Cuteworld.net

Last Sunday was pretty busy. Since I am going in a two weeks vacations on the beach, I had to go shopping. I had tickets to see Funky Forest: the First Contact at Fantasia Festival. I just had enough time to go downtown for the movie. I was planning to go ealier joining my friend in the line since there is always a long line in this festival. But arriving near the Jarry Park. It was tons of Italians on the roads; walking or in their cars, they all had their flags. Yep, they won! I thought I would be OK if I don’t go in the Little Italia.. I was few blocks from there. Anyways, I was late because of that. I miss few minutes. >_< Since we were stuck there for 30 minutes, we took some pictures... hehe.

So here about the movie: Funky Forest: the First Contact
Japan
2005 | 150 min | 35mm
Japanese language, English subtitles

Director: Katsuhito Ishii, Hajime Ishimine, Shinichiro Miki
Cast: Tadanobu Asano, Susumu Terajima, Hideaki Anno, Chizuru Ikewaki, Ryo Kase, Kazue Fukiishi

click here to watch the trailer

Fantasia description: “If you look at them just right, the most mundane elements of daily life can seem utterly bizarre. Conversely, the strangest, most inexplicable things can seem perfectly ordinary. That’s the lunatic logic behind Funky Forest, a sprawling omnibus of the obvious and the oddball, the casual and the completely insane. If you’re reading this in hopes of being handed a sensible synopsis of a straightforward story, you’re out of luck - Funky Forest’s daringly disjointed narrative is a mish-mash of blackouts, non-sequiturs, flashbacks, lucid dreams, magical moments and so much more. Awkward stumbles on the path to romance, and others of life’s little disappointments, are woven together with all sorts of extraterrestrial freaks and incomprehensible biological curiosities, music-video mayhem and mind-bending theatrics, and psychedelic surrealism of the finest grade, delivered with a deadpan shrug.“

I was afraid that I would miss the begining and won’t understand the story, but  it looked like a lot of short stories which are somehow, but not directly linked. Between each story, there was a small and short, but funny scene. I can’t not make a summary or tell the story, because it’s very messy. Everything is normal, but then become really weird.

Some part were really entertaining. In one scene, a guy is telling about his dream. I think his name is Takashi. He woke up on the beach with a car light just in front of him. Then there is a weird deguised guy coming out from the car with a big gun. Then some music start with huge speaker. The guy just start dancing. Then went back in the car. Takashi then see his friend Notti, who said she is not Notti. The only thing she say is “Show me your dancing”. Then two littles come out of the car and dance. Takashi try to join, but it was really hard. Later he had to do a tango with some animated and huge diva. It was like an hollogram. When they left, Notti asked him to do more effort. Then a group of people with yellow clothes started dansing in a taiwanese song. The choregraphy was pretty weird, but he could do it with them. Notti was really happy. Then the last test, he had to dance with another animation, but that characters had only a head. Notti said she could see his body. Takashi said he saw it too and started dancing. At the end of the song, the animated face started to laught and became a kind of demon face… I think it was the end of the dream.

At the end we’ll see them again. When Notti will tell Takashi that she just saw a UFO. Then she said that she lied (”uso”).  Then she started saying it often and it became a song, with just that word “uso”. I think it was pretty cool and they did a funny/weird choregraphy.

A weird part, was when a student is in a school. Then see a guy deguised in some animal with a huge and long tail in front of him. The guy asked her to pull him… She end up pulling it and another guy came all excited in some junior school uniform which was way too small for him. They look very excited and she asked what’s going on. They said they can’t explain because it will take 3h 10m to explain. But 3hr later, the girl understood that they are doing it to save some planet… and to help all she have to do is to plug some wire on her navel. The other part of the wire is connected to some TV which have a kind of big navel in the back. So she connected it… The wire went into her navel. You feel pretty sensitive/unconfortable seeing that. Then there are lights from the TV; some kind of excrement under the TV.. one of the guy then put his hand into to big navel behind the TV. Some kind of doll came out… it was a little sushi chef. I’m not sure if I understood correctly, but the 3 guys turn to the girl and asked if it was funny. She was pretty lost.. I was too. ^_^;

Another weird part. We see two girls talking togethers and one of them take off from her bag, two kind of caterpillars with tons of legs; the face is a big nose; the end/tail look just like an ass hole... ^_^; The thing was moving, it was a little discusting. Then the girl took it close to her mouth and the kind of tail which look like an ass hole, just grap her tongue!
Then we see two boys with another weird animal… one of the guy was wearing it like a school bag, but in front of him. So we can say the arms aroung his neck and the legs around his hip… the thing also have a long tail… the other guy was helping him to put that tail between his butt!! The other thing also have a kind of big and long nose like an elephant, which should be put into his mouth….
Then we see two other guys. They are around a kind of tree with mini-person attached to it. They looked litle a real human, but the face was a big bigger than the body and a long tail in the middle of the legs. One of the guy tell the other, that IT won’t work because all the expression of the mini-person have to be the same. One of them had a kind of face that you do when you are about to kiss. The face was too funny, AHHAHAA. The guy tell the othet that you have to rub it 10 times to fix the face. Then he take the tail and start rubbing it. We see the face changing to a smiling face… since he was rubbing the tail like it was a male organe, it was really funny. ^_^;
The funny part was when  we see them all together like an orchestra. So thoes weird things were weird music instrument!

There was a lot of weird/discusting things… and old man with long and unproportional tits… blood suker which end up being one of those mini-personne with long tail… there was the guitar brothers as well which were unpopular with girls. We saw them doing funny things to make the girl dig for them. There was the singles picnic as well.

There was some break in the middle of the movie as well. People had 2 minutes to go for a pee. It was funny a lot of people ran out of the theater and came back after 3 minutes. The only thing we see in that time we the time decreasing… There was another break later of 20 secondes. Some people started to leave the theater, but the counter didn’t stop at zero, it stopped before that! It was a fake break. ^_^;

Overall, I had fun. Some parts were extremly funny, but some other were a little too long-boring. The movie is 2h and a half, so its a little too long I think. I am not sure if I wished that the story will be more coherent.