Category: Comedy - Klaus at Gunpoint

Registry - Luxo, Jr.

10/23/2017

Cinequest 2017 Preview - Forgotten Man

3/5/2017

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.

Cinequest 2017 Short Film Preview - The Call of Charlie

2/15/2017

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

Fantasy Film 101 - Mickey's Polo Match

2/15/2017

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

Cinequest 2017 Short Film Preview - The Eleven O'Clock

2/7/2017

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

Cinequest 2017 Short Film Preview - Instapocalypse

1/31/2017

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

Sub-5 Comedies - The Date and Fancy

11/16/2016

The sub-five minute short is one of my favorite forms. They are nearly impossible to pull off as dramas, though I've programmed several that managed (including one with the amazing Paprika Steen that is absolutely heart-breaking) but for comedies, they are perfect. You come up with a gag, or a simple concept and explore it gently.

The Date is an example of a simple story - a guy prepping with his best friend for an up-coming date. Things change, and you can probably figure out the rest. It's a great example of a sub-5 because it does a few things perfectly. It has a simple concept, it plays with the ideas, it has a satisfyiing payoff, and the acting is clean, clear, and poignant. It's also adorable. It's exactly the feeling you want to get from a romantic comedy, but in a tidy, compact form.

Fancy, on the other hand, is much different, but still works with the sub-5 idea brilliantly. It's got the marvelous Gilliam Vigman as a woman leaving embarrassed from her gynocologist. She calls her best friend, and tries to figure out why the doctor reacted to her visit with a single word - "Fancy"

It's really funny, and it's tight, it's smart, but best of all, it's perfectly acted. Vigman goes into full-on nutty 90s woman mode as she walks away at the end of her call. Great stuff!

52 Episodes to Science Fiction Film Literacy - Airplane 2 - The Sequel!

11/8/2016

A look at science fiction comedy, science fiction sequels, and an outlandish statement about how this farce relates to 2001, A Space Odyssey. I also completely misremember the courtroom scene after having watched it less than 48 hours ago...

Parody and The Avant Garde - Art FIlm, Battleship Contempkin, and La Puppe

9/11/2016

I can't tell you haw many times I've sat down with folks to watch a few art films with friends and about a minute in had them go "Are they serious?" It's a problem, because when you're working within a vein of art that rejects traditional perspective and narraitve, it is easy to lose the thread and misunderstand what the attempt is, and the easiest explanation for most is to think that the filmmaker is being funny. A lot of Avant Garde film is deadly serious, though some humorous filmmakers have dome remarkable works.

While up bright and early with my Twins, I came across a film that had me going back and forth. Art Film - Enter the Mind Museum. Watching it, I was torn between considering it as an art film, all legit and stuff, and looking at it through the lens of a Zucker-Abrams-Zucker film using the art films of the 1960s and 70s as the target. There's a lot of Stan Brakhage in the film, with touches on the works of everyone from Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, and even Un Chien Andalou. The comedy comes not with mockery, but with respectful jibing, it seems. There's a lot to play with in the ideals of American Avant Garde filmmaking, and here, there is a joy and strange interplay between the comedy and the source material. If not for a bit of hyper-exaggeration, this could find a place in the collections of Canyon Cinema.

This brought to mind two CInequest films from early in my term programming. The first was a gentle mocking of French Art Films, or at least the American Film Student idea of what a French Art Film is. The film, Battleship Contempkin by Chris Brown, is two people, alone, in a room, playing the board game Battleship. There is the interaction between the both which is sly and over-the-top. At no point can you take this as a serious art film, it's too ridiculous, and at the same time, there are markers from the art film tradition that make you go "hmmmmmmm..."

The second, from about the same period, was La Puppe. Taking the legendary film La Jette by Chris Marker, director Timothy Greenberg plays with the concept, the still images and post-apocolyptic setting, and applies it to the story of a dog puppet. You have to know La Jette to get the most out of it, but even for the uninitiated, there's a lot of perfectly timed comedy.

Though these films run in the field of the Avant Garde as their setting, they are decidedly comedies, even when the line is blurred.

Hitler's Folly - Bill Plympton

6/7/2016

The man name of Bill Plympton is one of the greatest American animators of all-time. Oscar nominated and probably the most important influence on a generation of animators. His latest work, Hitler's Folly, is not an animated film. It's a faux documentary which is an interesting path for this director, about an alternative Adolf Hitler, who rose from Comic Book fanboy to become the most powerful figure in cartoons, and then in all of Germany It's a strange concept, but one that works, mostly.

The thing here is that it's way too talky much of the way. We have our filmmaker, played by the wonderful Dana Ashbrook, who tells us the story of how Hitler went from a comic collector and film society programmer to running the largest animation studio in Germany. He creates Hitlertoons, and then does the biggest animated film of all-time, while he's also rising up the ranks of German politics.

The World-building here is brilliant. The way that Plympton takes the actual history and slides in his concepts is smart, and while it's presented in a slightly too static way, the touches that Plymton gives it in animation draw you in, and while the joy of those moments slowly fades, they are highlights. Drawings of his proposed Naziland amusement park, Eva Braun's supposed fashion designs, and the Downy Duck work was great. The silliest ideas, like the idea of underwater Nazi cartoons.

Several other films came to mind while I was watching. CSA, a faux-doc about a world where the Confederates won the Civil War and there was still slavery, was a natural comparison, though this is much better. Able Edwards, the story of a science fiction re-telling of Citizen Kane. Hitler's Folly stands up well, though it's far from perfect. The Man in a High Castle has to peek in to anyone who knows the alt. hist. tradition.

There's a moment where Ashbrook's character addresses the underwater cinema theory and questions it, saying it's patently ridiculous. This could stand in for the viewer. This is over-the-top and there's no way this could be any sort of reality. That's the point, you know? Plympton is the greatest living American Surrealist, and this is less an Alternate History piece, as a Surrealist massaging of multiple paths. It's the story of Hitler's rise, though a false one, and of American animation in the 1930s and 40s, and the connections that you can draw between them. The requirements for Surrealism are a combination of dream-like states within a reality we can recognize. In this case, the Surrealism is based on the History we're bombarded with on the high-50s on our Cable Systems, mingled with the bizarre, completely unbelievable ideas.

Is this a fun watch? Yes. Dark, and funny, and darkly funny. I doubt I'll come back to it as often as I do with Plympton's other works, like Cheatin' but I can't argue that this is a great watch.