ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[southendmd]

How about a round of short films? 
Animated or live action.
Usual rules apply.

(Thanks, Elle, for the long-awaited Z film.)

[southendmd]

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qOY1b6Pe78[/youtube]
From an IMDb user:  "...recommended to the average Looney Tunes fans and people who like mad yetis."
(5:56)

=aside=
Sorry, my pedestrian tastes run to Bugs Bunny!

[oilgun]

Dir: Bálint Kenyeres
Hungary
14 min.

This is one of the better titles in the shorts collection CINEMA 16: EUROPEAN SHORTS.  I recently purchased it along with CINEMA 16: AMERICAN SHORTS which unfortunately doesn't measure up in comparison.  (I rated the former 4/5 stars and the latter 2.5/5)



From IMDb: I saw this film in New York (Sundance at BAM) and it blew me away. I wasn't expecting the film to be shot in one take, so I kept thinking about what Kubrick once said about the opening shot of a movie. According to him, it should be the most interesting thing the audience had seen that day. Well, I think I can say this film will probably be one of the most interesting things I have seen this year.

Many aspects of this film make it a short masterpiece. Its script, which comments on contemporary issues (though lightly). Its staging and choreography, which are phenomenal. I could go on for a while, but you really have to see it for yourself.

Luckily, the director attended a Q&A after the film. He explained that he had two shooting days and that they shot the film at dusk (you know, early in the evening) and only did four takes, the fourth being the final film. The director had certain ideas about the film and he practiced with a digital camera before the actual shooting. The location was found after the writing of a one page synopsis, but there was no script or storyboard. And the man in the end isn't a professional actor.

I love this film and loved talking to the director, who, by the way is a really nice guy.

[Fran]

Centuries of June (w/Stan Brakhage, 16mm, 10 minutes)



Stan Brakhage’s note about this film, from the Filmmakers’ Cooperative catalog:
This film comes to exist because Joseph Cornell wished, one fine summer day, to show me the old homes of his beloved Flushing. One of them had been torn down and another beside it was scheduled for demolition. In torment (similar to that which had prompted him to ask me to photograph the Third Ave. Elevated before it was destroyed) he suggested we spend the afternoon preserving "the world of this house," its environs. It would be too strong a word to say he "directed" my photography; and yet his presence and constant suggestions (often simply by a lift of the hand, or lifted eyebrows even) made this film entirely his. He then spent years editing it, incorporating "re-takes" into the film's natural progress, savoring and lovingly using almost every bit of the footage. And then he gave it to me, "in memory of that afternoon."

Centuries of June, perhaps more than any Cornell film, is a naked attempt to capture the soul of a place and the mood of a disappearing moment. Partly this feeling is due to the circumstance of the impending destruction of the house which dominates the first part of the film, and partly it’s due to Brakhage’s agile, kinetic camera work. Approaching the house with palpable trepidation, and straining to capture a butterfly’s movement, his camera charges the film with an energy quite different from that of Burckhardt’s.

By the last third of the film, the camera has moved away from the house – already relegated to the past – to focus on a group of children playing nearby. Though the house is no longer on camera, it provides the environment for the children’s play, and its presence is still very much felt, like a ghost. The film ends lyrically, with the children walking away from both camera and house.

[southendmd]

IMDb:  An unwanted encounter between an "acrimonious" middle-aged lady and a young black man. A comedy on everyday's racism in a Brussels tramway...

Won 2nd prize at the Torino International Short Film Competition.


http://www.dailymotion.com/bookmarks/albannl/video/x4h4da_la-dame-dans-le-tram_blog

=aside=
We're back in business!

[oilgun]

aka:  Valgaften
Dir: Anders Thomas Jensen
Denmark
11 min.

From IMDb: On election night we meet Peter, an idealistic young man, who suddenly discovers he has forgotten to vote. On his way to the polls he encounters a variety of taxi drivers, all racist in their way and Peter has to decide whether to stand up for his convictions or getting to the polls on time.

[oilgun]

=aside=
We're back in business!

Great, now you jinxed it! 

[Fran]

From IMDb:  What happens when a wise-cracking vent figure teams up with a shy boy with a love of puppets? You get FORGOTTEN STARS, a mockumentary about ventriloquist Jerry Boyd and his partner, Delbert Schwartz. This whimsical tale covers the ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies of one of America's best, and least remembered, ventriloquist teams.

[southendmd]

Tagline:  "Love means never having to say you're dead."

From an IMDb user: "...The acting is quite good, the comedy works well and the romance is disturbingly tender and believable despite one of the characters being in an advanced stage of decomposition."

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq1XZbH9mrA[/youtube]

Trailer (1:25)  I love that he wears a cowboy hat in one scene.

[memento]

IMDB: Fast talking, seat-of-the-pants-logic spewing Jeremy (Jeremy Koerner) convinces his single, lonely best friend Barry (Frederik Goris) to take part in a speed dating scheme that Jeremy believes is guaranteed to get Barry a date. With the help of three friends, Jeremy and Barry unleash Jeremy's plan on the women at an exclusive speed dating session. As the session comes to a close, it appears that Jeremy's hubris may have placed all five men into the center of a sinister plot for which none are prepared.

=aside= Paul
"The Gay Zombie" looks like a panic.