Daily post 17 Sep 2007 07:49 am
Screenings
- Persepolis played at the Toronto Film Festival this past week after having done well at Telluride, and it has garnered some fine reviews. Wired has a glowing paragraph in their film festival coverage:
In fact, I’ve only seen one film here that has any interest in what used to be called Wisdom: Persepolis, the stunning animated adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel about growing up fractious and female in post-revolutionary Iran. Visually, it’s a 2D triumph, with influences as diverse as stark communist iconography and Lotte Reininger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed. Perhaps a little contempt has crept into my familiarity with the protracted American journey to adulthood, but I found this decidedly non-Western (yet 100% accessible) version hugely refreshing. (Also: Shorter! A good quality at a film festival.) Absorbing the genuine life experience from her grandmother, parents and uncle, Young Marjane negotiates real peril, moral and bodily, and discovers that the battle to maintain one’s integrity is waged daily, in war and peace.
Now that’s some real grown-up talk.
If you’d like to see a couple of other reviews here they are:
- PopMatters, of Illinois loved it and includes a trailer in French on their site. (You can see this in English on the Persepolis site.
and
Cinematical offers their post-Telluride review.
Next up for this film will be a screening at Ottawa on the opening day and the closing night’s program for the NYFilm Festival. Very posh, indeed.
The film is scheduled to open in the US on Dec. 25th.
- China is using animation to try to stop child abuse. The pictured police woman and police 
now appear on gateway websites in China. These characters will pop up every half hour on websites.
The cartoon figures of the “virtual police” were created by the Beijing Public Security Bureau.
The cartoons are designed to encourage people to turn in offensive pornographic websites as well as child abusers. _
(Click any image to enlarge.)
