Dead Snow (2009)

Død snø aka Dead Snow
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Norway 2009
91 min
Tagline: Ein! Zwei! Die!

Double April Fools Day on you all! First I make a bad joke about the subject for my essay, then I disappear for more than a month - surprise! I will say only this: I was gone, bin Laden died, and now I'm back again. You may draw your own conclusions. (But please build your conspiracy theories around something Mata Hari like, so I may feel a little flattered.)

The other day I watched this film Dead Snow, which I had bought on DVD for my brother as a Christmas gift (with accompanying Merry Christmas card with Joseph Goebbels on it, as is mandatory). I had not seen it, but a film that claims to be "the best Norweigan Nazi-Zombie-splatter film that has ever been made" just has to be good. Not only do I think that Dead Snow is the best Norweigan Nazi-Zombie-splatter film that has ever been made - I suspect that it is the only Norweigan Nazi-Zombie-splatter film that has ever been made. And hopefully it will not spawn an army of cheap copies.

Just the idea of Dead Snow is pretty mind blowing. I watched the trailer on a pretty wild (read: "lots-of-liquor") party about a year ago, and it is but now that I have been able to still my hunger for it. Now, this is a tongue-in-cheek film, as many zombie films are. But it is unique, oh, it is unique! You may first watch the trailer and get an idea of what we are talking about here. Count the film references - which film are you for instance thinking about when the youngsters open the box with Nazi gold? (I know, quiz for 7-year olds. I just want my readers to feel a little smart once in a while. Altruism for the win.)





If the plot isn't obvious from the trailer, it is just as simple and cliché as a gang of stupid/horny teenagers getting the brilliant idea to live in a filthy cabin far up in the Norweigan mountains. Of course only one knows how to find the way back to the car/civilization, and he is also the only one with a snowmobile. One girl is supposed to meet up with the others at the cabin, but is viciously hunted down and eaten by (what we suspect is) a Nazi zombie in the very first scene of the film. Of course the guy with the only snowmobile and the only sense of direction goes off to look for her, when the rest of the gang are attacked by... well, a pretty dead, rotten and angry Nazi army that want their Leprechaun gold back.

Aside from just being a wonderfully entertaining film, perfect to watch with a few cans of beer and a loved one by your side that can alternate between laughter and horror to your privilege (I advise both men and women to use each other in these kind of situations), Dead Snow is also an intelligent parody of the zombie film genre. They don't give a damn about ridiculous plot holes (why would a teenage girl get the idea to walk across the mountains by herself? what is that old man doing in the mountains, and why does he just invite himself into the cabin to tell them the history of the Nazi occupation and that their coffee tastes awful? why would a hot girl want to fuck with a guy taking a shit? and so on), and the blood and gore is wonderfully entertaining.

It could happen... if you are insanely disturbed and grotesque. Guys, don't get your hopes up.

One of my favorite scenes is when that Rastafari chick is chased by zombies and manages to hide in a tree, just to have a fucking crow making noises and draw attention to her hiding spot. In desperation she grabs the crow around the neck and bangs it against the tree until it dies. (Haha. Macabre and humorous. I'm sick, I know.) She looks down to see if the zombies have gone. Two uniformed zombies stand still under the tree, looking up on her. There is silence and stillness. The zombies start to climb the tree and the Rastafari chick throws the dead crow at them. It doesn't help.

Anti-humor is the shit. Watch this film now! And then you can brag about you being so cultural, having seen a Norweigan (or was it Swedish? maybe it was from Switzerland...?) movie, and therefore may get laid if you play your cards right. Thank me for that. My pleasure.

International cinema: Australia and New Zealand

I'm currently taking a course about cinema history from the 1960's onward - and Gloria almighty, there's a lot! Studying film was much easier and reviewable in the silent era, when there were Hollywood, some cool and artsy German films, Swedish films with a lot of snow, Italian over-the-top historical epics and some Soviet propaganda.

When studying cinema was an easy task.

The Phantom Carriage (Sweden, 1921) and Battleship Potemkin (Soviet Union, 1925).

But after the 1960's every damn underdeveloped country had their own cinema movements, and suddenly there is a hell of a lot to study! Of course, it's wildly interesting too. Last week I watched a Senegalese bisexual version of Carmen, to mention something.

Tomorrow we are going to watch House of Flying Daggers (2004) in the context of Oceanian cinema, and since I thought that the director's previous effort Hero (2002) was visual mastery with a plot that was as fun as watching the grass grow in slow motion... well, it will probably be a nice morning.

Anyway. What I just came to think about while reading about films from Oceania, is that there is a hell of a lot of international cinema that most people have seen without probably thinking too much about it. Perhaps it's just my own interpretation, but it is almost like one expects all movies at the theaters to be Hollywood productions, since it's the standard. Therefore, I thought about writing some posts highlighting special "waves" of cinema from countries other than the USA, that have reached a great audience that not only consists of cinephiles. Well, a brief overview at least. Now: Australia and New Zealand.

Feel free to mention which of these films you have seen, and if I should have mentioned anyone in the context!

Australian cinema started to flourish in the late 1970's and early 1980's, and historical epics was a popular subject. What you might have seen in that category is a young Mel Gibson in the Word War I drama Gallipoli (1981). But wait, don't we need more Mel Gibson? Who can get tired of a drunken antisemitic Don Juan? Throw in the wildly popular futuristic action movies Mad Max (1978) and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981).

Historical depictions and hunk action: Gallipoli and Mad Max.

And then there was the Australian comedy. For some reasons, in the 1980's the world just went crazy for Australian humor. Along came Crocodile Dundee (1986), Muriel's Wedding (1994), The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) and Babe (1995). The latter was however American financed since USA likes to fund already winning concepts (like Crocodile Dundee II).

Australian comedies: Crocodile Dundee, Muriel's Wedding, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Babe.

And when Australia could deliver films that were popular with the audience, along came more American financed films from Australia and with Australian directors. Australian actors that became popular and could enjoy a Hollywood career (often with either an American or British accent, though) are Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Hugh Jackman, Heath Ledger, Geoffrey Rush and Naomi Watts (born in England, raised in Australia). To name a few. The violent drunkard Russell Crow is from New Zealand, see below.

Australian director Baz Luhrmann directed Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Moulin Rouge! (2001). The animated family film Happy Feet (2006) is also a fairly new American-Australian co-production.

New Zealand, being a smaller country and often confused with Australia, had a much more modest success in the film industry. Jane Campion made the fantastically successful weepie The Piano (1993, and yes - I kind of almost cried a bit too). It was a USA-Australia-New Zealand (phuh!) co-production, with middle-aged-woman-fascination and New Zealand raised Sam Neill in the cast.
New Zealander Lee Tamahori made Once Were Warriors (1994) about Maoris, and at least I remember my mother's fascination with a VHS copy of it when I was little. The Swedish translation of the title was the more corny "The Soul of the Warrior". (Just a bit of useless trivia.)

Drama from New Zealand: The Piano and Once Were Warriors.

But then! Oh, but then. Then came the previously cool and original B-movie director Peter Jackson and pumped in money like the greatest of Arabic oil countries into the New Zealand film industry with his adaption of J.R.R Tolkien's complicated nonsense books The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003). Suddenly New Zealand could finance films like never before, and Jackson built a state-of-the-art facility in Wellington where cool D stuff for films like Avatar (2009) could be made. (Well, I'm not into the specifics of the technology - blame me!)
After that cash wave came films like Whale Rider (2002) about a Maori girl, and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2004) by a New Zealander. Then nobody heard about New Zealand ever after the latter beautiful film played the lovely tunes of the Andrew Sisters' "Oh, Johnny, Oh, Johnny, Oh!".

See you next time with... some other part of the world in some era or another.

A screenshot from some Lord of the Ring film, the female protagonist of Whale Rider and a both beautiful and disturbing scene from the beautiful and disturbing Chronicles of Narnia.

Spirited Away (2001)

Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Japan 2001
125 min
Studio Ghibli

Spirited Away was the first anime I ever saw, and it turned my prejudices against the anime craze upside down. Of course, there are loads of really meaningless and bad anime too, as in any film genre: but I realized that this film is an example of creativity and imagination I had never seen the like of. In the same way Tim Burton creates his own universe, so does Studio Ghibli.

The protagonist is a young girl called Chihiro, who at the beginning of the film is moving to another town. They stop at the way when they are fascinated by a strange building, and soon they end up in a pleasant little town. "Pleasant" might be the wrong word, since everything seems strange. There are no people in sight, but like any film seen through the eyes of the child, the parents do not thing anything is odd and continue to stroll along. Unfortunately the town proves to be a link to the spirit world, and when Chihiro's parents start gorging on the local town food, they turn into pigs. Chihiro is captured in the spirit world, where she is stripped off her name by the witch Yubaba. Chihiro, or "Sen" as she is now called, has to try to survive in the strange spirit world and find a way to rescue her parents, who risk getting eaten if they turn too fat.

The original title "Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi" literally means "Sen and Chihiro's spiriting away", and refers to an occurrence in Japanese folklore where a person mysteriously disappear when an angered god has taken the person away (that's the word "kamikakushi" in the title). I get a strong feeling that there are a lot more references to tales and folklore in Spirited Away and its likes - thank God there is Internet.

Lolita: Student at the Department of Cinema Studies

How cool doesn't that sound? I still can't believe it's true.

This Monday I entered the building Filmhuset ("The Film House"), especially build for Cinema Studies in 1971, to attend by first film class. From the outside one could never guess what treasures are to be found there - a big ass block of concrete on the far side of a huge field, at this year almost impenetrable by 6ft of snow. (At least that's how it feels walking over it in the morning after only one cup of coffee in my blood stream.) It sure is a dream.

Filmhuset from the other side, and my every morning view from now on.

The usual school day contains of a two hour lecture in the morning, and then a screening in one of the two film theaters in the building in the afternoon. I bet everyone who was kind enough to write about their classic-film-at-the-theater-experiences on their blogs had to suffer my complaints about how I never will see a classic film on a big screen; Well, no more!

This Monday I lost my classic-film-on-the-silver-screen virginity with Francois Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 (1966) - a dystopia where the firemen no longer works with putting out fires, but rather break into people's homes to find hidden books and burn them. You see, litterature only makes people sad. Pretty cool film with Oskar Werner (from Jules and Jim) and Julie Christie (fresh from Doctor Zhivago), and the only English speaking film Truffaut made.

Pictures from Fahrenheit 451 (1966).

The title refers to the heat where books start burning.

Yesterday we watched Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006), which is (in my opinion) more of an eye candy film than a truly great one. It's cool, but a bit slow. But jeez, is it pretty!

Eye candy from Marie Antoinette (2006).

Did I mention that the movie theaters are named after the two great Swedish silent film directors, Mauritz Stiller (he who is responsible for Greta Garbo's arrival in Hollywood) and Victor Sjöström (Seastrom)? Did I also forget to mention that the Swedish film association Cinemateket show loads and loads of classic films in these theaters - in the very building where I study?

It certainly feels like I have entered a brighter era of my life, and I really hope that the feeling will last for a while. Tomorrow it's time to see Citizen Kane (1941) in the Mauritz theater, and on Tuesday we get the chance to watch a silent piece by earlier mentioned Victor Sjöström (in the Victor theater, of course), A Lover in Pawn (Mästerman, 1920) - with live piano music!

I did not mean this to become a "in your face" post (alright, I did) - but maybe I won't feel like this for a long time, so I better hurry to brag about it!

Polish film poster. Mr. Kane looks evil.

As a last addition to this post I would like to include two works by Frenchman Michel Gondry, the man behind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). He experiments a lot with "video art", or what one should call it.  Today it becomes more and more popular to extend the film experience through multiple forms of media, something that is referred to as convergence culture. As I generally am quite uninterested in new films, I am quite surprised to find this phenomenon so fascinating. A good example is the Matrix franchise, that requires the viewer to not only see all three movies, but also play the games, read the comics and search the website to get a full idea (or at least, a broader picture of) what the Matrix is.

Michel Gondry and Eternal Sunshine screen wright Pierre Bismuth has created a video installation, a work of art, called The All Seeing Eye. They have filmed a room full of personal belongings and have let the camera swipe the room in 360 degrees seven times. For each turn some things vanish. There's a television in the middle of the room showing a scene from Eternal Sunshine, making it obvious for those who have seen that film that this room is more a memory of a room than anything else, and that the memory is currently being erased. The basic question that both the film and this art work is asking is What is a memory?, and if a memory were to be erased, how much else that associates to it must also be demolished?

(And no, these are not my own thoughts. I agree with them, but to come up with all this myself would take more time than I use for my spontaneous throwing together of posts on this blog. This is a subject that is discussed and related to a lot in cinema studies, and that is why I share it with you.)

Another cool Gondry work is a less than three minute long short that he made as a birthday present to his friend Karen, who loves to ride a horse. It was just so cute and disturbing that I had to share it. It is called Three Dead People., and the music is lovely.

I will be back with more normal posts when the hype of finally starting to educate myself in a subject I have such a strong passion for had calmed down!

Starting the year with bloodshed

I have a tendency to have a great hangover after New Years Eve, lasting for a couple of days. I also have a tendency, when I have a hangover, to have a terrible blood thirst. It's almost only the day-after-the-night-before that I can watch less respectable, new films by my own free will. Having a hangover, feeling sorry for myself and watching people getting their limbs torn off in the most wicked ways possible - it just completes me.

That's why I decided to watch Saw (2004) and Saw II (2005).

Now, they are definitively not as brilliant as the film posters themselves are, but they are entertaining. I will sum up my late-night Saw experience with one sentence: The first one had a better continuity in the story and Cary Elwes from The Princess Bride (1987), but the second one had a much better twist towards the end, but also some very annoying testosterone-high male characters.

There, I won't waste more words on those films, although they weren't bad. (Just wait until I watch the rest of them, hu-ha...) If that wasn't enough, you just need to watch Angry Alien's 30 second re-enactment with bunnies [click on picture below] - it pretty much sums up the whole series, I believe.