Sitges 2009 – Our Festival Review

Sitges09Well we just about kept you up to date with our festival daily Blog (it was technically delivered daily, it just happened to be 4 or 5 days late) and those of you who made it to Sitges will have no doubt formed your own thoughts and opinions on the success or otherwise of this years event.

For the record, here’s how we think things turned out with OUR 2009 FESTIVAL REVIEW

It’s a long wait until the 43rd edition of Sitges so, in the meantime, we’ll revert to posting our general thoughts on all things cinematic, musical, artistic or pretty much anything we damn well please. Pop in from time to time or follow us via Twitter or RSS . We’re never the most prolific of posters but when we do, we’d like to think that it’s from the heart.

08.10.09 – DAY 6 – It´s The Year Of Filth

Boom! Like a bullet from a gun we´re up and out early to the Auditori. Breakfast is a luxury for one of us, particularly when there are supermarkets on the way that sell crisps and chocolate, so it´s with full stomachs and open minds that we check out Gaspar Noe’s controversial and highly anticipated mind-blower….

ENTER THE VOID – AUDITORI – 10:15HRS

This was a total visual extravaganza and whilst we were already anticipating a well shot and visually impressive film, the reports and feedback we’d seen on the web were that it was an over-long, pretentious film with a highly disjointed story. In our opinion, the stuff we’d seen before couldn’t be more wrong. A full review will eventually be HERE, but essentially it’s the story of a brother and sister who end up running with the wrong crowd and Noe’s film draws you into the story with an incredibly clever use of flashback and first-person camera views. It’s definitely not for everyone as the graphic sexual scenes, overhead camera shots, flashing high colour images and a 2 1/2 -3 hour running time will definitely divide audience. As far as we’re concerned, it totally rocked our world.

…..So, with minds totally blown and the feeling that we were just coming down from an acid trip we sought solace in familiar things – beer and a sobresada and cheese baguette. With just enough time to throw these down us and split a brownie (oo-er!) we got back in the press queue and headed in for the film that we were probably looking forward to the most…..

PANIQUE AU VILLAGE – AUDITORI – 15:15HRS

In the words of Tom Cruise (sort of) you had us at the trailer. You can check the trailer out at our preview page here, it’s essentially a stop-motion animation of a horse, a cowboy and an indian and the scrapes they manage to get into. Although the joke does wear a little bit thin over the course of 75 minutes, it’s still definitely worth a watch, and when else are you going to see a toy donkey laying out a funky drum beat?

……With a couple of hours to kill until our next film, we headed back into town and indulged in some beachside tapas and traditional Spanish wine in a bodega. Unfortunately the tapas and beers meant that time completely got away from us and with seconds to spare we made it to the Retiro to watch Johnnie To´s latest effort VENGEANCE. We´ve got to be upfront and admit that we´ve given his films plenty of opportunity to impress us in the past, and he always seems to flatter to deceive, so with this in mind, we weren´t expecting much.

VENGEANCE – EL RETIRO – 20:30HRS

And he so nearly pulled it off…The first hour of this film had some great setups, was brilliantly shot, excellent performances and a really good story but it definitely was a game of two halves and revisiting familiar ground of slow-motion gunfights on wastelands of floating paper debris meant that we ranted our way out of the cinema and straight into the queue for our next film – Duncan Jones´s MOON.

…..Unfortunately, it was late, we´d had a few beers and Rick Skywalker´s spanish was spoken far too quickly so we have no idea why the screening was delayed for 30 minutes just so we could see the DVD ´Making Of´ for CORALINE. Anyway, after some vociferous booing from the Spanish crowd, MOON began and they weren´t dissappointed.

MOON – EL RETIRO – 22:45HRS

Harking back to such ´70s classics as ´Silent Running´and ´Space1999´, Jones´s impressive debut wins through due to an outstanding performance from our man, Sam Rockwell.

…..We ended the evening on a high, and retired to The Corner Bar to discuss cloning, Japanese LSD trips and talking Belgian Horses that play piano.

07.10.09 – DAY 5 – He´s Jim Bowen´s Son You know…

Following on from a large and late night, getting up this morning was always going to be a stretch, and it certainly proved so for one of us. After skipping breakfast completely, Shaun managed to do his own version of the Sitges Zombie walk for most of the day.

THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL – PRADO – 11:00HRS

In hindsight, I don´t know what we were even thinking when we decided to check this one out. A few years ago we´d had the misfortune of seeing West´s TRIGGER MAN in the exact same cinema and it was such an absolute howler that we ended up walking out after about half an hour. This (incredibly!) slow-burning homage to ´80s devil worshipping movies was so far wide of the mark that it even bored people who were just passing the cinema. Amazingly enough we didn´t walk out but I suspect that was purely down to laziness.

………Following a half hearted attempt to do some writing (Colin) and catch up on some much needed sleep (Shaun) we were a short walk to El Retiro to catch weird French apocalypse flick LES DERNIERS JOURS DU MONDE.

LES DERNIERS JOURS DU MONDE – EL RETIRO – 14:00HRS

It´s hard to put into words my feeling on this film. It wasn´t bad, but then again I certainly wouldn´t say it was a good film. Fairly self-indulgent and a lot of the time non-sensical, I never really recovered from seeing (the lead villain from “Quantum Of Solace”) Matthieu Amalric´s cock in the first few seconds. The male member seem to be making a frequent (sometimes too frequent) appearance in the films at Sitges this year, it´s put  us right off the hot dogs.

………….With only a short time before our next film, we hightailed it up to the Auditori to watch the Philip Ridley / Jim Sturgess film HEARTLESS. Just as we arrived at the theatre, we ran into CS hall-of-famer Sam Rockwell, previous best actor and star of Duncan Jones´s MOON. Following a brief handshake and a confession of our undying love we headed into…

HEARTLESS – AUDITORI – 17:15HRS

This one definitely got a thumbs up from us. A strange and dark tale of a disfigured loner who enters into a Faustian pact with the devil in exchange for the thing that will make him happiest, but ultimately everything is not as straightforward as it seems. An excellent performance from Jim Sturgess is almost overshadowed by brief cameos from Joseph Mawle as The Devil and the always excellent Eddie Marsan as ¨The Weapons Man¨.

……Still buzzing from meeting Sam Rockwell we hit the town for drinks and dinner (Sobresada Pizza, a Corridorstyle favourite) before the final film of the evening, Vincenzo Natali´s SPLICE.

SPLICE – EL RETIRO – 22:45HRS

We hadn´t been able to find a great deal on the web about this so we went into it fairly open minded although both having reservations about the acting of Adrien Brody. It turned out that we needn´t have worried. Brody kept his performance fairly low key and good performances from the remaining cast, an interesting story of cloning spiralling out of control and a great looking film meant that we both really enjoyed this and couldn´t really pick it apart in any way.

…….With this in mind we retired to bed early(ish) in anticipation of tomorrow´s early morning head scrambler – Gaspar Noe´s ENTER THE VOID.