tickets booked for a few films at the espoo ciné film festival at the end of the month. woo!

saturday 27th: crash + love + hate
sunday 28th: l’amore di marja + para que no me olvides + il più bel giorno della mia vita + manderlay.

i got back a few hours ago from the opening night of star wars here in helsinki. ten screens in tennispalatsi were showing it, all starting at 3minutes past midnight.

the film was great. i loved it, despite mistakingly buying front row tickets thinking they were back row. so i spent the few hours missing out on a lot of the action due to being so close to the screen.

anyhoo, the movie. it was fantastic, looked fantastic with great little moments and some (typically) horrendous moments. to get the fullest from the whole experience, its a must to watch the 25 “clone wars” episodes that were on cartoon network over the last 18months. the cartoons are so good that when thinking of various scenes from the movie last night, i see them in cartoon style and not actual filmed scenes. check them all out! [clone wars here and here] [clone wars amazon.co.uk link and amazon.com link] (note: dvds contain the first 20 of the 25 episodes)

i keep bumping into jaques tati. a friend, noelani, mentioned him to me first last year and then over the last few days ive been looking and looking for some of his movies. the helsinki library system has some, but only with finnish (and other nordic languages) subtitles (the films are in french). so ive reserved a few of them regardless. basic finnish and basic french should do the job. the orion cinema here in helsinki is showing playtime this sunday. so i’ll go check that out (again using the french/finnish combo).

also: playtime wraps up today in new york [gothamist: jacques tati's playtime today].

svt.se – svt dokumentär. i randomly found a documentary/short film last night on swedish television. it was old footage from the late 1950′s to the early 1970′s stockholm coupled with a fantastic score by leif jordansson. the film is made by stavro and you can find more information about the film kometen (the comet) here. i only saw the second half of the 30minutes, so i missed a lot. the images fitted perfectly with the fantastic soundtrack. all shot in an almost home movie style, but with a disconnect. there was no characters, only randomly shot people going around doing their buisness in stockholm. lots of drunk people for a while all the while playing off and to the music which had a low key phillip glass feel to it with hints of some godspeed spin off and amina / sigur rós improvised introduction. fantastic stuff. (update: the dvd will be in shops (pesumably in sweden only) in about a months time)

stockholm 1965. a man with a film camera documents his surroundings the last days before the crash of the comet. a fiction film based on documentary material, from the time before the end of the world. 30 minutes of catastrophe poetry from 297 rolls of double-8 film shot between 1959 and 1971.

after this post last week, i saw that the dvd set was on sale in some shops here in helsinki. but it was priced at about 27€ each, way over my budget for some self indulgance. yesterday saw the arrival of some packages from home, inside was some cards from relations with some money. so off i went to get one of the three dvds. when the series first came out i was only interested in the chris cunningham one, but the gondry one seemed better value for money. so i got that. its one of the best things ive bought in ages. the videos are top class (and im only half way through so far), the making of../background documentary is just fantastic, funny and intersting. there was one video on it that i remembered from years ago. the “sugar water” video by a japanese band cibo matto was on an irish music show about 8ish years ago and all i remembered was the concept:

essentially “sugar water” is a one-take video, told on two sides of the screen. seems easy: everyone witnessed chris applebaum’s video for “closing time” by semisonic. but what that later video lacked was a clear and concise link between the song, its lyrics, and the characters between each side of the screen. no offense to applebaum: the video is clearly a great achievement, and was worth every penny spent on it

so it was a complete surprise to find that gondry had directed it (more info here). anyway, get the dvd in your local record/video/online store.. two thumbs up! (amazon.com / amazon.co.uk)

side a, 2003-1996: videos: the hardest button to button (the white stripes), come into my world (kylie minogue), dead leaves & the dirty ground (the white stripes), fell in love with a girl (the white stripes), star guitar (the chemical brothers), let forever be (the chemical brothers), joga (bjork), deadweight (bjork), bachelorette (bjork), everlong (foo fighters), around the world (daft punk), sugar water (cibo matto), hyperballad (bjork) i’ve been 12 forever (part 2 age 12-12): a 75-minute film including interviews with michel and the artists and collaborators stories and things: la lettre, one day, lacuna inc, drugstore (levi’s commercial), smarienberg (schmirnoff commercial), resignation (polaroid commercial) side b, 1995-1987: videos: like a rolling stone (the rolling stones), army of me (bjork), isobel (bjork), protection (massive attack), lucas with the lid off (lucas), human behavior (bjork), le me (i am), la tour de pise (jean francois coen), ma maison (oui oui), bolide (oui oui), junior et sa voix d’or (oui oui), les cailloux (oui oui), un joyeux noel (oui oui), la ville (oui oui) i’ve been 12 forever (part 1 age 12-12) stories and things: drumb and drumber, pecan pie (a short film starring jim carrey), three dead people, my brother’s 24th birthday, tiny, spin art, oui oui live concert footage, and more 52-page book of michel’s stories, drawings, photographs, and interviews full-screen format