Channel surfing

VIENNA, Virginia — I’m addicted to American television. Much like junk food, I can’t get enough of it until I’m too sick of it. Of particular interest to me are the old sitcoms that I used to watch on Betamax such as Cheers, The Cosby Show and Three’s Company. There’s also reruns of Roseanne, Seinfeld and Southpark that I religiously catch.

But the best thing about American TV is the variety. When I’m tired of the sitcoms and look for something more substantial, there are a lot of channels that cater to every taste. Just before writing this, the TV was showing Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious, Todd Solondz’s Happiness, the classic Japanese anime Macross and the NBA playoffs at the same time. I nearly lost my mind. Anyway, there are also many surprises for the adventurous viewer,and here are some hidden gems that came my way.

‘UZAMAKI’ (Higuchinsky)

Imagine Twin Peaks re-shot by Tetsuo: The Iron Man’s director Shinya Tsukamoto with a script by Edogawa Rampo, and you’ll have a rough idea of what Higuchinsky’s Uzamaki (The Spiral) is all about. The film follows an adolescent girl Kirie and her boyhood sweetheart Shuichi as they investigate the bizarre goings-on in their town in rural Japan. Students at their school are growing shells and becoming snails, Shuichi’s father starts to collect and obsess over anything with a spiral form and a storm is fast heading towards their town. The spiral is the only connecting link between these events, and with the help of a local reporter they start to uncover a secret history concerning the shape. Director Higuchinsky (a.k.a. Akihiro Higuchi) is however not very concerned about solving the mystery as he is about showing us one strange sight after another: a man committing suicide by mangling himself in a laundry washer, a woman so afraid of the spiral shape that the whorls of her finger alarm her to the point of breakdown, and a body twisting to become a human pretzel. Adapted from a popular manga by Junji Ito, the film is part of a new wave of Japanese horror that has been reaching foreign shores. What is interesting about it though is that it is more than a horror movie; it is alternately a love story, a teenage drama and a social farce. Surely not for everyone’s taste — especially for those who like their entertainment safe and predictable.

‘THE IDIOTS’ (Lars Von Trier)

Lars Von Trier’s The Idiots is a sick joke — which nonetheless makes it even funnier as it is sad. In the film, a group of young people band together and act retarded in order to spite the middle-class (and almost everybody else). The group takes turn in "spassing" out which ranges from drooling to more extreme antics bordering on anarchy.

The film’s a bit of a mess, which is exactly the point. The one thing that holds it together is Von Trier’s direction. What is particularly amazing is how the director’s vision as showcased in his past films such as Images Of Liberation and Breaking The Waves remains intact despite the Draconian rules imposed on it by Dogme 95’s Vow of Chastity. (Rules forbid the use of artificial lighting and sound as well as superficial action.)

The film is the second made under the Dogme 95 banner — the punk rock of the film world. It can be used as a metaphor for the movement as well. Like the film world. It can be used as a metaphor for the movement as well. Like the movement’s founders, the "idiots" are idealists, deliberately dumbing it down to prove a painful point: that conventions are arbitrary and ultimately become idiotic when taken too seriously.

‘AMELIE’ (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

The film’s title character is woman-child who after a cloistered childhood and the tragic loss of her mother retreats to her own imagination to re-create the world around her. Sounds a bit heavy but is anything but. Amelie is Alice in Wonderland relocated to modern France. As played by Aubrey Tautou (whose previous film credits include Venus Beauty Institute), Amelie is a character who finds special things even in the most trivial, her face "like a child holding wonder in a cup."

The second film by Jeunet without his former collaborator Marc Caro, Amelie still offers up the director’s trademark visual that owes as much to Francois Truffaut as it does to Terry Gilliam. In fact, Amelie is the director’s Jules and Jim, telling the story of fascinating female by relying on visual motifs rather than traditional narrative devices.

However, much like a puppet master getting tangled up in the strings of his own making, Jeunet’s penchant for highly-stylized camera work sometimes obscures the more emotionally affecting parts of his story. Only when he loosens the taut strings of his design do we manage to glimpse the beating heart of the film.

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