Saturday, September 14
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Gazer
This film steals liberally from the styles of other directors. The majority of it feels like early Christopher Nolan to me, it particularly reminded me of Following and Memento. In fact, the plot is more or less a mashup of the two; main character with a rare brain disease that prevents her from correctly perceiving time enters people's houses and gets into a lot of things that aren't her business. Then there are some daydream sequences toward the end which bring in other "influences," and by "influences" i literally mean more stealing. Which is fine.
The first of these dream sequences is very David Lynch, then there's a shot where a character does a full-on Kubrick Stare, and the rest of it is very David Cronenberg. We get back to reality for a bit, the early Nolan stuff, and then there's another dream sequence which is one hundred percent Stanley Kubrick, especially taken from The Shining.
I am not saying this is a bad thing. Homages and copying and stealing are how pretty much all of art, every kind of art, moves along through history. It's how progress is made and how we build upon what came before, because you really don't need to reinvent the wheel.
I've complained a couple times in this log about directors who try to do the Paul Greenglass shakycam thing without understanding why it works for him; i've talked elsewhere about directors trying to replicate Bayhem without really understanding Michael Bay (who is a true artist, i'm not afraid to say it, even though yes, i hate his movies; he has his own style and it works for him and no one else). But here, director Ryan J. Sloan actually does take these elements of other directors' styles and use them effectively and correctly. The whole thing works. I did think the brief Kubrick Stare shot was a bit much, but other than that, a very well-done homage/robbery on the part of the director.
I enjoyed the film. I probably won't go see it a second time at Sitges, but i'm happy it's getting the recognition across the festival circuit. I probably will watch it again when it's available on streaming or blu-ray.
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Short Film Competition 2 - Party's Over!
I did not like 5 out of the 7 of these short films.
It's tough to admit it, because the 5 i disliked were all more abstract, more experimental, and i like to think that i'm into that sort of thing. But none of these did anything for me except make me agitated.
The two i did like were more straightforward narratives. Although the last one, Chew, was presented in French, without subtitles. The storyline was easy enough to follow from visuals alone, fortunately, but i still feel like i missed out here. This was it's world premiere, so it's cool i got to go to that. It's playing again at Sitges, maybe i'll get a chance to see it there with subtitles.
The other one i liked was a Russian film called Mermaid. It takes the Little Mermaid fairytale and goes in a much wilder direction with it.
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Eraserhead
Okay obviously i've seen Eraserhead before. It's nearly 50 years old, most of us film enthusiasts have. The same English-speaking guy that introduced The Thief and the Cobbler yesterday came out to introduce this one as well. From the web site, i think his name is Flying Lotus, he seems to be important in the online film community, but i'm unfamiliar. I'd noticed his commentary on a few of the movie listings on the festival website. In his speech before Eraserhead, he mentioned that he'd been asked by the festival to come and curate one of the collections, so that explains all of that. He apologized to the festival for having chosen one of the most obvious cinephile movies of all time as part of his collection, but he said it's literally his second favorite movie of all time, and he'd never seen it on the big screen, so that was his motivation.
Not bad. I'd probably do something similar with Seven Samurai, or Hidden Fortress, or another Kurosawa movie, if i were in his position.
He asked if anyone was present that hadn't ever seen the movie before, and the majority of the hands in the room went up.
Incredible. So i got to see Eraserhead in a (half) full theater of people who didn't know what they were getting into.
They did laugh in a lot of spots, which i didn't expect, but there was cheering after and i think they genuinely enjoyed the movie.
God damn, that Eraserhead baby looks incredible up on the big screen. This movie was slapped together by like five film school students in 1977 as David Lynch's final thesis project, that baby probably cost ten dollars to put together. And as a special effect, it's held up for nearly fifty years. Also, to be honest, this time around, i kind of thought the baby was endearing and cute.
No regrets about taking the time to go see Eraserhead in the theater.
Also, interestingly, i know enough French now to realize that the subtitles on this were not a literal translation. So that's interesting, too.
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