Film Picks: Japanese Film Festival, Cartoons Underground, The Wild Robot
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A masterclass, Visions In Motion: Gakuryu Ishii, will take place on Oct 5, 11am at Japan Creative Centre.
PHOTO: JAPANESE FILM FESTIVAL 2024
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Japanese Film Festival 2024
The Japanese Film Festival is returning with 31 films that reflect 2024’s theme of Continuity.
Co-organised by Japan Creative Centre, Embassy of Japan in Singapore, Japan Foundation and Singapore Film Society, the selection showcases the fusion of tradition and modernity in Japanese cinema.
The director in focus is Gakuryu Ishii, known for his contribution to the rise of the cyberpunk arts movement in Japan. He will be attending the festival in person for a masterclass and a question-and-answer session after the screening of his latest film, The Box Man (2024, R21, 120 minutes; screens at Shaw Lido on Oct 5, 4pm), which explores the theme of voyeurism.
The masterclass, Visions In Motion: Gakuryu Ishii, will take place at Japan Creative Centre (4 Nassim Road) on Oct 5, 11am.
The festival is also screening Ishii’s punk-biker film Crazy Thunder Road (1980, M18, 98 minutes; screens at Shaw Lido on Oct 6, 7pm), now considered a seminal work in the Japanese cyberpunk genre.
Tatsuo Yamada in Crazy Thunder Road.
PHOTO: JAPANESE FILM FESTIVAL 2024
Where: Shaw Theatres Lido, Oldham Theatre, The Projector (Golden Village x The Projector Cineleisure and Golden Mile Tower) jff.sg
MRT: Orchard/Dhoby Ghaut/Nicoll Highway
When: Until Oct 20, various times
Admission: Tickets for screenings at Shaw Theatres Lido are $14.50, with discounts for members of Japan Creative Centre, Singapore Film Society (SFS), The Projector and Asian Film Archive. Tickets for screenings at Oldham Theatre are $10. Tickets for screenings at The Projector are $16, with discounts for students, full-time national servicemen, seniors, SFS members, Friends of Japan Creative Centre and people with disabilities
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Cartoons Underground 2024
The one-night event will showcase nine international animated films, along with five student films from Singapore.
PHOTO: CARTOONS UNDERGROUND
The Cartoons Underground festival, South-east Asia’s longest-running independent animation festival, will return for its 13th edition on October 19, at Golden Village x The Projector at Cineleisure.
The one-night event will showcase nine international animated films, along with five student films from Singapore.
The festival theme for 2024 celebrates the global influence of Asian animation talent, highlighting both emerging and established film-makers.
There will be a free masterclass, Behind The Screams (Lasalle College of the Arts, Oct 17, 6pm; reservation required), which focuses on the rise of horror animation for adults in Singapore. It will offer a behind-the-scenes look at upcoming TV shows from two local studios, Finding Pictures and Robot Playground.
Among the films to be screened in the main programme is the comedy She And Her Good Vibrations (2023), an animated short that was the first film to emerge from Cartoons Underground Animation Development Lab, the festival’s incubator programme.
Directed by Sarah Cheok and Olivia Griselda, the film centres on a middle-aged woman in Singapore who is discovering her sexuality, and explores the typically taboo subject of female sexual pleasure in a comedic and colourful style.
Where: Golden Village x The Projector at Cineleisure, 8 Grange Road www.cartoonsunderground.com
MRT: Somerset
When: Oct 19, 7pm
Admission: $20 (general), $40 (VIP, includes limited-edition merchandise)
Info:
The Wild Robot (PG)
102 minutes, now showing
★★★☆☆
(From left) Roz (Lupita Nyong’o), Brightbill (Kit Connor) and Fink (Pedro Pascal) in DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot, directed by Chris Sanders.
PHOTO: UIP
American animator Chris Sanders’ Academy Award-nominated adventures Lilo & Stitch (2002) and How To Train Your Dragon (2010) are about monsters.
The android of DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot is perceived as another, marooned among animals.
Actress Lupita Nyong’o is the voice of Rozzum unit 7134 – “but you may call me Roz” – an artificially intelligent robot shipwrecked on a wildlife island. To survive, Roz enters learning mode to communicate with the woodland inhabitants.
Raising the runt hatchling she names Brightbill (Kit Connor) – teaching him to feed, swim and fly south for his winter migration – becomes her assumed task. More than that, it becomes her purpose.
Her misadventures are whimsical and the community of cute characters includes an opossum matriarch (Catherine O’Hara), a goose elder (Bill Nighy) and a grizzly bear (Mark Hamill). But here also is the compassion of The Iron Giant (1999), plus a message on climate change rendered in the detailed painterly visuals of Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki.
Roz’s evolving emotional empathy shifts a Hollywood kiddie toon into an endearing tale of misfit families and self-determination. – Whang Yee Ling
