Alright, at first I thought that writing an individual review for all of my chosen movies at Fantasia 2010 would be a good idea. I ended up creating longer posts than I thought for the reviews that I made, and I ended up being quite busier than I thought I would be.
So there we are. It's been a long time already since Fantasia, and I think it would take a long time to cover all movies so I will not be doing a review for all of them.
However, I feel bad for dropping the idea, so I am at least going to give my overall thoughts about the 2010 edition of the festival.
I have to say that for me, Fantasia has always been a good opportunity to discover pretty good movies that I would not have known about otherwise. As I said in an earlier post, I saw 12 movies this year and this should have been enough to find out good stuff.
I actually think that Fantasia 2010 was a bit of a disappointment for me. Out of 12 movies, none of them were actually bad, but there was not any that could really qualify as outstanding. I will still talk about my favorite stuff.
First of all, Japanese animation did a pretty good job at entertaining me. I saw both Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror and Summer Wars. The first one was actually 3D animation and the second one your usual 2D animation. Oblivion Island had really beautiful graphics, and the story was really cute. On the other hand, Summer Wars featured a pretty original setting, and the plot development was quite interesting.
Korea did a good job this year too. I liked Blades of Blood and Woochi. Blades of Blood was set in Korea at a time where soldiers used sword while guns were beginning to be used. It was a good blend of action, humor and ethical reflection. On the other hand, Woochi was half in the past, half in the present. Even though Woochi seemed a bit less original at first, I think it was a better movie than Blades of Blood.
(I would like to say on a side note that old men with beards from Korea all look alike, and I was confused in both movies because I could not make the difference between several characters.)
Bodyguards and Assassins might be my favorite movie of Fantasia 2010. It is about a revolution in China at the beginning of the 20th century. The first half of the movie is pretty calm, being mostly discussions and planning the revolution. The second half of the movie features a good share of action, while they try to make the plan work. The biggest flaw in this movie would be the title, since I do not think it expresses clearly what the movie is about. I think most of the crowd thought they would be seeing a lot of fighting with assassins.
Finally, 2010 was my first experience at one of DJ XL5's performances, as I went to the Bollywood Zappin' Party. I don't think this man is the best crowd speaker there ever was, but his choice of scenes and match up is extremely funny. At first I was not sure if I would be enjoying myself for this one, but it turned out that I laughed a lot the whole evening and I had a good experience.
That's it for Fantasia 2010. If I ever feel the need to make reviews next year I will try to make them immediately after each movie. Doing everything afterwards is clearly too much work.
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