take70: 9.4.2014

Tiny Worlds

Door open 20h

20h30: Japan 1987, 110min, english subs

 

A messy bachelor's apartment is a paradise for the huge colony of cockroaches living there: no sprays, no traps, and plenty of food. When the homeowner's girlfriend moves in, however, the party comes to an abrupt end, and the roaches must quickly adapt to a life of struggling for survival. Combines animation with live actors. 

 

22h30: Germany 1970, 84min. GERMAN

 

1970 was a busy year for Zbynek Brynych, as he managed to make Die Weibchen and Angels With Burnt Wings in addition to this psychedelic curiosity.

The German Seventeen and Anxious was also released as O Happy Day. The film's alternate title is a reference to a popular gospel song, which is performed often and con brio in the course of the action. The film's official title alludes to the coming of age experienced by its youthful protagonists. The younger actors are green but eager to please, while the veterans in the supporting cast-including Nadja Tiller and Karl Michael Vogler-help make the film palatable for those among us not politely inclined to nervous teenagers. The film's R rating is admittedly necessary, but should not suggest that the film is overtly offensive. Unfortunately, Seventeen and Anxious represents the next-to-last film effort for its talented director, Zbynek Brynych. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi 

 

take 69: 2.April 2014

SCARY SPRING

Door open 20h

20h30: Japan 1977, 90 min. with english subs
 

In the hands of experimental Japanese filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi, the tale of seven "unmarried" young high-school girls who, during a school break, travel to a spooky, remote hilltop house to visit the reclusive, mysterious Aunt of one of their fold only to be consumed one at a time by the Ghost-House/Aunt in increasingly novel ways, is escalated into a spastic, phantasmagorical confetti burst of avant-garde techniques and tonalities. Not a minute goes by without some kind of imaginative and spirited experimental visual manipulation or interjection; from kaleidoscopic color schemes, to frame and time altering collage montage, to wild, high-concept mixed media integration (animation, mattes, props, sets, etc), to mini-movie injections (lovingly parodying/mimicking everything from silent film stylistics, to romantic fantasies to obligatory action scenes). Any and all workings of the film form are here incorporatedly warped; from imagery and editing to music and sound to content and presentation. Even the sketches of characters and their respective performances by the actors are hemmed in time with the overall off-the-wall configuration. (Example: Each girl is intentionally drawn with their stock personalities (the musician, the over-weight eater, the athlete, etc) novelly paraded in gleeful iconic irreverence.) The moods and tones of the film are equally melodic in their own discordant tangential way; seamlessly walking the line between comedy, horror and the deadpan aloof. It all adds up to a whole lot of fun. Where else could you see a girl eaten by a piano, an upright Bear helping cook dinner at a roadside noodle-stand or a man turned into a pile of bananas because he doesn't like melons!? With all its packed in candy-colored confections and novel door prizes, "Hausu" is a cinematic surprise party all in one...just add you. 

 

KINO ANDERS 5of5 STARS!

22h10: USA 1986, 87 min. english

 

From Beyond is a 1986 American sci-fi/ body horror film directed by Stuart Gordon (Reanimator), loosely based on the short story of the same title by H. P. Lovecraft, and was written by Dennis Paoli, Gordon and Brian Yuzna.

From Beyond centers around a pair of scientists attempting to stimulate the pineal gland with a device called The Resonator. An unforeseen result of their experiments is the ability to perceive creatures from another dimension that proceed to drag the head scientist into their world, who returns as a grotesque shape-changing monster and preys upon the others at the laboratory.