Film/Video Discussion Thread - The Bear and Badger

afgavinstan

I do remember it being an angle in the doc by Asif Kapadia, or it being said by her in interviews, but yeah, did feel a bit odd. Whole thing had this odd feel about it though, like it was just a really long montage.

JonB

EvilRedEye wrote:

JonB wrote:

Watched Zone of Interest last night. It's very well shot and obviously incredibly chilling as a concept, but I think it could be just as effective as a short film. You could watch, say, the first 20 minutes, or possibly any 20 minutes, and get just about everything it's going for.

I watched Zone of Interest at the cinema and spent the whole of my Saturday at a short film festival and I want to kick you in the face for saying this.

Alright Barry Norman, dial it down a bit.

EvilRedEye

I was in a heightened emotional state after being frazzled out by watching short films all day and felt bad about this from about an hour after I posted it.

It’s still a terrible opinion though.

Wookienopants

b0r1s wrote:

Lord of The Rings 4K back in cinemas 8th, 9th and 10th of June.

FUUUUUUCK.
I'll be there for all of them

Wookienopants

My copies of The Dark Knight trilogy in 4k arrived this morning.
Straight to The Dark Knight and fuck me, that opening scene in full 4k IMAX footage is stunning.

b0r1s

Wookienopants wrote:

b0r1s wrote:

Lord of The Rings 4K back in cinemas 8th, 9th and 10th of June.

FUUUUUUCK.
I'll be there for all of them

Me and my daughter have been debating it. I may book the Monday off. Don’t want to do a full day at work then sit through 4 hours of RoTK and likely fall asleep!

EvilRedEye

I’m back at the Garrick Stockport Film Festival for day two, friendly warning to not post controversial short film related opinions from late afternoon onwards.

Block 1 wasn’t great.

Chelsea the Astronaut (Short, 2024) - L’il documentary about a local school sending some kind of Barbie type doll into space. Not anything special but OK for what it is. A local film for local people. Watch online. ★★★☆☆

Cupboard Dwelling (Short, Year Unknown) - Comedy about a young couple who find a weird guy living in their kitchen cupboard. Clearly someone’s first effort and the audio is unacceptably rough but reasonably amusing. ★★★☆☆

Completely Well Adjusted (Short, 2024) - A woman arrives at spiritual retreat-slash-cult but nothing is as it seems. This was a longer short at maybe half an hour or something. Oh my god, it was just way too long. Should have lost ten minutes, it just dragged and the production quality wasn’t high enough to maintain interest. Feels like it was made by the director for herself and not for an audience. ★★☆☆☆

Cupboard Dwelling the best of a middling start.

b0r1s

b0r1s wrote:

Wookienopants wrote:

b0r1s wrote:

Lord of The Rings 4K back in cinemas 8th, 9th and 10th of June.

FUUUUUUCK.
I'll be there for all of them

Me and my daughter have been debating it. I may book the Monday off. Don’t want to do a full day at work then sit through 4 hours of RoTK and likely fall asleep!

Erm… so turns out it’s US only.

The only exception I can find is Prince Charles Cinema is doing all three marathon starting at 9pm 29th June. Pretty sure I can’t do an overnight 12 hour marathon without falling asleep.

regmcfly

I didn't want to be the US guy but thankfully natural selection has got us there

b0r1s

Am sad now.

Wookienopants

b0r1s wrote:

b0r1s wrote:

Wookienopants wrote:

b0r1s wrote:

Lord of The Rings 4K back in cinemas 8th, 9th and 10th of June.

FUUUUUUCK.
I'll be there for all of them

Me and my daughter have been debating it. I may book the Monday off. Don’t want to do a full day at work then sit through 4 hours of RoTK and likely fall asleep!

Erm… so turns out it’s US only.

The only exception I can find is Prince Charles Cinema is doing all three marathon starting at 9pm 29th June. Pretty sure I can’t do an overnight 12 hour marathon without falling asleep.

It's advertised on my local Vue website so I don't think it is! They have the dates up there but just no option to book yet.
Holding out hope

EvilRedEye

I’m sure in the past I’ve seen stuff announced for America and then it does come to the UK albeit announced a few days later.

b0r1s

Am happy now!

EvilRedEye

Block 2 is done:

Revenger (Short, 2024) - I guess you’d call this a comedy thriller/horror. A guy heads back to his hometown to settle an old grudge. Got a few laughs from the audience but I didn”t particularly enjoy it. The guy filmed it on an old Sony handheld camera - I genuinely do not understand this as the video just looked technically awful. ★★☆☆☆

Coward (Short, 2023) - This drama wasn’t bad and had a serious point to make about people being shot for cowardice during World War I but it was so extraordinarily po-faced and then struggled to cash its po-facedness cheques in terms of its production values and script. Nice try though. Watch online. ★★★☆☆

Against the Grain (Short, 2021) - Talking Heads style monologue about a woodworker reflecting back on his life. Simple and well-executed. Sometimes the simple things are the best! ★★★★☆

Against the Grain best from this bunch.

EvilRedEye

I’m fucking dying inside now but I may as well stick this out. Only two longer shorts in Block 3.

Take Control (Short, 2021) - A girl in an abusive relationship receives her A-Level results, provoking a confrontation with her boyfriend. The girl seemed oddly overdressed for a sixth form teenager for a lot of this but generally the production values were good. A reasonable stab at a difficult topic. Watch online. ★★★★☆

New Spawn Fades (Short, 2023) - Comedy horror with radioactive frogs attacking a small-town music gig. I’ve liked most of the film school projects on show but didn’t really like this one. Just too ramshackle. It’s filmed in black and white so they could have lots of liquid based effects like pouring radioactive waste in a river, getting ‘blood’ all over a village hall where genuine fake blood would be too difficult to clean, which I thought was a clever choice. ★★☆☆☆

Take Control wins.

EvilRedEye

I feel very self-conscious sitting around the filmmakers while I’m just like “Two stars! Two stars! Fuck you all!” on here.

EvilRedEye

We’re back in the realm of solid films with Block 4.

Won’t See Another One (Short, 2024) - Comedy film about a couple of Irish people who meet at a bar. Perfectly cromulent although the lack of any background noise in the bar at all comes across as eerie. Watch online. ★★★☆☆

Rear View Mirror (Short, 2024) - A man encounters horror in an indoor car park. Not much to this but on a technical level it’s the closest to resembling a commercial film of any of the horrors from this festival Watch online. ★★★☆☆

Street Art (Short, 2024) - Charming dialogue-free film about a struggling artist. Has some vibes of one of those dialogue-free animated shorts (although honestly not as tight as one of those). It’s not perfect - I think the thrust of the story could have been stronger - but there’s been so many films with a pretty weak central vision at this festival so it’s like an oasis in a desert to see a film with a strong, individual and pretty competently executed vision. Watch online from 4 May. ★★★★☆

EvilRedEye

Right, let’s sort this last batch of shorts.

The Close (Short, Year Unknown) - This was by the same director as Cupboard Dwelling in the first block and is a big step up technically. A friendly coffee shop employee is not all she seems. It’s pretty decent but is only about five minutes and feels like it would have benefited from being fleshed out to 10. ★★★☆☆

The Snogging Scene (Short, 2023) - Comedy where an actor is reluctant to perform the titular scene. In an inverse of a lot of my criticisms from this weekend, this first-time directorial effort has a sharp script but is technically rough. Promising though. ★★★☆☆

11:11 (Short, 2023) - A man who seemingly has everything drafts and redrafts his suicide note. This has extremely nice cinematography but was a bit pretentious for me. The ending attempts to be ambiguous but just ended up leaving me with a bitter note of anti-climax. ★★★☆☆

Cellophane Flowers (Short, 2023) - Two siblings reunite at a funeral. I don’t know if I was just completely frazzled after a long weekend of short films or the film was insufficiently clear but I completely failed to grasp the plot of this. ★★☆☆☆

Doctor… Who? (Short, 2023) - This isn’t an official Doctor Who production but it sounds like BBC Wales asked for it on the down-low as some kind of semi-internal parody thing. A bit insular but OK and the audience seemed to like it. ★★★☆☆

Best of this block: The Snogging Scene (Short, 2023)

Best of the day: Against the Grain (Short, 2021)

Best of the weekend: Grim (Short, 2024)

It’s over. I’m done. I never want to watch a short film again.

EvilRedEye

Tl;dr here’s a couple of decent shorts you might like to watch.

regmcfly

Go and read a book

DrewMerson

Boy Kills World

Deaf and mute boy trains to become killing machine young man in order to seek revenge for his murdered mother and sister. The USP here is that he’s forgotten what his own voice sounded like, so his inner monologue (which we can hear) is the voice over artist from his favourite beat-em-up. This gets coupled with the twin facts that he has spent his adolescence and early adulthood largely isolated from society, and he wasn’t deaf from birth so he can’t lip-read particularly well, so we hear an over-the-top narration of a world he doesn’t fully understand, to largely comic effect.

The OTT narration is matched by a caricature cast, impossible fight scenes and ridiculously crunchy, squelchy foley work to produce an end result that is far more fun than it has any right to be. The fact that Sam Raimi is one of the producers will give you an idea of the tone.

I went in knowing that it was not a work of art and had a whale of a time. Some of the visuals are a little clichéd but I think the execution earns the right to lean on these things. My only real complaint is that some of the fight scenes could have pulled the camera back a little more often to let us see more of the choreography, but otherwise it gets a thumbs up from me.

Diluted Dante

Excellent.

afgavinstan

Early gosling double bill. All Good Things and Half Nelson. Hadn't seen the former but I've seen The Jinx so it was all good. He's sensational tbh, does a great Durst. The latter I'd already seen years ago just after it came to dvd, also great. Highly recommend if you've seen neither.

Kinda wish he done more roles like that now.

EvilRedEye

Kraven the Hunter has been delayed to mid-December. [Punches the wall.] GODDAMNIT!

regmcfly

R rated movie coming out at Christmas - can't fail.

EvilRedEye

Cinemas are pretty empty, only the Lion King prequel and Sonic 3 coming out, can’t fail.

EvilRedEye

Io Capitano (2023) - After Society of the Snow, I went into this expecting another deeply unpalatable but important foreign-language film from the Best International Feature Film Oscar shortlist.

What I got was a pleasant surprise - a film that intersperses light and darkness for a not only palatable but, at times, actually enjoyable movie.

Two Senegalese teenagers decide to make the dangerous journey to Europe to make their fortune. What starts off as an exciting odyssey with some spectacular aerial shots of African scenery takes a dark turn as one of the teens is imprisoned by the Libyan authorities and the other is enslaved by the Libyan mafia. Will these youngsters ever make it to Europe?

While there are moments of extreme darkness in this that are not for the feint-hearted, neither is it a trauma-dump that will have you switching off in self-defence. I have to say I thought it was great and got a lot out of it. ★★★★★

EvilRedEye

I’m starting to see why Challengers in IMAX didn’t take off in the UK as even The Fall Guy is absolutely bombing at Manchester Printworks and that’s a tiny bit more IMAXy.

Diluted Dante

Watched Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind for the first time today, as it's my birthday, so why not watch something older than me?

What a great film. A lead character who is the whitest of white meat babyfaces, and yet remains incredibly likeable throughout.

b0r1s

Happy birthday Dante. You clearly are having a good one.

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