Watched a few good fims this weekend. First, 24 Hour Party People. It's the story of Tony Wilson, a Brit TV personality who figures promiently into the history (or perhaps myth) of punk, post-punk, and rave music in Manchester. The film wonderfully blurs the line between fact and fiction by featuring (and mentioning) cameos by real figures (including Wilson himself) and blending documentary footage into the narrative. While I thought it ran a little long, the films functions as interesting a commentary on art and style as the post-modern, genre-defining music of the era.

Next, I finally brought home (or rather Rachel brought home for me) 8 Femmes, a film I've been anxious to see since I heard about it almost a year ago. Visually this film reminded me of the best films of Jacques Demy (Umbrellas and Young Girls in particular). There's a richness and fullness to the colours that seems almost hyper-real - an effect which adds to, and perhaps allows, the strange mixing of mystery and musical genres. The film has been compared to Altman's Gosford Park; like that film, 8 Femmes appears to be a murder mystery though the solving the murder is not nearly as exciting as discovering the secrets of the household. 8 Femmes adds the further layer of musical numbers which, although fun, speak to various themes and subplots. I personally found that 8 Femmes is more subtle in its use of the mystery genre than Gosford Park. In Altman's film the police inspector never comes close to figuring out the crime, indeed the characters remain largely in the dark. For the 8 Femmes, figuring out who killed Marcel is never far from their minds.