He's Back, and He's Mad...
At the end of the year we got a major treat from Japan. Featuring better art direction than Barbie and better explosions than Oppenheimer, we all went nuts over Godzilla Minus One. People to root for, a monster we grudgingly agree needs to be destroyed, true drama and true suspense... this film is a heartfelt, scary, thrilling marvel.
In our yearly Top 10 here at ScreenAnarchy it ended in the third position
and you can read J. Hurtado's review here.
Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron
And there was more awesomeness coming out of Japan in the final days of 2023: we got a new film from Studio Ghibli, one written and directed by one of its founding fathers no less. Is it a classic for the ages like so many of his other films? Time will tell, as it's a disjointed thing of two different halves, both of them excellent but how they are glued together may confuse some people. But master of cinema Hayao Miyazaki is doing just what he damn well likes and that is always a glorious thing to behold. And courtesy of the Imagine Film Festival Amsterdam, I got to see it a wee bit earlier than most. Nice catch, Imagine!
Read Kurt's review here. Kurt, any chance you can get your kids to do a video review or don't they think that is funny anymore?
I, the Jury
In 2022 I joined the Circle of Dutch Film Journalists, or KNF when abbreviated in Dutch. And I announced in the previous Dozen of Musings that this might mean I would join a jury again. Well... that happened! And at the single largest cultural event of the Netherlands, no less: the International Film Festival Rotterdam, in my home town. Together with fellow jury-members Basje Boer and Kaj van Zoelen it was my pleasure to hand the KNF Award for Best Short Film to Aqueronte by Manuel Muñoz Rivas.
(That's me in the picture, by the way, as Manuel Muñoz Rivas unfortunately couldn't be present.)
Photo credit: IFFR/Anne Reitsma
Ghost in the Traffic
Internet traffic is a fickle thing and I can never predict how much each of my articles will get. Timing is a thing sometimes, especially if the Netherlands gets a big film a bit earlier than the rest of the world. And the way search engines work, once an article has received some sort of 'critical mass' of searches, it will start to attract more of them automatically (can anyone tell me why this remains being read a lot on a daily basis?).
In 2023, my biggest 'hit' traffic-wise was my Pretty Packaging article about the German Ghost in the Shell release. It's a beauty and one of my favorite acquisitions this year, for sure, but I did not expect the article to become so popular. Are there so many more Ghost in the Shell nutcases like me? Or did someone on Reddit just say: "Hey, look at this Ghost in the Shell nutcase" and everyone looked?
Hey, traffic is traffic, I'm not complaining...
Favorite Odd Thing: I Got Lured Into a Worst Case Scenario
"All good things go to those who wait", as the saying goes, but sometimes you have to wait a really long time for a worst thing too. Richard Raaphorst had been trying to create his Epic Nazi Zombie movie Worst Case Scenario for years, almost two decades ago, but the project got mired in the worst kind of development hell. That wasn't the end of it though: from its ashes, Raaphorst created things like Frankenstein's Army, and his work has been an obvious inspiration (cough got stolen cough) for loads of other people.
But the original project kept gnawing at him and he decided to revive it as a graphic novel. So far, so good... And then he asked me if I would model for him as the farmer, the father of the family in the story. Me? In a graphic novel? How could I say no!
So for months, no matter where I was, on holiday, in the office, I would get the strangest calls from Richard: "Ard, can you pretend to be on a tractor, looking over your shoulder, and have someone take a picture and send it to me?" Sure! And, fifteen minutes later: "Great! Can you do the same picture but lift an eyebrow and have a pipe in your mouth, or a pen, or a spoon or something?"
Needless to say I now have a collection of very weird pictures of myself, and Richard Raaphorst has them too. But I now also only have to open the graphic novel to see many portraits of myself! My vanity is fully satisfied!
In the picture above you see what happened when Richard asked for "A picture where you peep through an opened door to your children's bedroom, where your wife reads them a story." On the left is the picture I sent him, in the middle is the sketch Richard sent me back an hour later, and on the right you see the panel in the graphic novel. Splendid!
Spiderversed
In our yearly Top 10 here at ScreenAnarchy I stated the following about Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and instead of thinking up something new I will just repost it:
"An animated clusterfrag with a multiverse, three directors, a sequel, only half the story in two-and-a-half hours and enough eclectic art to make your eyes (hell, your BRAIN) water? Why oh why is this film so awesome?!! It was actually leading our half-year overview!"
True words, all of them! My youngest son hadn't seen the first one so we put the Blu-ray of that in the day before. Seeing the two films so close to each other really brings home what a double-whammy this is. Let's hope this year will prove to make it a triple-whammy.
You can read Mel Valentin's review here.
My wallet got Curzed
If there is one thing I'd like to criticize British distributor Curzon for, it's their approach to subtitles (as in: no hard-of-hearing, and none whatsoever if the film is in an English-sounding language). Other than that, they had an awesome year of releases in 2023, and their boxsets are rightfully the stuff of legends. The three I bought are portable museums of the directors whose work they contain.
And all were pretty, check these out:
Their Ruben Östland boxset.
Their Lars Von Trier boxset.
Their Wim Wenders boxset.
Festival fever
In September and October, the Netherlands experienced a film festival feeding frenzy. In the past I'd attend three festivals each year: the IFFR in Rotterdam in January, Imagine Amsterdam in April, and Camera Japan Rotterdam in September. Three nice festivals, spaced out nicely across the year. But recently I've been adding other fests to the list and Imagine changed its slot to Halloween. So in short order we got the B-Film, Underground and Trash Film Festival Breda, the Film by the Sea Festival in Vlissingen (Flushing), the Camera Japan Festival Rotterdam, and the Imagine Fantastic Film Festival Amsterdam. Each of these was great. BUTFF had food as its theme and screened classics like Soylent Green and Delicatessen (the latter with weird foodstuffs, to be consumed during certain moments of the film...). Film by the Sea had its 25th iteration and celebrated it hugely, with international premières and music artists attending. At Camera Japan I participated in a Japanese whisky tasting and the rest of my memories there are rather vague (great films though!). Imagine was a party as always and had the new Studio Ghibli film, an event I attended with all the family.
In November I slept. A lot.
My most doubtful acquisition
Oh brother. Where to start with this one? When distributor Severin announced that they were working on "their most ambitious boxset yet" I was delighted, until I heard the price (always an ouch if you're stereotypically Dutch and have no one to share it with) and the subject: The Black Emanuelle films.
One of my sons commented: "You actually spent money on porn?!" and, well, he's not wrong, that's definitely in there, mostly soft but sometimes also hard. There are 24 films in this set, 23 of which are trash (the 24th is a documentary about the others). BUT, and that's a big BUT, if you have any interest whatsoever in Italian exploitation cinema, this is the set to own. Severin brought a crack team of specialists together to tell you all about that era, a veritable who-is-who of film experts commenting and telling outrageous anecdotes. Actors looking back fondly. Actors looking back not-so-fondly. An amazing 356 page book. Two soundtrack CDs (music arguably being one of the few redeeming qualities in these films). All of that packaged in a kick-ass way too (check this out). How could I resist?
My favorite interview: Yuasa Masaaki
Blimey, only three bullets left, so it is time to start talking about my favorite things again! My favorite interview this year was at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which anime legend Yuasa Masaaki attended as a guest of honor. A belated visit it was as the festival had to cancel earlier events due to the Covid pandemic. But in 2023 he was received as a superstar, with interviews, master-classes and we finally got to see his latest film Inu-Oh which turned out to be absolutely fantastic (see my review). And Peter van der lugt and I got to speak with the man himself, and for the first time in the same room. Here's the interview!
My favorite acquisition
Speaking of Yuasa Masaaki: his adaptation of Devilman: Crybaby was made for Netflix and therefore did not get any sort of home release... or so I thought. As it turns out, in Japan a pimped, strictly Limited Edition was allowed to be made. Of course it had sold out immediately and could only be gotten through auctions and such. One shop in Japan had one left though, still in plastic and was willing to sell it to me for what I considered to be a reasonable price (meaning less than 150% of its release value). And it's a beauty. Two large-sized books of artwork are included and two soundtrack CDs. The disc-holder and books fit in a gleaming embossed cassette. It is gorgeous and as a collector I am so happy with it.
Favorite film: Dalva
The International Film Festival Rotterdam got a few mentions here already, but I have to give another shout-out here because it was there that I saw my favorite film released in the Netherlands in 2023: Emmanuelle Nicot's fantastic Dalva (read my review here). And it's one of those titles I would never ever have sought out if not for its audience ratings. I mean, when you're at a festival already, why not try the audience's number one, right? Even if it's a drama about a kidnapped girl who has been brainwashed into being a sex slave, who seriously needs to be 'deprogrammed' after being rescued from her abusive father. Filmed without even a speck of exploitation and bolstered by an unbelievably great child actress (Zelda Samson in her debut role), this was a gut punch in all the best ways.
Interestingly, my most favorite Dutch language film in 2023 was Under the Naked Sky (my review of which can be found here...), a drama featuring another young girl in a terribly difficult situation, with debut actress Ylse Ringeling delivering a fantastic performance. Red-headed child actors kicked my ass this year!
