration of their 40th Anniversary.

ABOUT GLORIA

While my life has had its challenging moments and I have traversed many a dark woods in my quest for knowledge, I am fulfilled by the wondrous journeys I have made to the realms of the Marvelous, the Magical, the Great Goddess and the Shamanic Mysteries, and I will be forever grateful to the teachers who inspired me and to the feminist activists on whose strong shoulders we now stand as we welcome new generations of visionaries expanding our feminist legacy into the new millennium.   -Gloria Feman Orenstein

Gloria F. Orenstein is Professor Emerita in Comparative Literature and Gender Studies from the University of Southern California. Her areas of research have ranged from Surrealism, contemporary feminist literature and the arts to Ecofeminism and Shamanism.

Her first book The Theater Of The Marvelous: Surrealism And The Contemporary Stage paved the way for her pioneering work on The Women of Surrealism. Leonora Carrington had been a friend and remained a major source of her inspiration in research and scholarship since 1971. Her book The Reflowering Of The Goddess offers a feminist analysis of the movement in the contemporary arts that reclaimed the Goddess as the symbol of a paradigm shift toward a more gynocentric mythos and ethos as women artists forged a link to the pre-patriarchal civilization of the ancient Goddess cultures, referencing them as their source of spiritual inspiration.

Orenstein is also co-editor of Reweaving The World: The Emergence Of Ecofeminism, a collection of essays that grew out of the conference she created at USC in 1987, Ecofeminist Perspectives: Culture, Nature, Theory. During the 80s she was invited by the Shaman of Samiland (Lapland, N. Norway) to be a student with her in Alta, Norway, an experience that continued intermittently for almost five years. She also created The Woman’s Salon in NYC that lasted for ten years beginning in 1975. More recently, her work in Surrealism, in particular, led to her inclusion of an essay in the book In Wonderland that accompanied the important exhibition of the same name that focused on the Women artists of Surrealism in the Americas, both those who were native to the Americas and those who migrated there during or after WWII. Orenstein was a pioneer in introducing the art of Frida Kahlo to North American feminists early in the 70s. Today, she continues her journey investigating the visionary worlds of revelation and the Marvelous, and will continue this pursuit in her research well into the future.