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Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 13 of 13: Shorts! Volume 3 - Archipelago (2004)

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Under discussion:

Shorts! Volume 3 (2005)

Director: Leon Siminiani
Spain/Puerto Rico, 18 minutes, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

And so, the short film Archipelago, with its triangle of players representing the past that more often than not rubberbands back to snap most of us smack in the face, drifts coolly up to me at a time when I seem to be on the verge of my own inevitable haunting by past. As far as I can make it out, the haunting is not of a malicious nature, but I am definitely getting the feeling of some serious ghosting going on about me.

Recently, coincidentally or not, as I approached my 44th birthday, I began to see the signs. New Facebook friends, forged from old friends, lovers from spurious romances, those we wished to have as lovers in some momentary but glorious lapse of reason, part-time enemies and mild acquaintances of my cruel past – the same cruel past we all share, and a past which grows daily, no matter how we pretend to not care, with each additional tiny, cruel step we take forward every second of every day. Random emails from much of the same lot who have found my blog or discovered through another party that my existence continues unabated to this point somewhere on the same planet.

Funny what the click of a few computer keys can do for human relationships. That which might prove extraordinarily uncomfortable to do face to face -- reconnect with the figures of our past, possibly dredging up old memories that certain parties in the exchange would rather have remain undredged -- is so much easier to do online, where facial tics can't betray our true feelings regarding a bespoken courtesy, and where nearly everyone speaks in a nearly Cro-Magnon form of baby-talk gibberish almost entirely free of nuance or true personality. Is it any wonder that I flee from online boards, where people spend much of their time having to explain and re-explain, again and again, exactly what they meant when they initially slapped down eleven misspelled words and a handful of incorrectly posed punctuation marks? We are slowly being reduced to a set of emoticons representing half-thoughts, and we will suffer for it.

But, in regards to those ghostly reconnections via Facebook (and not so much the horrid MySpace), I welcome them openly, if only because, in that Chex Party Mix of people (many of whom I wonder, "do they really even remember who I am?" or, at least, "... was?"), there are several of whom I am truly glad to hear from again, in whichever of the several categories I mentioned earlier they may fall. There are people in there whom I wish I could hang around with right now, and will not hesitate to keep up contact with them into the future if they are willing to do so on their ends as well. Whatever the distance that the last few years, or even past actions on any of our accounts, have laid down between us, I still feel that I know and miss these people, and wish to continue to know them. Besides, no matter what there might be in our respective cruel pasts lying in wait to spring anew upon us, likely most of it could never compare to the mildly Hitchcockian setup of past betrayal which haunts the trio of romantic combatants in Archipelago, the last of the films I had yet to write about on the Shorts! Volume 3 DVD collection.

Meet Ben and Nina, a dashing 40ish Spaniard and a zaftig Puerto Rican chica, recently married, and enjoying an idyllic honeymoon on the beaches of a seemingly lost area of Puerto Rico called La Esperanza ("The Hope"). They tickle, they flirt, they lounge about, and are increasingly interested in romantic gamesmanship. Nina wishes for Ben to "stop time" for her, whatever that may mean to a person, and I imagine that success in such a game relies more heavily on what Nina might be hoping stopping time involves, and not so much on what Ben thinks it does. However, having already won her heart, and given the state of their current mood, it seems that even the mildest trick with the right intentions will give Nina her deeply desired mood of time stoppage.

And then, time does stop. It creeps in so slowly, the couple doesn't even realize it. But it does stop all the same, and it happens when a third party enters their idyllic scene: Aníbal, who comes forth at first as just a scruffy lost traveler needing water and seeking out La Esperanza on his own, even producing a hastily drawn map upon a napkin which proves remarkably similar to the one that Ben shows him. Ben speaks of happiness to Aníbal, and insists on his staying at La Esperanza, telling him that "there is room for all three of us here" and "what's the use of being happy if you can't share it?"

But we already know that sharing this happiness will not be something that Aníbal will wish to do. When we hear that he is not married, but nearly was, we can already sense that the jig is up. Feigning to depart, Aníbal hands Ben a small jewelry box as a gift, seemingly for the kindness Ben has shown him, which Ben hesitates to take, but soon does. Inside is a single bullet. "I have five more in here," Aníbal states coldly, showing him the pistol tucked into the waistband of his pants. When Nina finally enters the scene and sees Aníbal for the first time, she will run up and slap his face, staring him down.

There is more, but I will leave it at this point for the readers and, hopefully, eventual viewers of this film, to discover the emotional savaging of these characters and to muse on their impact for themselves. Truthfully, the moment of the slap is the moment when the film could have ended for me. Five to seven minutes could have been shaved off the running time, and the movie would have proven just as intriguing. But don't think I am shooting down a couple of fairly gripping plot points in those extra minutes which I also recognize as worthwhile study. I just don't think that I personally got any more out of the film past that slapping point. The rest simply pours over those last few minutes like a mildly tangy though slightly acrid gravy, which partially serves to emphasize the taste of that which had already been fed to us, but also smothers it somewhat in the process. I would have rather been left wondering about the fate of the characters than to have it mostly solved for me.

But we understand that there are serious consequences from similar of trust, breach of romantic contract, or even outright betrayals, however calculated or confusedly innocent in their construction, within each of our pasts. Certainly, Ben now faces the ghosts of Nina's past betrayal of scruffy, timeworn Aníbal, and please feel free to judge for yourself how Ben handles such a devastating revelation directly following his ideal moment of reverie. Does time indeed stop for this couple forever, or will Ben seek a way out of this emotional black hole? And are we stopping time ourselves when the ghosts of our own pasts attempt to reestablish contact with us? Do we find ourselves transported out of our current happiness (assuming that one is happy at the time of the contact), and back into a time to which we would perhaps not prefer to return, even for mild and polite niceties with an acquaintance or old friend?

As much as I dearly love many of my friends from my past days, there was a reason I had to get away. So many reasons, really, but none of them involved any intentional betrayals of feelings or friendships. I just simply needed to make a change in my life before I got sucked deeper into a job that I despised and a depression that I was losing more and more ground to with every passing day. And don't forget that friendships go two (or even multiple) ways. You can go for a very long time without contacting someone, and may start to feel concerned about your lack of energy in committing to such an action, but always remember that there are at least two parties responsible for such a divide, not one (assuming that we are speaking of a friendship that remains on decent or at least OK terms, of course). Either one could have contacted the other at any time -- practically every one has a goddamn phone, letterbox or email) and lack of contact possibly speaks to a general conformity to the same inertia. Past relationships of the more romantic kind are more difficult to confront, especially if said parties are attempting to make a bridge to friendship again, but if I ever hurt or was hurt by someone, both sides must accept that such things were just not meant to be, and move forward to resolution. We have all broken hearts, and we have all had our own heart broken.

To simply chalk all this up to human nature is perhaps to take the coward's way out of the conversation, but there it is. Part of that human nature, though, is to take the devastation that we felt at the height of those despairing moments and to analyze and learn from them to brighten our future relationships. This would not placate the ex-wife, who is surely convinced to this day that I cheated on her with everything that moved, even though I only ever did within the confines of my own brain, and this only after I had given up irrevocably on having a sane relationship with the lass about two hours into our eight-year marriage (which never should have been). I regret that it could not have turned out differently, but there it is. It is now the past, and there is naught I can do to fix it except to leave it in the past. The actions of those days will always haunt me, though, and there is nothing I can do on my end but to throw up my hands, and use the experience to enrich myself psychologically going forward. Knowledge is a powerful thing, and the knowledge gained from past mistakes is an even more powerful usually than that which we learn from a book. And, man, was that a doozy of a mistake.

And so, after years of many such mistakes, only some of them emotional, I ran, much like Nina ran at some point before Archipelago starts, to leave behind that mounting depression, that terrible career choice and a city that held many fond memories for me, but almost equally as much, it held crushing defeat for me as well. I sought to reinvent myself, always careful to remember that I was still the same person that screwed up elsewhere, but to attempt to do things more in line with that which I had originally intended myself to become. Unlike before, where I was trapped in a dank warehouse with bad lighting, unforgiving concrete floors and clouds of paper dust, I now get the opportunity to write occasionally for part of my living, and to work in a far more exciting career setting. I am content in the most successful relationship of my life, and am just settling in after three years into life in a land that is still rather foreign to me in many aspects. Though the body betrays my middle-aged years more and more with each passing day, I am still far happier day to day now than I probably have ever been at any single section of my life.

If the ghosts of my past warrant they must contact me again, then so be it. The beauty of Facebook is that you only have to take part as much as you wish to take part. You can have a thousand "friends" but only contact the few dozen or so that you really appreciate. Not all ghosts are unfriendly, and as long as you watch out for the ones gifting you with bullets, you should be fine.

Posted Saturday, September 27, 2008 3:06 PM by rik_tod | with 1 comments

Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 11 of 13: Shorts! Volume 3 - Pretty Dead Girl (2003)

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Under discussion:

Carrie (1976)

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

The Evil Dead (1983)

The Fly (1986)

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1956)

Re-Animator (1985)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993)

Firefly [TV Series] (2002)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More, With Feeling (2001)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 06 (2001)

Saw IV (2007)

Shorts! Volume 3 (2005)

Director: Shawn Ku
US, 22 minutes, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Despite a title sure to be at least partially tempting to any horror nut, Pretty Dead Girl: A Musical Necromance turns out to be rather tame. And if you could get the subject of necrophilia past the initial tsk-tsking of your grandma, there is a good chance that she would end up at film’s end thinking the movie was rather sad and sweet, and would hardly take offense at all to what is being suggested by its potentially creepy premise.

I first saw Pretty Dead Girl on some cable network sometime about a year ago. I am not sure if it was Sundance or IFC, but honestly, I mix those channels up so much that I am never able to check out any of their shows regularly. Of course, most of the shows I have seen on there are of the variety about which I don’t give a rat’s ass, except for the ones done by Henry Rollins and Jon Favreau, but honestly, even thinking really hard, I can’t remember which one of the channels, Sundance or IFC, either show was actually on. I keep wanting to check out Live from Abbey Road – which is also on one of them -- but every time I flick over to it because someone I like – Muse, for instance – is on there, I end up having to sit through someone deplorable, like Josh Groban, Big and Rich or some Idol failure, to get to the good stuff, all of which seems to be interspersed with the horrendous. Can’t they just concentrate on one artist for a show? And one of these channels shows a bunch of '70s horror flicks on Friday nights -- all of which I already own, but it's nice to have them at one's fingertips anyway -- and one of them shows a lot of Japanese samurai and gangster films from the ‘50s and ‘60s, so they have that going for them. Whichever channel they are.

What does this have to do with Pretty Dead Girl? Well, nothing at all, but -– Hey! Maybe I saw this on one of the Showtime networks instead? All I know is that I had Pretty Dead Girl on my DVR queue for a good long while, meaning to show it to Jen, who has some measured interest in musical films, and musical theatre in general. I watched it and enjoyed it, whatever channel it was on, though I wasn’t blown away it by it. This possibly had something to do with the musical episode from Buffy, titled Once More With Feeling, and how it seems, in my head at least, that any attempt to music up the horror or sci-fi genres should actually run through Mr. Whedon first. (Oh, if only Firefly had made it to that style of episode…) We are now in an age where, every time one turns around, it seems that another classic horror or science fiction film is being adapted into a musical (or opera – big difference there…) onstage. (Plan 9 from Outer Space, The Evil Dead, Carrie, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Fly, etc.) Or, at least the notion gets raised that such-and-such (say, Chainsaw) would make a swell musical. I don’t know why things are trending this way – perhaps because the horror genre itself has gotten more and more trapped in its current torture porn rut – but outside of an almost rubbernecking interest I have towards these things, since I like both musicals and horror films, I actually start to despise the gimmick after a short while. And then it affects my attitude when confronted with mildly ambitious little films like Pretty Dead Girl.

It’s not a fair comparison, though, because Pretty Dead Girl is not really in the horror genre; it merely teases the viewer with promises of sick glory via its title. Honestly, once I realized it was a musical, I started to imagine a remake of Return of the Living Dead 3 with that hot little zombie chick played to pierced goth glory by a smokin' Mindy Clarke. Now, that would be highly interesting (and also make RotLD3 a much better overall film.) Pretty Dead Girl doesn't even get near such possibilities, centering itself on all-out romantic tragedy instead. All told, it is no more offensive than any number of other Romeo and Juliet-style stories, where suicide is playfully dangled in the air due to the hopelessness of the romance. The title, though, implies so much more beyond a simple desperate love affair that it really is disappointing to see that all told, Pretty Dead Girl is nothing more than magic potion fluff, with a bottle of poison bringing on the appearance of suicide, but only if every single drop is gulped down the gullet (hence the magic part). Otherwise, it becomes a full-on suicide. That this storyline springs forth from the actions of a morgue techie (with a clearly misguided missile) who cavorts and dances about (always in a G-rated way) with the bodies of deceased hotties does make it seem potentially horrific at first, and one almost can’t wait for the film to go all Re-Animator on us and suddenly we shall find torrents of blood gushing from the stumps from where the limbs of unsuspecting doctors have been ripped, and there shall then commence a rising bout of rampant cannibalism in the halls of the hospital, syringes stuck through eyeballs of screaming nurses, zombie fetuses that devour their mothers from the inside out, and, perhaps worst of all, an Alaskan governor will then get dangerously close to the White House. And then only one of those things happens… and it’s not even in the movie.

Unlike most of the examples listed two paragraphs above, the musical part in Pretty Dead Girl is not the gimmick. Instead, it is the false trappings of horror that are the actual gimmick, and it almost seems like a gimmick which has only been employed to get people to watch the film who are ultimately going to be disappointed once the film doesn’t follow through on its sick promise. It certainly tricked me into watching it the first time. And instead of where I thought it was going, I got a nice – just nice – little musical instead, with a couple of catchy tunes (I have had that “I have waited more than the better of my life” melody ear-worming me for the past couple of weeks since I started watching the film again), a lot of leggy dames hoofin’ it in a dream sequence, a trio of well-turned (and well cast) performances in the main roles and… well, that’s about it. It doesn’t go beyond that for me. It’s good, it's pleasant, and then I forget about it.

When I first saved it on my DVR to show Jen, I never followed through. A couple of months later, as it sat there unwatched, I finally deleted it after convincing myself that she really wouldn’t think that much of it. And then I forgot about it until I received the Shorts! Volume 3 collection from Spout Mavens. Now, with DVD in hand, I have once more sidled up to the “should I show it to her?” stage, and already I am convincing myself to the negative impulse again of not even showing it to her. The problem here is one of too much familiarity with the genre. The more experience or expertise one has in a certain genre, the more lesser items in that genre start to give way almost immediately to feelings of ennui. At least, that’s the way it normally works. I know some people that are horror nuts – some even on this very website -- who unabashedly adore every single horror movie that comes out, practically carving little gory hearts with dripping arrows through them into the top of their computer desk while once more giving five stars to something like Saw IV. Sure, some are better than others, but still… horror is great! Isn’t it? Aren’t all horror movies, no matter how bad, instantly awesome and cool, just because they are horror movies? Well, no. Some just blankly suck outright, and some are just downright atrocious from every conceivable angle. The same with every genre.

As I have said before, at least 75 percent of everything is garbage, no matter what form of media, no matter how much there is, and into this giant slice of pie, I heap mounds of the merely average. There is another slice of percentage, a chunk that perhaps appears as a normal slice of that pie, which accounts for the merely good. And finally, there is left a much thinner slice, the remainder, that denotes that which exists in the "very good to great" range. The continued and legendary greatness of certain entries in any genre make it increasingly harder, over time, to enjoy that category’s far more noxious efforts. It is towards a target sublime to which artists, even popular artists, should aim their talents. Back to the point, because my girlfriend has a good deal of experience, and therefore opinion, regarding the musical genre, and is well versed in those films which serve as the pinnacles of the form, I know instinctively that it is going to take far more to impress her in this genre than it would, say, me.

And I already think that Pretty Dead Girl is merely a good short musical film. Not fantastic, not knock your socks off, but just good. And so, for someone with the more than average eye for musicals in general, having seen the excellence which can be achieved in the genre, watching this is like seeing a dance sequence pop up in Ally McBeal. Sure, the actors might be giving it their all, but they are miles from being in the real thing. And, further discounting it for the gimmick factor of its fake fantasy horror trappings, Pretty Dead Girl can seem pretty dead from the beginning. And, if not dead, then just merely playing possum. And nicely at that.

And, speaking for myself, though I liked it well enough, nice is not what most people who would be intrigued by such a title as Pretty Dead Girl are going to be expecting.

Posted Wednesday, September 10, 2008 2:04 AM by rik_tod | with 0 comments

Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 10 of 13: Shorts, Volume 3 - The Fridge [To Psigio] (2004)

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Under discussion:

Eerie, Indiana [TV Series] (1991)

Amazing Stories: Season 01 (2006)

Shorts! Volume 3 (2005)

Director: George Siougas
Greece, 24 minutes, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

I have spent a shocking number of minutes the last few days recounting the trials of living with a handful of my roommates from past days. These roommates are, for the most part and as far as I can surmise, still friends, and thus, I shall not detail in such a public place the names and antics of said possible "still-friends." I will save those tales for a time when said stories directly tie in with whatever subject about which I am writing, or if I am just really good and pissed off at them.

By "recounting," I mean that I was engaged in a series of conversations with random current friends of mine, wherein certain items were brought up by them, which then reminded me of an anecdote involving this old story or that past occurrence, and all of them, for some odd reason, involved things that happened when mired (ooh, perhaps too strong a word considering I have been so careful up to this point) in cohabitation with those mostly "still-friends." This was not purposeful, though it could possibly point to some form of repressed... something... bubbling ever so slightly below the surface of which I was not aware until I watched The Fridge tonight.

The next film in my epic meandering through the Shorts! Volume 3 DVD set, The Fridge is a Greek film short whereupon one's enjoyment of it entirely depends on how you like your horror-comedies served to you. If you like them sick, gory and cruel, then please depart the premises. The Fridge might lead you down the path towards thinking it will turn sharply at any moment in that direction. But, buyer of this appliance of simmering evil, much like in the movie, beware! This film is top-loaded with an almost mid-period Spielbergian or early, early Burtonian whimsy, like it wandered out of a Greek version of Amazing Stories or Eerie, Indiana. (Mind you, this is not necessarily a recommendation in and of itself.) In fact, the film's 24-minute running length would actually suit its use on such a show, and if I found out it had been used thusly, it wouldn't surprise me one bit.

At its center, not counting the demonic refrigerator with the clawed-arm handle and the eerie orange-glowing light in the taloned grip sitting atop it, is one of those Puck-style (and by this I refer to The Real World, not Shakespeare) spiky-blond roommates that gets on everyone's nerves just by breathing too loud in the adjacent room. Upon reflection, to those former roommates of mine who may or may not be "still-friends," I might have portrayed this style of roommate. The problem in being on either end of these miseries of coexistence is that one never really considers that when you blow up at something they did, on their side of things, one of their pet peeves concerning you might be that you blow up at everything they do. And vice-versa versa-vice ad nauseum stick a cork in it **** you i'm gonna kick your ass try it asshole crash boom smash whew hey let's go get a beer what the hell was that all about i don't know. Then everything is fine until the next time someone's leftovers go missing.

Such behavior lies at the heart of this quite unsubtle and very silly exercise in over-the-top fantasy filmmaking. For unknown reasons, a shabbily dressed man frantically wheels a magnet-covered refrigerator to a spot at the end of a very open alleyway. The man then runs away in fear, desperately looking over his shoulder. The horns blare on the soundtrack in the manner to which he have become accustomed when something in the realm of great danger looms ahead for us in the film. We then meet that spiky-blond slacker, George, who eats out of the tiny fridge in his shared flat like a coyote who has discovered a carcass on a freeway, with one eye constantly over his shoulder, ready to bolt at the slightest sign of any of his three roommates. With the fridge being so small, despite George's attempts to remove any and all edibles from it posthaste, the roommates are fed up with it, and they decide that George is the one to take their pooled cash (he doesn't want to throw in) and get a bigger, better model.

Of course, given the opening, George will be the one to discover the fridge in the alley, which may or may not be possessed or actually be some form of demonic creature, keep the cash for himself, and pass the thing off as a new purchase. I am unsure of the prevalence of refrigerators in either Greece or in Europe in general for having handles in the shape of the devil's forearm, or of having that orange-glowing ball thing in a demon's grip looming like the Eye of Sauron atop it, but the roommates don't seem to notice anything odd. All is peachy as far as they concerned... until things start to happen.

And all of them happen to George. Food goes missing, and he gets the blame; he can't open the door, but then the roommates can easily, and then when he tries again, he can't; he hears a noise behind the machine, tries to fix it, the machine shuts down, everything melts, and he gets the blame and towel with which to clean it up. If you smell the words "battle of the wills" floating around the corner like a five-day old, room temperature club sandwich, then you would win the last Red Bull in the fridge. (Frankly, you can have the goddamn stuff...)

The Fridge is not all that original an entertainment -- as much in the way of genre fare goes, there are basic tropes which cry out to be followed, even by those who would subvert genre -- but entertain it squarely does. Somehow, it even manages to make a thieving schlub like George seem completely sympathetic. It helps that you will hate his roommates as much they seem to have grown weary of him. Some of my old roommates are my dearest, closest friends to this day -- though not all of them are -- but if there was one theme that ran throughout these failed attempts at space-sharing, it was the food issue. The refrigerator unit almost always seemed to be at the center of most of these arguments, and so it is very shrewd of the filmmakers to fixate on this common anger point and run it crashingly through the apartment.

And yes, a couple of those food-involved moments were brought up when I sought to make small talk by dishing deeply on the antics of roommates past. They aren't really sore spots at all, but just very funny in the telling, which is why I was sharing loopy tales of my "still-friends" with my current friends. But it does make me wonder if there was some other force at work in those apartment and condo kitchens of yore that caused all the distress. Not just a monstrous fridge which disappears food and has sloppy manners, but perhaps also a derelict dishwasher which destroyed a series of my favorite mugs and painted all of my white plastic bowls the nauseating color of Spaghetti-O sauce, or a phantom garbage disposal which spewed noxious filth all over the counter that remained there for several days while I was off on vacation. Surely these fiends must truly be to blame for my woes.

See how I am? Anything to make amends. Even after all these years, you gotta stick by your roomies...

Posted Monday, September 08, 2008 11:46 PM by rik_tod | with 0 comments

Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 9 of 13: Shorts! Volume 3 - Clay Pride: Being Clay in America (2001)

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Shorts! Volume 3 (2005)

Director: Jonathan Watts & David Karlsberg
U.S., 5 minutes, color animated
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

At least the filmmakers admit that their project is built upon a one-joke premise.

What producer/co-director David Karlsberg doesn’t really declare, perhaps out of a humility rarely found in filmmakers, is how well sustained that one joke turns out to be. Granted, Clay Pride: Being Clay in America, yet another film on the Shorts! Volume 3 DVD collection, only runs a mere 5 minutes. But even with one joke, once you acknowledge that delivering humor in stop-motion clay animation is a good deal harder than telling the same type of joke with live-action – timing, the mainstay of all successful humor, is even tougher to achieve when you can only film your “actors” a split second at a time, frame by laborious frame – then you will be astounded by the overall effect and feel of this film.

On the commentary, Karlsberg also admits that the animation in Clay Pride is not necessarily that ambitious either, which is true, but as always, it ain’t what you got, but how well you use it. Karlsberg and co-director/writer Jonathan Watts don’t go for obvious jokes here. They let the absurdity of the situation itself carry the film. The conceit, that clay-animated characters exist in a world with the “normals” in a manner directly parallel in which those of the homosexual affiliation exist within our world, is really primarily based around childlike pun play, simply replacing a letter with another pair of letters, like someone calling me “dick” or “prick” in the manner of the brute which has followed me about for much of my life. (I usually tell them, since my name does not contain a “c,” that their rhyme-play makes little sense, except in some foreign tongue, as if ordering Thai food or categorizing tiny and adorable African antelopes.)

But by embracing this entry-level pun, Watts (who apparently created this world first in a short film made in high school) pours his simple joke into what could pass, were it filmed for real in its parallel existence, for a rather somber documentary on intolerance and societal homophobia. Most of what is said by the characters – except for a timely cameo in the shadows by a certain slanty-headed green clayboy of great renown – is pretty straightforward and not much different from that which might be said in a parallel documentary on gay bashing in our society, with all of the humor gliding slyly off the premise that we are talking about clay-animated characters instead. There are no real sight gags here – a couple of jokey name references on signs is all – mainly, the film gets by on an easy assurance by the filmmakers that the strength of their premise carries that “one joke” through satisfactorily to the end. Which it does… mostly.

Forgive me this one reflection, but there is something about the premise that confuses me a little. If being clay is roughly parallel in that imaginary world to being gay in ours, does this mean that the clay characters are actually gay? If so, are there no “straight” clay animated characters? We see them in dance clubs and at confrontational meetings, and while there is little in the way of outwardly stereotypical “gay” behavior, the overall impression is that this is so. It is a little sad that the film doesn't (or perhaps, due to budgetary reasons, is unable to) show the clays within the world of the normals outright, interacting with their oppressors. Are they tiny compared to the rest of their world, or would we see a clay figure marching in a parade while redneck buffoons of equal size spit at them from the sidewalks. And what would those rednecks do when der Golem showed up to rend them asunder?

Golem joke aside, I’m very glad that Clay Pride remains a mostly subtle exercise, and doesn’t have Davey going doggy-style on Goliath or Gumby getting some Pokey. Such antics are perhaps better suited to the likes of Robot Chicken. But the subtlety does leave me wondering about their world. And is the repression towards “clays” in that world is more of a sexual thing than the makeup of their bodies? Because of this, is it racism or sexism? Or does it matter? Aren’t they both equally vile, and if combined in an attack, even more vile?

Tolerance, my friends, tolerance is the only way, clays or otherwise. Clay Pride succeeds admirably in this message, despite the slight doubting within my briefly pondered side-trip. Would it were so that all such films were so intently fixed upon their target.

Posted Sunday, September 07, 2008 7:55 PM by rik_tod | with 0 comments

Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 8 of 13: Shorts! Volume 3 - A New York Trio (2003-2004)

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Shorts! Volume 3 (2005)

A New York Trio: Confection, Colorforms & Date
Director: Eva Saks
U.S., 4, 8 & 5 minutes respectively, all color
Cinema 4 Rating: 5s across the board

Only fives for three straight Eva Saks' films? How can I be mean to someone whose chief desire seems to be to entertain or educate children?

Smack-dab in the middle of the Shorts! Volume 3 DVD collection lies a mysterious region known as the New Yorker's Triangle... er, I mean A New York Trio, consisting of two films of absolute, nearly cloying innocence and a third, slightly more adult short featuring a character whose death I was almost screaming for until the snotty little gold-digger's ways are changed for about thirty seconds when surrounded by the emotional residue of September 11, 2001. (That she will rebound from this the next day, and in about six months time or so, convince her unfortunate boyfriend that she needs a gigantic, unnecessary, ridiculous "wedding of the century" is not mentioned within the film. But, if you know anyone even remotely like her, and we each probably know about two or three thousand of them, then you know it's coming...)

Reading up on director Eva Saks on her website and elsewhere, it came as no surprise to find out that her films have been showing up on Sesame Street over the last few years. This is no knock on their quality, mind you... even to this day, long after such behavior is considered fashionable or at least socially acceptable for a non-child raising adult, I still spend some time at 123 Sesame Street, often early in the morning and only when I am flipping channels and notice that some random cable station is showing it. As a puppeteer myself, and a massive Muppet nut, I still find it the purest way to enjoy Henson's creations. As long as I avoid Elmo (whom I consider an abomination to decent Muppets everywhere -- there is no real character within his puppetry work, and he is almost purely driven, annoyingly, by his voice. He almost makes Telly Monster bearable...) Skipping past the little red fiend, I can sift through the show, watch familiar old Ernie and Bert bits (though they seem to show up less and less all the time), and every once in a while, my vigilance is rewarded by a series of spies opening their coats counting to ten, the song about the Lower Case N not being lonely anymore or the one about the Capital I (in the middle of the desert, in the center of the sky), or one of the older short films that used to be shuffled throughout the show, like I'm An Aardvark.

This appears to be the province where Eva Saks wishes to thrive, and judging from the first two films in her New York Trio, seeming connected only by location, Confection and Colorforms, while I have no knowledge as to whether these particular pieces have ever appeared on the show, I can understand how she managed to get on the show. It is no knock on either the capabilities of those who have created short films for Sesame Street, nor on Ms. Saks, to say that there is a comfort level within her work that fits in well with what has preceded her on the show. This could imply that the skill level doesn't necessarily have to be that high or artful to make it on the show; it just has to fall somewhere within the properly accepted ranges of subject matter and also come off, at least, as seeming moderately well-crafted.

I am certain that those far less jaded than I will find her work perfectly delightful, perhaps even heartwarming. The last time I looked, I still had a heart, and while it is one to shy away from the most gooey of sentiments, on most occasions, it does react well to sincerity, no matter how squishy the atmosphere surrounding the sentiment might be. And yet, confronted by a massive dose of what I can only assume is a most sincere effort on Ms. Saks' part to both entertain and to mildly illuminate her audience on varied subjects such as the plight of the homeless, racial and communal understanding and the personal sacrifice of the superficial, I am left cold, and find myself oddly stunned by this conclusion.

I was hostile to Confection from the start, not liking the choice of small girls in the lead at all (though I guess she grew on me slightly in my repeat viewings), and seeing the film as more of a Lifestyles of the Affluent and Bratty (as I did the other films), with her obsession for expensive desserts and her secret desire to become a ballerina. Sure, her encounter with a homeless man seems like it changes her, because this is the viewpoint the film forces on us, but really, the girl only rewards him with her frosted strawberry goodie because he applauds her daydream performance on the ballet stage. In truth, she is only facing the first point in her conditioning into adulthood. The homeless man knows what he wants -- the delicious dessert, and he recognizes how to get it, by producing what the girl, who is laden with a snooty busybody of a mother who simply must be the most horrible person, truly craves: some small measure of approval. He applauds -- the bell is rung -- she delivers the prize -- the puppy drools.

Colorforms ups the ante for me by having a perfectly wonderful tiny "actress" in the lead role as the unbelievably Messy Little Girl, but despite this, I was still left unmoved by the story. In a nutshell, and that's not hard considering how short these films are, a little girl is so crazily messy that her parents decide to call in the big guns to help her get some manners, i.e. "the grandfather." He confronts her at the breakfast table, she stands her ground, the parents rush off to some daily business where they won't be returning until much, much later, the grandfather and the girl sit with arms locked in a standoff, and once the parents leave, the grandfather whisks the girl off to an Indo-Caribbean Pagwa celebration, where the residents of the neighborhood throw garishly colored powders at one another and yell "Happy Pagwa." None of this is really explained to the audience -- I for one have only encountered mention of this bizarre ritual once before, but really, I couldn't care less about it -- and I was left wondering to what extent it was really explained to the girl. For all we know, the tot merely understands that she has gotten to attend a swell parade and gotten to be really, really, really messy, and all with an adult's loving approval.

But when they return to the house, they sit back in the standoff pose they had when the parents left, pretending to not have moved at all. The girl tells her mother, who asks if she has learned anything, "Cleanliness is next to godliness," which I am fairly certain is only a series of rote words to such a tiny girl. And here I get confused, because in essence, the girl is not just keeping secrets from her parents at the insistence of another adult, which is a dangerous precedent, but she is also lying to her mother and herself, because if she actually learned anything during her adventure, it was that filthiness is actually next to godliness, given the celebration in which she partook. The film itself has some fun moments, and great reaction shots from the girl, but the stiffness of the adult acting doesn't help the film win me over. In the end, like Confection, Colorforms comes off as middling and also seems to backtrack over its intentions.

And then there is Date, which loses me from second one. I don't like women like the one portrayed by the admittedly gorgeous actress in the lead role, her attitude, her bossiness, her superficial insistence. Certainly, the film is going to play off this, and it does, turning her completely around when she is confronted with a wall of posters at a candlelight vigil for the still missing victims of 9/11 (coincidentally, my birthday, and I insist that it plays no part in my feelings towards this film; if the film were excellent, I would tell you so). This is the best shot of the three films, but also, and thankfully, the shortest content-wise (its credits pad it out to the second longest). It's not that I don't think the story is fine -- in fact, as a concept, I don't have a problem with the film at all. I just don't like her character, and as I stated before, people who behave like that do not change overnight, and she will be back to pushing her boyfriend around financially within a fortnight, if not sooner. I am fairly certain, even though she will tell the story of how much this moment changed her for years and years -- something I hear people say constantly, even as they prove their hypocrisy almost instantaneously -- I would bet that she will have largely forgotten that moment action-wise within 24 hours.

Much like I will hope to forget her Date...

Posted Saturday, September 06, 2008 2:59 AM by rik_tod | with 0 comments

Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 7 of 13: Shorts! Volume 3 - L'Entretien [The Interview] (2002)

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Under discussion:

Shorts! Volume 3 (2005)

Director: Kathleen Man
French/US, 20 minutes, b/w
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

rik_tod awoke in the middle of the night to find that the Dutch animated color short he had been watching was transformed into a monstrously confusing black and white French film.

I am going to "man up" here and admit that L'Entretien (aka The Interview) is the first film on the Shorts! Volume 3 DVD of which it was necessary for me to listen in on the director's commentary. Usually, this is a practice of which I do not partake until I have gained my own deep familiarity with a film. I hardly ever purchase films for the extras, preferring to leave the movie watching experience as pure as possible and initially concentrated on the two most important elements: the film itself, and my immediate reaction to it. This isn't to say that I do not enjoy extras or commentaries. I just prefer to have formulated my own opinions about a film before I let others in to ruin my fun.

What did I get from director Kathleen Man's commentary on her tale of corporate hopelessness and alienation? Well, I certainly learned a bit more about the architecture of Paris and the dividing lines between the old and new sections of the city. I learned a lot about arches, and the proper way to overly pronounce the French names of those arches whilst bouncing back and forth into English so that I wanted to kick my foot through the television. I learned that she is perhaps overly impressed with certain shots in her film that I didn't find particularly interesting or entrancing (save one). But I also gained an understanding that, were I her, and filming this exact short in the exact location in which she did, I too would probably be impressed with my shot selection given the conditions under which they had to shoot it, with precious little opportunity for retakes and also learning how to deal with shooting around the crowds and businessmen that usually frequent the area.

What I didn't need to gather from the commentary is what was fairly evident from even that first half viewing: the Kafkaesque feel of the film. Director Man does point out that her chief inspiration was Kafka's A Common Confusion, a swift, sharp, single paragraph amusement that I recall being required to study in school (though I am not sure to the extent that others have been). Regardless, Man mentions her film is not a true adaptation of the piece, merely an extensive trifling with the time-and-mood-hopping logistics of it. To say too much is to ruin what fun a viewer outside of myself may make of it, and certainly there will be a large contingent that will fall in love with its stark setting and unsettling but dry humor.

But I didn't. Understanding where this film falters for me is partially to recognize, and this is not a direct criticism of any element of this film per se (ahem...) that a Kafkaesque feel is sometimes not all that difficult to achieve. I can't tell you the number of times I have seen atrocious short (and the occasional long) stage works where the writer/director/actors practically jump through hoops attempting to duplicate what seems to have come so easy for Herr Kafka. In film, with our noses pressed full and close to the action, it can be even more nausea-inducing when improperly managed. While Franz certainly worked expertly and hard for his effects, it can often feel that anyone who employs sloppy editing, stiff acting, poor camera technique, underwritten characters and a shortage of expository dialogue can almost accidentally achieve a Kafkaesque mood.

Important tip: adding the suffix -esque only implies that the film is "like Kafka," not actually "Kafka" himself. The problem is that so many people, influenced by his mood, style, and deeply ironic humor, believe that they have become one with Kafka, that they have replicated him far beyond mere influence, and that they understand him better than everyone else, as if there were some form of prize for this. Certainly many playwrights might hold a secret wish to become their era's Shakespeare, but it would never mean the same thing unless they were Shakespeare in his own time. If one is said to film in a Lynchian style, that person certainly doesn’t become David Lynch (unless it actually is Lynch himself trying to pass something off as a parody of his own style, which might be true of some of his projects), but is merely performing an emulation of David Lynch.

With L’Entretien, where it is clear which attempt is being made here -- that of a short film initially influenced directly by a particular Kafka piece -- what does it become? Is it an attempt to become Kafka, given the fact it does have one of his short stories within the rise of its creation? Or is it an attempt to be Kafkaesque, straining to become its own novelty while still remaining submerged within his unmistakable style? If one is adapting Kafka, then the filmmaker should actually be shooting for Kafka, not Kafkaesque. But if it is not a true adaptation, and rather a mere homage in style, then Kafkaesque is all it needs to be.

Either way, I found that the length of the film (nearly 20 full minutes) ran counter to the pace (leaden is a kind word) to such an extent that I, who never misses a chance to check out a film within the three-to-four hour range, gave up caring about the issue of "Kafka vs. K-esque" (especially after repeated viewings). I finally decided that choosing a winner was arbitrary once I hit upon the notion that the film really wasn't worth the concern. There are scenes that I do admire in L’Entretien -- the eating scene on the park bench, Man's beloved shot on the jetty overlooking the train system, and even the restaurant scene works for me too (but not in the way that Man insists it does) -- but they are not enough to win me over all the way. Or more than halfway.

And director Man is surely in denial on one minor but nagging point. She mentions that a specific scene in the film -- one with two dark-suited agents with earpieces holding a man under arrest, who then stare down the main character menacingly -- has been pointed out as seeming like a nod or tribute to The Matrix. She is amused by this, but swears she had no intention whatsoever of conveying this to her audience. Watching the film multiple times, I do not see how this could not have come up even in filming it, as it is so like the Mr. Smith scenes in the Wachowskis' sci-fi epic as to almost be copyright infringement unless it were meant as parody or tribute. She has got to be joking on this one.

Basically, it comes down to this… A person named R. was scheduled to meet up with a film numbered 7, but R. slept through half of another film numbered 6, and woke up after film 7 had already gotten underway. All of this happened around 2, the time, not the film. He would not have fallen asleep during the film numbered 2, no matter how sleepy, because he really liked 2. However, he was inwardly hurt by his inability to remain awake through 6 and opening his eyes at 2 to great confusion over what he first saw in 7, R. sought to seek some form of resolution with 7, so R. started 7 over again to figure 7 out from the beginning. 7 remained firm, however, in 7's intent to remain obscure and blandly creepy, and so, once 7 left the screen, with the hour at 3, R. sought out the advice of director K., who was very forthcoming, perhaps too forthcoming, on various issues within K's making of 7, and while R. learned many interesting things during this discourse, still he remained unfulfilled overall by 7. After a final attempt to reconcile with 7, and find some reason to consider its excellence, R. gave up, flicked the remote savagely to remove 7 from his presence, and skipped to the films numbered 8, 9 and 10. They were neither Kafka nor Kafkaesque, nor did 8, 9 or 10 attempt to be. Nor did they attempt to actually be any good at all, or even worthy of comment, though R. knew he would have to try tomorrow.

It was the only way he would ever miss the film numbered 7.