More Magic

If you've read my earlier report here, I've made mention that the major trade magazines didn't think much about Eric Khoo's film in Cannes Competition, My Magic.

However, there has been word that the audience in general loved the movie, and from the reports that follow, make the standing ovation seemed a lot more justifiable. I've said it before I can't wait to watch this film, but as WiseKwai mentions from this article, Singaporeans don't get to see it until early 2009! What?! *FAINT* C'mon Eric, don't keep us in suspense!

In the same article it mentioned that lead actor and magician Bosco Francis had taken ill and is hospitalized. I hope it's nothing serious, and here's wishing him the best of health and a speedy recovery! (and I'm kicking myself in the butt for my slackness in not having an interview with him before he headed to Cannes!)

Anyway, fellow reader iain M did some fabulous online sleuthing and lingual-gymnastics to share with us the various reports about My Magic, and really, tell me your interest isn't piqued? Here's what iain M has to tell us:

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A check on the Internet revealed there have been quite a few reviews on My Magic and very positive ones too. I used google's translation feature ... and the results are in fractured and confusing English, but I don't think it takes a genius to figure out what they say:
There are many more from Portugal, Italy ...
I think the European sensibility is very different from those of American publications like Variety.

Evene, a French cultural website which belongs to the highly respected Le Figaro group of newspapers, gave the film 5 stars
"In only 1:15, Khoo manages what many filmmakers try in two hours: a disturbing lesson in cinema, which spell with elegance limits known. "

Arte Tv, a Franco-German TV network loved the movie and gave it four stars:
"The Singapore Eric Khoo mixture prestidigitation and melodrama to describe the painful rebirth of a man."
.. "his record of brevity, which remontrerait (the english meaning, I think is reprimand) by many, is above all a miracle of cinema''

From newspaper the French Journal on Sunday which gave it four stars
"The sacrifice of the father, who accepts unbearable blows, is equally moving. The reunion between father and son , gently brought, are up tears in their eyes. All this in front of a camera that knows when to minimalist to highlight the characters. "

From The Manifesto newspaper in Italy
Fairytale 'neorealist' and metaphorical, but dry and glossy as a history of Kaurismaki, My Magic Eric Khoo (Singapore). (...) A great film shot in nine days, which leaves the taste in the mouth of the fragments of glass gradually ingurgitati.

From Italy's dvddrama.com
Behind its small air ARTEMIS, My Magic cache density unexpected. Through an alocholic whose life is about more than than drinking and vomit,
Eric Khoo borrows the path of redemption and presents a complex character who, under his belly bedonnant and his extraordinary phyical mass conceals a fragility related to mourning and love .....The film tells a story of father as we had never seen and the magic of cinema, combined talents of the actor conjurer form a fine ensemble whose originality is matched only by its goodness.

From www.cannes.maville.com
Filmed in nine days with two actors and a half, and a budget of misery, My Magic is a miniature almost miraculous tale about the love of a father and son. You get out on a cloud, with renewed faith in cinema. If the industry is still capable of producing - even at this end of the world - this kind of film, it proves that humanity is not quite doomed to decline. ...