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Director: Bruno Bozzetto
Release Date: October 31, 1968
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘Vip mio fratello superuomo’* is Bozzetto’s second feature, and it a great improvement on his first (‘West and Soda‘ from 1965).
The designs are bolder, the pace is higher, the timing sharper, and the story more original. The film starts rightaway with a hilarious history of the VIP superheroes through time. It then introduces our heroes, the superhero SuperVIP and his weak little bespectacled brother, MiniVIP. They end upon an island where a super-villain plans to turn mankind into brainless consumers.
The result is a very nonsensical superhero story, told to a great effect, with the minimum of means and very limited animation. It also shows Bozzetto’s aversion against consumerism, a theme he would expand upon in his masterpiece ‘Allegro non troppo’ (1976). Unlike that latter feature, ‘Vip mio fratello superuomo’ remains virtually unknown. This is a pity, for this funny film deserves a wider audience.
Watch and excerpt from ‘Vip mio fratello superuomo’ yourself and tell me what you think:
* also known as ‘My Brother Superman’
Director: Raoul Servais
Release Date:1968
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
In a sinister harbor, where cranes behave like giant dinosaurs and where pterodactyli fly a young flute player brings a mermaid to life. Unfortunately, the mermaid is captured by one of the cranes and dropped to death.
‘Sirene’ is a beautiful, surrealistic film with its own creepy and somber atmosphere. Luckily, there’s also space for some dark humor when the authorities arrest an innocent fisherman and when a zoo and a hospital argue about the mermaid’s body. ‘Sirene’ definitely among Servais’s best films, arguably only equaled by ‘To Speak or not to Speak (1970) and ‘Harpya‘.
Watch ‘Sirene’ yourself and tell me what you think: