Or The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec is the latest film from French director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, Leon: The Professional, Nikita).
It's been awhile since Besson has directed a film. He's written at least 40 movies and produced over 80 but only directed just over 10.
This film is based on famed French comic creator Jacques Tardi. There have been at least 9 volumes so far although there hasn't been an English adapation since the early 90's. Dark Horse Comics had reprinted them in an anthology series called Cheval Noir which has been out of print for decades and NBM had collected a couple of them in the mid-1990's but those too are out of print.
Still the film looks very cool. No idea if and when it will reach North America though.
Zow! Regina-born actress and General Fools alumnus Tatiana Maslany has won a special jury prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival for her work in Grown Up Movie Star (CBC). Prairie dog readers might remember Maslany'sappearance on our cover five or six years ago, when she starred in the Globe Theatre's holiday production The Secret Garden. We'll try to dig up the image for Dog Blog. For a few years now, Tatiana's been a busy and successful working actress with stints on shows and films like Being Erica, Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story,Renegadepress.com and George Romero's Diary Of The Dead. I'm a fan of her entertaining (and starring!) role in Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed, where she played a uniquely troubled child fascinated by werewolves. Here's her resume on the Internet Movie Database.
Congratulations and a happy prairie dog bark to Tatiana!
After seeing this film Friday night at the RPL, it has taken a couple of days for me to gather my thoughts on the film.
I went in forewarned, I already knew that there is some terrible things that happen in the course of the film and what they were. After all it's a Lars von Trier film. All his films are uncomfortable to watch.
But what is the film really about? This is von Trier's horror film so it is horrifying but the point of the film seems elusive.
On the surface it seems to be about He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) as they try to work through the grief of losing their child. The film is told in six parts. A prologue which is shot in black in white with Handel's Rinaldo playing. It's in slow motion as He and She make love while their kid gets up and falls out of an open window. The rest of the film is in colour and features some of the most amazing cinematography I've seen in a while.
Chapter One: Grief deals with She as she is hospitalized after the funeral. She can't seem to deal with the grief. She is kept on drugs on the advice of her doctor but He is a therapist and takes it upon himself to make her better. He does this in a cold and clinical manner. She: "You were always distant." He: "Give me an example." He draws a chart as She moves through her grief and into anxiety. The chart is suppose to be about her fears. The only fear that she can come up with is a fear of the forest. So he decides to take her to their cabin in the woods called Eden.
Chapter Two: Pain (Chaos Reigns) They make it out to Eden. Before they arrive, He makes She describe what it will be like once she arrives. As they walk to the cabin He sees a deer in the forest with a dead baby deer coming out it.
Chapter Three: Despair (Gynocide) Things start getting worse. He discovers that She's thesis was about the persecution of women during the witch trials and that She has come to some disturbing conclusions about nature and human nature. She: "Nature is Satan's church." Many horrible things begin to happen. Some are too horrible to describe.
The final two parts of the film are entitled Chapter Four: The Three Beggars and Epilogue which ends the film the same way as the Prologue.
On top of all the terrible stuff that I had heard about, it also occurred to me that the film seems to be misogynistic. Looking at von Trier's films, all his movies seem to be misogynistic. Breaking the Waves has Emily Watson getting brutally rapped because God likes rape apparently. Dancer in the Dark has Bjork's life just get worse and worse until the horrible ending. (Also von Trier drove Bjork into a breakdown while shooting that film to the point where she swore that she'd never act again.)
Dogville and Manderlay once again treated the women pretty shabby, although von Trier is tough an all his actors.
And yet here is a filmmaker that turned his major film studio into the first film company to produce porn for women.
But despite all the shock and horror of Antichrist, I'm not sure what this film is really saying. She seems to have suffered Münchausen syndrome by proxy and He doesn't seem to be really helping her or really noticing what is truly wrong with her. The film almost deserves a repeated viewing to appreciate all the subtle references but who really wants to subject one's self to such extreme gore? My friend that I went to the film with closed his eyes and looked away at a particular scene but has since complained that he can't get the imagine out of his head and he didn't even see it.
I revisited John Ford's The Searchers just recently and I was watching Martin Scorsese, John Milius and Curtis Hanson discuss the film on the special features. They had mentioned how dark and violent the film was. In one scene John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter have returned to farm and have discovered it had been attacked by the natives and is burning to the ground. Wayne finds Aunt Martha's bloody dress and looks into a shack - discovering her body. Ford doesn't show anything but Wayne looking into the building and then knocking out Hunter before he can look in. Milius pointed out that whatever happened is left our imaginations and that it's so terrible that even the Duke doesn't want to look.
I've always known that it isn't always necessary to show graphic of violence. But in this case it's seems to over power the film. Whatever point von Trier wants to make is overshadowed by the graphic violence.
It seems that Hollywood is content with being bland. It's nothing but film after film of annoying CGI singing chipmunks and non-offensive action films. On the other side of the equation, there seems to be more and more independent filmmakers who feel that they must shock audiences awake. Michael Winterbottom’s (9 Songs) latest film The Killer Inside is another example of this extreme reaction.
There doesn't seem to be any happy medium anymore, dull action films like Avatar or films like this.
And I still don't know what to make of Antichrist.
Saskatchewan musicians and filmmakers are reminded that Sunday, Jan. 31 is the final day for them to submit their music or film to organizers of the NXNE Festival which this year will run from June 16-20 in Toronto. This is a big-ass festival with concert showcases, conferences featuring music industry heavyweights, and a music-themed film festival with concert flics and indie docs from around the world. Over the years, NXNE has helped boost the careers of artists such as Feist (pictured), Billy Talent, k-os and Sufjan Stevens. For more details on how to apply, check out www.nxne.com
Well Rohmer was a brilliant director who was part of the French New Wave in the 1960's. He had a habit of making blocks of films with a particular theme running through them. I've only seen his Six Moral Tales - which consists of La Boulangère de Monceau (The Bakery Girl of Monceau), La Carrière de Suzanne (Suzanne's Career), La Collectionneuse (The Collector), Ma nuit chez Maud (My Night at Maud's), Le Genou de Claire (Claire's Knee), L'Amour l'après-midi (Love in the Afternoon/Chloe in the Afternoon).
He also had his Comedies and Proverbs - La Femme de l'aviateur (The Aviator's Wife), Le Beau mariage (A Good Marriage), Pauline à la plage (Pauline at the Beach), Les Nuits de la pleine lune (Full Moon in Paris), Le Rayon vert (The Green Ray/Summer), L'Ami de mon amie (My Girlfriend's Boyfriend/Boyfriends and Girlfriends) and the Tales of Four Seasons - Conte de printemps (A Tale of Springtime), Conte d'hiver (A Winter's Tale/A Tale of Winter), Conte d'été (A Tale of Summer) and Conte d'automne (A Tale of Autumn).
His films deal with people and their various relationships. There's a lot conversations that take place and usually not much action or drama. Still there's something beautiful and compelling about his movies. These are brilliant films and if you haven't seen them before, they are worth checking out.
Oh, the sad occasion of Art Clokey's passing has prompted me to start sifting though YouTube. Have you been? It's amazing what you can find there. I've been fondly recalling all the old classics - "Blind Man's Bluff", "The Winner", and then I was reminded of a film that I first saw on a compilation tape of post-modern animation entitled "He Was Once" (directed by Mary Hestand in 1989). See if you can spot a very young Todd Haynes. Enjoy!
No. Not that Stephen Harper. But I did interview a Stephen Harper on the subject of zombies. I'll let him explain....
“It’s worth clarifying that I’m a British media studies academic, and not your Prime Minister. Then again, inviting him to discuss zombies might not be such a bad idea: world leaders aren’t exactly known for their humanity, but yours seems to have more in common with the living dead than most...”
See, what happened was, for the zombie article I wrote for our decade-in-review issue, I tried to arrange an email interview with Professor Stephen Harper of the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media at Portsmouth University. He'd written a piece I enjoyed called "Zombies, Malls and the Consumerism Debate" for the journal Americana. And, considering his name, I figured he'd be a doubly perfect source for an article looking back on zombie film in the Zero Decade. But, due to holiday celebrating getting in the way, the interview didn’t come off until after the issue went to press.
Still, Harper’s insights into the zombie genre are pretty damn impressive so I’m running the whole interview here on the blog.
But first a few highlights....
“Humanity is living through apocalyptic times – war, famine and disease blight the planet and even the ability of the environment to support human life is being undermined at an alarming rate. Such developments aren’t natural or inevitable (in fact they are all more or less preventable); they are the excrescences of a mode of production that is in terminal decline – in fact, a system that can only be described as necrotic. Especially in the wake of the recent economic crisis, it’s become more and more apparent that capitalism is a rotting corpse. Although a dead system, it blindly staggers onwards. Having enjoyed a fruitful life, it has now exhausted its potential and is now no longer advancing the cause of human progress in any way, but cannibalising humanity. ”
“Perhaps more than any other type of monster, zombies condense ideas about power and its abuse. As you know, the zombie has origins in the Haitian voodoo tradition and insofar as they are seen as slaves, zombies invite a degree of sympathy, opening up a space in which we can see ourselves, as it were, in them.”
"More terrifyingly, of course, the undead can also represent the ‘return of the repressed’, resurrecting unpleasant histories or reviving reactionary values. In many films, zombies figure forth the ‘dead weight’ of archaic or conservative ideologies, recalling Marx’s famous observation in The Eighteenth Brumaire, that ‘the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living’."
I know that techinically this makes 13 Days of Christmas but what the heck.
This excellent Canadian film from 1978 was directed by Daryl Duke (who directed the Thorn Birds mini-series) and was a remake of a Danish film Think of a Number (1969). This adaptation was written for the screen by a young Curtis Hanson who gone on to direct L.A. Confidential.
Elliott Gould stars as Miles - a bank teller in a shopping mall in Toronto. It's Christmas time and Gould discovers that the bank is going to be robbed. He then comes up with a plan to steal a bunch of money and blame it on the robber - a psychotic Christopher Plummer. When Plummer comes to rob the bank in a Santa Claus suit, Gould gives Plummer some of the dough and keeps the rest for himself. Plummer discovers that he's been taken and a deadly cat and mouse game begins between the two men. This movie has many twists and turns and to reveal any more of the plot would destroy the fun of watching the movie. This was one of the earliest films from Canada to take advantage of the Canadian government's "Capital Cost Allowance" plans. And it won the Canadian Film Award for best film that year. The cast is stellar and even John Candy has a bit role in it. The film is one of hidden gems that nobody ever really knows about - in fact I can't even find a trailer or a clip of the film but it is finally available on DVD.
It's Christmas Eve at the Nakatomi Plaza in L.A. and for New York cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) it's going to be a long night.
Terrorists lead by Alan Rickman have seized the building and one of the hostages is McClane's estranged wife Holly.
Based on a novel by Roderick Thorp titled Nothing Lasts Forever. The book itself was a sequel to Thorp's earlier novel The Detective which was made into a film starring Frank Sinatra.
John McTiernan directed Predator the year earlier and with this film secured his position as one the best action directors for a brief period. He followed this film up with The Hunt For Red October. It slowly went down hill for him there, Medicine Man, Last Action Hero, Die Hard: With a Vengeance, The 13th Warrior, The Thomas Crown Affair and then the terrible remake Rollerball.
The movie uses Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 throughout the film, terrorists hum it, and it plays through out several big scenes that I won't spoil.
Alan Rickman is brilliant as Hans Gruber, the leader of the terrorists and Bruce Willis is the perfect everyman action hero. He can get hurt (one particularly nasty scene has Willis pulling glass out of his foot) and he can crack wise with the best.
This film is one of my favorites and considered by many to be one of the best action films of all time.
Life of Brian or Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) is a damn funny movie. It's also an excuse for me to have a Monty Python movie on my list. And it sort pertains to Christmas.
Born in a stable a few doors down from Jesus Christ, Brian is mistaken for the messiah most of his life. He gets involved in all sorts of wacky situations, including getting a group of followers.
Brian: "Please, please, please listen! I've got one or two things to say." The Crowd: "Tell us! Tell us both of them!" Brian: "Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't NEED to follow ME, You don't NEED to follow ANYBODY! You've got to think for your selves! You're ALL individuals!" The Crowd: "Yes! We're all individuals!" Brian: "You're all different!" The Crowd: "Yes, we ARE all different!" Man in crowd: "I'm not..." The Crowd: "Sch! "
And how can you go wrong with movie that has tag lines like
"A motion picture destined to offend nearly two thirds of the civilized world. And severely annoy the other third."
"See the movie that's controversial, sacrilegious, and blasphemous. But if that's not playing, see The Life of Brian."
"The film that is so funny it was banned in Norway."
"He wasn't the messiah. He was a very naughty boy."
The Python crew aren't pulling any punches in this satire of religion. The jokes fast and plentiful and nothing is spared. The film was banned in Norway for a year, Ireland for eight years, Burma, Bhutan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Oman, South Africa, Vatican City and several towns in both England and the United States of America.
Despite all the controversy the film has endured over the years and it still has a huge following. Plus it's funny.
The Thin Man is a 1934 comedy murder mystery based on a novel Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon).
Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) are a happily married and wealthy couple. Nick used to be a detective but he retired when he married Nora. They travel around drinking and enjoying the good life. And drinking. Made just before the Production Code kicked in, Nick and Nora enjoy themselves a lot.
Nora Charles: "How many drinks have you had?" Nick Charles: "This will make six Martinis." Nora Charles: [to the waiter] "All right. Will you bring me five more Martinis, Leo? Line them right up here."
Nora Charles: [suffering from a hang-over] "What hit me?" Nick Charles: "The last martini."
The film was made for the B movie unit of MGM by thrifty director W.S. Van Dyke. The movie was so popular it that they made five sequels, although they toned down Nick's drinking a little and Nora's to complete sobriety. Spoilsports.
The plot is complex. It's Christmas and a man named Wynant (the thin man of the title) has gone missing. He is then accused of multiple murders. Wynant's daughter Maureen Sullivan wants Nick to prove her father's innocence. Before long there's more bodies and suspects than anyone can keep track of.
Nick Charles: "I'm a hero. I was shot twice in the Tribune." Nora Charles: "I read where you were shot 5 times in the tabloids." Nick Charles: "It's not true. He didn't come anywhere near my tabloids."
It's an extremely fun and enjoyable film, the kind they don't make anymore and I don't think they could if they tried. At the start of the trailer William Powell is playing his other famous detective Philo Vance (who Powell played in four films) who then engages in a conversation with Nick Charles. Both characters are essentially Powell being Powell but he does the stylish detective well.
Randall Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) buys a gift for his son Zach Galligan in an old dark shop in Chinatown while visiting Manhattan. It's a small cute furry creature that's called a mogwai (which in Cantonese translates literally as "monster"). There are rules for caring for a mogwai. Don't get him wet, keep him out of bright light, and never feed him after midnight. Naturally all the rules get broken and then the fun begins.
Director Joe Dante (Piranha, The Howling) brings this black comedy to the big screen with his usual in jokes and a combination of horrific and comedic elements. There's lots of biting, clawing, intentional accidents, death by microwave, decapitations, general mass destruction and a quick pit stop in all the chaos to watch a little Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
This movie along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was responsible for the creation of PG-13 rating in the U.S. Both films are a little too violent for PG (which they were both rated) and no where near an R-rating.
It's 1183 and King Henry II (Peter O'Toole) and his wife Queen Eleanor (Katharine Hepburn) are holding Christmas Court.
King Henry is suppose to name a successor and wants to name Prince John (Nigel Terry). Queen Eleanor wants Prince Richard (Anthony Hopkins in his big screen debut). Meanwhile King Philip II (Timothy Dalton - future James Bond in his motion picture debut) of France wants his half-sister Alais (Jane Merrow) to marry the future heir. Except that she's been the mistress of King Henry for quite sometime now. A lot of verbal sparing and death threats follow.
The film is based on a play by James Goldman and directed by Anthony Harvey who, despite working several times with Katherine Hepburn, never managed to top this film. It isn't historically accurate but the acting between O'Toole and Hepburn is magnificent.
Saw it. Liked it. Recommend it. Avatar has no plot, the characters have the depth of Disney cartoons and the dialogue ("You're not in Kansas!" "We will fight terror, with terror!") ranges from "sketchy" to "George Lucas-esque painful to listen to." But...
Yeah, you should probably see this in the theatre. Ideally in 3-D. Ideally as soon as possible.
I love Avatar's dopey, hippie message. Maybe it's just that I saw the film on the right day but I was all-up for a flashy, brainless "tree-huggers vs. American-style corporate fascists in space" fable where (spoiler alert!) the good [cats] win. After a couple of weeks watching humanity's leaders bungle through Copenhagen for a useless non-treaty on global warming in real life, I needed giant, blue, feline warriors killing the crap out of crummy, capitalist scum and their stormtroopers-for-hire.
When the helicopters came, Bruce Cockburn wanted a rocket launcher. All the Na'vi (as they're called) need are inch-thick, four-foot arrows (unnecessarily) dipped in neurotoxic poison. Suck on that, you forest-raping Earth-fuckers!
As for the special and 3-D effects, dial your expectations down, slightly. Avatar won't change the way movies are made like Star Wars or Jurassic Park did. Avatar's effects aren't revolutionary, they're evolutionary. But yes, they're the best effects ever. Just don't expect to see a new colour being invented before your eyes, is all I'm saying. (I should add that, to director James Cameron's credit, the effects aren't used in a pushy way that would distract from the movie. Restraint is an admirable quality in a film that's 95 per cent computer-made.)
So that's my take. Hope it's helpful. Four dogs out of five.
Okay, four and a half. Not too bad for a flick with no script.
Splat! A young hooker, high on an illegal substance, jumps off a balcony and kick starts this 1987 action packed film.
It's Christmas time and Sergeant Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) is investigating the death of the girl with his new partner Sergeant Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson). Riggs is suicidal since the death of his wife and Murtaugh is just getting to old for this shit. After watering down the franchise with three sequels, some people might have forgotten how much fun, excitement and intensity this film has.
Made near the end of the '80s and following in the footsteps of several buddy cop movies (48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop), this film was directed by Richard Donner (Superman, The Omen, The Goonies) and written by Shane Black (The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang).
After the opening credits and the dead hooker, this film contains so many action scenes, it's almost hard to list them. But highlights include jumping off a building (with a suicidal citizen), a helicopter shoot out, an electric shock torture scene, numerous gun fights, several scenes containing the constant verbal sparing between Murtaugh and Riggs and of course the final kung fu fight on Murtaugh's lawn between Riggs and Mr. Joshua(Gary Busey). This movie is an intense ride.
There's a scene in this movie where Dan Aykroyd, brought low in a social experiment of nature versus nurture, sits on a bus in a Santa Claus suit. He's drunk and foul looking and he had just failed to frame Eddie Murphy at a company Christmas party of his former employers in an attempt try to reclaim his previous life. At the party he had "procured" some food and booze. Now sitting on a bus he pulls a smoked salmon out of his coat and tries to eat it through his Santa Claus beard getting hair stuck in his mouth. It is one of the funniest and nastiest bits I have ever seen. Sure there's sicker gags out there on film but that beard is just a nasty, filthy looking beard and I'm not sure I'd wear it much less let it get stuck on food that I was trying to eat.
The film is one John Landis' last of his really funny comedies that he made. After this he made several mediocre comedies like Spies Like Us and Coming to America and more than a few done right disasters - Innocent Blood, Beverly Hills Cop III and The Stupids.
This is one of those rare comedies that has some insightful social commentary. It also has an ending that apparently makes perfect sense if you're a commodities broker. I've tried to follow it several times and I think I understand what's going on. Fortunately there are folks out that look into this sort of thing and have actually explained what happens.
It's Christmas Eve at the Ekdahl family household. They are a large and extremely wealthy family and for the most part a happy family. But they are plagued with the usual family problems. The matriarch, Helena has three grown children. Gustav who constantly cheats on his wife. Carl whose German wife nobody likes and Oscar who is married to the beautiful Emilie and has two children - Fanny and Alexander. Oscar and Emilie are in the theatre. A couple days later Oscar mysteriously dies leaving Emilie alone and forced to make some difficult decisions that effect everyone, especially the children. All of this happens through the eyes of Fanny and Alexander, especially Alexander.
This was to be Ingmar Bergman's last movie and it was originally shot for television. The TV version is a whopping 312 minutes but it was also released in a condensed 188 minute theatrical version. This is the version that I've watched and it feels like a complete movie - I can't imagine what was cut out.
I don't know why but I like Bergman's movies. They can be pretentious as he tries to explore the human condition but there's always something more to them. And this is one of his more accessibly films. There is a bit of magic and the odd ghost thrown into the film but it all works seamlessly because it's all seen through the children Alexander and Fanny's eyes.
Christmas in July (1940) is the second film directed by the brilliant Preston Sturges after The Great McGinty. Although the movie has the word Christmas in the title, that's all that's Christmasy about the movie but for my purposes that's more than enough. Christmas in July features Dick Powell as an office clerk who has entered the Maxford House Coffee Slogan contest. He has dreams of winning the grand prize of $25,000.
"If you can't sleep, it isn't the coffee. It's the bunk."
Three of his co-workers decide to play a prank on him and send a fake telegram informing Powell that he won the contest. They assume that Powell will find out that he didn't actually win and they can all have a laugh about. Things don't quite go as planned as nobody seems to catch on that Powell didn't win and as a result he goes on a spending frenzy, buying stuff for his mom, his fiance (Ellen Drew) and gifts for all the poor people in his neighbourhood.
For those unfamiliar with Sturges work, he was the master of the screwball comedy. Rocket fire dialogue, the occasional social commentary and outrageous slapstick were his trademarks. His movies are just damn funny stuff. He had string of classics, one right after another. The Great McGinty, The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and of course this film. All of them are worth watching.
It's Christmas time in Bruges, Belgium and two hitmen, Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson), are on a forced sabbatical. They are lying low until they hear from their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes). You see Ray has royally screwed up a hit and Harry isn't happy with him at all.
Marie: [to Ray and Harry] "Why don't you both put your guns down, and go home?" Harry: "Don't be stupid. This is the shootout. "
This is a very black comedy with some brilliant moments of drama and some brutal action thrown in for good measure. The movie is written and directed by first time filmmaker Martin McDonagh. The basic plot is one Hollywood's good old hitman screwed up and killed someone he shouldn't have plot but McDonagh and company make the movie into something so much more than that.
Both Gleeson and Fiennes are excellent in their roles. I'm not usually a fan of Colin Farrell but he is perfect as Ray, an arrogant screw up who really isn't as bad as he lets on but the things that come out of his mouth just make you shake your head and laugh.
"I don't hit women. I would never hit a woman, Chloe. I'd hit a woman who was trying to hit me with a bottle. That's different. That's self-defense, isn't it? Or a woman who could do karate. I would never hit a woman generally, Chloe."
To describe anymore of the story would be to deprive people the pleasure of discovering the film. It's also one of those movies that Hollywood has no idea on how to advertise it. The trailer for it is terrible and really doesn't accurately advertise what the film is about at all. It's better to just watch the movie.
John Ford's 3 Godfathers (1948) was a remake of a 1916 silent film. Based on a book by Peter B. Kyne - the story has been remade at least seven times, including once in 1919 by Ford.
The film has John Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz and Harry Carey Jr. as a group of outlaws being chased across a desert in Arizona after they robbed the bank in New Jerusalem. They come across a dying woman on Christmas Eve who gives birth to a baby boy. She makes the three men the baby's godfathers after naming the baby after all of them.
After she dies, Wayne and company decide to try and keep their promise to the dying woman to save her baby. They make the harsh and treacherous way back across the desert with stock Ford actor Ward Bond hot on the Duke's trail.
Brilliant Japanese animation director Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Paprika) loosely remade 3 Godfathers as the film Tokyo Godfathers in 2003.
The movie has three homeless people, a teenage runaway, a homeless man and a transvestite who find a baby on Christmas Eve. The movie follows their adventures through modern day Tokyo as they try to reunite the baby with it's family.
This film is based on famed French comic creator Jacques Tardi. There have been at least 9 volumes so far although there hasn't been an English adapation since the early 90's. Dark Horse Comics had reprinted them in an anthology series called Cheval Noir which has been out of print for decades and NBM had collected a couple of them in the mid-1990's but those too are out of print.
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