Avalon

[Dee]

The Film Society is showing this film today (Feb 2nd) at 9pm in the Salad Bowl. It's live action but it may interest some here as the director is Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell).

The society have kindly provided a review of the film:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2002/10/17/a ... view.shtml

[hr]"Twenty-five years later, I dynamited Disneyland to rubble...but even in prison, I still see Goofy everywhere."

- "The Parking Lot is Full"

[samus]

Avalon is fucking brilliant.

[hr]samus

[Leo Comerford]

Hnmph. Avalon disappointed me. It constantly reminded me of better-scripted and better-directed films and TV shows, sometimes deliberately through references. Visually it went from (occasionally) beautiful to been-done-better-elsewhere to just embarrassing (some very dumpy TV-grade camera work tarted up with orange filter). Does Oshii need Production IG to make his films look good?

I've read several theories about the plot, but I'm not sure I care much. Given it's an Oshii film, I'm assuming the default Oshii moral: capitalism evil, militarism evil, America evil, technology leaving our control and taking over. Perhaps I'm missing something that makes the film interesting, but if so I can't guess what it might be.

All in-my-humble-first-opinion, of course. Please flame back... or wait 'til Dee tells you what dark masterpiece it reminded him of.

[Leo Comerford]

Hnmph. Avalon disappointed me. It constantly reminded me of better-scripted and better-directed films and TV shows, sometimes deliberately through references. Visually it went from (occasionally) beautiful to been-done-better-elsewhere to just embarrassing (some very dumpy TV-grade camera work tarted up with orange filter). Does Oshii need Production IG to make his films look good?

I've read several theories about the plot, but I'm not sure I care much. Given it's an Oshii film, I'm assuming the default Oshii moral: capitalism evil, militarism evil, America evil, technology leaving our control and taking over. Perhaps I'm missing something that makes the film interesting, but if so I can't guess what it might be.

All in-my-humble-first-opinion, of course. Please flame back... or wait 'til Dee tells you what dark masterpiece it reminded him of.

[Dee]

[s]Leo Comerford wrote on 12:32, 3rd Mar 2004:
wait 'til Dee tells you what dark masterpiece it reminded [i]him of.
[/i]

(Apologies to non-RPers who might not be familiar with this dark masterpiece.)

4 characters classes - warrior, thief, mage, bishop involved in a game run by a mysterious entity called a gamesmaster.

At first it seems so harmless, like it's only a game, but in reality it's a cover for something more sinister.

Those who cannot "make the grade" have bad things done to their heads.

And friendships come to an end because of in-game quarrels.

Those who do well are granted new special powers and levels.

And then we learn as you get to higher levels the powers can become real!!!!

A harmless innocent game? I think not.

OMG - it's "Dark Dungeons" by Jack Chick!

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

[hr]
"Twenty-five years later, I dynamited Disneyland to rubble...but even in prison, I still see Goofy everywhere."

- "The Parking Lot is Full"

[samus]

I actually liked the sepia tones and the cinematography.

The 'slowness' reminded me of Tarkovsky's films which are deliberately slow, but still manage to be interesting.

[hr]samus

[Dee]

This is a bad idea, but that's never stopped me in the past so....what was going on in Avalon then?

If you don't want the plot spoiled (although frankly there's not much to spoil) look away now.

It could be a straightforward Matrix clone (I don't know which came first so I'll say nothing about that) but
I'd also buy that the main character's orange filter world was as fake/real as the game world. The latter explanation is more interesting imho.

If it's against militarism and capitalism we're presumably supposed to think "Wow! It's so true - we could use technology to create a fantastic world where everyone is happy but instead we use it for fighting wars and the acquisition of capital. The game/system perpetuates itself by creating false desires (be an A-list player or whatever it was she wanted to be, kill her boyfriend to win the game), and the fight for scarce resources leads to conflict between players. Oshii's asking us to question the 'rules of the game' and its objectives rather than simply 'play to win'. "

I guess it also asks the same sort of questions as the Matrix about what we mean by the real world (it spares us the black trench-coated goofs trying to look very serious whilst doing deep philosophising I'll grant you).

Does this sound fair? Is this the extent of it, or is there something more I've missed?

Oh, and why did the dog disappear and reappear in posters in the "special level"?

[hr]"Twenty-five years later, I dynamited Disneyland to rubble...but even in prison, I still see Goofy everywhere."

- "The Parking Lot is Full"

[Leo Comerford]

[s]samus wrote on 02:47, 9th Mar 2004:
I actually liked the sepia tones and the cinematography.

The 'slowness' reminded me of Tarkovsky's films which are deliberately slow, but still manage to be interesting.

I've barely even heard of Tarkovsky, which shows how seriously one should take my opinions on cinema. Slow-moving films don't invariably bother me, though.

[s]Dee wrote on 17:25, 10th Mar 2004:

...

It could be a straightforward Matrix clone (I don't know which came first so I'll say nothing about that) but
I'd also buy that the main character's orange filter world was as fake/real as the game world. The latter explanation is more interesting imho.

I get most of my Avalon speculations from http://www.ninesisters.org . One I find plausible is that Ash's "everyday" world is actually just Avalon's "lobby area". This leads to the idea that Ash has actually been Unreturned through the whole film. (You might then (rightly? wrongly? aardvark?) assume that the opening text about the year 205? is factual, while the rest of the film is VR.)

Bear in mind that there are translation problems as well here. What Dee and I have seen is the Miramax dub, which apparently follows the Miramax sub track. The Miramax sub has significantly altered dialogue. Apparently there is dialogue in the film about Odin being given a gold ring and a crown of forgetfulness which made it into the other English-language versions of the dialogue but was replaced in the Miramax dub and sub. More obviously, Miramax added seven pieces of voice-over narration by Ash in the manner of the original Blade Runner release (oh, the many ironies). Seemingly the other English subbings have their accuracy problems too (see ninesisters.org again).

As for the Matrix... Avalon definitely came after the Matrix, which in turn came after, and was strongly influenced by, Ghost in the Shell. (Avalon and GitS share not only a director but a scriptwriter.) See http://www.geocities.com/tacobelll/matrixgits/ for a comparison of the two, and http://www.ex.org/articles/2001/2001.6. ... n-pg3.html for a mention of the Wachowskis fanboying at Oshii. I'm inclined to wonder if Avalon is meant as a sour satire on the Matrix, or even GitS, but that seems unlikely as Oshii had allegedly been trying to get Avalon made for a decade.

More soon...

[samus]

I'm hesitant to purchase the DVD because of the fact that there are so many different versions floating around. I don't know how good the US domestic DVD is, compared with with I've seen (Japanese DVD).

The cover art to the American version is so weak, too. I much prefer the Japanese and HK covers.

[hr]samus

[FURY-161]

TBH, I'm not really in favour of ANY version that's doing the rounds at the moment. The US version I showed at the FilmSoc showing has a quite appauling subtitle based not on a proper translation, but on the crappy English dub that lies on the disc. A nasty side effect of this is the subtitles appearing when no-one's talking, or subs that deviate wildly from what is actually being said on screen.

There are plenty of versions floating around in mainland europe (where the film opened much more widley(as is the care for so many far eastern films and animes), but none posess the crucial English subtitle.

There is a fairly good Korean disc floating around, with good extras, English Subs and a Polish DTS track, but it's a difficult and costly process to find and buy it.

The best version I've seen so far was a fan-dubbed pirate version, which was quite accurate in it's titleing and lost little in picture quality.

I can only hope that the film is distributed by a UK label soon. Just pray it won'tbe some shoddy label like Prism or, god forbid, Tartan.

So, there's the skinny on DVD. As for deciphering the film, well; Just look out for all the dogs in there...
[hr]
FURY-161 : FilmSoc Bod.
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"Anything to feel weightless again"
http://fury161.cjb.net

[samus]

[s]Dee wrote on 17:25, 10th Mar 2004:
Oh, and why did the dog disappear and reappear in posters in the "special level"?


I honestly haven't thought about a rationale behind this, because I know that one of Oshii's trademarks is to have a basset hound somewhere in his films. I can't think of an explanation for it other than "because Oshii wanted him there". ^_^

[hr]
samus

[Leo Comerford]

I've come to suspect that the strength of the Basset hound theme in an Oshii film is proportional to the degree to which his self-indulgence was allowed to take control of the project. So Ghost in the Shell was Basset Mark 1, Patlabor 2 was Basset Mark c. 2.5, and Avalon was Basset Mark 4.