Escape to the Carolina's film festival

For those looking to get away from the drudgery of classes and commitments, this weekend offers a chance to escape. Head to the Carolina Theatre and enter a world of mysticism and time travel, of epic bravery and spiritual bewilderment. In its second year, The Carolina’s Escapism Film Festival promises a diverse buffet of films for the adventure-lover in all of us.

Festival programmer and executive director of The Carolina, Jim Carl, said he sees Escapism as offering the type of films people used to watch on Saturday TV matinees, featuring serials like Buck Rogers and the Shadow. Carl added that he wanted to celebrate the type of films that are "fun and big-budget with thousands of extras and lots of special effects."

In that category, Escapism definitely delivers, featuring the highest budgeted Korean movie ever made, the highest grossing Thai film, and a huge Mandarin blockbuster. The film out of Korea, Yesterday, combines action and sci-fi to tell the story of a futuristic hunt for a brutal killer amid a conspiracy of stolen memory and forgotten pasts. Thailand’s Bang Rajan offers a different sort of "Escapism," submerging the audience in a tale of eighteenth-century warfare over the lands of modern-day Thailand. Carl noted the film was one of his favorites because of its authentic, perhaps old-fashioned, approach to screen spectacular. In a scene where two huge armies approach one-another on a hillside, no computer effects were used. Said Carl "That really is a thousand people in period costume rushing towards each other." Critics have compared the film to other classic tales of remarkable courage against extraordinary odds, such as Braveheart. Bang Rajan’s story, though, is ultimately one of humanity, in all its beauty and ugliness.

Warriors of Heaven and Earth, a Chinese film, also tells a story from the past, yet includes some modern plot elements and special effects. Earth follows two warriors, one a fugitive, one a bounty hunter, who, in a Raiders of the Last Ark-style plot twist, must come together to protect an extraordinary power.

Two other Asian films break away from the in-your-face action of the rest of the festival. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, the first anime film ever to be included in the Cannes film festival, explores the repercussions of technology in a futuristic world where the difference between man and machine has been reduced to the presence or absence of the intangible soul. Takashi Miike’s Gozu begins as a Japanese mob movie, before flirting with the genre of horror in the gruesome and irreverent style that has earned Miike a cult following.

Despite a heavy presence of Asian blockbusters in this year’s selections, the festival’s two centerpiece selections are quiet, thoughtful American films. The director’s cut of Donnie Darko, which features twenty minutes of new footage, will be featured in a single screening Saturday night. The American film Primer, a sci-fi brainteaser from first time director Shane Carruth, won the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and will make its Triangle debut as part of Escapism.

While the themes and origins vary, Carl maintains that the major element tying the films together is that they would probably not have been seen in the triangle otherwise. With the exception of Primer, none of the seven films were scheduled to open in the Raleigh-Durham area before selection to Escapism.

And if that’s not reason enough to catch this weekend’s festival at the Carolina, Carl adds, "You can buy beer at the concession stand."