Reel Shorts I

this is a collection of short films that made it through the screening process for SxSW. I make no judgement on the selection process, but to say I don't agrre with all the choices. theis statement will be the same for Reel Shorts II. this will have spoilers, sorry. well, not really.

Mary

this had the benefit of being short, very short. only three minutes long in fact. which was good because any longer and the audience would have been the ones suffering not the title character.

synopsis: little girl has a vision, the virgin mary appears to her in the night and proclaims her the chosen one. like an idiot, the next morning she tells her mother. cut to a psychiatrist and prescription pad. the next night mary reappears and the young girl quickly takes her meds. mary shruggs and mooves on to the little sisters room and gives her the chosen spiel. the next morning as they break their fast, the title character is medicated and drool. when asked how she slept the younger sister does not tell her mother about Mary's visit. fade to swade.

credits run, and to be polite(you never know where those movie creators are sitting) I clapped.

it bit.

The Lost Cause

nopt bad really, just very anti-reinactment. the story is basically a flash-back as the main character is prepairing the commit suicide.

he reinacts civil war battles. not the craziest thing I've ever heard of. I've heard that ewen mcgregor signed on to do three Star Wars movies, that's pretty crazy.

the main character in The Lost Cause has lost his wife and son because of the reinactments.

not much more to say, it had funny parts and was well filmed. you can say it didn't bite as much as Mary, but then I saw Mary first and that probably helped.

Genius Loci

wow, and not in the Garden State way. I can't spoil this one because it was just clips from a home movie and bad music. no actors, no dialogue, just 6 minutes of my life.

Renegade Bookseller

this is where things started getting better, after three duds this little documentary about an indipendent bookseller in LA actually was good. Natalie Woodlawn is actually interresting to watch and listen to as she tells the tale of how she bought her bookstore and what she wants to do in the future. It may not ever win an award but it was really good.

Dream Lover Fondue

oops! relapse. this was pure film school tripe. no plot that I could see, no point either. just a series of non-random images that move from stop-motion to archive footage. and the music(and I think this is a trend) was jarring. the soles of my shoes were rattling under the triple bass. I was beginning to believe that the screeners were out to get me.

All White People Are French

okay this is a Garden State wow.

this was a wonderful documentary about an african regugee telling a story about his family in africa. I will not spoil this one because it would just take something from this really great film. if you ever get a chance to see this one, watch it. you will not regret it.

and the title is not a joke, and also not meant to insult.

Keep Right

this was the reason I chose to see Reel Shorts I.

lance hendrikson is one of my top five favorite actor of all time, and he did not disapoint. this short is about a game, hide and seek with guns. the actions is well paced and believable, right up to the point the characters start arguing about the rules of the game. it's like a watching a d&d arguement, lots of whining and bitching.

good clean holy day fun.

Spam-Ku

this one caught me by surprise. I hate spam, the look, the smell, and being of spam. I live by the Monty Python line, 'I don't like SPAM!'

so this didn't suck, at all. the haiku did, but it was about spam so what can you do. i hope I never become as obsessed about any food as the main character of this film did.

time to open another dr pepper...

The Raftman's Razor

being a comicbook geek, I can't talk objectively about this one. I've liked some comicbooks enough to wait impatiently for the next issue. I will say, however, that the comics I waited for at least had more than one character and more than one line of dialogue. it was a fun little story about comicbook geeks and how they are often misunderstood.

well, not always, these guys were dorks.

Everything In This Country Must

I shit you not, that is the whole title. it was too short, it should have been at least another hour long to give the audience flipping closure.

news flash: the northern irish hate the english, and the english are all that big on the northern irish.

just thought I'd drop that in.