SFIAAFF Extras:
Kim Chun on director Justin Lim
Cheryl Eddy on this year’s crop of war docs
Matt Sussman on the films of Hong Sang-soo
Air Guitar Nation (Alexandra Lipsitz, US, 2006). Considering the so-called sport of air guitar consists of one-minute spates of cheesy posturing by proudly self-identified poseurs whose musical chops (and instruments) are a figment of the imagination, mockumentarian Alexandra Lipsitz manages to squeeze plenty of drama, one-liners, self-importance, and rock ‘n’ roll chutzpah out of her spot-on material. Brooklyn actor David Jung — in the kimonoed, Hello Kitty–breastplated air guitarist guise of C-Diddy — is the reason Air Guitar Nation is Asian and American: Lipsitz follows Jung as he hams his way into the US air guitar crown, doing battle with stubborn arch nemesis Björn Türoque (Nous Non Plus–Les Sans Culottes bassist-vocalist Dan Crane), and then travels to Finland to compete in the world championship against Euros who take their air guitar very seriously. Seriously. Regardless, Jung is the real reason this doc rocks, guitar or no guitar. For his good humor, over-the-top buffoonery, and ready wisecracks, I give him at least a 5.8. (Kimberly Chun)
Sun/18, 7:15 p.m., 1000 Van Ness; March 24, 7:15 p.m., Camera 12 Cinemas
Do Over (Cheng Yu-Chieh, Taiwan, 2006). Hopefully, you’ve got a little room left in your heart for one more movie of interlocking stories with connections to each other that aren’t immediately apparent (patent pending). Taiwanese director Cheng Yu-Chieh’s first feature film follows the events in the lives of five people on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day as they spiral downward into compelling, if improbably concurrent, personal crises. You may leave the theater having forgotten a plot point or two, but you will certainly remember the satisfyingly disorienting fight scene shot from a behind-the-shoulder perspective, or the image of four people with their ears to a table listening for lottery numbers being announced in the room below. (Jason Shamai)
Mon/19, 6:45 p.m., 1000 Van Ness; March 23, 8:45 p.m., Pacific Film Archive; March 25, 4 p.m., Camera 12 Cinemas
The Great Happiness Space: Tales of an Osaka Love Thief (Jake Clennell, US, 2006). On any given night in downtown Osaka’s neon jungle, one can see handsome young men — uniformed in designer suits, their meticulous Rod Stewart shags in various shades of bottled blond — incessantly chat up nearly every passing woman in sight. These would-be suitors are actually hosts, male drinking companions who are, as host club boss Issei explains, "in the business of selling dreams" to female clients with empty hearts and deep pockets. The sad irony that the majority of these women support themselves doing "night work," whether as hostesses themselves or prostitutes, is lost on neither director Jake Clennell nor his subjects, the employees and customers at popular host bar Rakkyo. The thoughtful candor with which the hosts and their regulars speak of their investment in "fake love" only underscores the financial and emotional costs demanded by such a fantasy. But beneath the bankrupt surfaces, Clennell finds a stronger desire for connection that’s tended to in, as one host poetically describes it, this "space to rest your heart." (Matt Sussman)
Sun/18, 9:30 p.m., Van Ness 1000; March 23, 7 p.m., Pacific Film Archive; March 25, noon, Camera 12 Cinemas
In Between Days (So Yong Kim, South Korea/US/Canada, 2006) Fighting a world as cold as a city freeway overpass and as lonely as the reverb in a karaoke box for one, In Between Days is closer to a contemporary South Korean feature — formed from an individual, female point of view — than anything belched forth from Sundance’s labs. The film’s friction between South Korean and North American identities lives and breathes within Aimie (Jiseon Kim), who resentfully semi-inhabits a Toronto block apartment. So Yong Kim’s camerawork holds Aimie close even as she’s dismissive of a boy she likes and cruel to her divorced live-in mother, whom she keeps on the periphery. Impulsive actions with permanent results — be they skipped classes or homemade tattoos — are at the fore of this past-haunted tale of first sorta-love gone wrong. Waking up with Aimie each morning and more than once watching her looking at something painful just around the corner, Kim is as attuned to intimate frustration and revelation as Gina Kim (Invisible Light, Never Forever). Together, they’re two of the top young feature directors in the United States today. (Johnny Ray Huston)
Fri/16, 7 p.m., Pacific Film Archive; Sat/17, 2:30 p.m., Van Ness
It’s Only Talk (Ryuichi Hiroki, Japan, 2005). Like Sofia Coppola with a sense of humanity, Ryuichi Hiroki takes his bored and aimless female characters seriously. This film — like his lovely 2004 road movie Vibrator — features an unwell woman with more time on her hands than is probably good for her. Last time the trouble was bulimia; this time it’s manic depression. Yuko (the impossible to dislike Shinobu Terajima) has been living off the insurance money from her parents’ deaths for several years and has just moved to the outskirts of Tokyo, where she spends her more chemically balanced days snapping pictures and smiling beatifically. Horny as the next girl, she further occupies herself with a series of relationships that range from the involuntarily platonic to the incestuous. Hiroki makes truly therapeutic films, the kind that dispense with pat resolutions in favor of a general reassurance that life can be beautiful even when it sucks. (Shamai)
Sat/17, 6 p.m., Pacific Film Archive; Tues/20, 9:15 p.m., Van Ness; March 22, 6:45 p.m., Van Ness
King and the Clown (Lee Jun-ik, South Korea, 2005). The world’s but a stage, and we are merely players — either playing or being played — in this loving, gender-twisting tribute to entertainers of the Chosun Dynasty in the 1500s. On the road to Seoul, a pair of actors — enterprising scruffster Jang-seng (Karm Woo-sung) and beauteous cross-dresser Gong-gil (Lee Joon-gi) — discovers the key to the kingdom and possible fortune in poking dangerous fun at their regent and his courtesan. But in the process of tweaking authority, the companions find themselves straying a little too close to ugly reality while clowning for their lives and triggering a bloody burst of truth telling, along with some unexpected guffaws from imperial quarters. (Chun)
Sun/18, 2:45 p.m., Castro; March 24, 2 p.m., Camera 12 Cinemas
Pavement Butterfly (Richard Eichberg, Germany/UK, 1929). Roland Barthes may have rhapsodized over Greta Garbo’s face, but Anna May Wong’s eyes in Pavement Butterfly belong no less to "that moment in cinema when capturing the human face still plunged audiences into the deepest ecstasy." At times they are narrow slits through which flicker sparks of vindictiveness. At others they open to seemingly inhuman proportions, tremulous moons that drip rivulets of tears. Like the similarly coiffed Louise Brooks, Wong did some of her greatest work with European directors. Here, Richard Eichberg casts Wong as a circus fan dancer on the lam after being framed for murder. Given her namesake, strains of Giacomo Puccini (as well as a blackmailer) trail behind this butterfly’s fateful climb from Paris’s bohemian demimonde to the scaffold of high society. While the narrative damns her to the gutter, Wong’s optical pyrotechnics alone confirm her rightful place in that empyrean of stars Hollywood so stubbornly refused her. (Sussman)
Sun/18, 12:30 p.m., Castro