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Quirky Guys and Gals AKA Sabi otoko sabi onna
R2 - United Kingdom - Third Window Films Review written by and copyright: Samuel Scott (2nd October 2011). |
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The Film
 Quirky Guys and Gals is an anthology of four short films with a very interesting objective. Using relatively experienced directors and cast members, Quirky Guys and Gals is a project in which student producers (over 25 of them!) are given the chance to experience the realities of cinema production by New Cinema Workshop. The four films couldn't be anymore different from one another and each one has a different tone and different level of quirkiness to them. The synopsis from Third Window reads: Approaching the surrealism of its predecessor, Quirky Guys and Gals (Sabi Otoko, Sabi Onna) ties together four stories of people searching for a spark in their lives. Yosuke Fujita (Fine, Totally Fine) leads off with “Cheer Girls,” an entertaining tale of a woman (Nanami Sakuraba) whose passion is to lead cheers—though not for sports teams. Rather, she finds common people and creates anthems to encourage them in everyday life. Tomoko Matsunashi’s “Boy? Meets Girl,” is a Tootsie remake in a high-school setting. Mipo O’s “Claim Night” sees the 30-something Mayuko (Tomochika) return home to find the electricity in her apartment turned off, yet when she finally gets a repairman to come over, their over-the-top confrontation gives rise to a wildly comedic situation. Lastly, Gen Sekiguchi (Survive Style 5+) offers up “The House Full of ‘Abandoned’ Businessmen” a quaint tale of a housewife who collects out-of-work salarymen to try and give them a fresh start. This is a great concept and a great opportunity for budding producers and a testament to New Cinema Workshop to be able to get some known directors and cast members to take part and help guide the segments of the anthology. The acting is reasonably good throughout and the style of acting, whilst different in each segment, suits each segment and character with different levels of quirkiness although sometimes it feels overplayed despite the sort of stories they are. Of particular note however is Kyoko Koizumi in the story "The House Full of ‘Abandoned’ Businessmen". The scripts are where the film ultimately suffers. Whilst original, they come across as rather lazy and it often feels as though a lot of the film was filmed on the fly and overly-improvised. The first section (Cheer Girls), is in my opinion, by far the best. Totally random and bizarre on all levels it made me laugh watching three over the top high school cheerleaders cheering on people doing regular things such as a young boy tying his shoelace and a waiter struggling to open a jar. In this section, the overplaying of the characters is a requirement rather than a fault. Overall, this is a solid selection of shorts for an anthology. Despite the obvious low budget constraints and mediocre dialogue, the segments are enjoyable and worthy of your time.
Video
Third Window present Quirky Guys and Gals in the original aspect ratio of 1.78:1. It's an NTSC>PAL transfer which has unfortunately resulted in occasional ghosting and combing, only noticeable in scenes where the camera isn't stationary. Colours are solid and outside of problems caused by the progressive transfer, picture quality is otherwise pretty decent.
Audio
Only one option here, a Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track in the original Japanese. Not much in the way of seperation but dialogue is clear and there was no apparent damage in the track. I doubt the film would've particularly benefited from an upmixed 5.1 track so what we have is certainly adequate. English subtitles are optional and clear at all times. They had a couple of very small grammatical errors but they were barely noticeable whilst paying attention to the dialogue itself.
Extras
The first extra is unfortunately poorly advertised on the disc. There are introductions for each segment from the respective directors but they only seem to be available by selecting the story segments individually and not by playing the feature in it's entirety. Either way, the intros were obviously produced directly for this release as they all say what a pleasure it is for their shorts to be available in the UK market. Next up we have lengthy interviews with each director: - Yosuke Fujita (16:58) - Tomoko Matsunashi (12:00) - Mipo O (22:56) - Gen Sekiguchi (12:33) A very welcome addition to the extras, these also seem to have been produced exclusively for Third Window. In-depth and covering a wide range of aspects from Japanese cinema in general through to everything about making their segments for Quirky Guys and Gals, these interviews are certainly a worthy viewing. The only thing that annoyed me about the interviews was we don't hear the interviewer who is obviously present, instead just getting the questions as subtitles whilst the directors continously nod. A bunch of bonus trailers for other Third Window releases have been included: - "Villain" - "Sawako Decides" - "Cold Fish" - "Confessions" - "Confessions of a Dog" - "Memories of Matsuko" - "Kamikaze Girls" - "Kakera" - "Fish Story" - "Lala Pipo" - "Love Exposure" - "Instant Swamp" - "Fine, Totally Fine" - "Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers" - "Funuke" - "Dasepo Naughty Girls" We finish up the extras package with a weblink.
Overall
Fans of the quirkier side of Japanese cinema will lap this up and it comes with a nice extras package and good sound. Video quality is slightly lacking but this an otherwise good release.
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