Tag Archives: 2004

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: HAIR HIGH (2004)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Voices of Eric Gilliland, Sarah Silverman,

PLOT: A middle-aged bartender recounts a tragic tale of doomed love to a young couple.

Still from "Hair High" (2004)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Plympton’s trademark animation style, verging on surrealism, meets a personal take on familiar rom-com and high school drama tropes.

COMMENTS: Bill Plympton is a major name in American adult animation today, especially for those preferring the offbeat and the bizarre. His raw and expressive style, full of crude jokes and grotesque yet hilarious visual gags, balances gross-out humor with a lighthearted and wholesome tone. Nowhere is that blend more apparent than in High Hair, a unique take on high school rom-coms with a esque twist.

A barman recounts the tale of Cherry and Stud and their unexpected, passionate love affair to two young students. We trace the teen drama tropes from the beginning: Cherry is the popular girl, and Stud is a nerdy, friendless loser. Cherry already has a boyfriend, the muscular Rod, another reason Stud shouldn’t have a chance with her in real life. However, when Rod “punishes” Stud by forcing him to become Cherry’s slave, something sweet and slightly kinky blossoms between them.

A love affair starting as a power game or a conflict is another well-worn trope of romantic comedies. But Plympton’s approach offers something different than what you’d might expect. The first half of the movie is full of crude, if admittedly inventive, jokes. Disturbing imagery is played for laughs, with even a hint of animated body horror. Gradually, a sweet love affair blooms, one that, surprisingly, doesn’t feel uneven or forced at all. The second half of the film follows Cherry and Stud falling in love, until a final twist combines the dark and macabre with an unexpected, yet not unwelcome, dose of tenderness.

Among the visual gags of special note—and there are many—are jokes about the characters’ hairstyles.  As the title hints, hair is a rich symbol in this movie. Follicles can express femininity or masculinity, and even take the form of a phallic symbol. Here, hair indicates hierarchy and social status.

All in all, this is a whimsical film, a perfect date movie for weirdos. Those who aren’t turned off by some bad-taste humor will be rewarded with a touching narrative. Behind the weirdness and grotesquerie beats a heart.

Hair High [Blu-ray]

Hair High [Blu-ray]

  • Acclaimed animator Bill Plympton’s (THE TUNE, MUTANT ALIENS) cheerfully unhinged tribute to 1950s teen romance and musicals like GREASE and HAIRSPRAY

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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE POLAR EXPRESS (2004)

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Beware

DIRECTED BY: Robert Zemeckis

FEATURING: , Nona Gaye, , Michael Jeter, Peter Scolari, Daryl Sabara

PLOT: A boy on the verge of abandoning his belief in Santa Claus is visited by a magical train that whisks him away to the North Pole, but the journey is filled with perilous diversions.

Still from "The Polar Express" (2024)

COMMENTS: There are two characteristics define Robert Zemeckis’ career: an eagerness to push the boundaries of visual effects technology, and an affection for frenetic, breakneck action. Sometimes the pendulum swings more in one direction than the other, but every now and then a Who Framed Roger Rabbit comes along to provide a healthy dose of both. So on the one hand, it is utterly unsurprising that Zemeckis would be captivated by the boundless potential of motion-capture CGI animation to deliver the kind of non-stop, eye-popping visuals that have always been impossible to realize in live action. On the other hand, it’s completely baffling that the property with which he would christen this new era would be the Caldecott award-winning children’s classic “The Polar Express.”

In fairness, it’s not a mystery that someone would come along to take a stab at turning this small book into a big motion picture. After all, Chris Van Allsburg draws cinematically. His page-wide illustrations capture action and emotion in an artistic splurge, summing up minutes of action and dialogue in single images, like oil pastel versions of Cindy Sherman photos. Building out from those lush Van Allsburg drawings probably felt instinctive, far more than other children’s book adaptations that expanded waaaaay beyond their source material, often to their detriment. There’s something very sweaty about the way absolutely nothing goes right for our Hero children, ladling on complications to make everything so much more EXCITING; but that’s not even the film’s greatest drawback. Rather, the problems arise when Zemeckis deploys his fantastic tech, which he has so often done in service of his story: shoehorning Forrest Gump into history, for example, or placing viewers in an impossible perch above Philippe Petit in The Walk. Here, though, the story is buried in spectacle, and repeated efforts to pad out the characters and give them more heft only make the spectacle push back harder. In The Polar Express, CGI beats Van Allsburg’s book into submission.

The movie wants to bedazzle you into a state of exhaustion. A raucous dance number in which flat-faced acrobats ricochet off the ceiling while singing the virtues of hot chocolate is aimed more at demonstrating the physics-defying capabilities of the technology than actually enchanting the children on the train. It’s immediately followed by the extended journey of a wayward train ticket, which takes a rollicking tour outside of the locomotive, floating through a pack of snarling wolves, flitting through a snowy forest, nearly becoming dinner for a flock of newly hatched eagles, before finally returning to the train compartment, all in an elaborate one-take that is Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE POLAR EXPRESS (2004) →

Apocryphally Weird

64*: CITIZEN DOG (2004)

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Mah nakorn

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Mahasamut Boonyaruk, Saengthong Gate-Uthong, Sawatwong Palakawong Na Autthaya, Raenkum Saninn, Nattha Wattanapaiboon

PLOT: Pod leaves his remote homestead for the bright lights of Bangkok, ignoring his grandmother’s warning that he will grow a tail in the big city. There, he loses a finger working in a sardine factory, then falls head over heels for cleaning lady Jin, who is intensely focused on a book that she found after it fell out of a crashing passenger jet. Her curiosity leads her to monomaniacal environmental activism, leaving no attention for Pod, who tries to remain close to her through a series of odd jobs that bring him into contact with some of the city’s more unusual residents, including a man who licks everything, an undead motorcyclist, and a child-like woman in a passive-aggressive relationship with her teddy bear.

Still from CItizen Dog (2004)

BACKGROUND:

  • Based on a novel by the director’s wife, Koynuch, which Sasanatieng illustrated. The novel was, in turn, based on Sasanatieng’s unpublished screenplay.
  • The title is a pun on the city’s name, “Bangkok, Great City.” By changing one letter in the Thai translation—Krung Thep Maha Nakorn to Krung Thep Mah Nakorn–-the name becomes “Bangkok, City of Dogs.”
  • Narrated by director , whose films include Last Life in the Universe.
  • Boonyaruk is a musician (some of his music appears in the movie) making his film debut here. Gate-Uthong is also a film novice, having worked previously as a fashion model.
  • The foreigner handing out protest leaflets who Jin dubs “Peter” is played by Chuck Stephens, an expatriate film critic for the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Thai cinema expert, who also worked on the movie’s subtitles. 

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Sasanatieng’s candy-colored Bangkok is rife with visual pleasures, but none as dramatic as the literal mountain comprised of plastic bottles that Jin recovers and carefully cleans, a peak which Pod and Jin separately ascend in a desperate search for meaning and jointly summit in celebration of love. Just as Bangkok itself is portrayed as an urban nightmare made beautiful by the people who live and love there, this mountain of trash is transformed into a wonder by the community.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: A chain-smoking woman-child’s love-hate relationship with her teddy bear; Grandma’s gecko rap

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The one thing that’s guaranteed to come up in any discussion of Citizen Dog is a reference to that milestone of quirky romance, Amélie. The comparison is not without merit: the two films share a bemused enjoyment of life’s pleasures. Sanasatieng looks to do the French hit one better, though, marshaling all his resources to highlight the strangeness of his characters, be they main, supporting, or background. No one in Citizen Dog zigs when they could zag, and strangeness and silliness are very much the norm. The opening scene in which everyone sings along with the soundtrack would be a musical number in most contexts, but here it feels diegetic, the voice of a community singing as one.

Original Thai trailer for Citizen Dog

COMMENTS: Life in the big city is hard. Say you get a nice job slicing Continue reading 64*: CITIZEN DOG (2004) →

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

THEY CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: CALAMARI UNION (1985) / THE CALAMARI WRESTLER (2004)

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The odds that, out of the near-500 films still in our reader queue, two of them would utilize the very same chewy appetizer in their titles seem awfully remote. Yet here we are, cinematically celebrating this savory treat from Helsinki to Tokyo. So let’s see just what calamari means to these filmmakers, and whether they’d have been better off invoking jalapeño poppers.

CALAMARI UNION (1985)

DIRECTED BY: Aki Kaurismäki

FEATURING: Timo Eränkö, Kari Heiskanen, Asmo Hurula, Sakke Järvenpää, Markku Toikka

PLOT: A collection of petty criminals band together to escape the Kallio district for the greener pastures of Eira; their journey to a new neighborhood, however, will be perilous and filled with obstacles.

COMMENTS: The classic World War II caper The Great Escape is about the daring breakout of more than 80 prisoners from a Nazi prison camp. The plan requires extraordinary levels of cleverness, craftiness, and chutzpah. Even then, the odds are against them, and (spoiler alert for 80-year-old history) only three men eventually get away.

Calamari Union is The Great Escape for idiots. A collection of 14 low-level criminals all named Frank (plus an additional traveler who speaks exclusively in English that he seems to have picked up from watching movies) join forces to escape certain doom in a bad Helsinki neighborhood. Are the cops closing in? Is some crime boss about to bring the hammer down on them? No, they just don’t fit in. Too many hills, with kids and dogs running around willy-nilly. No good can come of all that. They all agree: “A sick branch must seek a healthier tree.” They must escape to the paradise of Eira.

Trouble is, they’re all comically bad at looking out for their own best interests. Upon hijacking a subway to take them to the city center, the train driver shoots one of the Franks, an event met with only casual interest from the rest of the troupe. They all independently gravitate to the same café, despite having been warned that it’s every man for himself. They chase girls, make mildly extravagant purchases, pick fights, anything to delay actually reaching their destination. Getting to the promised land would seem to be the most urgent goal, but no one is in any particular hurry to get anywhere. Even when blessed with useful skills, such as convincing a driver to hand over their vehicle with no debate, they don’t put their talents to any particular use. That, of course, is Calamari Union’s particular breed of surrealism: no one does anything logical. It’s amusing, but as aimless as the petty crooks themselves.

Many of the actors are Finnish rock musicians, which might explain the moment when the Franks all show up for a musical interlude in Continue reading THEY CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: CALAMARI UNION (1985) / THE CALAMARI WRESTLER (2004) →

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE BIRTHDAY (2004)

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The Birthday is currently available for VOD rental or purchase.

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DIRECTED BY: Eugenio Mira

FEATURING: , Erica Prior, Jack Taylor, Dale Douma

PLOT: Norman Forrester navigates his girlfriend’s father’s birthday party as he waits for the right moment to tell her how he feels.

Still from "The Birthday" (2004)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Whatever Corey Feldman is doing to portray Norman is up there alongside ‘s turn as a romantic lead in The Room (albeit hovering on the reality-side of believable), and that’s just for starters in this oddball bit of capering which unfurls like a forgotten b-side.

COMMENTS: Norman wears white socks with his tuxedo. His powder-blue ruffled shirt is more appropriate for a high school prom. Alison, his girlfriend, runs hot and cold, making her difficult for him to read. The father, whose birthday is being celebrated, is dismissive of Norman’s pizzeria job. Norman can’t unload a hotel room glass he picked up at the start of the night, an old school buddy insists they watch the strippers together, blackouts begin to plague the main event, and he never finds a moment to give his girlfriend that special gift. All told, it’s not a good night for Norman—and that’s not even taking into account his discovery of a death cult hoping to summon a ian-style god of hopelessness.

Norman is our constant guide for this special evening, whether we want him or not. His eyebrows are always rising and lowering; he often doesn’t know what to do with his hands; and his voice sounds like it should be coming from a tertiary Dick Tracy villain with one line. But we’re with that voice, and that awkwardness, for two hours. It’s a heckuva gambit on the part of both actor Corey Feldman and director Eugenio Mira. This fractured character is what’s needed, though, for channeling this irregular narrative, peopled as it is from the basement to the penthouse with differently aberrant characters. To perform Mira a modest disservice, the dialogue oscillates between the goofiness of The Hudsucker Proxy and the menace of Barton Fink. Is everyone having a great time? Are they doomed? As with life, there’s a bit of both.

The Birthday kicks off with an Art Deco font-flourished title card reading “The Most Amazing 117 minutes in Norman Forrester’s Life,” before fading into a shot of the named character emerging from a creaking elevator whose tinny music, after some repetitions, clarifies itself as a Muzak rendition of “It’s My Party.” Mira’s promise trundles along deliciously for the first hour, as he slaps snips and snatches of eccentricity into the mix—the belligerent father, the Valium-addled mother, the alarmingly eager-but-unhelpful staff, and even the hotel itself, with its strange secrets—culminating in a first act climax of soul-searching and monologue from Forrester as he descends into the basement.

For a reason that baffled me at the time, Mira seems to cut away the entire, hard-earned accumulation of dark wacky and silly foreboding, deciding that the second half will instead travel full bore into a kind of stupid story line. For a stretch, I worried that Yes, the first half is weird enough to carry the film and an apocrypha recommendation, but I’ll have to warn that—and before I knew it, Mira was building again. A final blow-out wraps up this strange birthday party with style and intensity. Norman, who has spent his life ducking down and backing away from conflict, is provided the ultimate test; and despite his white socks, ruffled shirt, and “My Goodness What is that Voice?” timbre, by the very end, my weird hopes had triumphed.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a cinematic enigma that most definitely won’t be for everyone. However, for lovers of the wonderfully weird and mesmerizingly Lynchian, it’s a lost gem begging to be discovered.”–Stephanie Malone, Morbidly Beautiful (2024 re-release)

Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!