SF Intl. Film Fest - Day 6

Oooops!! I almost forgot to post today's little flick!

"Into the Picture Scroll: The Tale of Yamanaka Tokiwa" (dir. Sumiko Haneda, Japan, 2004, 100 mins.) You might think of this as a Japanese Ken Burns flick. Except that it features a set of 400 year old picture scrolls, which are 'animated' and accompanied by "a newly composed joruri score (ballad singing with shamisen accompaniment)." The scrolls are gorgeously detailed and tell the story of Yamanaka Tokiwa, who was a wealthy woman that was murdered and whose ghost wreaks a really bloody revenge, etc. However, I had a difficult time with the score. It plays for nearly the entire 100 minutes and is not very accessible, at least to my ears. I was ok for the first half hour or so, but then it just became a lot of screeching. Even though it is subtitled, I became restless and annoyed. I can appreciate the work, that this is an extraordinary way of preserving a 400 year old piece of art (a mammoth piece of art at that - the story was told with TWELVE scrolls!). However, I just couldn't stick with it.

That was it for today, as my boss took me to dinner tonight!! (Zare!) However, tomorrow is a quadruple feature, 12 hour day.

Rest up.