When a loved one dies, all you want is for things to be normal. I have a co-worker whose mother passed away on the same day as another co-worker had a birthday party in the office. He apologized profusely, he didn't mean to put a damper on things. That's how it feels, desperately wanting things to be normal, but it can't be normal. 

And that, in a nutshell, is Casey Wilson's wonderful short film Daddio.

First off, let me say this - Michael McKean is a North American treasure! Here, he plays Paul, the father of Abby (Cassie Wilson), and the husband of a recently-deceased wife. He takes it both hard, and weird. He gets a perm, but also tries to be the normal Paul. 

But he can't be the normal Paul. 

Abby is now forced to deal with her world, and her Father's world as well, all while hoping for normality in a world that, again, CAN NOT BE NORMAL! Wilson plays her role so damn perfectly. It's a wonderfully intelligent performance, and while Paul is the focus, and amazing, she is the drive, the wall required to send her father's quack back to the viewer. As the sounding board, she has to walk a line between completely understandable and on the edge of complete collapse.

You know, like when you're actually dealing with a death in the family. 

Wilson, who wrote and directed the short, based largely on her own personal experience losing her mother, and her father going all wacky and starting a Twitter (which is still around!) I've been a big fan of Wilson's for ages, and she's one of the big reasons why I loved the show Happy Endings. Here, she shows she's got serious chops all over the creative process, and with a tool like McKean, she's able to create a fine short film that is both funny and emotional, beautifully real, and absolutely out-of-the-real. But it's only out of the real for those of us not dealing with a death within the range of our personal Instamatics. 

You can see Daddio as a part of our Comedy Favorites program - https://payments.cinequest.org/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=114204~78899376-35a9-4153-8303-e1557be2dc32&epguid=c5191bc9-d5f7-4fab-87e1-de8dcbff688d&#.XjGyFEdKiUk
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I am, in my own way, a conspiracy theorist. JFK was killed by Giancana, Jack the Ripper was a Masonic rite gone wrong, and Sirhan Sirhan was under mind-control, and yeah, Epstein didn't kill himself. No, 911 was not an inside job, there are almost certainly not aliens in Area 51, and David Icke is an idiot. OK? So, I guess you can see that a film with a central pivot around conspiracy is going to end up programmed in a fest I work with, right? 

Well, only if it's got the strong sealegs of Brad Abraham's Conspiracy Cruise. 

The story is gorgeously simple - Gordon Pike, rock star turned conspiracy theory guru, is headlining a cruise for conspiracy followers. He's not the raving lunatic you would expect. In fact, he's far more like Tom Cruise's character from Magnolia than anything else. He's got polish, and then show he puts on is so smart. The cruise isn't what he expected, but then things get weird. 

Pike is played by Henry Zebrowski of Last Podcast on the Left. If you read my issue of Claims Department about podcasts, you'll know why this is a perfect choice. He actually softplays him for most of the way, which he's REALLY good at. I mean, he's stupid good at it. He draws out everything you can get from a character who is supposed to be the US version of David Icke... without the rampant anti-semetism. When he has to go all Out There, he manages it perfectly. If you've heard him on Last Podcast, you'll know how he ramps up. It's a great performance, and it makes the movement of the picture so impressive. The rest of the cast isn't outclassed either! No one has the focus on them as much as Gordon, but the pieces we get are so perfect for the story. In specific, there's the guy who's more Liberatarian than Conspiracy Theorist who I totally recognise as an archetype. 

Then again, it's also gorgeous. I mean it's so precisely shot and cut, it looks like a big budget picture. Director Brad Abrahams is so good, and his hand feels like it's all over this in the best possible way. The lighting, the set design, the editing, it all creates a sensation that is at once sinister and silly. This is EXACTLY what a short like this should give off - a sensation of something not right, but not necessarily malevolent. It is a weird world, and weird can take on many forms. 

I love this film. It's a great watch, and every second of it feels important. It's the kind of Mindbender that I love to see in Cinequest, and it's just so much fucking fun! You can find more info on the film, and the rest of Brad Abrahams' work at http://www.bradabrahams.net/, and you can get tickets to Shorts Program 5 - Mindbenders, at https://payments.cinequest.org/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=114202~78899376-35a9-4153-8303-e1557be2dc32&epguid=c5191bc9-d5f7-4fab-87e1-de8dcbff688d&#.XinAFUdKiUk

Also, I am now using Coincidence Theorist in my everyday life. 

We begin our look at the amazing cinematic year that was 1980 with a consideration of Friday the 13th. Yes, it was the beginning of a massively important franchise that also didn't quite fit what the franchise would become. We look at the reasons it should be on the National Film Registry, what the impact was on the world of genre film, and why it and Halloween are so important.

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There is a kind of film I call the Walkin' Around flick. It's fun, and the point of the film is not the progress of the characters through the setting or their encounters, but the way the characters interact with themselves. The road trip movie is the automated form of this sort of thing; the motorcycle to to bike, in essense. The British film Forgotten Man is of that ilk, and it's great fun!

The basic story is a guy who is a part of a theatre company for the homeless, Carl, meets Meredith, and they spend the day and night together walking, talking, encountering, and basically enjoying one another. Carl is dressed nice, because that's his role in the play, and Meredith comes from money. 

The real thing here is the acting. Each and every performance is the kind of thing you'd tell folks about. The leads, Obi Abili and Eleanor McLoughlin, are phenomenal, and have all the chemistry you need to pull off a film like this. The stunning black-and-white cinematography allows the subtleties to play across their faces in a way that never intrudes on the bigger picture. I got the feeling that this film would work in Glorious Colour, but as it stood, it was so much more monumental due to the impact each tiny gesture made upon the entirety of the shots. 

McLoughlin is magnetic, and Abili has a difficult role to play that he hits perfectly. I've seen other actors walk into this kind of role and go ill off-course into the weeds. Instead, he plays it with a combination of realism and a sense of direction without purpose. That may not make sense when you read it on-screen, but when you see it play out, it totally works. Meredith is a different animal, and she nails it by allowing every event to wash over her and giving into it as if it is a normal reality instead of an unusual occurance. That's another difficult pass, but she makes it happen, and damn well. 

Forgotten Man shows twice more at Cinequest, on the 9th at Santana Row in San Jose at 1:30, and at the Century Theatre in Redwood City on Saturday the 11th at 9pm. YOu should go and see it, because it really hits it out of the park... or an appropriately British version of that cliche. 

H.P. Lovecraft is the perfect source for comedy, right? 

Nick Spooner has created a hilariously bizarre short comedy with The Call of Charlie. It's a simple story - a dinner party, and then a set-up to get their single friend (CTHULHU or Charlie) happens as an unexpected friend stops by. 

Let me say this the simple way - it's freakin' hilarious. Seriously, everything, even the cinematography, manages to make the comedy even more comedy! The way it was cut, smart and clear and without an overly-showy sense of flash, it lets the acting and script and the general absurdity of CTHULHU coming to dinner play with the audience's expectations. Horror Comedy is not usually played like this, in fact, I can't think of another one that goes this way other than Cinequest 2014 favorite A Night at the Office. This makes it all the more impressive, because there is no template, and you can tell that it works at every step!

The Call of Charlie plays as a part of Shorts Program 7 - Comedy Favorites and shows at the Hammer Theatre Downtown SJ on Fri, Mar 3 9:30 PM and at the Century 20 Redwood City on Sun, Mar 5 3:50 PM, Mon, Mar 6 4:30 PM and Thu, Mar 9 8:30 PM

One of my favorite Disney shorts, it provides an amazing point of consideration for the development of animation's role in the Hollywood landscape. 

This is the part where I give a little bit away about the film programming process. We have to watch a lot of films, and so we don't have a lot of time for things to land. You watch one, you might take notes while you're watching, you rate it and you move on to the next one. That's how it works. There's no real reflection period, it comes at you like you're in a theatre, watching a shorts program. The ones that stick out, that you rate highly, those are the ones that you consider a few weeks/months down the line when it's time to put together your programs. 

But then, there are the other ones. They stick with you, have you thinking about them, basically poisoning everything else you try to watch because the film is so good, so fun, so fresh, so smart that anything else just feels wrong, and you have to stop for a while and re-watch, then let it sink in. The first movie I put on one fine morning was The Eleven O'Clock. The rest of my viewing day was ruined, since I had to re-watch it twice and then just bask in it. 

The story is a psychologist has a patient; the patient thinks he's a psychologist. The two meet and play off each other, trying to convince the other that they're the one that's trying to help. The entire thing is silly, but it's that smart sort of silly that makes you giggle at even serious bits that stick in. 

Watching it, there are three things that stuck me on it and required my re-watching. The first is the acting. Our leads are phenomenal, especially playing pass-and-go with each other within a script that is just about as smart as can be, which is the second thing. They each have a stance, and they both work from it so well. I was noticing tiny little things on my first viewing that stuck with me enough that I had to see it again! The third thing is the way it's shot. It is more-or-less a one location film, but it works within that location so well, I felt as if I was discovering it. That alone made this a film I had to program, and the rest meant I wasn't going to be meeting my 25 Films a Day duty!

The Eleven O'Clock plays as a part of Shorts Program 7 - Comedy Favorites and shows at the Hammer Theatre Downtown SJ on Fri, Mar 3 9:30 PM and at the Century 20 Redwood City on Sun, Mar 5 3:50 PM, Mon, Mar 6 4:30 PM and Thu, Mar 9 8:30 PM

They're saying that Zombies are played, but I think there must still be some magic in that old silk hat they found. The festering dead are still ambling strong when headed by a good script, a smart director, and a well-deployed cast. This proves to be the case with Instapocalypse. 

There's two intrepid hold-outs roaming the ravaged Earth, and a zombie, and there's an iPhone, and there's an Instagram post waiting to be checked. That's the basis for the film, and in five minutes, it gives a smart and funny play off of those elements in conflict. While it's short, it's stylish, but not showy, and funny, but not dumb. There's some beautiful craft on display in setting, make-up, and especially cinematography. As quick as a flash, it hits, and ultimately, that left me howling!

Instapocalypse shows as a part of Program 5 - Mindbenders  at Century 20 Redwood City Fri, Mar 3 9:45 PM Tue, Mar 7 6:00 PM and Fri, Mar 10 4:45 PM and at the Hammer Theatre in Downtown San Jose Sun, Mar 5 9:15 PM and Thu, Mar 9 3:45 PM