Bloody hell, the November cinema scene up here in Queensland has gone a little crazy!
First up early in the month, the Japan Film Festival is happening around the country, and sure, we don’t get a lot to choose from comparatively speaking, but what we do get is worth leaving the house for – Studio Ghibli’s Arrietty, based on The Borrowers; live action extravaganza Space Battleship Yamato (come on, it’s a battleship in space that shoots a laser that could have made the Death Star jealous! How can that not be awesome?); Railways, the new feature by Nishikori Yoshinari (Always – Sunset on Third Street); and Yamakoshi: The Recovery of Tiny Japanese Village, a timely and relevant story of Niigata Prefecture’s recovery after the Great Chuetsu Earthquake seven years on.
Aaaaaand, if that’s not enough to fill your calendar, the mighty, always-a-pleaser Supanova is on as well! Opening night, if you haven’t already got a ticket, is the full premiere of the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. The weekend fun then follows with the finals of the Madman National Cosplay Championship, hours of animated awesomeness in the Anime Screening Room and guests Brina Palencia (voice actor for Rei in Evangelion among other things) and a panel with Sushi Typhoon, the film subsidiary responsible (in more ways than one) for Mutant Girls Squad, Helldriver and Alien vs Ninja.
So, that’s your first 4 days in November sorted (you might have time to eat and sleep, but I doubt it), but what about the rest? Well, you have to know about BIFF, right? For years I’ve been complaining that Brissie’s own international film festival was on pretty much exactly the same time as Melbourne’s massive MIFF. What was with that? Were the states trying to make me choose? Was it some kind of sick test of loyalty? Well, no more am I sneaking around behind BIFF’s back, trying to catch furtive moments with that ‘other festival’, because BIFF now screens in November! And relevant to my interests, there are a number of worthy films pencilled into the little black book:
- Guilty of Romance (dir. Shion Sono)
- Helldriver (dir. Yoshiro Nishimura of Tokyo Gore Police and Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl fame)
- I Wish (dir. Kore-eda Hirokazu and I assume I don’t have to tell you what else he’s done because you should already know and be buying tickets as we speak)
- The Yellow Sea (Hong-Jin Na’s new blistering offering)
- Revenge: A Love Story (dir. Ching-Po Wong and in relation to this film, words like ‘over the top’, ‘frenetic’ and ‘extreme’ are probably understatements)
- The Drunkard (dir. Freddie Wong)
- Let the Bullets Fly (dir. Wen Jiang and starring CYF! Where’s he been lately anyway?)
But wait; there’s more! Not only do you get all this, you also get the Gold Coast Film Festival, a biannual event which always, always has something impressive to offer. This year the line up includes Let the Bullets Fly, The Man From Nowhere, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, Gantz 1 and 2, 13 Assassins, Norwegian Wood and the animated Japanese films Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below and Midori-Ko. Not only is the GCFF picking up a few titles screening at JFF elsewhere, it’s offering a few things nobody’s got. That’s reason enough to get in your car (or hey, the train/bus combo will get you there too) and get your already over-cinema’d self along to all the beachy bliss.
After all, with this glut in festivals, who knows when your next Asian cinema big-screen fix is going to be? Best to make the most of it while you can. December can be the month you spend recovering. That’s what the Christmas break is for, isn’t it?