The Cinema 4 Pylon: SpOutpost

REVIEW... REVIEW... REVIEW... REVIEW... REVIEW... Spout Mavens Disc #15 (and likely, the last): More Shoes... REVIEW... REVIEW... REVIEW... REVIEW...

rik_tod — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 04:13:44 GMT

More Shoes
Director: Lee Kazimir
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

I've been asked to recommend a film either at the top or bottom of this post, which isn't actually a review, though many people still insist on referring to these pieces I construct as reviews. All the same, I have also been asked to place the word "review" into the title. It was rough going, trying to find the exact spot to place that (used erroneously here) noun, but I hope I have at least been able to follow through properly by some small measure on that count.

As for that recommendation... well... let me ask you one small question: Do I know you? Apart from one other person here on Spout, The Working Dead, I don’t personally know any of you. Yes, a handful of people on here have left some very nice comments regarding my writing, and I am sure some of them would make great friends, but I still can’t know someone from just a quick comment or two. It makes it hard to recommend anything if one does not personally know those to whom one is speaking. That the reader can ascertain elements of my personality from my writing is readily apparent, since my style is of a more personal nature, talking about how films affect me more often than actually reviewing them. In the broad sense, though, this is not necessarily true of most “reviewers” or “critics,” who often shoot for a bland sameness in their acceptable styles. Regardless of style or intent, the reader still has it all up on the writer, including myself. They can scan through any number of my posts and get a fairly accurate picture of my emotional range, my psychological bearing, and my critical eye (which, more often than not, one will find those eyes closed). They can read my writing for a short while and get a decent summary of my being. They can determine whether they want to listen to my railings any further, and whether to accept my judgment, good or ill, of the film in discussion.

That’s all fine and well, but while it seems that such a relationship is one on one for the reader – reader meets writer – in fact, it is the complete opposite for the writer. The writer, presumably reaching out to a vast audience, most often has to tailor his words for that entire audience. In doing so, whether he is recommending the object of his review to his readers or not, he is in fact, doing them a disservice unless he is careful to couch his recommendation (or lack of one) in qualifiers: “this is the sort of film this sort of person, or such and such a type of people, would enjoy,” etc. But most critics do not take this extra step. They assume that whole goose-and-gander maxim thing holds true for the critic and their prospective audience: heed my words, you will love/hate this movie, no matter who you are!

Since I only write for myself, and mainly as a therapeutic means, I don’t worry about “recommendations.” Flat out, I don’t do them. I especially don’t since the Eraserhead and Motorama incidents of many years past, in which I didn’t actually recommend those films to anybody, I just suggested to my more or less captive and bored audiences that we watch them, and I have received endless harangues from the less adventurous amongst my friends ever since. The misunderstanding comes from their blanket need to be entertained -- and just entertained -- by movies. This runs counter to my need (though there is still an entertainment factor at play in my heart) to see films that are at least interesting, if not outright mind-expanding. I will not go into details about those films – this is not the time and place – but rest assured that they definitely made me start being far more careful about what films I show or even recommend to individuals. When people in the office ask me to recommend a movie, I generally ask, “What do you like?” If they answer “Oh, I love Pretty Woman!” or some such other pap (which has happened more than once, I am afraid), I am likely to respond, “Hmm, sorry. Can’t help you.” (I hold back on what I would like to add to that statement: “It’s too late for you…you can’t be helped.”) It’s not that I can’t back up my words or my opinions; I just don’t want to have to hear those people whine once they climb down the other side of the Rik Recommendation Mountain. The world is now made up of people who believe that their time is Oh So Very Precious – the “I can’t believe I wasted 90 minutes of my life on that film” contingent, when they all, to a person, are just as likely to turn right around in an instant for ten straight hours of Nintendo or a night of being soused with their brain-dead buddies. That’s fine – to each his own – but don’t hit me with your personal prejudices concerning films, and your own insecurities with personal time management, when you have asked my opinion in the first place.

Because this has happened time and again, unless I know someone extremely well, I do not recommend any films to anybody. My mother, my father, stepparents, brothers, the Working Dead, Raw Meat, Egg of the Dead – these are people, and their individual artistic tastes and boundaries, that I understand and know fairly well, and I can launch into recommending a film to them with a certain assurance that they will at least give me a measured opinion of their own on its excellence or lack thereof. I am not afraid to recommend titles to them, because I know them. In some cases, too well.

You, generic reader, I don’t know. So, outside of the film which I am purportedly supposed to be discussing here – More Shoes, a first-person documentary about the travels of a would-be filmmaker who definitely takes an offhand recommendation a tad too far, and when I say “too far”, I mean roughly 4000 miles in that direction of limits past the stretching point – outside of the film at hand, I cannot offer up a recommendation to you. What if I were to go all loopy and go, “Wow, the guy in this movie travels across part of the world in search of his artistic sensibilities as a director, so, since he travels, I recommend RV with Robin Williams!” For all I know, you aren’t the type who enjoys overproduced but under-thought hack comedy by people who should all clearly know better, and since you trusted my notion to recommend this film to you, you are going to be pissed off at me. You will be less likely to pay attention to one of my posts the next time around, and all because I told you that “you’d be sure to enjoy this if you enjoyed that.” Making recommendations is a dangerous game if played improperly, and everyone – even the self-aware – does play it improperly. And if both sides are crazy to begin with, no one can ever win. And, of course, there is the chance that I would recommend a really crappy film to everyone on purpose, because that is the sort of guy I am sometimes.

So, in the interest of this “review” still containing some form of recommendation in it, why not do an end-around and concentrate on the film at hand. Would I recommend More Shoes to you? I certainly liked large portions of it, even if it is not completely engrossing and a little too laid back in its approach. I will, perhaps, even watch the film again at some undefined point in the future, regardless of whether I would then have to put up with the director/star’s choice of hideous footwear. In fact, before I watched it again, I would re-title my copy of the film Better Shoes instead of More Shoes, because surely he would have benefited from some well-designed walking shoes rather than the usual slacker’s choice of ugly Birkenstock-style gear.

More Shoes is a film by Lee Kazimir, a young man with a certain small amount of filmmaking experience before this film takes place, who takes the recommendation of a legendarily crazy but brilliant film director, and decides to walk across Europe in search of his filmmaking soul. Werner Herzog once recommended that aspiring filmmakers forego the classroom experience of film school and “make a journey alone, on foot, for a distance of 5,000 kilometers, let's say from Madrid to Kiev.” Herzog, in his usual manner, proffers this advice to any within earshot, and most people will smile, shake their heads and go, “Oh, that Werner! There he goes again,” and then move on. Not Kazimir. He literalizes Herzog’s offhand statement, and hits the road on foot, and not just by making an epic journey on foot, but by actually duplicating the starting and stopping point of Herzog’s tossed off, imaginary excursion. It's the sort of idea for a film that gets publicity from the sheer audacity of it, and a more cynical person than I would probably point out with a sharper finger that maybe the true impulse behind it was publicity, to get the director noticed and nothing more. There might be a little of that here, but I think its more the approach of a man who is a little frustrated and lost in his would-be talent, and desperate to find if he belongs anywhere, doing anything.

To me, it’s a foolhardy though impressive ambition that drives Kazimir, but my chief problem with such an attempt is that, in my estimation, even if one decided to brave the rigors of such a trip, Herzog was not talking about actually filming such a journey. He was basically suggesting one surefire means in which a novice artist could gain life experience on a massive level before embarking on their filmic career. A travel of considerable size, of perhaps thousands of miles through historic towns and decaying society, would certainly afford the aspiring filmmaker ample opportunity to gain such experience. His life would be threatened on occasion, he would perhaps fall in love or at least lust a number of times, he would see the best and worst of humankind, and he would be given a true sense of man’s place within the construct of nature on this trip. All of the ingredients needed to allow the artistic self to merge with the more physical aspects are readily available for the hapless soul embarking on such a journey. Herzog does suggest his “Madrid to Kiev” trip specifically for an aspiring filmmaker, but he never suggests that such a filmmaker should bring a movie camera along with him down the road. And, really, such a task -- almost a spirit quest, in a way -- would serve the same purpose for a writer, painter or architect as well. Since Kazimir goes into his trip with film experience, it’s no surprise that his survey does take the form of a video, rather than a book, statue or mural. But I still think that such a journey of discovery would be best taken by using the memory directly, not capturing it on a series of tapes.

But, I don't fault Kazimir from wishing to use his particular focus on capturing his journey. While he may doubt whether he wants to continue working in film, and uses this experience more as a litmus test regarding his artistic ambitions, he really has no choice but to film it. After all, if he doesn’t, there is no record of it. While he would perhaps be better suited to simply backpack across Europe like many thousands of other kids of his relative age, if one is a filmmaker, why not film it?

My mother was recently in town, and she brought along her new digital camera, with which she proceeded to take hundreds of pictures while she stayed in Anaheim. She is on an epic journey herself -- by fifth-wheeler, not by foot -- on the first real vacation she has taken in twenty years or so. Naturally, she wants to capture everything she can on film . But there is no actual artistic impulse involved, at least none that is apparent to her own child. It is merely another person doing what we all do through life: collecting keepsakes, mementos, souvenirs... whether through a purchase from a gift counter or through the lens of a camera, we all tend to do this when we travel. In this sense, what Kazimir has collected on his travels on his camera matters no more than the photos taken by a 62-year old mother on a seriously long road trip that zigzags back and forth across the U.S.

In fact, if anything, in the same way that no one wants to be trapped on a couch while a relative makes them look at photo album after photo album of blasts from that relative's past, where every third person in each photo has to be explained at great length for the (usually stiffly posed) photos to make any sense at all, so too can More Shoes seem a bit like a chore at times. We are basically shown scene after scene, with little in the way of explanation, and with what little explanation we are given sometimes ruining what little suspense does build up along the way. At times, I wish there were no narration at all, and would prefer to almost just bump along silently through the film, enjoying each turn around the corner on my own judgment. But, at other times, I wanted to know more about the people I met in Kazimir's video journal, and the narration would fail me in that regard.

And still, I never lost full interest in his journey across a multitude of countries. There is enough here to sustain one between Madrid and Kiev, even if Kazimir himself starts to lose faith in his abilities along the way. This viewer really did start to feel for him, even if Kazimir brought it all on himself. I'm one of those "I need a vacation from vacation" folks, so I couldn't even begin to imagine what Kazimir was feeling in the waning moments of his walk. Or maybe I could, since he decided to film all of it, instead of just keeping it to himself. Like a collection of snapshots that really require a livelier narrator than someone's 82 year-old aunt to be more than just mildly interesting.

So, would I recommend More Shoes? Damn it. I’ve already told you – I don’t know you… but here's a recommendation I can give to everyone: Don't Follow Recommendations. Make your journey through the history of the cinema a more organic one. Start out trying twenty films from every single genre, no matter how much you think they are going to suck. Watch a film because one actor is in it, and then choose another actor in that film, and watch your next film with that actor in it, and so on. Open a film guide, drop your finger in, and then watch the collected works of whatever director the tip of your widdle nubbin lands upon. Do what I have done twice in my life and watch a thousand films in one calendar year (that's averaging just under two and three-quarters films a day, and its actually easier to do than one might think). Pick a book on a specific genre of film and then attempt to watch every film in alphabetical order. Or do what I do currently, and just check out any film that catches your fancy. Don't over-think it... just watch, try to enjoy yourself, and well after the film is done, ponder on how watching that film affected you, good or bad. Never... ever... worry about how much money a movie made at the box office. Unless you are a movie producer, box office means nada... And most of all, I recommend that you don't listen to strangers. Listen to people that you know, respect or trust. Value their opinions, even if you don't agree with them, and try to understand their point of view even if it skews 180 degrees away from yours. If they liked a film and you didn't, discuss it with them and find out what it is in their life that makes them be so incorrect -- er, I mean, different.

So, there you go. A recommendation section in this non-review that has "Review" in the title I am sorry that it isn't actually a film recommendation, but if one is required, I recommend everyone watch Nightdreams, directed by F.X. Pope. It's hard to find, but it has Wall of Voodoo performing a genuinely spooky version of Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire while lipstick lesbian cowgirls act badly on purpose, and yet still manage to act badly for real. It's the greatest scene ever filmed, and I am only half joking.

What's that? You don't enjoy hardcore flicks, even if Nightdreams is a relatively big-budget attempt at genre crossover, with some very interestingly staged, surreal sequences, including one involving a housewife becoming intimately involved with a giant Cream of Wheat box while a piece of toast plays Old Man River on a saxophone?

Well, that's the way it is with recommendations: you never know what you are going to get, especially if you don't know the person doing the recommending. You don't know me and I don't know you...

...and now I probably never will. Goodbye, Spout...

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

rik_tod — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:06:06 GMT

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.

Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 12 of 13: Shorts! Volume 3 - Too Many Ninjas?

rik_tod — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:35:57 GMT

Climactic Death of Dark Ninja
Director: Peter Craig
US, 13 minutes, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

A Ninja Pays Half My Rent
Director: Steven Tsuchida
US, 5 minutes, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

At the outset of reviewing two ninja films, please forgive me, if you will, for being a samurai guy.

Yeah, they’re pushy and elitist and, in the manner of most of the rest of mankind, they are often simply drunken, woman-slapping, craven beasts. But every once in while, one of them steps out, does something unbelievably heroic or cool (more often than not against the general grouping of pushy, elitist, drunken, woman-slapping samurai that aren’t heroic or cool). And when they finally do their heroic, cool bit, it’s usually out in the great wide open, where everyone can see and learn from their awesomeness and die by their godlike skill with the blade.

Not like ninja.

Sneaky, creeping, shadowy bastards, the lot of them. I guess it hurts them as a species that ninja have never really had an auteur in their corner like the samurai class had Kurosawa. Well, except for those Eastman and Laird guys, but they had to make their ninja heroes not just mutants and not just teenagers, but turtles as well in order to bring international attention and fame to them. And, looking back, the lack of a Kurosawa figure leading ninja into battle through the movies didn’t really hurt them at all, since everyone around me today seems to think that ninja are the bee’s knees. No kid wants to be a samurai anymore, but they all want to be ninja. Again, ninja did this through stealth, getting through to the public through what are largely considered children’s media (though we know that’s not really true), instead of through the front door and boldly out in the open like the samurai.

It’s not surprising, though, that ninja really started to pick up steam in the ‘80s – that most superficial of times (if you don’t count today), where backstabbing and shadowy behavior truly solidified their status as the bread and butter of the big business world (those two characteristics have always had an iron grip on politics). Sho Kosugi was there to lead the path on video, Frank Miller and those Turtle guys in the comics, and every third toy seemed to be a ninja engaged in some form of sinister sneakiness. And let's not discount the massive influence of Snake-Eyes from the G.I. Joe TV show, comic series and toyline. Ninja sort of seemed to the mid-to-late ‘80s what spies were to the ‘60s, albeit on a more minor scale. Unlike spies in the ‘60s though, the TV never got filled with successful ninja-led series – except those omnipresent testudinians-- nor did ninjas ever gain a truly Bond-like hero either. Why? Because it’s hard to become a lovable assassin, and its especially hard when you are shadowy and weaselly and obscure most of your features except your eyes. It can be done, but please don’t prop up Elektra as such a character; she’s sort of cool -- with Miller working her strings -- but she is mainly a pain in the ass.)

Me? I never took to the ninja set, and I suppose it’s quite obvious from what I have written thus far. But most of my friends seem to be quite enamored of them, and so it came as little surprise to me when I stopped to reflect upon a couple of those old pals while I was watching one of the two ninja-related films on Shorts! Volume 3 titled A Ninja Pays Half My Rent. Chiefly, it is because the style of this film is directly reminiscent of the antics preferred by those two old pals, and I even had to check out the credits of the film halfway through to make sure that this wasn’t a ninja-style film attack from one of them in particular, since both have spent time in and out of Hollywood working on short films and the occasional feature. Alas, while the mood was certainly right for them to have been involved, it appears they were not.

But it is definitely the sort of story they would have worked out, having some average doofus being forced into finding a new roommate (his old roomie dies from a grapefruit squirting accident, rarely fatal we are told, but still…), and finally settling on taking in a shadowy, lurking assassin to meet the bills. The humor doesn't try to go too far, though really, given the truncated running time, how could it? Just a quick set-up leading to the introduction of the ninja, a series of swift blackout gags portraying both the difficulties and the sometimes awe-inspiring charms of having a ninja as a roommate, and then... well, that's a surprise, and while nothing earth-shattering is going to occur in such light fare, Rent is a fine example of a film where the makers clearly understand exactly the point where they don't overstay their welcome. It's almost enough to start to warm my anti-ninja heart...

Also playing havoc with my stance on this subject is the other ninja-related piece of the DVD called Climatic Death of Dark Ninja. Unlike the more absurd first offering, Climactic could really take place in our world, and I must point out that there are no "actual" ninjas to speak of here. This film, a bit more ambitious (and presumably personal) than Rent, though still very definitely of a comic variety, is actually about the making of a film called Climactic Death of Dark Ninja and the various problems that don't just merely arise in this story, but rather, have plagued the production since its erstwhile teenage director corralled his ragtag group of friends and neighborhood kids into shooting the film long before we meet up with this group.

Please see beyond a couple of the stiffer performances by the young amateur actors and try to view their stiffness as more of a natural quirkiness, and you will find greater enjoyment in the piece. There is a definite weird charm at play here -- fans of insider joking about amateur filmmaking geeks will especially get a jolt out of this (i.e. those types of geeks themselves, including that pair of old pals of mine and, to a lesser degree, myself) -- and it would be a shame if you wrote it off early. Climactic pays off well by following up on a couple of key jokes laid out in the beginning, so sticking around for the full thirteen minutes rewards the viewer. If it seems, after following the shorter first film, that this one drags a bit, that wouldn't surprise me, but do stick around all the same. The length is actually perfect, and while after the first viewing I was fairly neutral regarding the whole enterprise, subsequent takes found me warming up to it, taking its loony charms to heart. Those darn ninja have sneaked up on me again.

And so, what do I do? Admit I have a problem? Surely not an addictive one -- it's only two short films -- not a series of features. If it were more prolonged a bout, I might be worried about my non-ninja stance. Maybe I simply had a minor Grinch-like torrent of emotion, and allowed for some tolerance in my formerly implacable stand against ninja of all stripes. And maybe it is a wish to still be hanging around with those two old pals of mine, launching into all sorts of trouble playing spy games and occasionally engaging in some guerrilla filmmaking. Maybe, at the great and considered urging of one pal in particular, we would even try to make a mini-ninja epic of our own.

I, of course, being a control freak, would probably then insist on gumming up the works by introducing a samurai into our film. They wouldn't like it, and would probably talk me out of it, but what else am I going to do? Gotta class up the joint somehow...

[I should point out that in my references to ninja throughout this piece, I am speaking in a broad sense about current popular notion of the ninja, not of their actual history or presence in the real world. My apologies to true ninja everywhere. You sneaky bastards…]

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

rik_tod — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 06:04:56 GMT

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.

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

rik_tod — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 03:46:57 GMT

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...

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

rik_tod — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:55:54 GMT

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.

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

rik_tod — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 06:59:59 GMT

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...

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

rik_tod — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:21:21 GMT

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.

Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 6 of 13: Shorts! Volume 3 - Loose Ends (2003)

rik_tod — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:00:29 GMT

Director: Stig Svendsen
Norwegian, 9 minutes, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

A scene that I did not mention the other day in my piece on My Name is Yu Ming was one in which the titular character, a Chinese man who has learned Gaelic in order to seek a new and hopefully more fulfilling existence in Ireland (a course which he has suggested to himself entirely at random), engages in an impersonation of an iconic movie scene. Yu Ming, his face covered by cream as he shaves in front of his bathroom mirror, begins to perform De Niro's "You talkin' to me?" scene from Taxi Driver, repeating the famous lines in his newly learned second language, though after he does four or five bits, he drops the tough guy act and snickers nerdishly at the mirror, handily amused with his lonely antics.

I started to wonder then as to whether a character in Yu Ming's circumstances and location would have not only actually had the chance to see Taxi Driver, but whether that sequence has quite the same impact dubbed into another language, where it is no longer De Niro verbally acting the part. My musing then broke down into whether, if Yu Ming had indeed seen Taxi Driver, it was as a bootleg via the black market, or then, if not, if the film were even available legally in his country. In Ireland, where My Name is Yu Ming was made, certainly it is available, and the English version would naturally carry over and play well the same there. It was the inclusion of China into the equation that had me musing.

I didn't think much about this film scene that comments on yet another film scene until I watched the sixth film on the Shorts! Volume 3 DVD collection, Loose Ends, a couple of days later. Where Yu Ming only fleetingly (and without real consequence) nodded at American pop culture, this nine-minute comic Norwegian short practically wallows in it. Having recently watched Simon Pegg's Spaced for the first (and second and third) time, I couldn't held but reflect upon it when confronted with Loose Ends' pair of Star Wars-obsessed supergeeks, who start an epic battle (though always of modest proportions) over whether E.T.s belong in the Star Wars universe.

Their geekitude is proven by their abilities to delve into such battle not over the better films in the Star Wars series, but over the worst one instead. But I myself shall not continue the debate, nor will I give away much more in the short, as pretty much the entire piece depends on how they play off the various permutations of this running feud. This includes the punchline, which I find personally a little underwhelming, though when I first watched it, the bit did warrant a chuckle on my part, as it did my girlfriend, who is herself a tad obsessive over the series, when I showed it to her later. At that point, though, I was past the chuckling stage over the ending, and had moved on to wondering where the rest of the Clerks-style Norwegian comedy classic, out of which this short seems to have wandered, could be. Two loser geeks rambling smartly but to little positive effect about minor details in Star Wars movies? Sounds like Nordic Kevin Smith to me, especially with a lot of Ås waddling about the place.

I am still unsure about whether the title Loose Ends really works for this film, as I really don't see anything in the commonly accepted though ambiguous area of loose ends in it, nor is anything really left unresolved, nor is it Norwegian porn -- gay, straight or transgendered -- so it certainly couldn't stand for anything in the area. The title most definitely didn't prepare me for the fact that I would smacked straight off in the face with jokes about Jar Jar Binks and the slow, careful loading of an E.T. Pez dispenser. But, like the Yu Ming scene, Loose Ends set me immediately into wondering about the prevalence of American pop culture throughout the globe. Not so much about the effects of such prevalence, because I really don't care, and am, in fact, more concerned about the effects on our own country, and only regarding those things for which I hold distaste if not outright disdain.

I do not doubt that someone will take me to task for considering the Star Wars films wholly American as they were filmed to a great extent in England, Tunisia and points elsewhere, and with an international cast to boot. But, production-wise and creator-wise, they are just as American as Lucas' Graffiti, though if it helps matters for the nitpickers (with whom I would often fall into rank), we could just speak of this as English-speaking culture and be done with it.

In the end, we have a series of science fiction/fantasy films (let's not start that argument here) that are wildly popular throughout the world, are referenced constantly in American culture in all forms of media, and now, apparently, have inspired a Norwegian filmmaker to create his own slacker comedy short built around the incidental appearances of characters from other American films or from films in the same series which take place years in the future apart from the films under discussion (The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith).

That this became the subject of the film's dialogue charmed me from the start of Loose Ends, chiefly because I was not expecting it, especially from two guys (one of whom, unsurprisingly, is named Lars) driving through some undefined backstretch of the Norwegian road system in the middle of the night. I doubt if the subject were anything else of actual Scandinavian origin that I would have been drawn so quickly into the film. (Well, any subject except for lutefisk... that is so frightening and noxious a concept, that any film attempting to explain its supposed appeal has got to be fascinating straight through.) Suddenly, I am watching two fellows from a foreign land having a conversation that I could just as easily have with any of my own friends here in the States. And probably have had at some point.

But the film, perhaps befitting the shabbiness of its choice of Star Wars flicks, is only an amusing trifle and the initial charm starts to wear off before the conclusion. Even in a home where I am surrounded by Harryhausen posters, Universal Monster models and Bruce Campbell knick-knacks, geek culture grows increasingly thin with me the longer I am exposed to it through the voices or actions of others outside myself. It's the main reason I have yet to actually venture to Comic-Con, even though I live not that far away. It's the main reason I have only been in a comic shop twice in the last three years. And it's also the reason I have yet to attend a film festival down here. Perhaps it stems from a self-loathing, and I don't wish to be reminded of that which I have become, a person who has been sucked into a vortex of comics, music, toys and videos from which I know no reasonable escape. Not to say that I do not enjoy my trappings nor continue to add to my various collections. But I also recognize that perhaps with a little bit of self-restraint, I might have a real home now, instead of a massive pile of what largely boils down to nothing but paper and plastic representing junk culture crammed into an increasingly crowded apartment. Who knows what I might have done with the money I would have saved over the past 25 years? I might have done something bigger than just blowing wads of cash attempting to complete my Fantastic Four collection (which I never actually did) or tracking down those elusive Cowboy Bebop soundtrack import CDs (which were subsequently swiped from me). At least Yu Ming knew enough to cut his geek foray off after a couple of Gaelic-translated Travis Bickle lines.

And now you know why I am reluctant to be concerned about how our culture is affecting the rest of the world. Sometimes, I think they can just have it. And the Norwegians can certainly keep The Phantom Menace if they wish...

Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 5 of 13: Shorts! Volume 3 - Seventeen (2003)

rik_tod — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:23:17 GMT

Director: Hisko Hulsing
Netherlands, 12:00, color animated
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

At what level do we begin to recognize our own failure? If we start out with imperial ambitions, is everything else short of controlling the world considered to be a failure? Since most of us will never, or should never, wish for such power, I guess we all have to just be thankful for whatever success we might achieve, and accept our fate from there.

I worked at my previous job for 22 years. I won't go into the details of the five Ws and an H of the situation -- I have discussed these matters elsewhere in bits and pieces on The Cinema 4 Pylon, and if you are actually interested, for whatever reason, I suggest you delve into it there. My need to bring up the length of my stay at that particular hovel of a business was merely to impart the message that 22 years at any one place, home or business, is far too long a span. I started young, full of piss and vinegar, but not quite enough to make me burn the place down and move onward. I despised about 90 percent of the people, employees or customers, with whom I came into contact, and there were certain sections of the business where the workers were little more than savage animals in my eyes. I always felt that anytime soon, something would happen where I would be rid of them and their brutish ways. Either I would leave them behind as I sped towards better times, or they would die the deaths that they so richly deserved for their callowness and their uncaring attitudes towards everything except for the most base forms of human endeavor.

And then, almost imperceptibly, with the faucet slowly dripping away my youth, I found myself stuck. I could not leave the job due to my own fears, my own uncertainty for the future, and I accepted a fate where even a horrid career is better than a world without a clear destination ahead. And even after the worst moments -- those times where I swore I had had enough and would rather kill them all and face the most severe prison sentence ever than work one more day in that pit of damnation -- I found myself punching the clock again. And again. And after so many years, I found myself not warming to those whom I previously despised, but becoming instead enough like them where I could no longer hold myself to a loftier ideal. Soon, I stopped resisting their idiocies and fell into line alongside them. I had become the others.

It has been said for eons that our world is largely run, in nearly every aspect, by fear. Fear can keep us running when we both shouldn't, and fear can also keep from running when we should. Its not so much about overcoming our fears, as it is about coming to an understanding with them, figuring out when they are truly justified or when they are pure shite. My own fear of the future overrode my fear of being trapped in a lifeless hell, and for a long time, I was a horrible person for it. While I won't rule out that there were outside agents that allowed me to come to grips with my fears, in the end, I was the one who had to walk away and start over. I stopped the stagnation at 22 years, and set up elsewhere. No longer do I feel like one of those others that I found so despicable.

In Hisko Hulsing's superbly creepy animated short, Seventeen -- one of 16 films on the Shorts! Volume 3 DVD collection -- we meet a young man named Harry, almost the age I was when I began my 22-year run, in a similar situation. His afternoons are marked by his labors on a roofing job, far above the streets of a village surrounded by patchwork fields. He is surrounded at his job by workers almost exactly of the Cro-Magnon set, and they booze and prank each other to the point that little work seems to actually get done. He strains to shut out the ruffians, and distracts his attention by peering at a woman in the building adjacent to the worksite, who strips slowly and coyly catches Harry's eye as he sits numbly on the edge of the building, several stories above the ground. In fact, the woman is a prostitute, and soon her madam will catch onto Harry's spying and shut the curtains on his afternoon of naive peeping. Harry doesn't see her as a whore, but merely as a target for his youthfully urgent affection, and as he spies, he is dreamy eyed and wistful, completely forgetting his co-workers.

They have not forgotten him, however, and they catch him unaware, lost in his love at first sight daydreams. One of the ruffians grabs Harry's ponytail and pretends to shove him off the roof. Soon, they are attacking some nearby laundry on a drying line, dressing the young lad up in women's clothing, and even after fitting the dress over his head, we see from Harry's point of view that he imagines one of the men, in a hirsute, sweat-laden and frightening closeup, is looking at the innocent, comparatively waiflike and pony-tailed Harry in a lustful, drooling manner. It is but a small harbinger of the horrors to come for Harry, who will now spend the remainder of the film locked in a battle with his delusions -- drunken and real -- interpreting the actions of the citizenry of the village as increasingly aggressive and conspiratorial towards himself.

Obsessed by the beautiful prostitute, Harry attempts to buy a drink for her at a local carnival, but he lingers too long in doubt, and her time is taken by some of his co-workers. Later, he will awaken in a deeply drunken state and wander into a scene where two of those men are having sex with her, and he will not recognize the fact, as she checks her watch in uncaring boredom, that she is literally on the clock. He will only hear her false moaning as screams of agony, and will imagine she is being doubly raped. He will launch himself at the attackers, but he will embarrassingly end up only in sending her sprawling backwards into a mud puddle with his crotch landing on her face, and her potential johns, a winding string of whom are seen waiting around the side of the building and onward, will not take this lightly at all. Interrupted from their pleasures, the men will, in Harry's eyes, and thus ours, transform very nearly into zombies or at least creatures of some arcane night, and shamble after the boy until he is driven from town.

From here, Harry will meet many others who will come at him first as the gentle and friendly, and through our hero's nightmare eye, will reveal themselves as nothing more than hostiles. Women who would grant him sensual release will turn into harpies, those harpies would take on the face of a co-worker, those co-workers will join the rest of the citizenry in ritual sacrifice for a secret blood cult, and good Samaritans will always wish for something craven in return. The images fly fast, and every tiny thing skews threatening to the lad. A carnival which promises joy during the day becomes a bestial thing by night -- this is no profound statement the film is granting us, as we all naturally understand the dark side of such places. But it works remarkably well here, with zigzagging angles and monstrous shadows closing on Harry as he seeks an escape from his ceaseless, mostly self-imposed travails. The film, reflecting his rampant fears, will get the better of him.

The background paintings used to achieve these affects are rough but always lush in their hue and invention. The depth achieved in some of the pieces truly astounds, and despite how savage the film may seem content-wise, it is always stunningly gorgeous and composed. I must profess that even I, one who doesn't flinch at very much initially in any film, was taken aback somewhat by the carnality of the film. Not that I couldn't handle it, but after the comparative mellowness of the previous films on the disc, I wasn't expecting such brutality and menace, let alone the nudity and sex quotient. At times, the content is so grimy that one almost wishes to wash it away with a freakishly innocent episode of The Wiggles.

But it is all for purpose -- this is no gratuitous exercise in filth, but rather a very well-turned examination into stagnation and personal inertia. Harry himself will go back to his roofing job, day after day, slowly sucking into the world he interprets as hostile. He will grow sloppier and unshaven, and his dreams will fade ever deeper into the back of his head as he surrenders only to the daily pleasures, which will fatten his body and weaken his resolve. He will likely even join the line of grunting Neanderthals lined up around the building waiting for a quickie release from a bored sex worker. He will become what he hates, and he will be unrecognizable from those whom he despises.

Hopefully after 22 years of this, he will truly wake up...