Living a double life, Dr Atsuko Chiba is a 29 year-old research psychotherapist working on the cutting edge of the scientific community. Her alter ego, 18 year-old Paprika, is a dream detective who enters people’s sleep at night to battle the source of their neuroses and anxieties. When an evil force steals her dream-entering device, waking life becomes over-run by nightmares and Paprika is the only hope for saving Tokyo from annihilation. - MIFF
Now let me just add that to my wishlist. A wishlist that’s not been updated for awhile. Christmas’ coming soon, and i would love to strike a few of them out by then. Yes, the title appears to be the first words on Paprika, Satoshi Kon’s latest anime offering. Well now, anime self-respecting anime fan has to know that name, and at least watched one of the following 3 movies; Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers.
A brave tagline seen on IMDb, regardless of who put it there, is “This is your brain on anime” and the first thing that comes to mind was a similar mind-boggling anime, Mind Game. It goes beyond artistic elements and metaphors, blending the craziness of what you can do with animations and just fudging with you mind. Thus, Mind Game, i suppose. Paprika seems to explore something of a more coherent plot or idea or whatever you like to call it. It was shown on the Melbourne Film Festival, and i can’t believe that it’s been a year now since i was in Melbourne having the time of my life overexposing my eyes to films of all languages and genres.
I’m no artist, and though life may not seem that way, i agree with Jean Luc Godard that a film has 3 necessary elements; a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessary in the said order.
“This head movie is cunningly designed to mess up minds.” – Japan Times.
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Another interest bit. For some reason i ticked the section GSC In’tl screens Newsletters when signing up as a member there, and to my greatest surprise, my curiousity in actually opening the email which i usually delete without a 2nd thought reaped a sorta of a magical gem which i thought i had lost about one year ago. The three words i saw was “Linda Linda Linda“. Thank you GSC for having this Japanese Film Festival, though it might not be much.
At least there’s something from Hirokazu Kore-eda!
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Even more of interesting bits.
A reflective day, where i blab a whole lot with miss sakaki, had a lot of cheese and then regretting it when i look into the mirror, i finally realised, at the end of the day, while typing the few paras above that today marks 1 year i’ve been back in Malaysia. Not that it really matters to anyone anyway. But one year on, have i decided what i really want? sakaki-chan was saying that even she doesn’t know (yet), and i can’t say i am relieved. I mean, when i look at all those shiny happy people who seem to know where they are going, i’d really love to know if where they is really where they wanna go?
It’s still early days in life when i think about it again. And i think i am beginning to be able to map out what i really want. I just need the Lord’s help.
