So

by Peter Gabriel

The only record of Peter Gabriel I ever owned on vinyl was manufactured in the USSR and entitled simply «Питер Гейбриэл» (apparently, they weren’t so sure how to translate So to Russian, and the spelling «Гейбриэл» must have looked innocent back then).

I also had a curious double compilation album Greenpeace Breakthrough (1989) which included the So opener «Красный дождь» (Red Rain). I completely forgot that, in addition to Peter Gabriel (now as Питер Гэбриэл), it featured Sting, Grateful Dead (Грейтфул Дэд), Sade (Шаде) and Dire Straits (Дайер Стрейтс)!

About the same time, I first spotted Sledgehammer and Big Time music videos on 2×2, the first commercial TV channel in the USSR. Man I was impressed.

The covers of the So songs abound. I love Sledgehammer by Morgan James...

...and Mercy Street by Rosegarden Funeral Party.

But nobody makes Peter Gabriel covers better than Gabriel himself, with a little help from his friends. My favourite So re-interpretations are Don’t Give Up as a duet with Tracy Chapman...

...and In Your Eyes with Youssou N’Dour, Angélique Kidjo and Soweto Gospel Choir.

Five animated shorts

I was curious about the nominations for this year’s Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film. Last week I had a chance to watch them all.

Forevergreen

a film by Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears

Moralising and predictable, this film is hands down the wurst of the lot. In case you didn’t know it: pine nuts good, junk food bad.

The Three Sisters

a film by Konstantin Bronzit

The three titular sisters lead their forlorn existence on a small island. Naturally, it’s all transformed when a sailor moves in. This (not so) slightly misogynistic short can make you giggle a couple of times before you get bored.

The Girl Who Cried Pearls

a film by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski

I wonder what was the real reason for giving this stop-motion animation its Oscar. Yes, it’s technically stunning. The story is rather dubious, to say the least. And I didn’t feel any emotional connection to its, let’s be honest, ugly characters.

Butterfly

a film by Florence Miailhe

Touching and beautiful, Butterfly is based on the life of the Olympic swimmer and Holocaust survivor Alfred Nakache. Now this is the Oscar material.

Retirement Plan

a film by John Kelly

At just seven minutes, this film is the shortest — and, IMHO, the best — of the five.

Memoir of a Snail

a film by Adam Elliot

It’s more than refreshing to see a modern animation (or any modern film, for that matter) made entirely by humans. In words of its director,

every prop, set and character in the film has been handmade. There’s no CGI, no AI, everything you see is something real and tangible that you could hold in your hand.

Besides the visuals, I loved the story and its (often, but not always, dark) humour. The voice talents include Sarah Snook, Jacki Weaver, Eric Bana, Dominique Pinon and Nick Cave (yes the Nick Cave).

Éiru

a film by Giovanna Ferrari

From Cartoon Saloon, the creators of The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, comes this charming hand-drawn short. Once again, recommended to me by Timur.

Mariposas Negras

a film by David Baute
screenplay by Yaiza Berrocal and David Baute

This animation tells the stories of Valeria, Tanit and Shaila, three migrant women from different parts of the world. A Spanish-Panamanian co-production, directed by the Canarian David Baute and featuring the original song by Rubén Blades.

Encanto

a film by Jared Bush and Byron Howard

At the long last, I watched Encanto (in Spanish), thanks to the open-air cinema cycle Vamos de cine organised by LPA Cultura. I have to say that I didn’t enjoy the first 10—15 minutes at all and was even considering going home. The viewers, that is, little kids and their parents, were producing so much noise that sometimes I couldn’t hear the dialogue. I’m glad I stayed.

OK, the “happy” ending was a bit of a let-down. I was hoping for a magic-less alternative, which was already taking shape. But all in all, I liked this film. I would like it even better if not for songs. Most of them are forgettable (I forgot them already) and don’t add much to the story. A few are irritating, none more so than Colombia, Mi Encanto yodelled by Carlos Vives. I’d say, scrap them all — with a singular exception of No se habla de Bruno (We Don’t Talk About Bruno) which is a masterpiece. I think that the Spanish version is superior to the (already pretty damn good) English original.

Cool World

a film by Ralph Bakshi

There goes €1 that I’ll never see again.

If you’ve ever seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit, don’t bother with this one. And if you’ve never seen Roger Rabbit, don’t bother with Cool World either: watch Roger Rabbit.

So what’s wrong with this film? Just about everything.

Cool World concludes the cycle Ralph Bakshi: Urban Noir, and about time too.

American Pop

a film by Ralph Bakshi

Finally, a Bakshi film that I actually liked. A soundtrack for the (best part of) 20^th century, something for kids of today to watch. Don’t let the title put you off (yes, it makes me cringe too): “pop” here is short for popular music, moving from ragtime to punk with jazz, swing, soul and rock in between. Not pop music. I still don’t get why American artists insist on naming their creations “American something”.

It’s also pretty uneven. The story kind of disintegrates towards the end — as the quality of music goes down. Yet there are some truly beautiful or otherwise funny bits that made my night.

Magical Caresses

a series of short films by Lori Malépart-Traversy
animation by Keyu Chen and Lori Malépart-Traversy

From the director of Le clitoris comes this charming “animated documentary series based on Caresses Magiques, a book series written and edited by Sarah Gagnon-Piché and Sara Hébert” (I took this quote from the end credits). The “animated documentary series” is really a mini-series, of five animated shorts no longer than 4 minutes each; and the “book series” was just two volumes, now out of print. The first of the films is narrated in English by Ms Malépart-Traversy herself; the other four feauture the voices of, I suppose, some of the book’s heroines (in French, with English subtitles). You can watch all the films on the National Film Board of Canada web site or on Vimeo (scroll down to the embedded videos).

Coonskin

a film by Ralph Bakshi

Ralph Bakshi’s third feature looks like a combination of Fritz the Cat (animals) and Heavy Traffic (humans and live action). Finally, some sort of coherent plot, which makes the film actually watchable without constant thinking of when it’s gonna end. There is marginally less violence than in his two previous efforts and practically no sex — I wish this was the other way round. For me, Coonskin was the least offensive one of the three Bakshi’s films I’ve seen so far. Or maybe I’m developing tolerance to this stuff.

Heavy Traffic

a film by Ralph Bakshi

The same checklist here as in Bakshi’s debut feature, plus some clumsy live action and pinball. Heavy Traffic mostly consists of zoomorphic humanoids, not too different from anthropomorphic beasts of Fritz the Cat but uglier. The only attractive character is Carole (Beverly Hope Atkinson). What did she find in Michael the pinball-not-exacty-wizard (Fritz 2.0? Future Bakshi?) is anyone’s guess. The soundtrack is really good, would be even better without Scarborough Fair.

Fritz the Cat

a film by Ralph Bakshi

Sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, profanity, graphic violence, politically incorrect jokes — in other words, “something to offend just about everyone”. I must say Fritz the Cat didn’t offend me that much. Perhaps it haven’t aged that well then. The thing is, at 78 munutes, the film is way too long for the message, if there was any. I don’t mind sex between anthropomorphic barnyard animals, I’d appreciate (proportionally) more rock’n’roll, and I really could live with less violence. Cut it to 20 minutes, I say, and we’ll talk. Of course, Billie Holiday and Bo Diddley are great. Some of them jokes still work —

We interrupt the Israeli–Arab war for this special announcement. The President, after conferring with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, has agreed to send more arms to Israel, based on the return of New York City and Los Angeles to the United States.

— and some of them don’t. “Radical left”, what radical left? By now, there’s no left left in the US.

Even bigger problem for me is that I didn’t find the protagonist lovable, or charismatic, or interesting in any way. The only character I sympathised with was Harriet the horse, maybe because she reminded me of the donkey from The Bremen Town Musicians.

Fritz the Cat opens the cycle Ralph Bakshi: Urban Noir organised by Filmoteca Canaria and Tenerife Noir.

39 very short films

Thirty-nine? You must be kidding me. Not ten, not fifteen, but 39 short films selected from, wait for it, 58 submitted to the competition. The competition in question is called Visionaria, but I’m afraid this year’s jury had a very vague idea what “selection” is. Judging from what I’ve seen yesterday, the remaining 19 films (33%) must have been pretty unimpressive. The screening was held in Teatro Guiniguada which was packed — with Rabbit’s friends and relations, I suppose. Short films are not that popular otherwise.

The complete programme is available here — I can’t be bothered to list all films in this post. I liked Femme by Javier González and Still Live by María Sanz Esteve. My favourite, however, and the one I voted for, was Agatha Christie estuvo aquí by Cayetana H. Cuyás which, to my delight, has won the first prize.

All the films are available at YouTube.

Արշալույսի լուսաբացը

a film by Inna Sahakyan

An animated documentary based on the life of Arshaluys “Aurora” Mardiganian (1901—1994). It also includes interviews with Mardiganian and surviving fragments of the 1919 silent film Auction of Souls.

Here’s a bit of info that appeared in the end titles: it was not until 2021 that the United States recognised the the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide. Is it correct? I looked it up: yes, correct. Worse still: neither UK nor Spain, as sovereign nations, are there yet, although the parliaments of Scotland, Wales and six Spanish autonomous communities have recognised the Armenian genocide.

Aurora’s Sunrise was the last film of the cycle Tiempo de memoria, memoria en el tiempo, organised by Instituto Canario de Desarrollo Cultural (ICDC), the only one that I’ve seen. Before the screening, the Canarian flautist Cristian Suárez played three short pieces in memory of the war victims.

Dispararon al pianista

a film by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal

From the creators of Chico & Rita, this animated almost-documentary follows the trail of hitherto unknown to me Brazilian jazz pianist Tenório Jr. who mysteriously disappeared in 1976.

I found They Shot the Piano Player uneven, often repetitive and at times frustrating. In addition, the version I saw in Los Ángeles was dubbed. Although the film is Spanish, its original soundtrack is mostly not. So when they say “starring Jeff Goldblum” and “interviews with Gilberto Gil, João Gilberto, Vinicius de Moraes, Milton Nascimento, Caetano Veloso” etc. etc. and after that you don’t hear their voices, you’re bound to be disappointed.

On a more positive note, I’ve discovered a new name. And the music is great throughout.

Slide

a film by Bill Plympton

Ah, if only they’ve made it four times shorter, this film would have been just perfect. Never mind the ridiculous plot or a yawning absence of likeable characters (maybe apart from some moles sticking out of the ground). It’s 80 minutes of country and western music that will destroy your faith in humanity, if you still have one.

もののけ姫

a film by Hayao Miyazaki

I think Princess Mononoke was the first Studio Ghibli film I saw, yet somehow it never became my favourite. Rather the opposite. Still, I endured it quite a few times when the kids were little. Yesterday, we sat down to revisit it.

It’s amazing how much I’ve forgotten in, um, fifteen years or so. I definitely enjoyed the movie now, yucky stuff notwithstanding, maybe because we watched it (for the first time!) in original Japanese, maybe just a nostalgia effect. There are many parallels with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Lady Eboshi, of course, is a mediaeval version of Princess Kushana, as San (aka princess Mononoke) is a (p)reincarnation of Nausicaä. Kodama the tree spirits are almost unbearably cute; of human characters, the Iron Town women are the most appealing.

Spider-Man: Cruzando el Multiverso

a film by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson

It’s been a long time since we visited a mainstream cinema so it came as a surprise that the nearest one, Cinesa at CC El Muelle, has closed on 1 May 2023. So we went to Yelmo at CC Las Arenas where they still show the latest of the Spider-Verse franchise.

Like any second film in almost any trilogy, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is more grandiose, more fast-paced but nowhere as creative and satisfying than its prequel. Más de lo mismo, I’d say. A welcome addition is the Spot (I liked better his Spanish name, la Mancha), an aspiring Spider-Man’s nemesis who first surfaces as a petty thief. Sadly, the more his powers grow, the duller he becomes. The (Leonardo da Vinci-designed) Vulture is pretty cool. The Spanish dub is very decent, maybe apart from that of Rio Morales, Miles’s mum (Diana Alonso), sounding like, well, typical Spanish dub. The end credits are the work of art, just ignore the song.

По следам бременских музыкантов

a musical by Yuri Entin, Vasily Livanov and Gennady Gladkov
a film by Vasily Livanov

Speaking of 50^th anniversaries: here’s another one for you. For me too.

Just like it was in the case of its prequel, I first heard On the Trail of the Bremen Town Musicians on the vinyl. Once again, it was a gift from my cousin who came to visit us one weekend. I still remember the magical moment when he put the disc on a turntable and we heard the words, read by Oleg Tabakov:

Давным-давно на белом свете жили не только глупые короли и прекрасные принцессы, не только страшные лесные разбойники и весёлые бродячие артисты, но и гениальные сыщики.

Long, long ago, there lived not only silly kings and beautiful princesses, not only scary forest robbers and merry wandering actors, but also genius detectives.

The musical turned out to be even bigger box of surprises than its predecessor. I certainly did not expect Muslim Magomayev — an establishment singer à la Iosif Kobzon and Lev Leshchenko — to be there. And there he was, voicing not only Troubadour, who, indeed, sounds like the “official” Magomayev, but also his antagonists: Genius Detective (Гениальный Сыщик), with his catchphrase “Oh, yes!”, and Atamansha (Атаманша), the leader of Scary Forest Robbers.

My mum used to quote Genius Detective («А нюх как у собаки, а глаз как у орла»), Silly King («Такая, сякая, сбежала из дворца») and Beautiful Princess («Ни-че-го я не хо-чу»). The two songs that the Bremen Town Musicians perform when posing as “foreign” (as opposed to their native Bremenland) rockers were a staple of my brother’s band repertoire in the early 1980s. Many years later, Yuri would call «сыщик» any vintage convertible reminiscent of the car that Genius Detective drives in the film.

この世界の片隅に

a film by Sunao Katabuchi

Tamara did some research before deciding to watch this film with us. I also was happy that it didn’t turn out to be another Grave of the Fireflies or When the Wind Blows. Even as the war shows its ugly face, the heroine manages to find beauty and joy in (this corner of) the world. Suzu’s “haute cuisine in the times of severe food rationing” masterclass is astounding.