Movie Details
| Title: | The Fantastic Planet | |
| Director: | Rene Laloux | |
| Year: | 1973 | |
| Genre: | Animated | |
| Times Seen: | 2 | |
| Last Seen: | 09.28.06 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 09.28.06 | Alamo South Lamar | This Screening is part of event: FantasticFest 2006 Ahh last day... actually a pretty laid back day due to fatigue and a lack of midnight movie... my day started out quiet enough with a screening of Fantastic Planet introduced by Darren Aronofsky. Harry took the opportunity to call Kier-La a "programming elf" which is wrong on so many levels... but otherwise it was interesting to hear Aronofsky talk about why he liked this movie (it's trippy and has a homegrown feel to it). He also said that one of the projects he's working on now might end up animated in a very very similar fashion, and he's never seen it projected so this will be a treat. Myself, I was interested in hearing the original score which Wiley says is pretty great. As a surprise to pretty much everybody (since it wasn't in the book or mentioned by Harry at all), one of Rene Laloux's shorts preceded the film... which was actually pretty sweet. It was also animated, and stold the story of a farmer who uses his tears to make his crops grow big (by devising several methods including holding onions up to his eyes or wearing a backpack which regularly hit him on the head and kicked him in the ass). Trouble comes when snails eat his crops and grow into huge town-destructing gigantor monster snails that create some general rampage-esque chaos before forming together to die in weird formations. Amidst the devastation, the farmer decides to grow carrots, again watering them with his tears. The short ends with several huge rabbits looming over the horizon. Pretty cool short. Seeing the movie again... this was the first time fatigue reared its head for me. A couple times previously I had trying to will myself to fall asleep but this is the first time in the fest that it crept in against my wishes. So I kind of rested my eyes for a few seconds here and there, which I didn't mind too much because the film is really far out and dreamy anyway... I will say that the score is awesome and much cooler than the Chicago tunes I heard last time, but I must say I got tired with all the dialogue. I don't remember it at all but I guess last time I just read the subtitles while the band played... I wish the original score went from begin to finish and there was no dialogue... hearing french people talk made the movie seem that much more like just a normal movie... the imagery is so great and the story is so simple (well, sort of) that I think it's cooler to treat it like a psychadelic fairy tale and not bother to make it accessible at all. Anyway, I had a good time with it, even in my dreamy haze. And although Aronofsky's first pick for a movie to show was Aguirre The Wrath of God (which Harry said they couldn't get a print in good enough condition to play (which is bullshit because the Alamo showed it in like January)), this still made a pretty good introduction to The Fountain. |
| 12.01.05 | Alamo Downtown | Yay for the 500th film in this journal! It's this really odd surreal fantasy animated picture that the Alamo Drafthouse showed with live score from Neil Hagerty (guitarist from Pussy Galore and Royal Trux) and his band the Howling Hex. This also means that I've spent every night this week at the Alamo Downtown. Aside from QT6 I think that it a consecutive record. Luckily, I'm busy doing something else tomorrow night so there will be a break before I'm back again for Saturday night's Trailerthon (which looks to be tons of fun for a trailer geek like me). The Fantastic Planet is a really strange movie. I'm not sure what the original soundtrack is like, but it feels like I should be high and listening to prog rock while I watch it. Luckily, Howling Hex supplied a constant stream of random improv morphing into a few actual songs before dissolving back into random strummings and noises. I am not really a fan of this type of music... but it was kind of made worse by the flagrant disregard for the film. This was nowhere near a score to the movie. In fact, word has it that in the show previous to the one I saw they just played extended versions of Chicago songs. A paying gig is a paying gig i guess but the other live score showings I've been to all blew this one away. Oh well. Luckily, I wanted to see the movie enough that the music didn't really bother me. I was so weirded out from the visuals already that I really didn't mind... I did like it whenever Neil picked up his bass guitar though because that meant there was gonna be some sort of rhythm coming and that's always cool. As a funny side note, after the show I was standing talking to/overhearing some Alamo regulars and this guy came up to Lars and went on and on about how this was real shit and it was real 2005 and there's not much 2005 left so that makes it even cooler, and how he can understand that shit, like it speaks to him. Lots of stuff he can't understand but this he could. Of course Lars listened with a straight face but i was looking pretty hard to see just a crack of a smile underneath his facial hair. Who knows, but this was right after he got finished telling us how crappy the first show was. Then Kier-la came over and heard about the Chicago thing but when one of the band came by she was all like "that was great, I liked the Chicago songs!" heh heh... such are the pitfalls of running the event i guess. |
