MIFFy, Kitty, and Samorost.

[thorfinn]

MIFFy

So, I've now seen Come Drink With Me, Demonlover, Kaidohmaru, and Interstella 5555. Reviews:

• Come Drink With Me
  Released in 1966, this is claimed to be the movie that kicked off the "kung fu" genre. Starring the Cheng Pei Pei (the actress who played Jade Fox in the recent Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), and Cheng Pei Pei was present and introduced the film, closing with a "remember, this was made 38 years ago" apology. I don't think the apology was warranted - the film has been beautifully digitally remastered, and as far as kung-fu movies go, it's still good. Not as tightly paced as it could have been, and some of the plot is not as well put together as it could be... but that's ever been the fate of genre-starting events, to be judged lacking in hindsight.
• Demonlover
  I still have mixed thoughts about this movie. I think I agree with the IMDB reviewer that says "A sadly wasted opportunity". It had good backstory, and a lot of depth potential... and a lot of twisted depth... But I think it was a little poorly plotted at the end. It also didn't help that I was fighting a mild case of nausea. I have an idiosyncratic problem with "from human eye perspective" camera motion. I have very very good proprioception and my brain really doesn't like the mismatch between visuals and proprioception. Anyway... said mild nausea probably didn't help, and my reaction, I must admit, is similar (on a much lesser scale) to my reaction to last year's The Piano Teacher. "Good, but not enjoyable." In this case, I think the "good" didn't outweigh the "not enjoyable", where, I think, for The Piano Teacher, the good did outweigh the "not enjoyable". I suspect some of that may simply have been poor translation - I wonder how much is lost to text shortening, and whether understanding the original French would have helped.
• Kai doh maru
  Pretty, very pretty. And very Japanese. Again, though, I suspect that an awful lot was lost to translation damage... It was very difficult to follow the plot, and I wonder how much of that was loss of context-damage via translation. I suspect a lot... the blurb certainly contained a lot more plot detail than it was possible to really get by following the text.
• Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem
  It's amazing how much of a story you can tell without words at all. Cheesy 70s kitsch style animation, this was the sort of film that you probably want to be on LSD to watch.

Kitty

Memed from gadge, a quick and cheerful Google search.

Samorost

Courtesy of q_skud_, here's a cute little flash game: Samorost. Oh, and beware of the link to q_skud_'s journal entry - it contains some game hint spoilers in the comments. Err, click on the little blue and brown observatory to start, and then there are 6 (I think) "levels" from there to the end.