My reaction to the death of Halyna Hutchins.

 

I think everybody knows the story now. Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, above, died last Friday after actor Alec Baldwin accidentally shot her with a prop gun he was told was not loaded. When the story broke, I was online and it immediately shocked me and I knew it would make the primetime news even here in Australia (which it did).

As the hours passed I couldn't help but question whether this tragedy would've been considered as newsworthy had a less well-known actor than Baldwin been the one who pulled the trigger. He is also serving as a producer on the film, entitled Rust, and therefore has more responsibilities on-set than were he just one of the stars, but although he still has indeed technically killed Hutchins, and injured the director Joel Souza, I think the primary culprit here is Dave Halls, the assistant director who gave him the gun and assured him it was empty without checking it (yet Baldwin maybe should've checked it himself before firing it).

Amidst all these initial thoughts, however, and still now, I feel horrible for Hutchins and her young family and her friends; my heart goes out to them all. But I'm frustrated with how the media is treating this incident. They are, from what I have noticed, focusing almost exclusively on her death and how that was caused rather than on her work. I think it's despicable that most media outlets are doing that, particularly when women cinematographers (and women filmmakers in general) have to fight their way to success and job stability in what is an overwhelmingly male profession. Hutchins achieved that, but the media seems intent on ensuring she will be remembered exclusively as the woman who Alec Baldwin accidentally shot on a movie set. They've also used this tragedy to renew interest in the accidental shooting that killed Brandon Lee while filming The Crow in 1993, which I suspect has only fueled conspiracy theories and affected his family.

But anyway, I won't go on any more as I feel I've made every point I wanted to here perfectly clearly and if I ramble on more I may just inadvertently use the same reporting tactics I've criticised here. RIP, Ms. Hutchins.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #265: Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (2020).

 

Cherry (voiced in the Japanese-language version by Ichikawa Somegoro VIII) is a shy teenage boy with social and communication difficulties who expresses his feelings through haikus instead of verbally, and always wears headphones to block loud noise out. Meanwhile, Smile (Hana Sugisaki) is a teenage girl who externally projects confidence and vivaciousness as a social media influencer, but wears a mask because internally she's deeply insecure about her very large and braced front teeth. One day during summer they have a fateful chance meeting and quickly become more than friends, but then Cherry's father Koichi (Hiroshi Yamiya) informs him they will be moving town in a month.

This anime romance from co-writer and director Kyohei Ishiguro is frequently so fluorescently colourful it could give even Baz Luhrmann an epileptic seizure, but that's a very clever artistic choice and indeed it's the point because it helps the viewer see the world as both the protagonists do. Smile is, as I said, an influencer, an occupation and lifestyle which can frankly be very superficial, and Cherry is quite evidently autistic, which often means being hypersensitive to visual brightness or having enhanced visual perception. That is also why they together make a realistic couple because it's a case of opposite attracting, and it makes their separate arcs more relatably modern. They are also affectingly voiced, and the animation shows a perfectionistic approach throughout.

The pacing is occasionally meandering, but overall Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (and how fun and cute is that title?) struck me as a really sweet, intelligent and balanced anime love story from Ishiguro and studio Signal.MD. 8/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #264: Whisper of the Heart (1995).

 

14-year-old Shizuku Tsukishima (voiced by Yoko Honna in the Japanese-language version) attends Mukaihara Junior High School in Tokyo. She lives with her parents and older sister and her best friend at school is Yuko (Maiko Kayama), but her real love is books. She's a bookworm's bookworm, and one day she visits her local library and is stunned to find all the books missing. Upon browsing the checkout cards, she discovers somebody named Seiji Amasawa (Issei Takahashi) has borrowed them all. Shizuku now tries to track Seiji down, and learns he's actually boy in her grade and Mukaihara. Once they then meet, she discovers he's a budding luthier who has a crush on her and therefore has begun borrowing books en masse, obviously knowing how much she loves them, to make her notice him. In return as they get to know each other, Shizuku starts writing more and singing, and then their relationship deepens and their previously unknown connections are revealed.

Whisper of the Heart was former animator Yoshifumi Kondo's sole directorial effort before his sudden death at age 47 in 1998, and Studio Ghibli's first theatrical film directed by neither Hayao Miyazaki (who nonetheless wrote the screenplay) nor Isao Takahata, but I'm afraid for me, it could've been considerably better. Visually it's as gorgeous as anything else Ghibli have made, and the voice cast all give adequate and natural performances, with dialogue that feels realistic for each character. However, the narrative was, for me, increasingly plodding and predictable to the point where I was ultimately almost entirely disengaged. It simply felt to me to be much too formulaic a YA romance, even for 1995 which was long before that genre exploded in popularity at least here in the West.

It's a nice story, sure, but one that I found to be told in a very stale manner despite the aesthetic flair on display, and it also ignored what I considered numerous chances for comic relief. Overall, Whisper of the Heart obviously did not win my heart. 6/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #263: Microbe and Gasoline (2015).

 

Daniel (Ange Darnent) lives with his mother Marie-Therese (Audrey Tautou) his distant father and two brothers in Versailles. He's lonely and bored, but is a budding painter. One day there arrives at his school a new boy, Theo (Theophile Baquet), who is basically his alter ego: loud and grungy. But they click immediately, and are soon hanging out together outside school. Sharing similar home lives and having found common interests like vehicles and design, they decide to build a makeshift car and take it on the road. They now become "Microbe" and "Gasoline" as they traverse their DIY automobile across the French countryside. En route, their relationship also changes and deepens.

This is a family-friendly departure for writer-director Michel Gondry after mostly adult-oriented features and a heap of music videos, and good on him for trying to inject some variety into his filmography, but frankly I expected less convention from the maker of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Be Kind Rewind. Primarily, I think this one would've been fresher and more profound had the dynamic been a girl and a boy  - with a completely platonic relationship, that is - instead of two boys. I think that would've allowed the film to combat childhood and gender stereotypes and to convey a message to children that boys and girls can find an emotional connection with each other Instead, as it is, for me the main duo felt quite hackneyed, even though Darnent and Bacquet both show promise on screen. Tautou, however, is wasted in a role that offers her no challenges whatsoever.

Gondry wisely depicts the young protagonists as obscene and uncouth (especially Theo), but that touch cannot mask the otherwise deeply cliched narrative and themes, and visually there's nothing distinctive or subversive either. I expected a far stranger family movie from Michel. 6/10.