After enjoying Arsenal’s imperious 1-0 defeat of Newcastle yesterday afternoon, I headed into London with vague notions of watching one of the films in this years London Film Festival. Working on the basis that screenings are never full and you can always get in line for a return, I consulted by Guardian Guide to see what was on. I quite fancied The Quiet American starring Michael Caine, but as I turned up, it was obviously a premiere, and tickets were not likely to be two a penny. I’m not too bothered about this, since it goes on release in a couple of weeks and I get a chance in the meantime to read Graham Greene’s novel. I do find it fascinating that so far America has not felt itself able to release this film yet. Somehow it’s un-American. More on that once I’ve read the book and seen the film.
Instead it was going to be something else, and I randomly chose Avalon as it seemed interesting. Now I must admit that I’ve been meaning to watch Ghost in the Shell for quite some time. I’ve got it on tape from a Sci-Fi Channel showing, along with a profile it’s director Mamoru Oshii. This is a video I shall be returning to fairly soon.
Avalon was filmed in Poland, with the characters speaking Polish for the most part (although much of the computer text is in English – was this done several times for different markets? And the book spines may even have been in Japanese). In a near future an illegal virtual reality game called Avalon allows players into a role-playing gameworld, where they must fight one another and bad computer generated characters. Our protaganist is the attractive Ash, one of the stars of the game. The film is beautiful to look at in a washed out sort of manner, and the music is stunning – I shall be hunting the soundtrack down. This site seems to be the best there is on the web for English language speakers.
I suppose Avalon appeals to the videogame player in me, yet it is also the work of an exceptionally accomplished film-maker, and is the kind of the film, that it’s refreshing that can still be made somewhere in the world. Still unreleased in the US I see. There seems to be a theme developing.