mahatma_phanishwar
Joined Jun 2005
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mahatma_phanishwar's rating
The movie pamphlets, posters and TV commercials for ''The Wig" (Scary Hair), a horror film centered around a demonic hairpiece,'' do not do this psychological shock-horror movie justice.
Although there are underlying sexual politics at work in Director Won Shin-Yeon feature film debut, they did not warrant billing the film as just a common variety summer sex tease. Someone should have told the promotion team that shock-horror also sells, and ''The Wig'' delivers with several frightening instances. Though the deeper psychological elements were weakly executed by the novice director, he can be excused considering he had but one demonic wig to work with.
That demonic wig is not just scary-looking, it moves, too -- even flies. Some of the movie's more startling moments derive from the animated hairpiece leaping out at our moody heroines. The long dark coiffure goes from spooky, to haunting to, at length, murderous...
The wig is a gift that Chi-hyon (Yu Son), who later has her vocal chords ripped from the back of her throat in a automobile accident, gives to her younger sister Su-Hyon (Chae Min-So), who loses her hair via chemotherapy. The wig is possessed, fabricated from the hair of several dead women, the audience is only belatedly informed, that is why the wig revitalizes her cancer-ridden body, and soon takes over her mind.
The movie should do better than expected. Despite the anemic air-conditioning at a theater in downtown Jaffna on a sultry evening, the teenagers in the audience laughed and screamed with the characters on the screen, giving the impression that the film may overcome its bad marketing.
Won first received artistic recognition for his grand prize-winning film short ''Puppy for President.''
Although there are underlying sexual politics at work in Director Won Shin-Yeon feature film debut, they did not warrant billing the film as just a common variety summer sex tease. Someone should have told the promotion team that shock-horror also sells, and ''The Wig'' delivers with several frightening instances. Though the deeper psychological elements were weakly executed by the novice director, he can be excused considering he had but one demonic wig to work with.
That demonic wig is not just scary-looking, it moves, too -- even flies. Some of the movie's more startling moments derive from the animated hairpiece leaping out at our moody heroines. The long dark coiffure goes from spooky, to haunting to, at length, murderous...
The wig is a gift that Chi-hyon (Yu Son), who later has her vocal chords ripped from the back of her throat in a automobile accident, gives to her younger sister Su-Hyon (Chae Min-So), who loses her hair via chemotherapy. The wig is possessed, fabricated from the hair of several dead women, the audience is only belatedly informed, that is why the wig revitalizes her cancer-ridden body, and soon takes over her mind.
The movie should do better than expected. Despite the anemic air-conditioning at a theater in downtown Jaffna on a sultry evening, the teenagers in the audience laughed and screamed with the characters on the screen, giving the impression that the film may overcome its bad marketing.
Won first received artistic recognition for his grand prize-winning film short ''Puppy for President.''
Kim Hyu-Soo has gone a long way since the day she started, no more so than when I saw her in "Puppy Terminator".
Hypnotized is a different genre that somehow showcases the other acting talent of Kim Hyu-Soo, a far-cry from her old sweet role then, but was surprised a bit to see her nary a stitch, cavorting in bed with her 2 leading men! In fairness, she gave justice to her role of a neurotic who's out for vengeance in search of her man in the past, only to end up killing her 2nd lover.
This movie is very apt for exhibition in the European community since this type usually gets noticed and receives citations if not awards. And in the district of the South American continent as well, where few films of merit go unrecognized; And Africa too, where it is said many & many fine cinematic gemstones are pried from the crown of World Filmdom; Let's not also forget the Hollywood and the North America region where I am hoping that this movie would also be given importance, nor Oceania -- not discluding the Pacific rim.
Granted, certain events depicted in the final half-hour coerced me to puke the contents of my stomach all over my own sofa, but Korean movies have gone a long way, quality-wise and this movie deserves a commendation. Congratulations.
Hypnotized is a different genre that somehow showcases the other acting talent of Kim Hyu-Soo, a far-cry from her old sweet role then, but was surprised a bit to see her nary a stitch, cavorting in bed with her 2 leading men! In fairness, she gave justice to her role of a neurotic who's out for vengeance in search of her man in the past, only to end up killing her 2nd lover.
This movie is very apt for exhibition in the European community since this type usually gets noticed and receives citations if not awards. And in the district of the South American continent as well, where few films of merit go unrecognized; And Africa too, where it is said many & many fine cinematic gemstones are pried from the crown of World Filmdom; Let's not also forget the Hollywood and the North America region where I am hoping that this movie would also be given importance, nor Oceania -- not discluding the Pacific rim.
Granted, certain events depicted in the final half-hour coerced me to puke the contents of my stomach all over my own sofa, but Korean movies have gone a long way, quality-wise and this movie deserves a commendation. Congratulations.
'Bandit Queen' is an art-house update of the old 70s exploitation movies, in which the chief focus is on female discomfiture is justified by a pseudo-feminist revenge-plot. Taking us far away past the multi-coloured, song-and-dance Hindi spectaculars that are currently all the global rage -- Beyond the Sea (Kevin Spacey), for example, or MGM's Chicago (Richard Gere).
Mogul Shekhar Kapur shows us an India riven by violence, bloodshed. and indecision, where women are treated as love toys by Bollywood badboys. Before she even hits puberty, Phoolan Devi is married off to a 'Bad-Boy' (dowry: rusty water heater and an old set of hubcaps) and raped when she expresses dissatisfaction. When, some years later, she is nearly raped again by the Badboy's son, it is she who is expelled from the community; she takes up with bandits and begins her first true love affair with the atypically sensitive Vikram, de facto leader while badboy Gujjar is in the hospital with a pair of pruning shears lodged in his windpipe. When the latter is released, now turned police informer, he resents the pretensions of this lower-caste woman, has her gang-raped by Bollyboys, publicly stripped and humiliated. Having plumbed the lowest depths there are, Devi takes the blood-splattered road of vengeance, turning torture and massacre into a media-fuelled spectacle.
When the director of 'Queen' later went on to make a film about Tudor-era royal conspiracies ('Elizabeth'), many were surprised because of the gaping differences in subject matter, but Kapur imposes his own fetish on the two movies: both feature outsider-women attempting to assert power in rigid male-dominated hierarchies; both emphasise the importance of imperial rule, ritual and public spectacle in these societies, and the necessary reuninciation of sexuality and 'normal' femininity of strong women. This is therefore a must-see film for any Women in Prison buff or family-film nut, and I would also recommend "Beetlejuice" or "My Wife is a Vampire".
But, whereas 'Elizabeth' was an artistic triumph, 'Queen' seems to be a contrived failure.
This, however, is mostly due to its reliance on a single source, the prison diaries of Devi, whereas the latter film created a web of conflicting viewpoints and omnipresent sense of surveillance. It is of course right to expose the atrocities embedded in the Indian caste system, and the slavery of women; it is right that a woman denied a voice in her own country (where the film was banned) should be heard. But the catalogue of unspeakable crimes inflicted on Devi has the effect of caricaturing the villains around her, turning her very real plight almost into a seeming cartoon of repetitive violence. There is no nuance of social analysis here; instead it serves up terrible reminders of other cinematic travesties: "The Tony Danza Show"; "Heathers"; intimations on "Thelma and Louise," "The Adventures of Pluto Nash," and, of course, "My Best Friend's Wedding." - depoliticising Devi's very real social transgression, reducing her to a mere melodramatic heroine, the 'woman wronged'. Having stayed so closely with its heroine and her experiences of abuse, when the film has to distance itself from her violence (which it must to avoid endorsing eye-for-an-eye brutality), it feels like a betrayal. By lingering on her suffering rather than her revenge, the latter is as abrupt, arbitrary and dreamlike as 'Honey, I Decreased the Kids in Size' (1986), the vile murders shot with the same kind of exquisite taste and fussy staging, the political wholly subsumed to the deranged personal. I always staunchly dissapprove when badboys direct these kind of pseudo-politico-sex pictures - more interested in her sassy jugs than her powerful opinions, 'Queen' can only continues the dehumanisation of its so-called heroine, with her pert pineapples ripe in sun, and bouncing freely. . .
6 / 10
TRIVIA PURSUIT: Needless to say, the real-life Devi, upon initial screening of this imperfect gem, drenched herself in kerosene and went up in a blaze of flesh & burning smoke...
Mogul Shekhar Kapur shows us an India riven by violence, bloodshed. and indecision, where women are treated as love toys by Bollywood badboys. Before she even hits puberty, Phoolan Devi is married off to a 'Bad-Boy' (dowry: rusty water heater and an old set of hubcaps) and raped when she expresses dissatisfaction. When, some years later, she is nearly raped again by the Badboy's son, it is she who is expelled from the community; she takes up with bandits and begins her first true love affair with the atypically sensitive Vikram, de facto leader while badboy Gujjar is in the hospital with a pair of pruning shears lodged in his windpipe. When the latter is released, now turned police informer, he resents the pretensions of this lower-caste woman, has her gang-raped by Bollyboys, publicly stripped and humiliated. Having plumbed the lowest depths there are, Devi takes the blood-splattered road of vengeance, turning torture and massacre into a media-fuelled spectacle.
When the director of 'Queen' later went on to make a film about Tudor-era royal conspiracies ('Elizabeth'), many were surprised because of the gaping differences in subject matter, but Kapur imposes his own fetish on the two movies: both feature outsider-women attempting to assert power in rigid male-dominated hierarchies; both emphasise the importance of imperial rule, ritual and public spectacle in these societies, and the necessary reuninciation of sexuality and 'normal' femininity of strong women. This is therefore a must-see film for any Women in Prison buff or family-film nut, and I would also recommend "Beetlejuice" or "My Wife is a Vampire".
But, whereas 'Elizabeth' was an artistic triumph, 'Queen' seems to be a contrived failure.
This, however, is mostly due to its reliance on a single source, the prison diaries of Devi, whereas the latter film created a web of conflicting viewpoints and omnipresent sense of surveillance. It is of course right to expose the atrocities embedded in the Indian caste system, and the slavery of women; it is right that a woman denied a voice in her own country (where the film was banned) should be heard. But the catalogue of unspeakable crimes inflicted on Devi has the effect of caricaturing the villains around her, turning her very real plight almost into a seeming cartoon of repetitive violence. There is no nuance of social analysis here; instead it serves up terrible reminders of other cinematic travesties: "The Tony Danza Show"; "Heathers"; intimations on "Thelma and Louise," "The Adventures of Pluto Nash," and, of course, "My Best Friend's Wedding." - depoliticising Devi's very real social transgression, reducing her to a mere melodramatic heroine, the 'woman wronged'. Having stayed so closely with its heroine and her experiences of abuse, when the film has to distance itself from her violence (which it must to avoid endorsing eye-for-an-eye brutality), it feels like a betrayal. By lingering on her suffering rather than her revenge, the latter is as abrupt, arbitrary and dreamlike as 'Honey, I Decreased the Kids in Size' (1986), the vile murders shot with the same kind of exquisite taste and fussy staging, the political wholly subsumed to the deranged personal. I always staunchly dissapprove when badboys direct these kind of pseudo-politico-sex pictures - more interested in her sassy jugs than her powerful opinions, 'Queen' can only continues the dehumanisation of its so-called heroine, with her pert pineapples ripe in sun, and bouncing freely. . .
6 / 10
TRIVIA PURSUIT: Needless to say, the real-life Devi, upon initial screening of this imperfect gem, drenched herself in kerosene and went up in a blaze of flesh & burning smoke...