Tag: viral

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Observing
(Opazovanje)

Director – Janez Burger – 2023 – Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, North Macedonia – Cert. none – 83m

*****

A paramedic must deal with the aftermath of a man being kicked unconscious after people watch the incident on social media livestreaming – plays in the spirit of the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

The sounds of a man (Vito Weiss) being beaten up by others. No images. Mercifully.

If you lived in Slovenia, you’d be familiar with a news story about a man who was beaten up by others who livestreamed the event over social media, picking up an audience of 20 000, out of whom only a negligible number, maybe a handful, thought to call the police. That incident was the starting point for this film, which is an attempt to come to term with such events.

It’s a drama based around the three-person ambulance detail who find themselves picking up the victim of the livestreamed attack. He’s in a bad way and winds up in intensive care. Most of the ambulance pickups either die on the way to or in hospital, or they make a full recovery; this man, however, remains stable but unconscious in the ICU with no sign of either recovery or lapse.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Marcel The Shell
With Shoes On

Director – Dean Fleischer Camp – Co-Creator – Jenny Slate – 2021 – US – Cert. PG – 90m

***

A man makes a documentary about tiny, stop-frame animation shell character Marcel and his granny, the rest of whose family have mysteriously disappeared – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 17th

Expectations are a funny thing. I’m a huge admirer of both stop-frame as a medium and films which mix up animation and live action. This film does that in a fresh and original way. At its core is a cute little critter named Marcel, part extraordinary visual conceit, part improvised voice over by actress and co-creator Jenny Slate, continuing a long tradition of women voicing small boys in animation.

Slate didn’t just voice the character, though – she originally created the voice as a joke and then Dean Fleischer Camp, suddenly needing to shoot a short film quickly for a commission, threw together a shell, an eye and some tiny shoes to create a unique and, indeed, distinctive-looking character. The character and the short film in which he starred became an internet sensation.

For this feature, the pair have crafted a story in which documentary filmmaker Camp (playing himself) finds himself living in the house which tiny Marcel (voice: Slate) occupies with his ageing and vulnerable grandmother Connie (voice: Isabella Rosellini), their quite considerable extended family having mysteriously disappeared.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Ring
(Ringu,
リング )
(Collection)

Ring

Director – Hideo Nakata – 1998 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 96m

*****

Spiral (Rasen)

Director – Joji Iida – 1998 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 97m

** 1/2

Ring 2

Director – Hideo Nakata – 1999 – Japan – Cert. 12 – 95m

*****

Ring 0

Director – Norio Tsuruta – 2000 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 99m

***1/2

Ring plays in the BFI Japan 2021 season October / November at BFI Southbank, also currently streaming on BFI Player as part of the BFI Japan 2021 programme. Ring and Ring 2 are on Shudder.

You watch a short, scary video on the VCR. Then your phone rings… you have a week to show it to someone else – or die! Ring (1998) took the world by storm.

A single parent, TV journalist investigates a cursed videotape…

I review Arrow’s Ring Collection for All The Anime.

Ring plays in the BFI Japan 2021 season October / November at BFI Southbank, also currently streaming on BFI Player as part of the BFI Japan 2021 programme. Ring and Ring 2 are on Shudder.

Trailer:

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Mrs. Noisy
(ミセス・
ノイズィ)

Director – Chihiro Amano – 2019 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 106m

****

A writer and young mother struggling with an elusive second novel finds herself dealing with a noisy, futon-beating neighbour in a rapidly escalating row exacerbated by viral internet videos – plays online in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2021 in the UK

Two women neighbours get involved in a petty feud which escalates out of all proportion, fuelled by videos on the internet. While parts of the feud are riotously funny to watch, this is less a comedy and more a warning as to how badly things can go wrong between ordinary people isolated in their separate domestic units in our ever-evolving technological age of phone cameras and social media. The housing block in urban Japan could just as easily be in any city in the UK. It looks all too horribly familiar.

Having published one hugely successful novel, Maki (Yukiko Shinohara) gives birth to a daughter and resolves to use the experience to feed into the next novel. She keeps writing, but her publishers tell her that nothing she’s written is up to par. Six years on Maki, her husband Yuichi (Takuma Nagao) and their small daughter Nako (Chise Niitsu) move into a new flat in a new block hoping that the change of scene will be just what Maki needs to get the writing back up to standard.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Find This
Dumb Little #Bitch
And Throw Her
Into A River
(Vind Die
Dome #Trut
En Gooi Haar
In De Rivier)

Director – Ben Brand – 2017 – Holland – 87m

****

Privacy in the age of internet exposure. An act of animal cruelty on a video goes viral with terrible, unforeseen consequences – from the Schlingel International Film Festival 2018

One sunny afternoon, in a forest, Lizzy (Senna Fokke) picks up several puppies one by one and throws each into a nearby river. Her brother Remco (Nino den Brave) films the act on his mobile and, in an attempt to impress his peers, posts the video online. It goes viral.

Although the scene and the video we see here were recreated for the film, with special effects and editing making it appear that this actually took place when it didn’t, this Dutch film is based on a genuine video which went viral, with Hollywood director Michael Bay, no less, briefly offering a $50 000 reward for finding the girl. Director Brand has constructed a narrative around the recreated video, which he uses as his starting point. He elicits extraordinary performances from his cast of (mostly) young actors.

The children’s father Wim (Wim Opbrouck) runs an illegal business chipping puppies for sale on the internet. Since some of these arrive from his suppliers ill or injured and therefore not fit for sale, they need to be disposed of.… Read the rest