Cinematical

The International Film Festival Rotterdam just wrapped - here's a wrap up of the word around the Internet on the best (and worst) of the fest's offerings:

Over on Twitch, reader Peter sent in a most impressive summary of the 25 films he saw in Rotterdam, focusing heavily on the Japanese offerings at Rotterdam. A couple of fun, Kamikaze Girl-style flicks (The Great Yokai War , a children's film directed by hard cult director Miike Takashi, and Yaji and Kita - The Midnight Pilgrims, which may be "the most cheeful drugs film every made"; a trio of very "weak and nasty" films, one of which ends with three bad guys getting anally violated at a proctologist's office - ouch!); and one very good film, It's Only Talk, directed by Hiroki Ryuichi. I'll keep an eye out for that one - Peter describes it as being like Lost in Translation, which I liked very much. Peter also details other films he enjoyed, including Drawing Restraint 9, by performance artist and sculptor Matthew Barney.

Indiewire' s Mark Rabinowitz  has a great write up about Cinemart, Rotterdam's co-production market and one of the "jewels of the indie film world".

Frenchy enjoyed Reefer Madness: The Musical. (film is an adaptation of the stage version, starring the original stage cast,)and hated Analife - "crap onna stick". Ouch.

Eden, Michael Hoffman's "romantic culinary comedy", picks up the Tiscali Audience Award.

The White Light Weblog - a special programme section of IFFR, which presents a series of "drugs driven" cinema. No, that doesn't mean the filmmakers are on drugs; section features "hallucinating cinema" and "narco cinema", in which drugs appear as a plot catalyst.