There is such a thing as Pez-flavored popcorn? Pez? All its charm is in the packaging and delivery. The candy itself can be downright vile. Even if Pez were a flavour sensation, why popcorn?

I just attended the final night of the MIFF. It’s amazing how exhausting it can be just to watch movies, granted back-to-back over a ten-day stretch. Anyway, it was entirely worth the experience.

So. Today, we had one silent movie by F.W. Murnau (of Nosferatu fame). As with the (highly expressionistic) golem film from last year, the soundtrack was composed, and performed live, by a pianist from the coast. He’ll be sending a CD of it here, by request.

Next up, I spent some time poking around Marden’s during a three-hour gap. I managed to dig up a bunch of useless doodads such as a copy of Sewer Shark for the Sega CD (about two dollars) and an RF adapter for the Dreamcast (just in case I happen to run into a TV old enough that it’d be required) — marked down from an absurd eighteen dollars to about three or four. There were copies of Anarchy Online sitting around for under five dollars, but Edgar’s too old to run anything like that. It was just amusing to see them there, next to the cheese graters and fishing tackle and giant Tootsie Rolls and Gundam Wing figurines.

Marden’s is an interesting place.

I also adopted the most handsome duck in the world. He’d been calling to me all week.

Then there was an interesting Japanese film which no one except for me seemed to understand at all. (From the literature, it’s apparently inspired in part by Philip K. Dick. I suppose I can see that.) I’m not going to go into too much detail, but toward the end it occurred to me that the film was almost Shakespearian in composition, with the character of Keechie playing much the same role as the fool — or whatever other foil was often used as a tool of fate — to illuminate the faults of the main characters and to help pull the plot forward. Also, the movie started in some ways to become, toward the end, much like what I’d expect from a traditional Samurai drama. It seems there’s little in the film which is best to take at face value; it’s all a modern fable of sorts. It’s hard to tell at first, by how intentionally Western everything seems. But that begins to get stripped away, as things move along…

The second showing of Body Drop Asphalt was just one slot too late; too few people saw it the first time, and the voting for best film of the show closed just as the movie’s slot began. A shame, but it at least got my vote…

But that’s mostly because they saved the best film for last. I can’t find it in the IMDB, but it’s a Swedish film by the English title of “Deadline”. (Jonne, might you be any good here?) It’s obvious why the movie in question was reserved for the closing ceremonies; I probably would have voted for BDA anyway, simply to give it the much-needed support, but… I don’t believe I’ve seen a movie as well-made as this in — decades, really.

(There are, incidentally, too many movies with the name “Deadline”. I didn’t catch the Swedish title, but I can’t imagine it being this lame. This is something which has irritated me greatly, over the past few weeks; it seems nearly every foreign film has had its title not merely translated but, rather, altered into the most boring, forgettable spun-off Hollywood marketeer claptrap imaginable. “Merci Pour Le Chocolat” somehow becomes “Nightcap”; “L’ Emploi du temps” is mangled into “Time Out” — and so on. Gr, I say.)

The mid-’70s were really the last bastion of serious moviemaking in Hollywood. Then Star Wars came around, and nothing’s been the same since. The thing about indie and foreign pictures, is that while they’re great in the sense that they fill the void of experimentation that Hollywood could never provide, they generally just don’t have the financial backing that the teenage barf factory has to offer. So you have the potential for a lot of really interesting and difficult pictures which you’d not get otherwise, but there are generally some compromises.

My point is — well. It’s not a visionary film. It’s not anything which hasn’t been done before in some way. It doesn’t dazzle the viewer with creativity. It’s simply more solid a film than I’m at all used to seeing. Its characters are well-drawn, and the acting is impeccable across the board. The direction is just right. The pacing is perfect; the way things are gradually established, beginning with the way the paper is run, moving onto the main character’s (realistic) life at home, and office politics; then gradually onto the real plot of the movie. And it ends at just the right place, and in just the right way. There’s a particular confidence and sheer competence at work here which I’m not accustomed to seeing. Not out of today’s cinema, anyway. Again, perhaps a few decades ago.

So that was today. Here again is an adjusted list of what I’ve seen, with links where I can find ’em.

• Merci Pour Le Chocolat (“Nightcap” (argh!))
• Nado Anaega Isseosseumyeon Johgessda (“I Wish I Had A Wife”)
• The Year That Trembled
• 12 Steps Outside
• Body Drop Asphalt
• Sur Mes Lèvres (“Read My Lips”)
• Strange Fruit
• Mortel Transfert (“Mortal Transfer” — hey, they got this one right!)
• Storefront Hitchcock
• Les Enfants Du Siècle (Children of the Century)
• Dieu Est Grand, Je Suis Toute Petite (“God is Great, I’m Not”)
• Paszport (“Passport”)
• The Hired Hand
• Visions 2002
• Stop Making Sense
• The Haunted Castle
• Desert Moon
• “Deadline“

So. There.

Otakon is only a few days away now. Not sure what I’m doing yet. I thought I was going to be more prepared than this.