I thought it was great, and have already seen it twice, once in the theater and once on DVD. The DVD viewing had the advantage of optional subtitles, which I used in hopes of better understanding the whisperings in the final scene. Didn't get into the special features, though (it was a rental at a friend's house).

'Contrived nonsense'? Meh. Seems that most well-known filmmakers should be so lucky.

Yeah, the commentary has some interesting bits, such as revealing that the budget was $450K. I was pretty shocked at that. The film has some pretty terrific exchanges in it. I've written the director to ask if he coud send me the script as it hasn't been published. Hopefully he'll send me a pdf or something as I'm interested in seeing if his action is as sharp as his dialogue.

I wonder how much of that money was spent on film stock, cameras, and post. He obviously didn't spend much on sets, but his movie sure does look polished.

Yeah, not much on sets as there's a lot of parking lots and streets and such but there is the party at that mansion which I imagine in most Hwood movies would have cost a fortune to rent or build. The place was apparently in remodelling ruin but they avoided most of it with angles, though there were a few ladders and drop sheets visible.

The price just seemed so low to me for something shot on 35. It was also edited on computer and the scoring was done online, with his musician on another continent and the two of them watching the movie over an iSight camera with pausing and playing between discussion of cues.

What did you think of the deleted scene that was a longer version of the girl's piano poem? I think cutting it was the right decision, but damn if it still wouldn't have been a cool weird scene to keep in the movie.

I want to see it again so as not to get too distracted by dialogue and Teh Pretty to figure out the plot, or maybe just to see the running-from-knife-guy scene again. There was one jarring point where (I think, it's been a few months) they called a cheongsam a kimono, but that's just my inner terminology-nit-hunter. I actually liked the ladders and remodeling stuff in the mansion--added lots to the atmosphere.

bingo, I think they were right to cut all the scenes they did. However, I thought the sex scene--done differently--would have added another layer. I didn't like the sex scene but the I like removing the ambiguity of whether they had sex.

casarkos, I don't remember that kimono thing line.

My brain may have been making that one up. Problem is I know I saw a red kimono/cheongsam mixup around that time, and I can't remember seeing another movie or tv show that had a red Asian dress in it. Anyway it didn't really detract from the movie.

Rian wrote me back about the script. Cool!