Frog Goes to Dinner (1985)

One day I was in the Fairfield Public Library, and on that day I saw a video in a thick black clamshell case for sale for a whole dollar. The video was Frog Goes to Dinner, and it’s a twelve minute short film based on the story by kids book mastermind Mercer Mayer. The thing that caught my eye about it is that the box stated that it was filmed in my hometown of Fairfield, CT, so I got a little excited. It was partially filmed at the Burr Homestead, which is a famous old colonial home that is now owned by the town, and used for special events and tourist attraction crap. (Frog Goes to Dinner was also filmed in nearby towns Norwalk and Weston.) Anyway, the short is pretty straight forward: a little kid is going to dinner at a fancy restaurant with his parents, so he puts his frog in his pocket. The frog escapes of course, and starts getting into all kinds of trouble, like sitting on soufflés and swimming in the lobster tank. Frog Goes to Dinner is wordless, so luckily the little kid has a very wide eyed and expressive face, but the frog is particularly impassive. Anyway, it’s a fun little oddity, plus you can watch the whole thing here!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae7aCzl_cwY

Cold Fever (1995)

Cold Fever is a haunting and beautiful film about a young Japanese man named Hirata on a journey in Iceland to the river where his parents died in an accident, seven years before. The reason for the journey are the funeral rites he must perform at the site of his parent’s death, so their souls can find rest, while the movie is about the journey itself. We are introduced to Hirata as a awkward, dispassionate businessman who apparently only cares about golf, but is persuaded by guilt to leave for Iceland. Once there, he is immediately besieged by bizarre situations and quirky characters, but never are these situations played solely for laughs. For example, when Hirata is riding on the back of a pick-up truck in the middle of a snow storm among a dozen men singing a Icelandic song in booming baritone voices, or when Hirata’s cab driver suddenly stops the cab and rushes into a bleak, deserted seeming building so he can participate in a nativity scene, everything exudes an aura of absurd and surreal beauty. Hirata, as played by Masatoshi Nagase (Mystery Train, Suicide Club), is very likable and multi-dimensional. He instantly feels like a real person, even though we never find out too much about him, because we feel like we are on the journey with him. He manages to portray dozens of human emotions throughout the course of the movie, and not once does it feel melodramatic in the slightest. Lilly Taylor and Fisher Stevens show up as whacked out and obnoxious American hitchhikers (Fisher Stevens and Masatoshi Nagase pee together) while the rest of the cast is either Icelandic or Japanese. The music itself plays a huge part, such as when Hirata’s plane arrives in Iceland to dark and ominous guitar, or when the radio in Hirata’s car breaks, and he’s forced to listen to weird Icelandic metal and folk music. In any case, this is the kind of movie that I hesitate explaining too much, and I feel that the only thing I can say is: just watch it!