Free Pony Theory ~ Cinema. Contemporary life, urban, drama and others.

Joined: 23 Sep 2006 Posts: 1088

Adrift in Tokyo - 2008

“To see Tokyo in all it’s wacky and scenic splendor, take a long walk with Tenten (a.k.a. Adrift in Tokyo). The latest from director Miki Satoshi (Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia ), Tenten is a brilliantly manic road comedy starring the unbeatable tag team of Odagiri Joe (Tokyo Tower - Mom Me, and Sometimes Dad) and Miura Tomokazu (The Taste of Tea). Both actors are playing roles they could do in their sleep - prickly middle-ager and slacker student with unfortunate hair - and they bring the exact combination of calm calamity and charismatic craziness the film calls for. In the grand tradition of male bonding road movies, Tenten is just the aimless story of two strange guys walking around Tokyo for a few days and the stranger adventures they encounter - and yet, it’s so much more. Underachieving law student Takemura (Odagiri Joe) - on his eighth year and counting - has racked up quite a sizable debt in the name of higher education. The urgency of his financial situation announces itself in the form of hot-tempered debt collector Fukuhara (Miura Tomokazu), who comes bursting into his apartment one night demanding payment and threatening painful repercussions. Short of hitting it big on pachinko, Takemura has no idea how he can possibly pay back the sum. As the deadline closes in, Fukuhara makes Takemura an unexpected proposition: walk with him from Kichijoji (in western Tokyo) to Kasumigaseki (in central Tokyo), and he’ll pay the indebted student one million yen, enough to cover his debt. Bewildered but in no position to argue, Takemura hits the road with Fukuhara who, it turns out, just killed his wife and wants to turn himself in at a specific police station in Kasumigaseki. Getting there will take some time though, because many wacky people (including Koizumi Kyoko as a club madam) and surprise detours await them on the road in between.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrift_in_Tokyo_(Film_2008)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1098226/

http://movie-megaupload.com/2009/...rift-in-tokyo-2007.html#more-1617

Joined: 23 Sep 2006 Posts: 1088

La Faute à Fidel! - 2006

A 9-year-old girl, Anna de la Mesa (played by Nina Kervel), weathers big changes in her household as her parents become radical political activists in 1970-71 Paris. Her Spanish-born lawyer father Fernando (played by Stefano Accorsi) is inspired by his family's opposition to Franco and Salvador Allende's victory in Chile; he quits his job and becomes a liaison for Chilean activists in France. Her mother, a Marie Claire journalist-turned-writer documenting the stories of women's abortion ordeals, supports her husband and climbs aboard the ideological bandwagon. As a result, Anna's French bourgeois life is over. She must adjust to refugee nannies, international cuisine and a cramped apartment full of noisy revolutionaries.
The film is filled with a dizzying array of philosophy and ideology - everything from Communism to Catholicism to Greek and Asian mythology - which Anna must reconstruct from confusion to her own set of beliefs. As she negotiates her way through this ideological maze until ultimate internalisation of her parents' admirable (albeit ad-hoc administered) objectives, we are exposed to a witty analysis of stereotyping, misinformation, the potential hypocrisies of ideologies and the potential false hopes of idealism.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0792966/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blame_It_on_Fidel

http://www.foriegnmoviesddl.com/2...fidel-blame-it-on-fidel-2006.html