by SARAH ROWLAND

She's stacked, limber and looking for a father figure. Her turn-ons include saving the world from evil rulers and deep-throating as many rice balls as she can (uh, we mean seaweed sandwiches). And oh yeah, she slays on the karaoke machine. The only downfall this superhero has is that she's a "happy maniac." But the first time you see Cutie Honey transform into her signature crimefighting costume, which includes an armoured chest plate with a peek-a-boo, heart-shaped centre, you can overlook her insistent cheery disposition.

Based on the Japanese anime TV show of the same name, itself based on Go Nagai's popular manga, it's hard to imagine that a cartoon character as sugarcoated as Cutie Honey could be brought to life by a human actress without being sickly sweet. But that's exactly what director Hideaki Anno did when he decided to use the popular animated series as a muse for his latest full-length feature.

"I wanted to say, ‘Don't run into the virtual world of fiction, but live in an actual life,'" says Anno in an e-mail interview with the Mirror.

His version of Cutie Honey - which interjects animation for some of the battle scenes - follows the sexpot warrior (as played by Eriko Satoh) about a year after she is brought back to life with the help of i-System, an android technology that her father invented before he died at the hands of Sister Jill. Obsessed with eternal life and beauty, Jill goes beyond sticking to a low-carb diet and shooting Botox into her laugh lines. Instead, she sets out to steal Cutie's everlasting effervescence. Meanwhile Cutie, who is eager to avenge her father's death, must decide if she is going to let her need for redemption blacken her heart with the same kind of hate that possesses Jill.

Instead of being a simplistic revenge fantasy, Cutie Honey unapologetically champions the power of love. When Cutie communicates with her cherished uncle through an invisible emotional connection, even though his memories of her have been wiped out by Jill, Anno illustrates that benevolence is more enduring than intellect. He does so with a light touch that doesn't dig too deep into the human psyche.

Hairy controversy

This stands in contrast with some of his other work, like the final episodes of his sci-fi anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, which veered sharply into moody, self-reflective territory. Anno received a lot of criticism from hostile fans; it was reported that he even received death threats. He also earned a reputation as one of the most "controversial" filmmakers in Japan, and reporters accused him of being defensive and antagonistic at press conferences when asked about his followers' reactions. He seems to have come to terms with negative feedback since then.

"A work is also a fan's thing, from when it is released," says Anno. "I think that they are free to react how they choose. However, I have recognized that there are many of those who judge people with insufficient sensitivity."

Although Anno went on record admitting he liked the ending of his series, out of respect to his co-workers on the set, he buzzed off all his hair, which he says is an ancient Japanese custom that expresses remorse and taking responsibility for one's actions.

"I shaved my head because the TV series was not completed in its original image," he says. "My feeling of apologia was to the staff and the cast."

Well, unless his fans take exception to Cutie Honey's campy action sequences, T&A costumes and message of love conquering all, he can safely put down the sheers and keep his locks long.

At Concordia's Hall theatre (1455 de Maisonneuve w.) on Saturday, July 17, 9:45pm, and Sunday, July 18, 4:45pm

High noon and loons on the moon

>> Two takes on French comics titan Moebius

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

If you're a fan of European comics, you've seen the work of France's Jean "Moebius" Giraud. He's been celebrated over here since the '70s for his exquisite if often directionless flights of fantasy and techno-surrealism, initially in the magazine Heavy Metal, which introduced his signature character, the stoic, airborne warrior Arzach. Even if you're not un amateur de la BD, you've seen his work - his production designs have blessed Tron, Alien, The Abyss and The Fifth Element, the last being the closest thing to a live-action version of his comics yet produced.

While his contributions certainly boosted those films, it's grand to finally see an extended moving-picture project that is purely Moebius in every detail. The Arzak Rhapsody cartoons, 14 three-minute shorts created for French TV, capitalize on the freedom of Flash animation to bring Arzach to vivid - and uncompromised - life.

"You have almost nothing between the drawings, the ideas, and the results," Giraud says over the phone from France. "For me, there are two results, one negative, the other positive. The negative is, my feeling is that the stories and the style are sometimes a little complacent and weak. What was missing was someone else to say, ‘This part should be a bit better, maybe you could redraw it.' The positive part is, I was all alone! It's something that's completely mine. I can say, this is my work. This is very rare in animation."

The reverse is true for Blueberry, the big-deal live-action version of cowboy comics Giraud created with the writer Charlier in the '60s. "My involvement was zero per cent. I sold the rights to two stories, that's all. I met the director, Jan Kounen, and we became friends. He's a very nice guy. I was really anxious to let him be free."

The original Lieutenant Blueberry comic series was pretty straightforward Western pulp, but Kounen's shamanistic spin on the character (which boasts a cast that includes Juliette Lewis, Michael Madsen, Ernest Borgnine and French superstar Vincent Cassel in the lead role) seems closer to the psychedelic sensibility of filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, a frequent Moebius collaborator in later years. Traditional French fans of the comic were seriously irked, the way many Americans were when confronted with The Fifth Element's loopy attitude. Yanks like their sci-fi dark and dystopic, not colourful and cornball, and Giraud has an interesting theory about that.

"When I saw The Fifth Element, I realized that movie had something new, in regards to American productions. Something about amusement and fun, about real entertainment with no purpose. The future, in the American tradition, can be seen through scientists, through the scientific vision, but also through the religious. They used to talk about the future in the church in the United States. They'd say, ‘Repent, repent! Sinners, if you don't repent, you'll die and be with the devil!' So there's a confusion, in American science fiction, between the TV preachers and the scientific perception of the universe. It's very strong in American science fiction, this mystic side. But the price to pay for that mystic side is something very close to religious education. The Fifth Element was very clean about that, because it had nothing about any prophetic warning. It was only the fun of the future."

Arzak Rhapsody is at concordia's Hall Theatre (1455 de maisonneuve w.) on Saturday, July 17, 5pm; Blueberry is at the Hall Theatre on Saturday, July 17, and Sunday, July 18, 7pm

Hairy scary
fairy tale

>> The lurid la-la land of Wenzel Storch's A Journey Into Bliss

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

A frenzy of archaic technology, visually stimulating clutter, clownish aristocracy, absurd black humour and antiquated fairy-tale iconography, A Journey Into Bliss will have many tagging German indie filmmaker Wenzel Storch as Terry Gilliam on a budget - or maybe on crack.

Storch happily admits to the influence of Gilliam and his Monty Python cronies, and to classic Euro kiddie flicks like Josef von Baky's original Münchhausen ("To my mind," says Storch, "a thousand times better than Gilliam's remake"). But he claims his leading inspiration was his own acid trips in the early '80s.

"At the time, I thought to myself that it should surely be possible to make stuff on the screen just as higgledy-piggledy and unpredictable as it is on a trip. And what if those kinds of films don't actually exist? Then you just have to get on with it and make them yourself. On acid, behind the magnificence of shapes, colours and objects there is hidden, sudden horror, and vice versa. And in Journey, the most spine-chilling things suddenly become quite cute again."

Journey could in fact be described as a children's film that kids should be kept clear of, what with all the pissing, vomiting, sex, drunkenness, exposed brains, exploding heads and cute animals cursing like sailors. "That's a very appropriate description for it, although I don't think it will put kids into a state of shock for life. Even when the really hard stuff comes, it still flickers across the screen in an affectionate and quaint kind of way.

"That reminds me of one small anecdote. Matthias Hänisch, who plays the King of the Gourmets, did in fact show his two six-year-olds the scene where his head is sawn open and the brain is taken out, and the children watched it spellbound. Afterwards, full of concern, they asked him if it was bad or sad for him that he would now have to run around without his old brain."

Journey was filmed and edited on ancient gear (the Arri II A camera dates back to the '30s) largely for fiscal, not aesthetic, reasons. Production design was really an extended scavenger hunt. "We spent a whole year scouring farmyards, attics and flea markets, and on many a night illegally plundered a disused factory. By the end, we stood in front of an enormous mountain of junk - dentists' chairs, plaster cacti, medical apparatus, turnip and potato diggers, mounted antlers, ad infinitum."

The biggest stars in the cast were Nora and Gypsy, the twin bears that share the role of the snail ship's ursine first mate (see it, you'll understand). "Previous to this, Nora had played in the French Asterix film. The twins' mother had filmed with Telly Savalas and Belmondo, as well as appearing in Polanski's Macbeth and Annaud's The Bear."

A steady diet of Gummi Bears and Coca-Cola staved off any star fits by the bears. Not all the actors were so professional, though. "Unfortunately the rabbit was idle in the extreme. When we shot the scene in the propeller car in which the frogs go joyriding, the rabbit just kept on falling asleep at the wheel."

At the hall theatre (1455 de maisonneuve w.) on July 15, 9:40pm and at Salle De Sève (1400 de Maisonneuve w.), July 16, 9:55pm

Bloodthirsty

>> Sinister German actor Udo Kier is still parched for more killer roles

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

What do you see when you hear "Udo Kier"? Andy Warhol's Dracula writhing around a bathtub vomiting blood? The Kingdom's Aage Krüger being born, full grown? Hans, the musical homo from My Own Private Idaho? Actually, the possibilities are endless. Even if his name and face don't toll your bell, Udo Kier has conquered territory somewhere in your subconscious. He's spent nearly 40 years on screen, playing monsters, killers, Nazis, barons, counts, doctors, priests, sleazes, sadists, sidekicks and next-door neighbours. He's appeared in every Lars Von Trier film (except The Idiots) and starred alongside Jim Carrey, Pamela Anderson and Arnold Schwarzenegger - in fact, he keeps a Polaroid of himself with the Governator in his briefcase at all times, "Just in case."

Evil doer?

Born in Koeln, Germany and based in California since 1992, Kier works primarily in Europe, where he shot One Point O, a sinister thriller about corporate mind control, and Gate to Heaven, a quirky rom-com set in Frankfurt's airport, two recent films that Kier will introduce at Fantasia. It's Kier's first time in Montreal, and if you're wondering whether he'll recoil from Mount Royal's cross, you're not alone.

"Wherever I go, people come up to me and say, ‘You're so evil,' but the way they say it is almost like an orgasm," he says, suggesting that everyone loves an evil spectacle, be it a vampire flick or CNN. "Evil has no limit. I made a film called Revelation where I kill everybody. I start with Jesus Christ and I go through all the periods till today killing people because I'm a bad guy. There's a children's TV show I'm going to do in Germany where I live underground and I have an army that terrorizes the city upstairs. But the devil was a fallen angel, so to play the devil, you have to be an angel, and I'm totally the opposite of most of the roles I play."

Away from work, Kier likes to garden, cook, collect furniture, renovate his Palm Springs abode and rescue dogs.

"I love dogs, especially street dogs, maybe because I was brought up without a father. Bastards like bastards."

And actors like characters who spend half their life acting.

"I would like to make a film where I'm married, I work in a bank, I wash the car in the garden, the mother is cooking, the children coming home from school, and then in the evening, at 12 o'clock when everybody's asleep, I transform into a vampire, I kill some people and the next day I go back to the bank."

Like a wirgin?

"Sex with Madonna? Well, whatever you call sex. If you're naked and you have hands on your body everywhere, I don't know what you call that. I didn't have an orgasm though."

Technicalities aside, Kier was in Sex with Madonna, the infamous 1992 book photographed by Steven Meisel. A cameo in her "Deeper and Deeper" video followed, as did a handful of music videos over the years, by Korn, Anna Nicole Smith and Eve & Gwen Stefani.

"I like music, and I like to surround myself with young people because it keeps me young. I'm close to 60 so I don't want to sit in a big comfortable chair in front of a wall with books and talk about my past - it's boring! So I like to dance with Eve or Pink, and I do a lot of films with first-time directors," he says, praising One Point O's Jeff Renfroe and Marteinn Thorsson, with whom he's signed on for a second project.

Equally enamoured with art films, B films and big studio productions, Kier is content to be pursued by directors rather than chase work (though he's getting tired of waiting for that call from David Lynch).

"I was very lucky in my life, always. I met Paul Morrissey in an airplane and I met Gus Van Sant at a party. And when you have done, like me, so many movies, you don't have to prove anything anymore. I know what I'm doing in a Lars Von Trier film, and if I do Barb Wire, I know also what I'm doing. And why not?"

Udo Kier presents Gate To Heaven at the Hall Theatre (1455 de Maisonneuve W.), Monday, July 12, and at Salle de Sève (1400 de Maisonneuve W.), Wednesday, July 14
Udo Kier, Jeff Renfroe and Marteinn Thorsson present One Point O at the Hall Theatre, Tuesday, July 13, and at Salle de Sève, Wednesday, July 14

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