TIFF ’20: Still Processing + Every Day’s Like This

September 21, 2020Posted in2020, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Canada, Documentary, Drama, Film Festivals, Short Films, TIFF

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STILL PROCESSING
***½/****
written and directed by Sophy Romvari

EVERY DAY’S LIKE THIS
***½/****
starring Kacey Rohl, Daniel Kash, Francis Melling, Krystina Bojanowski
written and directed by Lev Lewis

by Angelo Muredda Canadian filmmaker Sophy Romvari mourns and preserves the past in her wrenching new nonfiction short, Still Processing, whose title puns on the intricate work of processing photographic images along with the spectral traces of those they depict. Evoking a tradition of poetic but philosophically robust memorial essay films and literary texts about engaging with the material record of the dead, from Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil to W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, the film is nevertheless shot through with Romvari’s modest sensibility. Though Romvari herself is front and centre throughout, the film is a quiet affair, shot in the loneliness of archives, darkrooms, and bedrooms, frequently lit by faint glowing lights and punctuated by a running subtitle track that elucidates the filmmaker’s emotional state. A compelling marriage of form and theme, the film is also gorgeously photographed. Particularly striking is a sequence that finds Romvari working solo among the cold brutalist architecture of York University, taking old photos of her deceased brothers David and Jonathan out of the humble archive of the box they’ve been housed in for the first time. She delicately arranges their faces on a nondescript table that soon becomes a kind of installation, effectively massaging her siblings back to life through her hands in real-time, as if gesturing to the labour and art of processing grief that only filmmaking can accomplish.

FrightFest ’18: Short Film Showcases 1-3 + Miscellany|7 Questions with Filmmaker Chris McInroy

November 7, 2018Posted in****/****, 2018, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, FrightFest, Horror, Interviews, Lebanon, New Zealand, Revenge, Short Films, South Korea, Spain, Thriller, UK, Vampire

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This is a nearly complete overview of FrightFest '18's short-films lineup, though technical issues unfortunately prevented us from screening Catcalls, Puppet Master, and Right Place Wrong Tim.-Ed.

by Walter Chaw

SHORT FILM SHOWCASE 1

We Summoned a Demon ***/**** (d. Chris McInroy)
Funny how the coolest '80s throwback film that isn't It happens to be this short by Chris McInroy, which channels the light ethos of that era, with VHS nasties shock-effects scattered across its brisk, five-minute runtime. Idiots Kirk (Kirk Johnson) and Carlos (Carlos Larotta) attempt a little witchcraft by sacrificing a rooster and playing a record backwards on a plastic portable turntable. They're trying to make Kirk cool so he can ask out "Brenda" for tacos, but it doesn't work. Instead, they summon a demon (John Orr) from a neon-smoked Hell portal they can't control. Or can they? With its crackerjack timing, its tight script, and the effortless control and camaraderie of its leads, We Summoned a Demon works wonders in a short span. DP E.J. Enriquez's lighting schemes make the whole thing look like Michael Mann's The Keep, and, sometimes rare for shorts, the movie knows its length and absolutely murders its landing. Listen for composer Bird Peterson's smooth sax riff when Kirk finds his inner cool. Comedy is hard, guys; We Summoned A Demon is butter. (Scroll down to the end of these capsule reviews for an interview with Chris McInroy.)

Fantasia Festival ’18: Born of Woman (short films)

August 6, 2018Posted in2018, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Czech Republic, Esoterica, Fantasia Festival, Fantasy, Film Festivals, Finland, Horror, Ireland, Norway, Sci-Fi, Short Films, South Korea, Thriller

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by Walter Chaw This is what I believe: I believe that men and women are essentially different and that those differences result in perspectives that are necessarily different. I don't consciously privilege one perspective over the other, but I acknowledge that I am not always aware of my prejudices. I think Wonder Woman would have been garbage if a man had directed it; and I think 20th Century Women, written and directed by a man, had beautiful roles for women. It's confusing and it can be exhausting, but at the end of the day, creating an equal opportunity for women and people of colour to tell stories (whether they're theirs or not) can only be good. So…

Fantastic Fest ’16: Fraud + Belief: The Possession of Janet Moses

October 1, 2016Posted in2016, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Documentary, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '16, Film Festivals, Horror, Mystery, New Zealand, Short Films

Ff16possesion

FRAUD
***½/****
directed by Dean Fleischer-Camp

BELIEF: THE POSSESSION OF JANET MOSES
**½/****
directed by David Stubbs

by Walter Chaw The line between documentary and fiction filmmaking is blurry. Better–more accurate–to say there’s no difference at all: that documentary is just a genre in and of itself. Documentaries are products of points of view, of editing, of premise. You could film someone reading a phone book, but even that’s a choice. Where to put the camera; why do it in the first place? Consider the Heisenberg Principle as well, this notion that the nature of anything changes once it’s observed. Documentary as “truth” is an interesting philosophical question. It’s sold as such, used politically, manipulated to serve purposes contrary to the idea of objective reality, but documentaries are never objective. Indeed, they challenge the very idea that the product of any endeavour could be truly objective. It’s an interesting phenomenon in our technological wasteland that video “evidence” of malfeasance has proven inconclusive in courts of law. Replays in professional sports have only muddied the playing field. Everything is subject to interpretation and the product of someone’s decision made somewhere along the way.

Telluride ’16: Short Films

September 20, 2016Posted in2016, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Disney, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Iran, Mystery, Short Films, Telluride, Telluride 2016, Thriller

Tell16shorts

by Walter Chaw

Dirt */**** (d. Darius Clark Monroe) One of those time-loop conceits that opens with a guy burying a body and ends with…no, not telling. Dirt has an issue with editing and looping, the fallout being that image overlaps noise, confusing function. It's possible to do this meaningfully; it's also possible to junk it up so completely that every transition begins with unnecessary obfuscation. That's what's happened here. Dirt isn't promising, but it is brief.

Fantastic Fest ’15: Short Films

October 16, 2015Posted in****/****, 2015, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Disability, Drama, Esoterica, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '15, Film Festivals, Horror, Japan, Romance, Satire, Sci-Fi, Short Films, Sweden, ZERO STARS

Fanfest15babysitter

by Walter Chaw

The Babysitter Murders ****/**** (d. Ryan Spindell) For certain artists working in the short-film format, I don't have any idea how or why it is they haven't been called up to the big leagues yet. This speaks as much to my prejudice, obviously: there's nothing wrong with the short form. In literature, many of my favourite writers are best in the short form. In film, though, there's so little real opportunity for distribution that it seems a particular shame when guys like Ryan Spindell have only produced shorts. I'm not complaining (his work is excellent), merely hoping he has the means to continue. Spindell's latest, The Babysitter Murders, is so expertly composited that it would be kind of a shame to dissect it at all. Sufficed to say that it unearths a new place to take Wes Craven's Scream meta funhouse, and does it without a hint of smugness or show-off-y insecurity. It's beautifully paced, conceived, and executed. Look at a cooking scene early on, set to "Fast & Sweet" by Mondo Boys feat. Kestrin Pantera–the way it's shot and edited, the way Elie Smolkin's camera stalks and Eric Ekman cuts it all together. The movie's premise–a babysitter alone on a stormy night when a psycho escapes from an asylum–is as rote as they come, but Spindell, as he did with The Root of the Problem and dentists, finds something new to say. The performances are to a one pitch-perfect and the gore is appropriately horrifying; it's a film balanced in that space between hilarity for its excess and hilarity for its brilliance. I'm out of superlatives. Spindell is one of the finest voices working in genre right now, carving out a niche that's neither self-serious nor self-abnegating. He's full of joy, this one, and his movies are treasures.

Looney Tuesdays – “The High and the Flighty” (1956)

March 17, 2015Posted in1950s, 2015, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Looney Tunes, Short Films
*½/****directed by Robert McKimson by Bill Chambers Inexplicable, tone-deaf Looney Tunes pairings are legion in post-Termite Terrace revivals of the brand, but rare is the Golden Age head-scratcher quite like The High and the Flighty, an otherwise pro forma Foghorn Leghorn cartoon guest starring...Daffy Duck? Introduced joyfully bouncing a ball towards a mysterious "rope limit" that turns out to be the reach of the leash holding Barnyard Dog in check, Foghorn starts another war with his canine nemesis that travelling salesman Daffy Duck espies and decides to capitalize on by selling both parties his wares from the Ace Novelty Company,…

Looney Tuesdays – “Dough Ray Me-ow” (1948)

January 27, 2015Posted in1940s, 2015, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Looney Tunes, Short Films
***/****directed by Arthur Davis by Bill Chambers When Bob Clampett left Termite Terrace in 1946, his unit was assigned to Arthur Davis, who had years of experience behind him as the industry's first in-betweener (the person who draws the steps that get a pose from point A to point B) as well as a director in his own right, having helmed a number of cartoons for Screen Gems, where he worked closely with the great Frank Tashlin. (The two migrated to Warner Bros. together.) But Davis's name never became synonymous with Looney Tunes like so many of his colleagues' did,…

Looney Tuesdays – “Honey’s Money” (1962)

January 20, 2015Posted in1960s, 2015, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Looney Tunes, Short Films
**½/****directed by Friz Freleng by Bill Chambers Napoleonic quickdraw Sam--who went by several aliases, such as Chilkoot Sam, Seagoin' Sam, and, most popularly, Yosemite Sam--was story man Mike Maltese's burlesque of the Missouri-born Isadore "Friz" Freleng, who appeared often as the butt of in-jokes in Warner cartoons, some of which Freleng himself made. Freleng subsequently became the character's custodian, and he was the only one foolhardy enough to give this most hostile and venal of Bugs Bunny's adversaries a solo outing, rising to the challenge not by neutering Sam, per se, but rather by identifying Bugs as essentially extraneous in…

Looney Tuesdays – “Bunny Hugged” (1951)

January 13, 2015Posted in1950s, 2015, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Looney Tunes, Short Films
***/****directed by Charles M. Jones by Bill Chambers Rabbit Punch's simian pugilist "Battling McGook" returns in Bunny Hugged as wrestler "The Crusher," such a fearsome opponent in the ring that his challenger--Gorgeous George parody "Ravishing Ronald," who's introduced with a bang on the J. Arthur Rank gong (suggesting a subtext of British politesse vs. American might) and hilariously announced as "a denatured boy"--is rolled out on a platter. When the Crusher uses RR's hairnet to turn him into a human punching bag, mascot Bugs Bunny ("It's a living") takes matters into his own hands. The prototype for a certain pyramid-shaped…

Looney Tuesdays: “The Big Snooze” (1946)

January 6, 2015Posted in****/****, 1940s, 2015, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Looney Tunes, Short Films
****/**** by Bill Chambers Given Bob Clampett's less-than-amicable departure from Warner Bros., not only is his final cartoon for the studio, The Big Snooze, a particularly loaded one, it also suggests a key influence on the evolution of Freddy Krueger's mythology. When Elmer Fudd tires of Bugs Bunny repeatedly steering him off the edge of a cliff in a cartoon-within-this-cartoon, he tears up his contract with Jack Warner and dances on the confetti. The delicate ecology of Looney Tunes thus upset (what is the hunted without a hunter?), Bugs disrupts Elmer's life of retirement by coating his pleasant dreams with…

Looney Tuesdays: “Slick Hare” (1947)

December 30, 2014Posted in1940s, 2014, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Looney Tunes, Short Films
**/****directed by I. Freleng by Bill Chambers Old Hollywood may possess a timeless quality that prevents Slick Hare and others like it (Hollywood Steps Out, Hollywood Daffy, even 8 Ball Bunny) from becoming an instant relic à la the Michael Jordan-fronted Space Jam, but celebrity cameos in animation nonetheless have a habit of accelerating the ripening process. Gags like Ray Milland paying a tab with a typewriter--and getting change in the form of mini-typewriters--straddle the line between obsolescence and posterity, today only earning laughs among the movie-minded while also presenting a valuable snapshot of the pop-cultural consciousness circa 1947. Thing…

Looney Tuesdays: “Little Red Riding Rabbit” (1944)

December 23, 2014Posted in****/****, 1940s, 2014, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Looney Tunes, Short Films
****/****directed by I. Freleng by Bill Chambers The Shrek movies dream of being this renegade. Little Red Riding Hood (a brilliant Bea Benaderet, using a halting squeal that suggests the '40s equivalent of uptalk) is on her way to Grandma's house with a picnic lunch: Bugs Bunny. The Big Bad Wolf gets there first, of course, though he has to kick other wolves out of Grandma's bed. (Where's Grandma? "Working [the] swing shift at Lockheed." Wartime audiences must've howled, pardon the pun.) When Red arrives, the Wolf can't hustle her out fast enough in his desire to eat Bugs, and…

“Santa vs. the Puppies vs. Monster Part Two”

December 17, 2014Posted in2014, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Comedy, Short Films

 

by Bill Chambers Another self-serving post to notify that the long-delayed sequel to "The Monster Show"'s 2012 Christmas episode, animated by yours truly, finally went live in glorious HD earlier this week. Truth be told I came close to crediting myself as Alan Smithee on this one, but we persevered through so many false starts it'd be perverse to hide (from) it. FYI, it'd probably be even harder to follow this episode without seeing the original, so I've included links to both. Get it before cyber terrorists threaten us to pull it!

Looney Tuesdays: “Gorilla My Dreams” (1948)

December 16, 2014Posted in1940s, 2014, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Looney Tunes, Short Films
**½/****directed by Robert McKimson by Bill Chambers Bugs Bunny floats in a barrel to the ape colony of Bingzi-Bangzi, where Mrs. Gorilla, in the throes of baby envy, mistakes him for a delivery from the stork. A sympathetic Bugs goes along with it, but her husband Gruesome--an obvious relative of Bunny Hugged's The Crusher--is vexed by the impostor, and opens up a can of whup-ass on "Junior." Although Bugs's pantomime of a gorilla brings down the house (Robert McKimson's paunchier Bugs really lends itself to the gag), ultimately the central conflict is too esoteric to sustain a 7-minute cartoon, as…

Telluride ’14: Showcase for shorts

September 3, 2014Posted in****/****, 2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Film Festivals, France, Short Films, Telluride, Telluride 2014, UK

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Toutes des connes **/**** (France, 6 mins., d. François Jaros) Recently redubbed Life's a Bitch, Toutes des connes is a fitfully-engaging relationship dramedy composed of a few dozen ultra-shorts featuring a guy (scriptor Guillaume Lambert) who breaks up with his girlfriend, goes through stages of grief and acceptance, then gets back together with the girl. It's well-done for what it is but feels like it needed half the time to be what it is. Toutes des connes doesn't do anything surprising or innovative, announcing itself conspicuously as a calling-card film for director Jaros. Yes, I see that you can shoot and edit, though the grieving dude with the shaving-creamed face staring at the mirror thing was funnier in Raising Arizona.

MHHFF ’13: Shorts Program #4

October 20, 2013Posted in****/****, 2013, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Film Festivals, Horror, Music, Short Films

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Next Exit **/**** (UK, 14 mins., d. Benjamin Goodger) A light bit of nothing, Next Exit is a little Ludditism along the lines of that one episode of the American "The Office" where Michael Scott follows the bad instructions of his GPS directly into a lake. The performances are good, the direction is fairly pedestrian, and the story, about a girl who accepts a ride home from a pub one night, has a couple of decent twists but is ultimately more mildly clever than disturbing or compelling. In its short time, it does manage to cover the bases in terms of going out of cell-phone range and the suggestion of a cyclical ending, but it fails mostly in terms of generating much in the way of horror or comedy. Mostly, I had trouble with the idea that anyone would think a hotel–or a hospital, or anything–is located in the middle of the woods.

TIFF ’13: Short Cuts Canada Programme 3

September 8, 2013Posted in2013, Authors: Bill Chambers, Film Festivals, Short Films, TIFF

Candy **/****
9 mins., d. Cassandra Cronenberg
Der Untermensch **/****
9 mins., d. Kays Mejri
In Guns We Trust **½/****
12 mins., d. Nicolas Lévesque
Jimbo **½/****
23 mins., d. Ryan Flowers
Method ***/****
8 mins., d. Gregory Smith
Portrait as a Random Act of Violence ***/****
4 mins., d. Randall Lloyd Okita
We Wanted More ***½/****
16 mins., d. Stephen Dunn

Wewantedmore

by Bill Chambers Unfortunately for Candy, a non-judgmental, veritable time-lapse look at one night in the life of a prostitute that occasionally branches out to linger with her spent, oddball clientele, "Breaking Bad" got there first with an indelible montage set to The Association's "Windy" that opened season three's "Half Measures." Kudos to director Cassandra Cronenberg, however, for not making a straight-up horror and risking the same comparisons to her father that plagued brother Brandon's Antiviral.

TIFF ’13: Short Cuts Canada Programme 2

September 4, 2013Posted in2013, Authors: Bill Chambers, Film Festivals, Short Films, TIFF

A Grand Canal ***/****
19 mins., d. Johnny Ma
Beasts in the Real World *½/****
8 mins., d. Sol Friedman
Daybreak (Éclat du jour) ***/****
11 mins., d. Ian Lagarde
Noah ***½/****
17 mins., ds. Walter Woodman & Patrick Cederberg
Out *½/****
8 mins., d. Jeremy Lalonde
Seasick **½/****
4 mins., d. Eva Cvijanovic
Young Wonder *½/****
6 mins., d. James Wilkes

Noah

by Bill Chambers It opens with a bride and groom saying their vows, but as subtitled voiceover from writer-director Johnny Ma informs us, this is not a romance. A Grand Canal dramatizes the last days of Ma's father, a Chinese boat captain who angers a mob boss by turning away a shipment, then makes things worse in trying to collect on the boss's debt. Mei Song Shun–astonishingly, a newcomer–is powerful as a proud man reduced to grovelling in a scene exceptionally well-calibrated for tension and pathos, considering this is both a short film and a student film. Shun is so good, in fact, that it feels like a betrayal of his performance when Ma decides to up and break the fourth wall with B-roll of himself directing and narration elaborating upon the therapeutic value of this endeavour.

TIFF ’13: Short Cuts Canada Programme 1

September 3, 2013Posted in2013, Authors: Bill Chambers, Film Festivals, Short Films, TIFF

Cochemere **/****
12 mins., ds. Chris Lavis & Maciek Szczerbowski
Gloria Victoria **/****
7 mins., d. Theodore Ushev
Pilgrims ½*/****
8 mins., d. Marie Clements
Remember Me **½/****
15 mins., d. Jean-François Asselin
Subconscious Password ***/****
11 mins., d. Chris Landreth
The Sparkling River **½/****
18 mins., ds. Félix Lajeunesse & Paul Raphaël

Subconsciouspassword_01

by Bill Chambers TIFF 13's Short Cuts Canada programme starts viewers off in the deep end with Cochemere, a bifurcated, CG-embellished mix of puppets and live-action in which a nude, polarized Mother Nature, presumably (Google tells me the title means "mother checkmark" in English), intrudes on a stormy utopia to nourish with milky saliva the uncanny fauna, who then appear to return the favour in outer space, their rapey, goblinlike presence prompting a shapely, flame-haired astronaut to start masturbating in her sleep. Sometimes enchanting–the opening images seem found, like the hidden universes of Microcosmos (and, hey, a little Barbarella kinkiness goes a long way)–but ultimately impenetrable. Perhaps all you need to know is that St. Thomas Aquinas is thanked in the credits.

A Hollis Frampton Odyssey (1966-1979) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

June 10, 2012Posted in1960s, 1970s, 2012, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Esoterica, Short Films, The Criterion Collection

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***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B

by Bryant Frazer The avant-garde in film has always had an uneasy relationship with home video. Grainy old VHS tape of works by luminaries like Bruce Conner or Kenneth Anger might have made the texts themselves available for more careful study by a larger audience, but the picture quality compromised the work tremendously. The arrival of DVD technology allowed for a better visual representation, yet brought with it certain dangers. For one thing, there’s a moral issue: Filmmakers who had objections to the commodification of art and culture were put on the spot as their once-ephemeral films were transferred to a new medium that was easy for an individual consumer to purchase and own. There’s also an aesthetic issue. No matter how close a video transfer gets to the visual qualities of a projected film–and a good transfer to Blu-ray can get very close indeed–a video image is not a film image. For avant-garde filmmakers, and especially for so-called “structural” filmmakers like the late Hollis Frampton, for whom film itself was subject, text, and subtext, the difference is key.

Tom & Jerry: Golden Collection – Volume One (1940-1948) – Blu-ray Disc

March 12, 2012Posted in1940s, 2012, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Short Films

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
"Puss Gets the Boot," "The Midnight Snack," "The Night Before Christmas," "Fraidy Cat," "Dog Trouble," "Puss N' Toots," "The Bowling Alley-Cat," Fine Feathered Friend," "Sufferin' Cats," "The Lonesome Mouse," "The Yankee Doodle Mouse," "Baby Puss," "The Zoot Cat," "The Million Dollar Cat," "The Bodyguard," "Puttin' On The Dog," "Mouse Trouble," "The Mouse Comes To Dinner," "Flirty Birdy," "Quiet Please!," "Springtime For Thomas," "The Milky Waif," "Trap Happy," "Solid Serenade," "Cat Fishin'," "Part Time Pal," "The Cat Concerto," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse," "Salt Water Tabby," "A Mouse in the House," "The Invisible Mouse," "Kitty Foiled," "The Truce Hurts," "Old Rockin' Chair Tom," "Professor Tom"

by Jefferson Robbins They're phenomenally enjoyable, but the conflict in Warner's Roadrunner cartoons comes down to a lively protagonist pitting himself against something that's not a character, nor even a "force of nature." Nature, in fact, is suspended; Wile E. Coyote is struggling with a quantum impossibility. When he sets out after his prey, he finds laws of matter, energy, and motion suspended and reversed. (At times, the Roadrunner appears to move at lightspeed or beyond.) The Coyote applies Acme™ science to the chase, but discovers science doesn't apply. The Roadrunner has no obvious inner life or larger goals, and seems to exist just to frustrate his pursuer. The Universe simply does not want the Coyote to catch this blankly-smiling creature with a void howling behind its eyes, and so he never will.

Dispatch from the 2010 WWSFF: Midnight Mania – Creepy

June 12, 2010Posted in****/****, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Czech Republic, Film Festivals, Short Films, UK

Click here to visit the Worldwide Short Film Festival's official website.

by Bill Chambers Back in my early-twenties, there was one summer job I had where I found myself doodling animals saying inexplicable–and, needless to say, often repulsive–things. It started out as an effort to break the ice with my only co-worker (we spent most of our time locked in a makeshift editing bay together), then escalated into a constant test of her boundaries. I happened across some of these drawings recently, and they are resolutely unfunny: a bunny threatening to kill your mother with an axe, a frog telling a fart joke; in retrospect, I wonder why said co-worker eventually invited me to her wedding. Stockholm Syndrome's my best guess. Nevertheless, during the subterranean Looney Tune that is Everybody (animated; ds. Jessie Mott; 4 mins.; ½*/****), I began to feel grateful that there was no real public forum to display those cartoons back then, because all I'd really be doing is inviting some asshole on the Internet to dismiss it as adolescent shit. This is adolescent shit. Rendered in crude, impatient watercolours, various deer, bats, goats, etc. are anthropomorphized via cheaply cryptic remarks like "I'm too small in the necessary spaces," and "You paralyze me with disgust. You're spilling open like a gelatinous achin' belly." To which I reply, by way of Al Pacino in Heat, "Don't waste my motherfuckin' time!"

Dispatch from the 2010 WWSFF: Midnight Mania – Freaky

June 4, 2010Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Denmark, Film Festivals, France, Israel, Japan, Norway, Short Films, Spain, Switzerland, UK

Click here to visit the Worldwide Short Film Festival‘s official website.

 
by Bill Chambers It’s tempting to say that pop already ate itself, leaving a vast wasteland of remakes and reboots that can’t possibly be fertile enough to cultivate imaginations; I sometimes lie awake worrying that one day all we’ll be left with is the vultures and their Jane Austen mashups, their homemade Lord of the Rings prequels and Sweded Rambo movies. Should such a Doomsday scenario come to pass, let’s hope it occasionally yields something as whimsical and obviously heartfelt as France’s The Little Dragon (Le petit dragon) (animated; d. Bruno Collet; 8 mins.; ***/****), in which a magical force brings a Bruce Lee action figure to life, seemingly with the legend’s identity, if not his soul, intact, as it is his impulse upon encountering a Chuck Norris cut-out to kick it down. (He also recognizes his name and image on other collectibles.) Decked out in his yellow Game of Death jumpsuit, he navigates a maze of cobweb-strewn movie memorabilia that appears to be some Harry Knowles type’s bedroom; in a moment of quintessentially French cinephilia, Bruce, having been passed the torch (the Statue of Liberty torch from a Planet of the Apes model kit, that is), stumbles on a makeshift crypt lined with dolls of Rita Hayworth, Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Louise Brooks, Robert Mitchum, and, erm, Robert Taylor. The stop-motion animation is charming–this scrappy little guy may actually be the ne plus ultra of Lee imitators, who are of course legion–and the tone is deceptively irreverent. This is fan art, executed with gusto–but does it have a function? Collet could be the next Nick Park–but is he hurting for inspiration?