CANNES, France (AFP) — A mega-budget South Korean "kimshi" western and a glass-eating fakir at the heart of a shoestring Singapore production rolled onto the screen Saturday as the Cannes film festival prepared to wind up.
"The Good The Bad The Weird" is an action-packed "oriental" western inspired by Italy's "spaghetti" variation, set in 1930s Manchuria, then under Japanese occupation.
Director Kim Jee-woon sent the crew trekking nine months from Seoul to the Gobi desert and across the interior of China for the open horizons and endless plains that backdrop the 17-million-dollar (11-million-euro) movie, said to be the country's biggest production ever.
Selected to be screened at Cannes but not competing for the festival's Palme d'Or top prize, the rollicking film is about a hunt for a treasure map that pits bandits and train robbers and a bounty hunter in horse chases and scooter races through markets and across deserts.
Warmly received, the film relied on a crew of 400 with three of South Korea's top actors aided by extras -- but needed no help from computer graphics, with the stars performing their own stunts.
Kim said his rock-n'roll western was inspired both by Clint Eastwood's 1992 best picture Oscar-winner "Unforgiven" and by Italian Sergio Leone's enduring spaghetti genre.
"My Magic" by Eric Khoo is Singapore's first entry ever to run for the prestigious Palme d'Or, to be announced Sunday from 22 movies.
The father-and-son tale, shot in nine days on a "super-shoestring budget," Khoo told AFP, is the story of a down-and-out depressed former magician, most often so downright drunk his 10-year-old cleans up his vomit at nights.
Star of the movie is Bosco Francis, a real-life fakir -- or magician -- who performs amazing feats of endurance and is a longtime friend of Khoo's.
He specialises in glass-chewing, fire-eating, levitation and pulling other rabbits out of hats.
Greeting the 2,000-strong Cannes crowd at the film's premiere, Francis waved a hand and produced flames from nowhere, then whipped open his wallet, which also caught fire.
Minutes later, at reception for the film, he offered to eat a glass but instead was handed a glass bulb -- which he chewed and swallowed after breaking off the metal parts.
"This is to prove I do all the magic in the film," he said of acts that include slipping large needles through his arm or tongue.
Khoo told AFP that the film was inspired by his friendship with the magician, who had been estranged for years with one of his sons.
The making of the movie, in which father and son finally come together, also brought Francis' son back.
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