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Note: The opinions expressed in these reviews do not necessarily reflect those of my own... From Ann Koi's livejournal: This year has been a blast, so far... So, what's worth seeing? The slide show before the short blocks/during the intermissions. My paintings look so cool 20 feet high on a projection screen. Seriously. Its how they should be seen, perhaps. Rex and Toren's stuff was fun too, heck it was all rad. Yay for Andrew Migliore for making that slideshow! Hm. Well, my favorite shorts so far were Christian Matzke's "Imperfect Solution" (a more to-the-letter Herbert West, although it needed to end differently so as not to seem like it was a teaser for a longer film) and an animated piece called "Do Not Feed the Book". I refused to go to "Beyond ReAnimator" because Combs BAILED on the fest again. I hear there's a kung fu penis in it. I also hear one of the "Shunned House" adaptations is hella disturbing (Gabby, Jason, and Nicci all liked it, I didn't get in to that one yet - my schedule! heh) but I get to see "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" tomorrow (went to the release party today with Jason Thompson and his charming girlfriend, showed the nightgaunt tattoo around a bit - and there were mint chocolate zoog cookies and gingerbread cats - too cute!) "Eldritch Influence" was an interesting feature, interviewing several writers (Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, and Brian Lumley, most notably) and some of the HPLFilmfest/film circle people (Andrew Migliore, Aaron Vanek, Christian Matzke, Andrew Leman, and very briefly Scott Glancy) as well as Stuart Gordon, and there's a clip of the Thickets in it. I had a lot of problems with the piece though despite the amusing quips and comments that flowed especially from Lumley and Gaiman. The otherwise scholarly and enjoyable narrative and interviews were broken up - badly edited together for the most part - by inappropriate and kind of half assed fiction bits that weren't nearly on par with the good stuff. I also felt they crammed some information (all the stuff on mythos related music for example) and cheated it out of the time it deserved while lingering too long on things that were boring or not very relevant (the cheesy faux cult mini b movie - hi, could we have maybe actually mentioned the SERIOUS occult writing using mythos archetypes? Way to drop the ball "scholars"). Too all over the place and inconsistent, although a very good introduction to the festival for newcomers perhaps. Would be a great intro to Lovecraftian culture if all the pseudo documentarian not remotely believable totally cheesy "Miskatonic University professor" bits were clipped out. ...The long awaited "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" animated feature did not disappoint, although there were parts that might have been better left out or shortened for interest of smoother and more coherent operation. Non fans might have found the piece boring, I'm afraid (except for the fact that it is incredibly cute, and yes, the ghoul dialogue from the comic book was preserved). I saw a lot of people I know this weekend, too many to list them all. I did not get enough sleep. I had a great time but really need a few more days before I return to classes. There's simply too much to do.... (Thanks to Ann Koi of Catalyst Studios) ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ From Mike Tice: My experiences and impressions at the FilmFest follow... The films: The Shunned House was made in Italy, and they shot in both Italian and English. We saw the English version, though I think I may have preferred the Italian, as the accents of some of the actors were at times distracting or incomprehensible. Nevertheless, the film was a nice mix of The Shunned House, Dreams in the Witch-House and the Music of Erich Zann. It was purposely shot in a disjointed (some said Lynchian) style that didn't add up to a fully coherent story, but I appreciated the overall atmosphere. I particularly liked the Zann section, and the actress playing Zann must have been a violinist; usually I find it highly distracting to see non-musicians pretending to play instruments. She was great, even through that section's grisly punchline, which many found way too over the top. I confess that I liked it. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. This was an `animated' feature based on Jason Thompson's series of comic books. Although I admire the dedication this project took, I can't really say that I found it enjoyable. The animation was not entirely made up of pans & scans across Thompson's artwork, but it was not much more than that. But I think the greater flaw was that it tried to cover a lush novel in its entirety. Thus, everything flitted by so quickly that even the good stuff went by without a pause to enjoy it. Apart from the good stuff, there is much that is not-so-good in the source material, but it all gets equal time. As in Peter Jackson's adaptation of Tolkien, the occasional sections of beautiful Lovecraftian language are muddled or excised. It's easy for me to sit back and criticize when my only direct contribution to Lovecraftian film is my dreadful acting in the dreadful "Cthulhu Wore Tennis Shoes". So I certainly honor the labor of love that went into DreamQuest. Aaron and I both agree that the most quotable line of the film is: "Where's my yak?" The Eldritch Influence: a documentary on Lovecraft, particularly his influence on later authors and media, including a few short snippets of an interview with Aaron (and a few other people). I enjoyed this a great deal, except for the filmmaker's attempts to create some pseudofactual material, like footage of a `real' Lovecraftian cult that worships a pre-Sumerian obelisk in the woods of Wisconsin. I was impressed by most of Neil Gaiman's interview, in that he seems to understand what Lovecraft is all about the same way that I do. Which reminds me of the great edit from Neil Gaiman calling The Call of Cthulhu a "crap story" to Aaron naming it as his favorite HPL story. There is also a painful (hopefully completely staged) scene of a Call of Cthulhu gaming group. Five fat slovenly people with funny-shaped dice and Cheetos. Afterwards, during Q&A, I told the filmmaker that that scene cut a little too close to home. Aaron took exception to that. He thinks my players are better-looking on average than those depicted in the film. Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, ST Joshi, Christian, Andrew and others supplied more of the interview material. The shorts. I didn't see nearly as many of these as I wanted to. Maria's Hubris: A German short based on the Thing on the Doorstep, which is one of my favorites and a story for which I've written a few pages of screenplay. I liked it quite a lot, and the German was almost easy enough for me to understand. The director cut down a long story into the critical moment and did it quite well. The Raven: A fantastic filmed version of the poem. The talent reading the poem has a great voice, and the actor (if it's a different person) did a creditable job lip-synching just those parts of the poem that area actually spoken by the poem's narrator. I might have read some of the lines a bit differently, but on the whole it was a great reading of a poem that's always much longer than I remember it being. I was worried that the raven would be a taxidermed thing, but instead a very clever puppet was created. It doesn't look like a real raven, but its stylized look is perhaps even better than a real Raven. Pickman's Model: Another Italian film. I liked it a great deal, but it suffers from a terrible flaw. It does not have a proper ending. It just ends in a `why are foreign films so foreign?' moment. Casonetto's Last Song: "Cthulhu Wore Tennis Shoes" may be awful, but at least it was less than five minutes long. This amateur film is 15 minutes or so. Several aspects of this film are not merely amateurish, but bad. In particular, the dialogue is bad, bad, bad. The acting and some of the other elements of the script are also pretty bad. The picture and sound quality are also bad, but that's just because of the no-budget production. I think at one part you can hear a cat meowing in the background; this for me was one of the delightful highlights, actually. An Imperfect Solution: Christian Matzke tackled one section of Herbert West: Reanimator. Beautiful historical medical props. made me think of Steve Martin's drill in Little Shop of Horrors: "They don't make them like this any more...sturdy...heavy...dull." Lots of other attention to historical detail all over the place. Props and locations aside, the acting and story are all better than adequate, though the assistant's sister is a bit off. My one real beef is that the punchline was a bit drowned out by the other loud sounds. But really, this amateur film looked mighty professional to me. Cutethulhu: I'd seen it on the web, but it's still good for a chuckle. I'd speed up the scene in Swan Point to get the humor timing right, but the whole thing is less than 2 minutes anyway. (Thanks to Mike Tice of Elegantly Amused Press) Don't
forget to read Catherine Fuller's account of the festival here,
and Derek M. Koch has a very good review here. |
