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Fantasia - Full Report

It is a tradition for Montreal's
Fantasia film festival (http://www.fantasiafest.com) to present a solid
selection of Anime. The festival site contains summaries of the featured
movies complete with sample pictures. About the same information was available
in paper form on the glossy paper festival program.

This year selection is larger and 
better than usual. I have personally seen the following shows:

Escaflowne: A Girl in Gaia
(Subtitled)

Director: Kazuki Sekine

Scenario: Ryota Yamaguchi, Kazuki Sekine

Opinion:
Very Good. Special mention for gorgeous pictures and soundtrack.

Akira
(New version, dubbed)

Director: Katsuhiro Otomo

Opinion:
This classic is still excellent.

Millenium Actress
(Subtitled)

Director: Satoshi Kon

Scenario: Sadayuki Murai, Satoshi Kon

Opinion:
A totally blissful masterpiece. A special mention to amazing story telling
technique.

Metropolis
(Subtitled)

Director: Rin Taro

Scenario: Katsuhiro Otomo

Opinion:
Very Good. Special mention to the innovative graphic style and spectacular
backgounds. This movie must must be seen on the maximum resolution sceen
technology allows.

Laputa: Castle in the Sky
(The new Disney dub)

Director: Hayao Miyazaki

Scenario: Hayao Miyazaki

Opinion:
Another totally blissfull masterpiece with a solid dub from Disney.

Boogie Pop Phantom
(First three TV episodes, Dubbed)

Director: Takashi Watanabe

Scenario: Sadayuki Murai

Opinon:
Not determined after only three episodes. If you really need one, I would say
your own feelings about Lain are a fair guess of how you will like this show.

The festival was a huge success. Anime
is treated seriously by the media here. Millenium Actress made
the firstpage of the influential French language cultural magazine Voir .

(http://www.voir.ca/montreal/cinema/cinema.asp?Id=16879)

Not to be outdone, its English
counterpart Hour has published a very interesting interview of director
Satoshi Kon. 

Spoilers included

(http://www.hour.ca/magazine/index.asp?id=819&parution=930)

It is time to give more substance to
my opinions. I am avoiding spoilers on the story, but I still give much
information on other aspects of the shows. I you insist on watching them with
a clean state of mind, now is the time to quit reading.

Escaflowne: A Girl in Gaia

Gorgeous is the word!

The main reason to watch this show is
to enjoy the wonderful pictures and amazing sound track. The colors,
backgound, sceneries and anumation are just perfect. The music reuse some of
the original TV series themes but also contains a lot of new material just as
good as the original Yoko Kanno tracks.

The festival program and web site
descibes this movie as a re-telling of the original TV series. Well, what do
they mean with re-telling? This is a complete re-writing! It is a totally new
story that has nothing in common with the original series except it retains
most of the characters and happens in the world of Gaia. The character designs
have also been altered. Millerna new look is quite a shock. You can see her on
the festival site. All other characters are sufficiently similar to what they
used to be to be easily recognised. I had a lot of fun checking how characters
were visually changed and what part they were playing in the new story as the
show was going on.

The new scenario is quite enjoyable.
It is an adventure much like Lodoss with Escaflowne characters. Not a bad
comparison point, but this is a little below the standard I personally would
have expected from something wearing the Escaflowne label. A few plot points
would have deserved more explanations than the writers were willing to give
us. In particular I have a couple of questions to ask about the finale but not
here since it would spoil the show.

Lain fans watch out. You will find a
few allusions to this show in a couple of scenes.

Akira

This classic has a well deserved place
in this gallery of heavyweigths.

I really enjoyed seeing it on the wide
sceen. The new master is wonderfull to watch, but since I have never seen the
old one, I can't really compare.

I have seen plenty of delicate colors
that never showed on my TV screen. I have found myself tuning the TV to get
them back to no avail.

It is apparently a new dub. It sounds
goods with credible actors and dolby effects.

Millenium Actress

A tour de force of storytelling!

Montreal have a love affair with the
work of director Satoshi Kon since 1997 when Perfect Blue won a first
prize at Fantasia. Therefore the Japanese have decided Montreal is the best
place for the world premiere of the latest Kon-san masterpiece. Even the
Japanese have not seen this show before us.

Kon-san was in Montreal feeling all
the anguish normally felt during a premiere. He was greeted with a well
deserved standing ovation. Perfect Blue fans get ready! Kon-san has
outperformed himself.

This movie is the biography of a
fictitious actress. No villains, no disaster rampaging Tokyo, just the unusual
life of an ordinary person. The real fun is not in the story, it is in how it
is told.

As Kon-san pointed out after the show,
one of the main theme in Millenium Actress is to tease the audience
with a confusion in time.

We see a collection of scenes from the
actress past. These scenes keep hopping quickly from a time period to another.
We are shown the actress past life events and extracts from the actress past
movies. We also keep hopping between periods of Japan history as he actress
has starred several historical movies. On top of this, all these scenes
elaborate on the Perfect Blue theme of confusion between facts and
fantasy.

The impressive part is we still end up
to know everything about the actress life. The confusion don’t interfere with
understanding. We know at all time what she wants, why she wants it and what
she ends up with.. I went out of the theater totally amazed.

Metropolis

Spectacular!

This was the first showing of this
movie outside of Japan.

They have spent five years to produce
this movie in order to achieve the best and it shows. It is a movie that must
be watched on the big screen. If you can’t achieve that, then hope the studio
will produce a progressive anamorphic transfer with full HDTV resolution. The
pictures are full of finely crafted little details that give them so much
life. I can’t imagine that to render well on a regular TV resolution no matter
how good the transfer can be. You may get pretty pictures but all the life
will be gone.

There is real fun in watching the
backgounds. They really succeed to create the look and feel of a huge
megapolis. I know, huge and megapolis are repetitious but in this case
repetition is deserved. We see plenty of very wide shots of urban landscape
with large number of humongous buildings. Each of these shots give an
extraodinary sense of space further enhanced with appropiate 3D effects. We
can really feel the size of the metropolis. We feel the size of each of the
individual buildings.

In terms of characters, this is not
the usual Japanese big eyes small mouth look and feel. They have a round head
large feet style that makes me think of very old fashioned american cartoons.

The scenario is fine but with some
plot points that deserve more explanations than the writer is willing to give
us. Again I have questions about the grand finale I can’t ask without spoiling
the show.

Laputa: Castle in the sky

A masterpiece that shines in this
gallery of materpieces!

This is the new dub from Disney. It is
quite good. The voice actors sounds believable at all times.

I really enjoyed this old classic,
even better than Princess Mononoke. Miyazaki moves us throughout all
sorts of emotions. Some scenes just exude happiness and wonder. We find plenty
of humour and drama as well.

Two sentences found in the festival
program:

‘This film was brought to you
courtesy of Buena Vista Home Entertainment. Please look for “Laputa: Castle in
the sky” coming soon to video and DVD.’

I just can’t wait.

Boogie Pop Phantom (first three episodes)

This is a show with a personality.

I expect the world to split between
Boogie Pop lovers and Boogie Pop haters with a big chasm between the two. That
is because there will be so few people that will dare call this show
‘ordinary’, I think strong opinions are going to be the norm.

Colors? What colors? This show is in
black and white with little touches of sepia in the mid grays just to remind
you there could have been colors. These guys don’t even try to please with
their look. The soundtrack is also harsh with a lot of city noise effects. The
story progresses so slowly that at one time I was wondering if something was
actually going on. With such a rebarbative look, no doubt the world will
contain a fair number of Boogie Pop haters.

But if you keep watching past the
negative first encounter, interesting stuff is coming out. Each episode
depicts a character through a series of little scenes. Information about the
character and story slowly build up scene after scene until a climax is
reached. The mood is very dark with serial killers, man eating spirits and
self-destructive teen-agers. This is the very kind of storytelling we find in
Lain. No doubt there will be a fair number of Boogie Pop lovers as well.

Where do I stand? Do I like or dislike
Boogie Pop? I don’t know yet. This is a 12 episodes TV series and I have seen
only only three. But I did notice that information does build up only whithin
an episode, it is building up in very delicate touches from episode to episode
as well. Whether I love or hate the series depends a lot on what is going to
happen next. Given the scenarist has also written Perfect Blue and
Millenium Actress, I expect the best.

Wait a minute! What do I see in the
Fantasia program? Are these full color pictures of scenes that were not in the
first thre episodes? They must be preparing something really big. This show
really pique my curiosity.

Let’s face it! I am doomed to become
either a Boogie Pop lover or a Boogie Pop hater. The only way to find which
one is to keep watching.