Café Lumière, Millenium Mambo, Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart, & Mirrormask

Café Lumière is about two major universal truths: no mass transit system in the world sounds better than the Tokyo one, and Photoshop is a huge resource hog. It's dedicated to Yasujiro Ozu, on his 100th birthday, but it's only not really an Ozu film, as the camera actually moves, and some shots aren't from a kneeling standpoint. Hsiao-hsien Hou makes a film that would have been far better had it not had the specter of Ozu's work hanging over it from the opening titles. I was expecting something far more than it was. It's essentially a love letter to the Tokyo trains, with the barest plot there to occasionally draw you away from thinking that it's all about the trains before another shot reminds you of the trains. I kept hoping for something more, but nothing particularly happened. I have no idea why I decided to add this to my queue. It's well made, just very light.

Millennium Mambo is... um... well, I guess I can add Qi Shu to my list of Good Actresses Whose Labia I've Seen. Although that wasn't in a movie. She apparently posed for some Asian porn magazine. And by pose, I mean, she shows pretty much everything (you can find it all online, although under a different transliteration of her name). After having seen The Transporter and enjoying it far more than I should have, I never would have picked her as a good actress. But she was quite good, although a fairly stupid character in the film. She's a somewhat physically (but mainly mentally) abused girl in Taipei, who has to deal with the men in her life who aren't entirely on the up and up. It's another Hsiao-hsien Hou film, although this one isn't nearly as interested in being an Ozu film, and is much more of a modern film, even with a couple of great scenes, like the one of Qi Shu just walking down a covered walkway, and then the faceplants in the snow. The music was also quite good, although it was all apparently Giong Lim's previous work, not songs written for the film.

Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart reminds me that one of the worst things that happened in my lifetime was 1980s fashions. And then you give Asians ridiculous feathered hair, and it's just painful. It's another Wayne Wang film (after Chan Is Missing) about the assimilation process of Chinese in San Francisco. Although the DVD didn't even bother to translate everything. Which pissed me off immensely. But there is a reference to Cheez-Wiz, so Wayne Wang FTW! Or something. Also, I have now seen everything that Laureen Chew has done on film. Which is sort of strange, because even with the sometimes stilted acting, she's far better than some of the people with long careers in movies. I know, I know, it's because she's not devastatingly gorgeous. But two other people in the film did go on to far more, Victor Wong and Joan Chen (Apparently Joan Chen directed Autumn in New York which has a good cast? So it's clearly Allison Burnett's fault, who's a guy? What the hell?). The DVD includes Dim Sum Take Out, a short film which includes lip syncing to My Boyfriend's Back (plus a version in Cantonese and English?), a sex toy party, plus an insane amount of crazy 80s fashions, and is what Wayne Wang filmed the year before and tossed most of to film the relationship between the daughter and her mother, rather than the daughter and her friends. It's completely bizarre.

Mirrormask has production design that was outstanding, with masks and crazy sets and characters all over the film, and the metaphors also were quite good. Nothing outstanding, but certainly not nearly as bad as some of the reviews were making it out to be. The fear of losing a parent is quite disturbing, and it's really quite an effective look at that and growing up with trying to decide whether to follow in your parents' footsteps or not. It's made by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, who are clearly very talented. I loved Gaiman's story about how he ended up writing the English translation of Princess Mononoke (my second favorite Miyazaki film after Nausicaa): he got a call from Harvey Weinstein who basically said, "I was looking for the best screenwriter working today to write the English translation, so I went to Quentin Tarantino, but he said to come to you, so would you like to do it?" and then he flew to see it on a big screen and said yes. Because it is a great film to see on a big screen. But I did get to write about it before it even appeared in the US, because of the seamless integration of CGI effects fit in with my paper on them in college. I seem to have gone off on a tangent here. Mirrormask is certainly above average, but the little niggling things are certainly distracting. Not distracting: the Britishness, and the idea that for some people, this will be their favorite film ever. It isn't mine, but I love that people are out there making films like this.