That Rare Toaster

Where does inspiration come from? I was sitting around this morning trying to come up with some short film ideas and all that was coming to me were generic stories probably fueled by all the shit I’ve watched over the years. By 11 I needed a drink. I threw on my boots and stalking cap (to cover my eye brow that is now only half there because, in the end, I just think too much). Sweating, but semi-pleasing to the eye, I ventured out of my apartment to let life inspire me. My only goal was to get a double Ceasar, which I did, along with some pretty good pasta smothered in cheese sauce and littered with bacon pieces. I brought along some sharpies and my sketch pad so I could write down ideas as they came to me. Suddenly a man walked in and there, to my ignorant surprise, was all the inspiration I ever needed. I won’t reveal much more about it since I want to write a screenplay about him.

But this brings me to the point of my entry: inspiration. It’s such a weird intangible thing that it can sometimes seem like it’s a million miles away and all your mind can do is swim around in a shallow puddle of dead ideas. Then, when you’re sick of thinking about crappy ideas, your mind wonders and you’re automatically thinking about what the fuck you’re even doing? How are you going to get by as an artist if you can’t even come up with a short film idea? I look at some of the great works of our time and wonder how am I supposed to compete?

Then you’re thinking that maybe that’s not the point. Art, to me, has always been a mode of expression that artificially reflects real life. What better inspiration than observing life itself? Our society is so soaked in fantasy and escapism that we have lost our ability to observe the simplest things around us. We’re too hungry for entertainment so we can forget the grind of daily life. We seek entertainment to take us away from life, but as I said, art is life. Talk about a vicious circle. All “art” is doing now is pointing out how shitty our lives are. How we are nothing but a society being guided by some invisible hand and are being subjected to so many ideas designed for the soul purpose to make money that we can’t even come up with an original idea ourselves. Then there’s all that other shit I won’t even call art since it’s soul purpose is to generate capital and turn us away form what art could be. We’ll just call that media.

Now, back to inspiration. As shitty as our society is I’ve decided to work towards a greater goal in life. I’m not after money nor fame. I want to change minds. The greatest minds of our time have worked in some pretty shitty social situations. My canvas is the dump we call society and I will fucking dig until I find that rare toaster that still has an electrical plug and works. Wish me luck friends.

Am I The Only One Who Hated This?

Ah, my last film of the fest. Too bad I walked out on it. I herd this movie stirring up a ton of controversy and wanted to check it out. It turned out to be too much for my senses to take. It’s basically a film about a skinny Will Farell look alike beating the shit out of women. He beats them, he rapes them, he beats them again. It just seemed like the director was playing out some sick fantasy that otherwise would have been impossible, insanely illegal and immoral. I don’t understand why this movie was made. It’s hateful to women, has a pretty ridiculous plot and was impossible to take seriously. Was this shock just for the pure sake of shock? Probably. The stupid plot and the lines this flick crossed was enough for me to get up and go the fuck home. Had I not been tired from watching 3+ movies everyday up to this point, I may have stayed for the ending, which I hear might have been a redeeming quality. This is a movie you will either love or hate. I certainly didn’t like it.

High School all Over Again

How could I say no to a high school drama that has John C. Riley playing the principal? Terri is a great high school drama flick about an overweight kid trying to make his way through high school while only wearing pajamas. After the principal figures out he’s been skipping in school he takes Terri under his wing and becomes his friend. Terri, seeking a father figure, accepts this friendship but quickly finds out nothing is perfect.

What did I like best about this movie you must be wondering? Well, I think I just like how the director Azezel Jacobs captures the innocence of a high school oddball. The film touches on all sorts of subjects from bullying to mental illness and does so seamlessly. Terri shows us an intimate look at a confusing time in life and pulls it off really well. I could almost hear my very own principal screaming at me every time Riley’s character ripped into a student (which is very often). I wasn't planning on seeing this one but I'm glad I did.

Turning My Brain To Stupid Mode

It was nice after two days of thinking critically to shut off my brain and enjoy some high concept whackyness, and boy, did directors Brad Mills and Jacquelyn Mills deliver the goods in The Legend of the Psychotic Forest Ranger. But just when I thought I had to stop thinking I realized that this was a self reflexive movie, as in a movie that realizes it’s a genre movie and exploits that very thing. That shit is deep if we’re going to get into film theory. Fuck it, let’s not go there.

So after deciding to snuff out the educated part of my brain I got to thoroughly enjoy the movie. There’s no reason to explain the film since it’s summed up in it’s title. I’ll just say that I was pleased to see that the dumb teenage foursome meets up with a carbon copy of themselves just so the director can double the idiocy on screen. Two jocks, two blond bimbos, two rational brunettes and two jokers all fall one by one to the Psychotic Forrest Ranger who has a voice very reminiscent of the movie phone voice on that episode of Seinfeld. The film was full of bad effects, ridiculous lines and faulty logic. Just how any film should be when it’s aware of itself. Now that’s creepy.

A Bus and Some Acid Heads

Boy was I looking forward to seeing Magic Trip. I even opted to skip out on Phillippe Farlardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar. But what can I say, I’m a sucker for life altering hallucinogenic drugs. But Allsison Edwood and Alex Gibney’s portrayal of Ken Kesey’s (auther of One Flew Over the Cuccoos Nest) failed attempt at a documentary was more then just an LSD fueled trip across the country. It was a story of humanity, equality, and the need for humans to transcend understanding and just be one with each other and nature. This wasn’t just a simple road trip across the country. They set out to change a nation that was in the infancy of revolution.

Sometimes the narration of the characters done mostly by voice actors, due to the fact that the film was poorly recorded, was a bit distracting. But I got over it. I was mostly excited to see Neal Cassady (the character Dean Moriarty is based off of in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road) get hopped up on speed and drive a bus for what seems like weeks straight. The larger than life character Keouac describes in his book seemed god like to me when I read On The Road. Seeing him in the flesh drove home this thought. When Kesey is asked, towards the end of the film, what he thought of Cassady’s death he responded that he likely "died accidentally, but on purpose, just so he could see what angels are like."

Magic Trip does a good job of un-demonizing a very powerful but, for the most part, enjoyable drug. But as it does this it also shows it’s audience that living in an LSD veiled world has its consequences. Sexual relationships on the bus get entwined to the point where nobody knows how to deal with them, so they just do more drugs and let things happen. The people on the bus suspend what they have come to know as human life and social norms and just let themselves satisfy urges. Sounds like a sweet trip to me but, by the end of it, the lines of reality and playing flutes in their underwear begin to blur and they get caught up in a make believe world. In the end Kesey says it best: “People do drugs so they can, when they are ready, stop doing them.” That’s not an exact quote by any means. I may or may not have been under the influence of mind expanding drugs.

Off To See Some Shorts: Atlantic Shorts 3 That Is

Short films are fun! Well, for the most part they’re fun. Sometimes they suck and it’s not fun. Like when you were a kid and you had to stay with grandma, that kind of not fun. Ok, enough digression. I hit up the Atlantic Shorts 3 and here’s what I saw (and also what I thought of them):

A Night Out
I knew I should have got the rights to this name when I thought of my breakout silent film starring Calvin from my film class (it was also called A Night Out if you haven’t caught my drift). Anyway, this short by local director Heather young is the story of a mom just trying to get out of the house for a single night to go see an old high school boyfriend. But in her way is her bratty daughter and her ugly mother. The grandmother and the daughter, both in their own ways, think up schemes to keep mommy home. In the end the mom is left with a choice: her family or her life. This video is a nice and funny look into the life of a single mother and the sacrifices she must make to keep a family happy. Kind of heartwarming and depressing at the same time; my kind of flick!

Smoulder
Ah, I finally get to watch a NSCAD short and see what those artsy kids have been up to. So what have they been up to? In short: lesbians. And not only lesbians, but teenage lesbians trying to find themselves. Do they find themselves? Yes. Do they find each other? Yes. Did this movie have a point to it? No. Well, maybe to show the frustrations of young lesbian love (much like the frustrations of young heterosexual love minus the blue balls). It was all shot pretty nicely in a forest setting (probably to accentuate the naturalness of being a teenage lesbian, I dunno) but the dialogue falls a bit flat and there isn’t much of a story. It was still worth a watch though.

The Slumber Party
I love comedy shorts when they work and this one works just dandy. It’s about a young girl who goes to a sleep over, gets totally hammered and pukes all over her blanket (ahhh to be 7 again). Her dad comes to get her and they end up in a kerfuffle with the owner of the house about some lost money. Well all heck breaks loose when a zucchini is handed over and a punch is thrown. I chuckled merrily throughout Mary Alice Corton’s short, and for that it gets my dim-witted approval.

Deep End
Running along with the nights theme I got to watch another short depicting youth and their struggles with homosexuality. So we got an older brother who’s gay and a younger brother who doesn’t want to accept it. Although it wasn’t clear at the beginning that they were brothers. I thought they were actually a couple with all gay imagery going on (especially the scene were the big brother squirts sunscreen all over his brothers back.) I honestly thought that it was a movie about a young man who happens to be a gay pedophile. It turns out I was wrong, but was left confused as to why the director led me to believe it in the first place. Anyway, the little brother goes on to accept his older brother and actually stands up for him at the end. Yay. This would have been a good short had I not been confused for half of it.

The Bike Ride
I don’t know what to think about this one. Un till the very end I thought it was a comedy. The imagery and music score certainly made the short seem like a comedy. But in the end it was fucking intensely serious. A kid, for reasons unknown, jumps on his bicycle and hits the open road. He drives so far that he actually has to stop at a playground (where the audience presumes was his primary destination) and eats a granola bar just so he can make the rest of his journey. His destination is his mom’s work place in town. Once he gets there shit gets real and we find out the boy, who we thought was going on a youthful romp down the road on his bike, was actually going to get help for his father who fell off a latter, in what I assume was a tragic painting related accident. I like this film because it led the audience to believe it was about one thing (comedy about a kid going to a playground) and turns it into something completely different (drama about a kid desperate for help). It makes the audience actually feel bad for the comedy it set up earlier when they realized what they were laughing at. Woah.

First Words
This one might be my favorite, It’s just so darn cute and kind of hits close to home. Caley Maclennan tells us the story of a father trying to teach his infant son French and the frustrations of doing it all in a primarily English environment. The mother realizes this frustration and decides to translate the baby’s favorite book into French using a labeler. Holy cute! It just made me happy. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I was brought up bi-lingual and share the frustration of not having translations of my favorite picture books. Man, those were hard times.


I’m 14 and I Hate the World
I’m 24 and I hate the world too; but not as much as the heroine in this film does. Her life goes topsy turvey when her perfect world falls apart due to her parent’s hilarious death. This short is a fun filled surreal look into the mind of a 14 year old and the tragedies she must face. I liked this one for a couple of reasons: one, the narrative moved along quickly and efficiently and two, the director obviously had fun doing it. And I’m all for fun when it comes to making shorts.
Forty-Five and Five
This was an odd entry. I think it was about a big sister helping out her little dork brother, who, from my understanding, has no friends. She lets him listen to a records in her room, but goddamnit, she won’t go set the table (or whatever the heck the kid came up to ask for in the first place). The film tries to hard to set up the poorly acted big sister as a badass with a heart of gold. It has a pretty cute ending, but that’s as far as it goes.

Flush
And yet another kid is flopped down into the complicated world of homosexuality in Flush, a short done by Megan Wennberg. Accompanying her parents to her late grandfather’s residence, a young girl (who doesn’t really know what’s going on) is put in the middle of a dispute of who gets grampy’s ashes: his gay lover or his daughter (the kids mother). Deciding to take matters into her own hands, and with a little bit of acquired knowledge from her parents and her “uncle,” the girl flushes him away to the ocean. The story hits home when the grandfathers partner is delighted with her decision, since he can see the ocean from his favorite bench, hence metaphorically, gets to look at his lost partner every time he looks out to sea. The parents go home with an empty urn and no one is the wiser. The innocence of this film is what makes it a winner. The film does a great job of showing us the simple logic of a small girl and the wonders it can sometimes create.

Kathy
Kathy, directed by Mark O’brien, was an intriguing look into the life of the coolest girl in school seen through one of her follower’s eyes. It suffered from some technical issues regarding frame rates and horrendous ADR, something I have a hard time getting past. But under all that was a quirky little film about the perks of being a subordinate. I can’t really say it much about this film without telling the entire story so I’ll say this: it was neat.

And Overall
I had a good time watching these shorts. There were ups. There were downs. I was sort of disappointed when I realized every single film had an overall theme which I narrowed down to cute kids and confused teens who sometimes dealt with homosexual issues. A little variety wouldn’t have killed anyone but I guess I should have put 2 and 2 together by reading the descriptions of the films. Whatever. It was still enjoyable and left me looking forward to my next short film viewing.

Blown Away By Charlie Zone

I must admit this movie took me by surprise. Charlie Zone, directed by Michael Melski, portrays the story of a desperate street fighter who will do anything for money. He is sent spiraling into a lone rescue mission, or at least, what he thinks is a rescue mission, for an amount of money that no down and out street fighter could ignore. And all of it is set in a dark and gritty Halifax that would make Eisner shudder. Although there are few narrative choices that I personally didn’t agree with, all in all I was very impressed with what Melski had to offer. Melski does such a great job painting us his vision of the Halifax underground that all my qualms with the film have been quickly forgotten (well, maybe not the happy ending, but fuck it, I enjoyed myself). So far Charlie Zone has been my favorite flick of the festival.

What Happens When You Piss Off Christians

Weibo's War is the second documentary I got to see during the festival and it definitely does a better job then Cave of Forgotten Dreams. The director David York takes his audience into Weibo’s war against the Alberta oil industry. Weibo, a Christian fundamentalist, finds himself being the prime suspect for a series of pipeline bombings. He and his extended family, who live on a small secluded farm, are suddenly up against an invisible enemy known as “sour gas.” The sour gas is the main target of the industry and Weibo happens to live on top of whole whack of it. Not long after the first flaring begins weird things start happening on the farm. The worst of it being a rather graphic scene involving an aborted stillborn with sever deformities, presumably from the sour gas leaking onto their farm. But what this documentary does best is it keeps its audience close enough to the Weibo’s family so they can sympathize with their situation but yet make it so that not one person in theatre trusts them. I was constantly trying to gauge Weibo and found it impossible to do so. I really wanted to trust Weibo because I sympathized with him, but the movie makes it obvious there is more going on with Weibo and his family then is caught on camera. And I just love that shit.

SN'OPE

Snow, directed by Rohan Fernando, opened up beautifully. The opening shots (which turned out to be the last shots) got me all hot and bothered. I was hoping for a visual orgasm, but as the film went on, I couldn’t even fake one if I had to. The style quickly changes to a cinematic/documentary hybrid where the scene is lit perfectly but the camera is shaky. Then came the close ups… so soo many close ups. The style of film was interesting to see but it gets tiresome after thirty minutes of nothing but shaky cam and eyeballs. The story, which sums up to be an adult Sri Lakin girl who loses all her family to a devastating tsunami ends up in Canada with her aunt and uncle and quickly falls into a world of coke, lies and heroine. Apparently that’s what ten months in Canada does to a person. Yeah yeah, I realize she’s depressed about losing her immediate family and all, but her fall from grace is hardly believable. Also, the main character Parvati, played by Khalista Zackhariyas, makes some choices that no sane woman would just to go see the ocean. The films aggressive progression and the sometimes-unbelievable circumstances Pvarti finds herself getting into took away from what could have been an interesting narrative. Sure there are arguments and potential reasons for the story to have gone the way it did, but the film maker didn’t make those reasons obvious enough for me, the average idiot, to pick up on.

Cave of Redundant Narration

I have to say that I was really looking forward to Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams. The thought of stepping into a cave not touched by humans for 35,000 years and seeing pre-historic man's first attempts at art gave me goosebumps. But after the opening shot it was apparent that this documentary was on a one way track. Herzog forces a lot on his audience and doesn't let them develop their own understanding of the Chauvet caves. The film gets boughed down with all kinds of spiritual jargon and pompous assumptions that take the audience away from the visuals (which should have been the driving factor of this documentary). The film should have been no more then fifteen minutes long but instead Herzog extends it to an exhausting 90 minutes and crams his own personal view of the cave down his audiences throats. Some of the interviews were used for obvious comedic effect and did not need to be apart of the documentary. Perhaps Werzog through his incoherent ramblings and excessive interviews was trying to amplify the mystery of the cave but his efforts came off as, for the lack of a better term, weird as hell.

Once in the cave the 3D effects really paid off. Being able to see every depression in the rock and how the drawings interacted with the caves natural space was surreal. There was a good ten minutes at the end of the film were Herzog mercifully stops narrating and just lets us see the cave. The crew did an amazing job using the lights they had to reveal and fade the drawings. The camera work, for the most part, was done very well considering the crews restrictions. But that's the only time I appreciated the 3D effects. Most of the interviews looked fake because the subject popped away from the backgrounds which became a visual distraction rather than pleasing to the eye. Had the movie simply been that 10 minutes or so of actual cave footage I would have came out happier.

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams was like sitting through a really off the wall lecture put on by Grimace (not even Ronald McDonald takes him seriously). The ideas Werzog present take away from the natural beauty of the pre-historic drawings. I understand art is to be interpreted by the beholder in which ever way they would like. I'm just sad we had to put ourselves in Herzog's shoes and listen to his sometimes ridiculous assumptions of what the paintings could mean. It's sad to see this film, which had so much potential to be jaw dropping, get side tracked by one directors personal feelings.

Roller Town and the Beginning Of The Atlantic Film Fest Journey

The Atlantic Film Festival is in town and I’ve decided to blog about the movies I’m going to see. I have the “Kick Ass Pass That Lets Me Into Everything,” (I think that’s what it’s called, but don’t quote me on it) so I plan to abuse it like it’s free internet porn.

Luckily I got to cover the red carpet event for Roller Town with Haligonia.ca and wouldn’t you know it I was able to sneak my way into the premier (the only thing my pass wouldn't get me into). After a few pretty funny speeches by various people involved with the movie I found myself sitting front row for the world premier of Roller Town directed by Andrew Bush. The first thing I realized after the opening shot was how campy the movie was and how much I loved it. Every shot was made for comedy and the film mostly hits its marks. Story wise the movie isn’t much, just the average orphan saves the local roller rink from a video arcade take over and somehow finds love during all the madness. But the comedy and campiness made me care little for story. I found myself craving the next scene just to see how crazy it was. Mark little and the rest of the Picnicface cast did an amazing job and it’s immensely satisfying to see them reach heights I’m sure none of them thought where possible.

Before the movie began I got a chance to film an interview with Andrew and all he wanted out of the movie was to make people laugh. If that was his only goal with the movie then I would say it was a smashing success. Rarely was the theatre void of laughter and when the key comedy scenes hit, everyone was in hysterics.

Besides the absolute assault of awesomeness the movie was radiating there was energy in the building that could not be denied and I was happy to be part of it. For offering my services to Haligonia I scored a free ticket to the roller disco after party where I consumed beer and watched much better looking people then me roll around on roller skates. Oh, and I met some pretty cool people too. I’m heading to see Cave of Forgotten Dreams tonight (one of the main movies I wanted to see this festival season). More on that after I see the flick! Stay tuned!