If his 2010 debut feature Beyond the Black Rainbow established Panos Cosmatos as a director whose filmmaking style is hard to define, follow-up Mandy pretty much cements it…
Monthly Archives: October 2018
Breakthrough anime director Mamoru Hosoda on ‘Mirai’
In conversation with Japanese writer-director Mamoru Hosoda, he cites childhood and how young people change as a recurring theme that unites all of his original stories. As such, it seems strangely appropriate that we end up introduced to his own children during our interview. Having just told us that his latest animation, Mirai, is inspired by his kids, we ask him if any of the film’s characters were directly informed by his own brood, which leads to us being shown a family portrait on his phone. “Do you want to see my kids’ pictures?” he asks. “They even look similar.” Sure enough, a lot of the people pictured in the photo resemble the character designs in the film. “The father is different,” he concedes. “Obviously, I’m not that good looking.”
Although staged on a comparatively smaller scale to other Hosoda films like Summer Wars and The Boy and the Beast, Mirai still has an element of fantasy informing its portrait of family relations. It’s closer in spirit to his excellent drama Wolf Children, which spanned several years in the lives of a pair of lycanthropic children and the human mother struggling to raise them. Mirai also features troublesome children, though its exploration of time comes through the unique hook of a magical garden enabling a young boy to encounter his relatives from different eras, with a future older version of his younger sister Mirai acting as his guide…
Shirkers (Sandi Tan, 2018)
From Jodorowsky’s Dune to a film about Tim Burton’s cancelled Superman, documentaries about movies that never got made have proved a popular prospect over recent years. Sandi Tan’s energetic Shirkers, ostensibly an entry in this subgenre, differs for a few reasons.
Firstly, it’s directed by the helmer of the original film it concerns, which shares the same name. Secondly, it’s about an independent Singapore-made film the world never got to see, rather than a Hollywood property. Finally, and most crucially, the original Shirkers was actually completed. The reason it was never released is because one strange individual involved in production stole all of the film’s materials once the 1992 shoot had wrapped…
The strange story of Orson Welles’ final years
Intended as the director’s magnum opus, Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind is one of the most famous films never to be completed. Or, at least it was.
Thanks to the efforts of various parties over the years (and a hefty cash injection from Netflix to get the existing footage out of rights limbo), a full version of the film – which tells the story of an ageing director struggling to revive his career – has finally been finished. After a wait of more than 40 years, it will be available on the streaming service from 2 November.
In conjunction, Netflix are releasing a feature-length documentary on the very same day, which covers the decade prior to Welles’ death in 1985. Titled They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, it follows the late filmmaker as he struggles to get The Other Side of the Wind made…
The sex work-positive horror written by a former camgirl
Acquired by Netflix after winning two awards at the 2018 Fantasia Festival, psychological horror Cam is one of the few films concerning sex work that’s written by a former sex worker. The film’s co-author, Isa Mazzei, had a camming career similar to that of the film’s protagonist for roughly two years –minus the supernatural happenings, we’re told…
MFKZ (Shôjirô Nishimi/Guillaume Renard, 2017)
Scattered throughout animation MFKZ (aka Mutafukaz) – a collaboration between French company Ankama Animation and Japanese studio Studio 4°C (Tekkonkinkreet, Mind Game) – are a number of narrative-interrupting title cards that reflect something about the film’s various eccentricities. Some are posed as questions before expository information, such as in the case of ‘Who Are These Mysterious Wrestlers?’ One, in particular, stands out: ‘The Movies Have Never Seen Sh*t Like This!’ Although you can trace the DNA of a few notable influences, They Live and Akira among them, one might find that an accurate summation of MFKZ as a whole…
Scotland Loves Anime 2018
Bar the occasional big screen outing for kids’ brands like the Teen Titans and My Little Pony, Hollywood has largely given up on releasing 2D feature animation in cinemas. And with the exception of recent European efforts like Ethel & Ernest, the best place for more traditional animation styles to thrive remains in the East, particularly in Japan. Anime on the big screen in Britain has become a big business thanks to successful limited runs via distributors Anime Limited and Manga UK, especially with 2016’s worldwide smash Your Name. The Scotland Loves Anime festival, returning for its ninth instalment at Glasgow Film Theatre and Edinburgh’s Filmhouse, is the best place for the unfamiliar and hardcore enthusiasts alike to get their biggest and most diverse dose of the medium…
‘Mandy’ director Panos Cosmatos on Nic Cage and ‘MacGruber’
Panos Cosmatos doesn’t make films that are easy to define. This may seem a bold statement concerning a filmmaker who currently has only two features to his name as a writer-director, but those movies are so singular as aural and visual experiences, quite unlike anything else contemporary, and, though they share a through line with some other media of the past, difficult to group together with much that’s come before them. And ‘experience’ is an apt description. “What I’m trying to make with these two films is an immersive audio-visual experience, more than just a traditional narrative,” Cosmatos tells us over the phone. “Every decision is weighed in a qualitative realm of creating this dream state…”
Maniac (Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2018)
Netflix miniseries Maniac, from Patrick Somerville (The Leftovers) and Cary Joji Fukunaga (True Detective), is an enticing prospect even before taking the stacked cast into account. Led by Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, it also has Sally Field, Justin Theroux and Sonoya Mizuno (Ex Machina) supporting, with the likes of Gabriel Byrne and Hank Azaria regularly popping up…
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