Hey folks, Harry here, back at Geek Headquarters with a normal toilet, sanitary running water and non-Chinese food. Also i notice an absence of Sonny Chiba, David Carradine, Ancient Temples, Uma Thurman, colorful money that goes alot further than my regular dollars and... Ummmm... oh yeah, lots more white folks... they are scary, now I know why everyone was staring at me over there. Meanwhile, while I'm back in Austin, one of the AICN flock is in far off Venice... You know him as Rav, I know him sometimes as Snookums... In Austin we look at him with affection. Here he is with a rundown on some of the shorts he saw in Venice... no, not the boxers he's seen... he doesn't kiss and tell!
Heya Guys,
Just watched four films in a row so I thought I'd take a little break, eat and write some more, some of the films I just watched were fucking amazing suprises, mild dissapointments, and also some of the worst shit ever committed to a celluoid print. BUT, I am going to be a bit of an asshole here and not even tell you about any of those movies, what I am going to tell you about is three short films that played up here this morning. Now I don't usually come and watch short films at film festivals, normally they all pretty much suck for the most part, amateurish student wastes of time, although normally there are a few students gems hidden in the stack of hay. Well here in Venice they seem to be a little bit more interesting and have a tad bit production value than the crap they show at Worldfest or even SXSW. So it took a lot to get me to go to this screening, in fact one of the directors actually had a few scandalous photos of myself so I had to give up listening to Julianne Moore, Todd Haynes, Dougray Scott, and John Malkovich praising Venice over and over again in person to watch these movies. The freakier part of the whole situation was that the girl at the soda stand already knew my order before I opened my mouth, god I'm becoming too predictable. The three short films I stayed for were Michael Reihana's Little Gold Cowboy, Vincent Deslande's Silence, and Eduardo Arias' White & Black.
Earlier this year I got to take a look at a complete load of shit called The Bikini Bandits Movie, this feature was completely schizo man it was all over the place like a crack addict's summer vacation in Columbia. It's real problem was that it wanted to throw in a lot of cool shit, but instead of working them in it was just mixed in like they threw everything in a blender and out the film came. Well in a way Little Gold Cowboy reminded me of all the good things about that piece of shit, as its a shortfilm with no real constant narrative, but a constant beat almost like this has been made to show off the directorÃs music video talents which are quite good. Little Gold Cowboy is about an Angel/Cowboy walking around for 6 minutes, well being a little gold cowboy and theres something about true love in it too. Wait there are hot lesbians too! It doesnt really make any sense whatsoever, but it remains a really cool film all over. The film was financed by the New Zealand Film Commission, I wish more money would be given to people who put hot lesbians in their films. Altogether the cinematography and editing is top notch, there's some real talent put into this film.
Vincent Deslande's Silence was a tad bit on the pretentious side of things, but nonetheless it seemed promising in the way of set design and cinematography. Particularly his sets and lighting, he couldnt have been working with that high of a budget and what he came up with looked like it could have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hopefully whoever did the set design for the film will be able to go on and do bigger and better things.
Eduardo Arias' White and Black is quite different than the silence that preceded it. It was only three minutes long, just about half as long as the end credits were for Silence. Eduardo Arias film is basically just about a white cop chasing a black man through New York. Arias is concise he never wastes a frame and gets you in and out of there in 3 minutes, leaving the subtitler at the bottom of the screen still bopping to the electronic beat of the film. Arias is able to do things with this 3 minute film that some Hollywood filmmakers spend two and a half hours failing at. Ariasà film twists your thoughts and manages to leave a lasting impression on your mind in the hours after viewing his film.
Enough with the Massawyrm indie indie short film schtick. IÃm off now to go find some food somewhere on this island and maybe some women too.
Later,
Rav
