Transformers

It looks like the Michael Bay spectacle THE TRANSFORMERS destroyed this week's box office, taking in $152.5 million in its extended 6 day opening. It also scored the highest seven-day performance for a non-sequel in history, previously held by Spiderman. And while many critics say it's more car advertisement than film, word of mouth contintues to be positive, but only next week's BO will tell.
In the spirit of transformations, the Fantasia Festival 2007 also kicked off this week, and one of their many fantastical selections is WOMAN TRANSFORMATION (Yokai Kidan). It's a different kind of transformation all-together. Check out it's teaser trailer here. From the Fantasia website:

Michiko is an unhappy young model whose body is going through some bizarre changes. She checks into the hospital where she is diagnosed with an highly unusual spinal-cord disorder that manifests itself in a superhuman elasticity, allowing her to stretch her neck to fantastic heights. In a subsequent story, a teenage girl obsessed with her expensive fake nails starts noticing that her real nails are growing at an alarming rate, to the point where she can't work, can't eat, can't function. Cutting her nails proves futile, as well as intensely painful. Eventually she is driven to drastic measures. In the last of three tales, Mana is a cruel and thoughtless high school student whose transformation involves a bizarre loss of identity.

While anthology films have a bad rep, these three grim tales of female bodily transformation co-exist through peripherally connected characters, imbuing the film with a fluidity that allows it to bypass the patchiness that plagues efforts at a similar structure. The Japanese title Yokai Kidan translates directly as “Strange Story of Monsters,” a title that deliberately conjures images of classic Japanese monster movies like 100 Monsters and Spook Warfare (both of which also feature the mythological long-necked woman). But what sets this film from director Toru Kamei (Double Suicide Elegy, 2005) apart is his use of the “yokai” concept to externalize the inner ugliness and turmoil of his characters.

Kamei's latest recalls the suspicion of femininity espoused in classic horror films like Cat People, Wasp Woman and The Reptile -- but the sombre tone of the film is all its own. Each girl is forced to undergo her respective transformation alone; the film emphasizes their physical and emotional isolation with a solemn score, moody lighting and the distinct lack of helpful authority figures. In this particularly terrifying reference to female puberty, each woman is driven to despair over her bodily changes -- which, at such an image-conscious age, can be deadly.
—Kier-la Janisse