Helsinki International Film Festival 2009
Well, it's that time of the year again. The tickets for the Helsinki International Movie Festival (or Rakkautta & Anarkiaa in Finnish) which is held from 17.9. to 27.9. came on sale today. I spent yesterday evening going through the festival catalogue trying to decide what movies I wanted to see and after that checking their airing times & dates and trying to figure what movies to see when.
The tickets came on sale today at 10 a.m. Since I had a morning shift at work, I had my lunch break from 10.15 to 10.45 and spent most of that time booking the tickets I wanted. As usual, the huge amount of traffic on the webserver caused it to slow down A LOT and to be unresponsive at times, but I did manage to book tickets to all the movies in exactly the showings I wanted :). Yay! 15 18 movies this year...
Movie list
Antonia (Brazil)
Billu Barber (India)
Bluebeard (France)
Bright Star (UK/Australia/France)
Crows Zero (Japan)
An Education (UK)
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (Japan)
The Good, The Bad, The Weird (South Korea)
The Hurt Locker (USA)
Jodhaa Akbar (India)
The Mermaid (Russia)
Nymph (Thailand)
Red Cliff I (China)
Red Cliff II (China)
Still Walking (Japan)
Thirst (South Korea)
The Tournament (UK)
Yatterman (Japan)
I have actually already seen three of these films on DVD (Billu Barber, Jodhaa Akbar and Red Cliff I), but all three looked so cinematic (i.e. visually gorgeous) that they deserve to be seen on the big screen. I did think Red Cliff I was a bit on the boring side, since it didn't really get going until right at the end, only to end in a cliffhanger waiting for part II. Still, it did look good enough for me to give it a second chance by going to see parts I & II back-to-back in the theatre.
Some others are also obvious must-see choices. Oguri Shun beating people up in Crows Zero and Fukada Kyoko being evil and Arashi's Sho being a hero in a silly superhero costume in Yatterman... Like I said, must-see stuff :). The Takeshi Kaneshiro & Tony Leung combination in Red Cliff is pretty irresistable as well.
The rest of the films I picked just because their descriptions sounded interesting. I decided to pass on the opportunity to see Ponyo on the festival, since it's having it's local threatrical release the week after the festival, so I can catch it then.
This year's CM for the festival is really fun (though by the end of the festival I'll probably be dead tired of it, since they usually show it at the beginning of almost every film there... :P):
Love & Anarchy, 22nd Helsinki Film Festival, Trailer from Anima Boutique on Vimeo.
The tickets came on sale today at 10 a.m. Since I had a morning shift at work, I had my lunch break from 10.15 to 10.45 and spent most of that time booking the tickets I wanted. As usual, the huge amount of traffic on the webserver caused it to slow down A LOT and to be unresponsive at times, but I did manage to book tickets to all the movies in exactly the showings I wanted :). Yay! 15 18 movies this year...
Movie list
Antonia (Brazil)
Billu Barber (India)
Bluebeard (France)
Bright Star (UK/Australia/France)
Crows Zero (Japan)
An Education (UK)
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (Japan)
The Good, The Bad, The Weird (South Korea)
The Hurt Locker (USA)
Jodhaa Akbar (India)
The Mermaid (Russia)
Nymph (Thailand)
Red Cliff I (China)
Red Cliff II (China)
Still Walking (Japan)
Thirst (South Korea)
The Tournament (UK)
Yatterman (Japan)
I have actually already seen three of these films on DVD (Billu Barber, Jodhaa Akbar and Red Cliff I), but all three looked so cinematic (i.e. visually gorgeous) that they deserve to be seen on the big screen. I did think Red Cliff I was a bit on the boring side, since it didn't really get going until right at the end, only to end in a cliffhanger waiting for part II. Still, it did look good enough for me to give it a second chance by going to see parts I & II back-to-back in the theatre.
Some others are also obvious must-see choices. Oguri Shun beating people up in Crows Zero and Fukada Kyoko being evil and Arashi's Sho being a hero in a silly superhero costume in Yatterman... Like I said, must-see stuff :). The Takeshi Kaneshiro & Tony Leung combination in Red Cliff is pretty irresistable as well.
The rest of the films I picked just because their descriptions sounded interesting. I decided to pass on the opportunity to see Ponyo on the festival, since it's having it's local threatrical release the week after the festival, so I can catch it then.
This year's CM for the festival is really fun (though by the end of the festival I'll probably be dead tired of it, since they usually show it at the beginning of almost every film there... :P):
You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com
Love & Anarchy, 22nd Helsinki Film Festival, Trailer from Anima Boutique on Vimeo.