God of Love (2010, U.S)
The New Tenants (2009, Denmark)
Toyland (2007, Germany)
West Bank Story (2005, U.S.)
The Lost Thing (2010, Australia)
Logorama (2009, France)
The Danish Poet (2006, Norway/Canada)
Ryan (2004, Canada)
Harvie Krumpet (2004, Australia)
Synopses and reviews after the jump!
A black & white, New York-ish, jazz-tinged 2010 short made I believe by a 30-something-year-old film student.
A young man and several friends have a jazz quartet. The young man, Raymand Goodfellow (Luke Matheny, also the writer/director), is the lead singer who ends his set with a song incorporating the stunt of him throwing darts blindfolded. He yearns for the band’s drummer, Kelly, to notice him, but she only has eyes for their jazz guitarist, Fozzie. Fozzie knows of Raymand’s attraction to Kelly so he tries to reject her advances, in the name of friendship.
Raymand prays to “god” to get Kelly to notice him, and one day he gets a mysterious box of darts, with instructions alluding to them having Cupid-like powers. He tries a dart first on a stranger and another bandmate, whose attraction to each other lasts. Raymand thus tries a dart on Kelly, but although her attraction to him lasts for a few hours, it is not sustaining. Depressed and rejected, he uses most of his remaining darts on all sorts of women until he has a bevy of women (and a man) fawning over him, but again none of this lasts because there is no true attraction between them. Raymand then decides to plan a perfect date to prime Kelly and use his last dart on her to hopefully cement the relationship.
The date does not go well, as what he planned is not what Kelly is interested in. Fozzie knows this and changed some of the elements, showing he knows Kelly better than Raymand. Raymand ultimately decides to do the right thing.
Later he gets another mysterious package, a bow and arrow, with a thank you note for the “job well done.” The film ends with Raymand on the road, doing his new job as a Cupid.
I liked how Raymand at first believes that the “god of love” is someone else but it turns around to become him. Also the name Raymand Goodfellow is reminiscent of Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream, who also was a sort of Cupid in getting the humans together romantically in that play. Although you can tell not all the actors are polished professionals, I liked the story and the arc of maturity that Raymand goes through, as well as the fantasy elements. Use of the black & white cinematography and jazzy setting evokes a certain new wave feel that fits in with the ages of the characters.
This was a 2009 short I’ve seen before. It is made by Danish filmmakers, but was in English and co-starred several American actors. It is a black comedy written by Anders Thomas Jensen, who wrote and directed Adam’s Apples and Green Butchers, two films I liked which star Mads Mikkelsen.
In The New Tenants, two men (Jamie Harrold, David Rakoff) have just moved into an apartment, not even having unpacked. They appear first to be roommates then through their bickering dialogue you get the sense that they are gay partners. They argue about their pet peeves about each other like an old married couple.
Through interactions with neighbors and visitors, we come to see that the apartment's last tenant had died, had a hidden drug stash, and also was having an affair with a married woman. The new tenants eventually meet the married woman, her husband (Vincent D’Onofrio) who is out for blood, her grandmother who lives in the building, and the dead tenant's addled drug dealer (Kevin Corrigan) who comes looking for the hidden stash.
There is a lot of plot in this short film, and quite talky and chattery as the two men keep up their argument throughout as each new character interrupts their domestic non-bliss and they put two and two together of just who the old tenant was. The blackness of the comedy is pretty apparent!
Toyland for me took some time to like, if “like” can be a word used about a 2007 Holocaust film.
During World War 2, a German mother lives in a building with others, some who are Jews. Her son plays with a Jewish boy but she shelters him from truth by telling him that the Jews who are led away (to concentration camps) are being taken to “Toyland” where there are giant teddy bears and other delightful things. Her son expresses a desire to also visit Toyland.
One day when she is out, soldiers come to take her neighbors away. When she returns she is fearful that her son was mistaken for a Jew when he was visiting the neighbors or that he willingly went along with them, thinking he was going to "Toyland." She frantically searches for him, and manages to get to the train just before they leave, finding a boy she believes is her son.
Production values are good for a short film, especially what would be the expense of making a period film. At times I thought the story might imply that the woman herself was Jewish but was able to pass as a German, as she has papers showing her identity but thought to have stereotyped Jewish features by the German soldiers. This could add another depth to the character. Otherwise the characters in the film are pretty two dimensional and not given much development due to the film's length, and the pacing of the story's action doesn't slow down much to let the audience reflect and feel more emotion for the characters. The story essentially is a short drama with a poignant ending that hits you in the gut.
I’ve seen this one before too, from 2005. It is a comical and musical take on the Israel/Palestine conflict, using the premise of a “West Side Story”-type musical.
Two falafel restaurants rival each other. The Hummus Hut’s Fatima falls for David, a soldier who is a relative of the Kosher King. When the Kosher King’s equipment encroaches on the Hummus Hut’s property, this leads to a conflict and the building of a wall between them. A fire destroys both restaurants and both sides come together to feed the masses since, post-fire, neither of them cannot do the job alone.
This was a good mashup of a comedy/musical with a serious topic that incorporated the symbolism and physical presence of the wall in a way that both fits into the narrative of this story as well as that of the real life division of the two sides. The songs were done in the style of the well-known songs of West Side Story, and you can see which character here relates to a character in the earlier musical, although the character portrayals are quite stereotyped. I don’t think it will change anyone’s mind about the conflict, especially since it doesn’t address any real Israeli/Palestinian issues, but puts it in a lighter frame of mind.
This is a 2010 CGI-animated film of surreal characters, and is based on a picture book by one of the filmmakers, Australian Shaun Tan.
The story is narrated by its main character, a young man who looks for bottle caps on the beach for his collection. He sees a large creature--part mechanical, part biological--which no one else seems to regard. After attempting to see if anyone will claim it the man deems it a "lost thing" and seeks to return it to some government facility which collects such things. But a mysterious employee warns him not to do so, as "lost things" tend to be forgotten there. The employee instead directs him to a hidden spot where many lost things are allowed to live in freedom.
As one might expect, you can suggest many meanings for the metaphor of the lost thing. The muted color palate juxtaposed against the surrealism of the creatures perhaps is a pro-imagination statement. Maybe the story is anti-government or anti-conformity.
This is another I have also seen before, a French-made short from 2009 (although its dialogue was in English). It is a cartoon-style animation (but most likely CGI) using many, many corporate logos in a story about a robbery that happens before a Los Angeles earthquake, both leading to a lot of destruction. Humanoid mascots such as Michelin Man, the Pringles mascot, or Ronald McDonald have character roles. Other logos such as Pizza Hut or The North Face are used according to their product type or shape as background buildings and other elements.
It was good to watch this on DVD as opposed to seeing it on the big screen, since watching it only once doesn't allow you to capture all the logos. It reminds you how much consumerism you are subjected to in your daily life; even if many of these businesses are not ones you patronize, you recognize a great deal of them.
This is also a previously-viewed 2006 short from Canada, which I find often has very similar stylings despite being made by different people. I don't know how, but I can almost always identify a Canadian short animation if it is done in a cartoon style. The National Film Board of Canada seems to support a lot of these short films because I have seen their logo over many years of short film-watching.
I don’t know if this is an autobiographical story, but it is a historical love story which mentions the real-life Norwegian author Sigrid Undset, who wrote the well-known Kristin Lavransdatter. (Although I don’t know the story myself, I‘ve seen a copy of a film of Kristin Lavransdatter at the library, I think it’s a medieval epic.)
A young Danish poet, Kasper, wants inspiration and writes to Sigrid, who invites him to visit her in Norway. On the way, during a storm, he stays at a farm and meets Ingeborg, the farmer's daughter, and they fall in love although she is promised to be married, which she does out of duty. She vows not to cut her hair until she and Kasper are reunited. In the meantime while they are apart and she lives through her marriage, Ingeborg requires help with her ever growing hair and hires a girl to be her hairdresser. A letter that goes missing causes Kasper to believe Ingeborg has forgotten him.
When Sigrid dies in 1949, Ingeborg, now a widow, and Kasper separately travel to her funeral where they are finally reunited. The hairdresser travels there later, where she meets a young writer on the train, who coincidentally is travelling to meet Kasper, his hero, for inspiration. The narrator of the film (voiced by Liv Ullman) reveals that the hairdresser and young poet are her parents.
This is a story where everything fits neatly although there are many chance meetings, happenstances both good and bad, and coincidences. Ullman’s voice is the only one you hear and her speaking style is gentle and clear and fits with the gentle romance of the story. The animation is simple and there are repeating images in parts of the storytelling.
The short Ryan appears on other animation DVDs where viewers pointed out this short being the only one worthy to watch, so I was intrigued why. It is computer animated/altered images which also incorporates some of the subject's artwork, by using real-life conversations with Canadian animator Ryan Larkin. He was most active in the 1960-70s but had a history of alcoholism, drug abuse and homelessness.
Larkin's life and art was apparently revived by this 2004 short film, and he was able to start making art again until his death in 2007. The altered elements are often images of Larkin in some state of falling-apart, with parts cut out of his face and body as if he were disintegrating, indicative of his earlier lifestyle. I don't have any knowledge of Ryan Larkin or his importance to Canadian culture, but as in The Danish Poet, this film was also co-funded by Canada's National Film Board.
This is another short I’ve seen before (in addition to a feature length film) from Australian filmmaker Adam Elliot. This claymation short from 2004 stars Geoffrey Rush as the narrator, telling the story of Harvie Krumpet, a Polish-born Australian.
The film begins from Harvie's birth in Poland in 1922, his parent's death in a fire, and through his emigration to Australia. Despite many “downs” in his life, Harvie is pretty optimistic. He has Tourette’s syndrome, has been struck by lightning (and becomes magnetic), is physically deformed, but meets a nurse at a hospital and marries her, eventually adopting a Thalidomide-stricken baby daughter.
Even in the late years of his life when he lives alone in a dreary senior home, where the inhabitants are senile or sickly, he carries on with one of the many “fakts” his illiterate mother taught him: “Life is like a cigarette; smoke it to the butt.”
No comments:
Post a Comment