cup21 :: r2.3

[Curtis, baby]

Anwar Ka Ajab Kissa (Buddhadeb Dasgupta, 2013)
xCompass


Eri Eri rema sabakutani (Shinji Aoyama, 2005)
xYoung


vote for either
xCompass or xYoung
by May 11

[FLABREZU]

Hmm this looks to be QUITE the interesting match up!

[john ryan]

xYoung

Loved the music. Enjoyed seeing future Raiden playing around.

[nrh]

i have some notes and some poems by the director on my genre intro thread.

this is a pretty good interview by aoyama from around the time he made eli eli - http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/shinji-aoyama/

[mesnalty]

xCompass

Love the way that the trope of the loner PI who lives with his pet is subverted and turned into something surprising and gentle, and love the unusual camera movement choices in the scenes with Ayesha in particular.

[rischka]

xCompass

i think it doesn't entirely work but i love the performance of nawazuddin siddiqui and dog



some lovely touches there at the end too

[Lencho of the Apes]

I wasn't convinced that the magic-realist bits of Anwar Ka Ajab Kissa added anything important to the movie, but yes, I loved the character and the performance.

The Aoyama was also very nice/middling nice. Good to see cross-pollination between different kinds of artistic expression in the J-garde.

[niminy-piminy]

xYoung

[flip]

i didn't care for the first dasgupta film i saw, but i liked this one a lot better, i think i admired the filmmaking more than the film but there's some impressively precise staging, a few too many conversations with the dog about taking a shit for my taste (actually a few too many conversations with the dog about any topic probably). i found the aoyama was a bit too diffuse and self-indulgent, though it probably would have worked a lot better for me if i got more invested in the music - i grew up on that kind of noise rock, so i would have expected to like it, but in that centerpiece performance only the quieter bookends really caught my ear.

xCompass

[Curtis, baby]

xCompass wins 3-2.