AWN Blogs

This short is featured on the Animation Show Vol. 3 DVD.

Matthew Walker's CG student short about two hapless astronauts made the festival rounds in 2006, bringing a good deal of attention to the young British animator. It made the theatrical rounds as part of both the Animation Show of Shows and Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt's Animation Show. Filled with droll humor, British etiquette must rule the day when one astronaut's boredom leads to a precarious predicament for him and his fellow space traveler.

While the design of the film isn't trailblazing, Walker's sense of timing is wonderful. He has the patience to allow his jokes to build. Sometimes he draws them out a tad too long, but for the most part he hits the mark. For sci-fi geeks, they'll laugh at both the conventions he uses and for the real science that never gets used in other space-based stories. The first and last jokes are the best of the film, which makes for a good start and fine conclusion.

This short is featured on the Animation Show Vol. 3 DVD.

The easiest way to anger the non-adventurous movie watcher is not to show them something shocking, but to show them experimental animation. They become belligerent with what seems to be nonsense and you can watch as the anger consumes them when someone tries to explain the meaning. This could be for many reasons, which I will get to later.

So why do I bring this universal statement up in the discussion of Max Hattler's experimental short COLLISION? Because the film is a great example of the barrier between those who like experimental film and those who hate it. Hattler's explosion of bright colors and shapes is timed to a firework-like soundtrack. His use of color and symbols make it fairly easy to read his meaning. They represent the various flags of the world as they mix and meld and explode into a celebration of multiculturalism. The message comes off fairly obvious… at least for me. Someone else might just see a kaleidoscope of pointlessness.

This short is featured on the Animation Show Vol. 3 DVD.

Run Wrake's devilish short is brilliantly twisted. Using a Dick-and-Jane-like illustration style, Wrake skewers contemporary morality. With words floating overhead, describing each object on screen, a young girl sees a rabbit in a field and thinks that it would make a wonderful muff. With the help of a mischievous little boy, she knocks out the rabbit, takes it home and cuts it open to discover a tiny devil idol inside. Turns out, the idol loves red plum jam and can turn insects into jewels, feathers and ink. The greedy little children then devise a murderous plan to bring swarms of bugs to the idol, so he will make jewels rain from the sky.

Part documentary, part drama, this earnest BBC production tries very hard to legitimize the genius of 19th century composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky, while painting a portrait of his personal life and how it influenced his music. Split into two-parts for TV — "The Creation of Genius" and "Fortune and Tragedy" — the reenactments of Tchaikovsky's life work better when they are freed of interruption from documentary host and composer Charles Hazlewood. Like its subject, the special seems to be looking for a voice.

Halzewood narrates the story of Tchaikovsky's life as he travels to Russia to show us the influence the artist had on Russian culture, music, ballet and opera. We get moments from Tchaikovsky's childhood when he is sent away to school and never recovers from the death of his mother when he was 14. Both Pyotr (Ed Stoppard, THE PIANIST) and his younger brother Modest (William Mannering, MASTER AND COMMANDER) were gay and frequented the homosexual underground in Russian and in the U.K. Tchaikovsky has an on-and-off affair with fellow music student Aleksey Apukhtin (Gyuri Sarossy, TV's EASTENDERS) for years. As his fame grew, he became more worried about his homosexuality creating a scandal and set out to marry. After receiving a letter from admirer Antonina Milyukova (Alice Glover), he meets with the woman and subsequently marries her. Around the same time, he also meets Nadezdha von Meck (Lucy Briers, TV's WIVES AND DAUGHTERS), a wealthy woman who would become his longtime benefactor and friend, even though she refused to meet him in person, always corresponding through letters. We follow Tchaikovsky's turbulent marriage, his years as composer for hire and his death from cholera.

Taken at face value one might not see the significance of this film. Put in context, as the start of a continuing series, it takes on the status of an epic undertaking that Roger Ebert once called "an inspired, even noble, use of the film medium." Directed by Paul Almond as part of the WORLD IN ACTION TV series, SEVEN UP! wasn't intended to be the first chapter in a series. Based on the Jesuit phrase, "give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man," the half-hour program was supposed to be one-off look at a group of seven year olds from different economic and social backgrounds. Original researcher Michael Apted transformed the first film into what it has become, the chronicling of the same lives every seven years since.

After a limited release in theaters in 1998, this independent sci-fi film from Canada has garnered cult status since arriving on video. Using one set, director Vincenzo Natali creates both a claustrophobic mental torture chamber, as well as a mind-bending labyrinth. This sci-fi horror flick has gory bits for sure, but the mystery of the plot and what it means to the characters makes this film more exciting than all the slicing and dicing.

A man wakes up in a cube-shaped room with doors on all six surfaces. He moves to the next room and we learn quickly what happens when one ventures into the wrong room. Five other captives wake up in one of a series of interlocking cubes. Joan Leaven (Nicole de Boer, TV's THE DEAD ZONE) is a Math student, who will be called upon to try and decipher the numbers engraved on the many doorways. Helen Holloway (Nicky Guadagni, LARS AND THE REAL GIRL) is a doctor with a big conspiracy theory involving the military industrial complex. Quentin (Maurice Dean Wint, HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH) is a cop with a superiority complex and a nasty temper. Rennes (Wayne Robson, AFFLICTION) is a fugitive escape artist who devises a way to check for booby-trapped rooms. David Worth (David Hewlett, TV's STARGATE: ATLANTIS) is a young cynical man who doesn't believe they'll ever get out of the cube. Later the group will encounter Kazan (Andrew Miller, TRAPPED IN PARADISE), a severely autistic man with a secret gift.

The man in the Fedora hat is back. While the next installment in this franchise could be titled "Indiana Jones and the Search for Lightning in a Bottle," which is what the series has been trying to capture since RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, the first new installment in 19 years nicely bridges the gap in time, in both the real and fictional worlds, placing the action in the 1950s and crossing ancient and modern myths. The aging hero can still take a punch, but he comes off wiser. For all he's been through, he should have all the wisdom in the world already, but I'll get to that later.

Director Steven Spielberg, working from a screenplay by JURASSIC PARK scribe David Koepp, gets the story cooking right from the start. Indiana (Harrison Ford) and his partner Mac McHale (Ray Winstone, THE DEPARTED) have been kidnapped by Russians, lead by Soviet super-agent Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett, I'M NOT THERE), with her stark black Louise Brooks hairstyle and mysterious psychic abilities. She's looking for the contents of a box in a government warehouse and needs Dr. Jones to find it. This incident kicks off an adventure that will lead our dashing hero to Peru in search of a highly magnetized (well, highly magnetized when the plot needs it to be) crystal skull, which could be the key to learning all the knowledge in the universe and beyond. So of course this would be of interest to the evil Commies, who want to get inside our brains and control our every thought. Along for the ride is greaser Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf, TRANSFORMERS), who informs Indy that his old friend Prof. Oxley (John Hurt, THE ELEPHANT MAN), who has dedicated his life to studying the legend of the crystal skull and it's connection to El Dorado, is in danger. And lets not forget Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), Indy's girl from the original film; she's back too.

Mixing the difficulties unique to Vietnam vets with the adjustment problems of all returning soldiers, Hal Ashby's touching drama contrasts the pro-war and the anti-war sentiments by presenting two soldiers connected by their love for the same woman. Ashby isn't a director that is common to the average filmgoer, but during the 1970s he made some of the decade's best, including this film, HAROLD AND MAUDE, THE LAST DETAIL, BOUND FOR GLORY and BEING THERE. Without flash, he patiently develops his core characters, allowing emotions to build and accumulate into poignant and powerful reactions. This is one of those films that goes along at a steady pace then reaches a moment where it grabs you by the throat and propels you to another level.

Last week Todd Haynes' enigmatic biopic of Bob Dylan, I'M NOT THERE, arrived on DVD, giving inspiration for this week's lineup on musical biopics. Rock, soul and country are all represented, often crisscrossing. Two straight-laced performers, two troubled singers and one chameleon. One film mixes the artist's music with performances from the actors while the other four films are evenly divided between prerecorded tracks and live performances. This musical film festival is sure to get your toe tappin'.

I'M NOT THERE starts us off with a film that fictionalizes the seemingly different personalities of folk/rock legend Bob Dylan. Six different actors play a version of the singer who wore many masks over the course of his career. Receiving an Oscar nomination for her work, Cate Blanchett's pretentious folk singer that has turned his back on political messages and his fans is an unforgettable portrait of Dylan during the time of the classic rock doc DON'T LOOK BACK. Heath Ledger's version of Dylan is a misogynistic actor who rose to fame playing influential folk singer Jack Rollins, who is played by Christian Bale. Ledger's Dylan is married to an abstract artist who harks back to Dylan's real-life first wife Sara, brining a rare look into the heart of the man. Bale's Rollins is a folk icon that turns to Christianity. A trio of other Dylans include 11-year-old African-American Woody Guthrie played by Marcus Carl Franklin, 19-year-old poet Arthur Rimbaud played by Ben Whishaw, and middle-aged Billy the Kid played by Richard Gere. This thought-provoking experiment tries to understand the forces that drove the musical legend to invent and re-invent himself over and over again. What drove his social conscience songs and then his later rejection of them? How did the lure of fame twist his soul and later make him run and hide? I'M NOT THERE doesn't answer these questions, only presents possibilities for us to contemplate. As I said in my original review, "For someone who watches a great deal of films and looks for something different, this film delivers a passionate performance and excites with invention. It’s a fascinating portrait of a man who could be a completely different person on any given day and does justice to that complexity."