Blogcritics Author: Lucas McNelly

Movie Review: Short Films by Keith Snyder

Lucas McNelly — Tue, 4 Mar 2008 10:57:41 EST

We need more filmmakers like Keith Snyder.
Sell in HellStarring: Blake Arnold and Daniel McFeeleyCinematography by: Patrick KniselyWritten by: Blake Arnold and Keith SnyderDirected by: Keith Snyder6 min/Hollywood, CA There's only one job in Hell, and that's telemarketing. So says Keith Snyder's short Sell in Hell, and it's hard to argue with that theory. Done in mostly one...

Movie Review: Aesop's Diner

Lucas McNelly — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 12:20:13 EDT

There isn't anything here that isn't easily fixable with experience.
The Family Johnson was once New York City's "coolest band", but sex, drugs, and rock and roll don't always mesh as well as you'd hope. A year and a half later, lead singer Bugs (Royce Peterson) is a broke addict with nothing but fond memories of his time in the spotlight. As part of his recovery program, he meets former...

Movie Review: Universal Traveler and Dream of Life

Lucas McNelly — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 19:03:03 EDT

Meaney could rather easily become an interesting music video director.
Universal TravelerA poetic sci-fi head trip about the nature of time and space, Universal Traveler is at the same time utterly compelling and confusing, fascinating and frustrating. The story follows two scientists (Alicia Fuss and Abby Bader) trying to develop some technology having to do with nanobots. The test is stolen and the subject (Matt...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

gravida: The Uber-Indie Project Turns the Camera on Itself

Lucas McNelly — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 11:58:09 EDT

Starring: Rachel Shaw and Adam KukicCinematography by: David EgerWritten and directed by: Lucas McNelly[1]$2,000/25 min/Pittsburgh, PAWe come now to our biggest ever conflict of interest, Lucas McNelly's gravida (2007), a film made by the very person who does these reviews you've come to eagerly await. Naturally, I cannot review my own film. That would be weird and completely inappropriate, which is probably just as well because I'm at the point right now where I can't stand to look at it anymore. But does that mean gravida should be denied the rich experience that is the Uber-Indie Project? Of course not. So, I've asked ten of my fellow bloggers to review it for me and if any other reviews trickle in, I'll add those as well. They are under strict orders to not treat the film with kids gloves. Good, bad, indifferent. They're all here.And away we go..."The short film is a 'study in loneliness' from dedicated indie filmmaker Lucas McNelly, the creative mind behind the stark, French New Wave-inspired L'Attente (2006). Expressing an intangible concept like loneliness through the screen might seem problematic, but McNelly takes his best shot... The results are heartfelt and poetic. If McNelly is striving to craft an indie film masterwork gravida is a major step in the right direction." -- Thom Ryan, Film of the Year "Like the best films about intimacy, it draws you in close but leaves out enough that you can project your own hopes and fears onto the characters. This allows for conflicting sympathies and ensures that not everyone in the audience relates with the characters in the same way. Loneliness is a mysterious beast, hard to tame. Resisting the temptation to simplify, gravida invites us to ponder the complexity of the choices we make, the unreliability of human connections." -- Matt Riviera, Last Night with Riviera"Watching gravida, I gained a little more faith in ultra-low budget filmmaking; it's far from a perfect film, but it shows that you don't need a lot of money to make a smart, personal, interesting movie. To do this, Lucas McNelly's film utilizes the writer-director's ear for dialogue and some intriguing subtext in its look at a woman who's dealing with something very familiar: loneliness." -- Pacheco, Bohemian Cinema"gravida deals with a delicate subject matter, and could have lost the audience's interest and trust without a careful hand, but Lucas is certainly up to the task. Lucas' camera is never obtrusive, acting more as an invisible observer even when the story's emotions peak. Actors Rachel Shaw and Adam Kukic find their stride as the story builds and are able to sell the idea that their characters are facing troubling, adult decisions." -- Adam Ross, DVD Panache"gravida is an excellent short film. Beautifully photographed with a terrific lead performance by Rachel Shaw. Called 'A Study In Loneliness', the film effectively creates a very somber tone that it is able to sustain throughout. It almost works as a silent film, as the visuals are so strong." -- TalkingMoviezzz.com (plus an interview)"Filmmaking in general could use a little bit more of Lucas' talent because he uses the medium perfectly: revealing pieces about characters in matter-of-fact glimpses, letting the audience in on what the other characters don't know just yet... The camera work is also a perfect complement to the story. Long static shots and few edits help capture the stillness of Kristin's life. The camera rarely moves, instead it sits there often from a distance, letting us take in what we are seeing." -- Piper, LAZY EYE THEATRE"gravida fails to explore its subject matter in any great depth, but it undeniably represents a big step forward for its director... I merely feel that he could have penetrated deeper into the underlying causes and nature of his protagonist’s despair... That said, I definitely enjoyed the film (which, incidentally, holds up to repeat viewings), and it contains a number of moments that I like quite a bit." -- Andy Horbal, Mirror/Stage"Lucas McNelly has made a serenely confident short film, with which he shows a real facility as a director. He never tries to dazzle the audience with flashy technique or camera work, preferring his style to be dictated by his material. Despite his obvious budgetary constraints, he’s capable of some lovely low-key touches, like his use of colored lighting in the climactic revelation scene... gravida is small film in the best sense, one that’s exactly the right size for the story it tells. McNelly’s direction is subtle enough not to overwhelm the film, but strong enough to assure us that there’s a firm hand on the wheel." -- Paul Clark, Silly Hats Only"[McNelly] has produced a film of understated elegance and thoughtfulness that allows the viewer to glimpse, ever so briefly, a moment in time that will be burned for eternity in the heart and mind of its protagonist... He's the best kind of filmmaker there is, the kind driven by a love of the art, not a desire for a contract... gravida is not a perfect film but considering the budget and time limitations it is quite an achievement." -- Jonathan Lapper, Cinema Styles"[McNelly] and Shaw effortlessly illustrate the moment when she grasps the temporal fleetingness of this comfortable, familiar sort of pain and longing, which is about to become but a wistful memory. In the end, the movie slips through our fingers, like a memory itself, which is, as it turns out, its most impressionable, poetic quality. gravida marks the first sure steps in what one hopes will be a long and fruitful filmmaking career for its director." -- Dennis Cozzalio, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule (plus an interview)[1] In addition to being your humble host and narrator, Lucas is a kind and generous soul, according to such impartial sources as his mom.You can check out gravida at the official web page, where there are all sorts of wonderful things for you to explore and a DVD to buy. You can also visit Lucas McNelly's MySpace page, his IndieFilmPedia page, and his blog, 100 films.Got a film you'd like to submit for the Uber-Indie Project? Go here for details.

Lucas McNelly runs the film collective d press Productions. Both his films and his writings about film are enjoyed by audiences worldwide.

Movie Review: gods in disguise

Lucas McNelly — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 21:59:42 EDT

Filmed entirely in Athens, Greece, gods in disguise aims to explore the city's social conditions in the wake of what appears to be some sort of riot or siege by the proletariat. At least that's the impression we're given from the footage of a mural depicting the siege and the outside of a building where it apparently is still taking place. From there, we hear from a tour guide who tells us a little of the context of modern day Athens, coupled with footage of things in the city that look interesting.The end result is a documentary short that's unfocused and scattered, never spending enough time on any one issue to explore it with any amount of depth. Take, for example, the siege mentioned in the film's opening minutes. Here you have an event that's prime material for a documentary film, the type of happening that filmmakers dream about. But not only do we not see any footage of the event itself, we don't hear from anyone involved or see anything other than a glimpse of the fallout. The siege happened three days ago, but for all we know it could have taken place years ago. Clearly director Johanna Custer couldn't get access (otherwise, we would have seen that footage), but decided to try and bluff her way through a film anyway, opting instead for a tourist's view of Athens, showing us easy to access exteriors and a poorly executed interview with a tour guide that, at times, is almost impossible to hear.The same is true of the voice-over narration, which is so poorly recorded that the audio cuts out on every plosive. In theory, this should be the film's strong point, as voice-over narration allows for the multiple takes that filming in a foreign country doesn't. However, the voice-over ends up being the film's Achilles heel. Even if an audience member were willing to watch what comes off as Custer's vacation video, the audio is so bad they'll want to quit well before the end. Starring: documentary subjectsCinematography by: Johanna CusterWritten and directed by: Johanna Custer8 min/Pittsburgh, PAYou can check out Johanna's blog at the lone revue. Also, you can check out her webpage or her MySpace page.Got a film you'd like to submit for the uber-indie project? Go here for details.

Lucas McNelly runs the film collective d press Productions. Both his films and his writings about film are enjoyed by audiences worldwide.

Movie Review: The Short Films of Evan Richards

Lucas McNelly — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 16:50:02 EDT

Note: Since this is a collection of shorts, we will split the review into three parts.A Schizophrenics Love Story Mark (Hans Stefan Ducharme) hears voices. They tell him to touch things. They prevent him from showing up for dates with his girlfriend (Sarah Farnham) and, once, from attending her birthday party. As you might imagine, this is a problem for her. Our hero tries to explain, but as she sees it either her boyfriend is lying to her about skipping her birthday party or is crazy. Neither option appeals to her so she dumps him.A Schizophrenics Love Story, as a whole, is a largely effective short that tends to wear some influences on its sleeve. And while that's not always a bad thing, here it tends to be a bit much over the final third. It owes a debt to modern thrillers like The Usual Suspects (1995). I would stop short, however, of calling it derivative. You can see where the ideas are coming from, but the film thankfully resists becoming a carbon copy. Evan Richards' main strength is a visual style that, in conjunction with cinematographer A.J. Muffet, provides a consistent style throughout his films. The eye for framing and composition is innate, as most good ones are, and he understands, for the most part, the value of a camera move as a narrative device, and not just something to do because it looks cool. That's not to say he's a visual virtuoso, the second coming of P.T. Anderson. There's still moments where the camera could probably be in a better spot, where the camera move could be more effective, but for the most part Richards gets it, and who's to say those hiccups aren't just budgetary limitations or perhaps simply part of the learning curve? Lest I give too much praise for a film that clearly has some flaws, consider that Richards' writing here is a little choppy -- the dialogue tends to go directly from point to point without bothering to transition cleanly -- and I'd like to see some of the characters and scenes fleshed out a bit more, as the film occasionally leans toward cliche. But these are problems fixable by experience, and there's no reason to believe Richards won't grow as a writer (the script itself was written in 2004). The dialogue has a generally natural feel. It just needs another draft or two with the realization that just because dialogue reads well on the page doesn't always mean it will sound good on screen. If this were a lesser film, if the visuals weren't so well-composed, then the dialogue might come off better. It just isn't up to the film's visual standard. But I have little doubt that in time it will be.Starring: Hans Stefan Ducharme, Sarah Farnham, Joy Vanmeter, and Shawn McVicarCinematography by: A.J. MuffetWritten by: Evan Richards[1]Directed by: Evan Richards & Nathan Horn17 min/Bangor, ME SleepwalkerSleepwalker is, above all else, an exercise in style. It follows a sleepwalker (Joshua Whinnery) who, while crashed on his couch, gets up and wanders around downtown Bangor in the middle of the night. It's something we've all seen before, but it gives Richards and Muffet a chance to show off a beautiful side of a city that rarely gets noticed as such. Working with what must be almost entirely natural light, they compile a city fit for a dream sequence. And as someone who's been to Bangor on several occasions, let me just say that's no small feat.Starring: Joshua WhinneryCinematography by: A.J. MuffetDirected by: Evan Richards2 min/Bangor, MERichard Robertson's Rockport PotteryThere's something about footage of a someone making pottery that instantly grabs my attention. Whenever I'm channel surfing and there's something about pottery on PBS, I have to stop and watch. I'm just so fascinated by how this spinning lump of clay so quickly becomes something else, how with the smallest amount of pressure, the potter is able to form this nearly flawless thing. I can't fathom how delicate and precise that process must be, yet it always looks so damned easy.But even beyond that, this is a compelling documentary short. Through a voice-over, Richard Robertson explains how he got started in pottery and how that led to him studying for two years in Japan with Zen pottery masters. Richards combines this storyline (and the resulting tangents about finding an artistic calling) with the visual progression of the pottery's creation. The two narratives -- the audio and the visual -- work well together without feeling cluttered. Or maybe they do. I keep getting distracted by the spinning clay.Starring: Richard RobertsonDirected by: Evan Richards4 min/Rockport, MEEvan Richards and I went to the same private high school in midcoast Maine. He was in my brother's class and I was in his brother's class. The school has zero cinema courses and has fewer than 200 alumni, yet has produced two filmmakers. Figure the odds on that.You can watch these and other films by Evan Richards at his blog, The Complete Works of Evan Richards, which isn't as much a blog as it is a collection of all his films. You can also be his friend on MySpace and check him out on IndieFilmPedia and IMDb.Got a film you'd like to submit for the Uber-Indie Project? Go here for details.

Lucas McNelly runs the film collective d press Productions. Both his films and his writings about film are enjoyed by audiences worldwide.

Movie Reviews: The Short Films of David Lowery

Lucas McNelly — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 21:37:22 EDT

One thing I like to do as part of the Uber-Indie Project is use the space to throw a small amount of recognition to not only the films themselves, but the people who made them, the creative souls who toil in obscurity. Usually this does nothing more than show up when someone Googles themselves, but still, you never know. That's why you always see the list of credits along with the review. But with shorts, it's a little different, because the credits don't hold true from film to film. So what to do? Well, we're going to split the review into parts and see if that works. Unfortunately, I can't get as in-depth with these as I normally would. So it goes.The Outlaw Son (2006)Starring: Kyle Williams and MacheteCinematography by: Nicholas PrendergastWritten and directed by: David Lowery11 min/Austin, TexasA flight into Austin. A phone call. Coffee in a diner. A long night in a parked car. Silence. Long, uncomfortable silences. To call The Outlaw Son sparse and minimalist would be something of an understatement. This is a film where, at first glance, nothing happens until the final moments, where it might appear that Lowery is stringing us along until the finale, but I don't think that's the case. The way he films it, in short little clips buffered by a blank screen, almost like flipping through a photo album, it builds ever so slightly. The sort of thing you could easily miss. It's a film where the tiniest of gestures mean everything, and even thought the film at no point bothers to connect the dots between the ending and the rest of the film, here's my either/or theory: either Lowery is indulging in art for art's sake, the standard student film approach, or (and I hope it's this one) The Outlaw Son is a picture of a relationship in trouble, of some level of heartbreak, of the long sleepless nights working through your problems, and the ending is an act of solidarity, the type of "we're in this together now", team-building thing you see when sports teams all shave their heads for the playoffs. They've come to some sort of resolution and this is the point where they begin to move forward. And even if it isn't, even if I'm completely wrong, it's an effective film regardless.A Catalog of Anticipations IIStarring: Mary Margaret Lowery and Cammi HeathCinematography by: David LoweryWritten and directed by: David Lowery4 min/Austin, TexasA story of a little girl (played by Mary Margaret Lowery, narrated by Cammi Heath) who collects interesting things, only to discover a dead fairy in the field behind her house. She finds more and more, eventually theorizing that there must have been some sort of war, and then one day, one of them comes back to life. It sounds pretty out there, but it isn't, mostly because of the way Lowery chooses to tell this story. Eschewing traditional means, the film exists as a series of photographs, advancing one still image at a time, with the fairies realized by stop motion animation (using clay, I assume) that merges flawlessly with the rest of the film. The story is a short one, recounted in the matter-of-fact way that only a child can manage. To her, there doesn't seem to be anything all that remarkable about a fairy war in her yard, and so she tells the story in that manner. But it still contains a dry sadness that's in a lot of ways more poignant than a river of tears.A Catalog of Anticipations IStarring: David LoweryCinematography by: David LoweryWritten and directed by: David Lowery4 min/Austin, TexasLowery himself stars in A Catalog of Anticipations I, a take on the classic rebirth theme that's so prevalent in cinema. It's nicely done -- the shots are well-composed and the editing is crisp -- but this isn't something we haven't seen numerous times and it doesn't attempt to put a different twist on it. I don't know that there's much of a reason for this film to exist, other than in a larger work or as something of an exercise. That being said, there aren't many filmmakers who'd be willing to lay in the mud and put dirt in their mouth for a film. Hell, that's why you hire actors, so someone else can lay in the mud while you sit in a chair sipping coffee.Some Analog LinesStarring: David Lowery and Benjamin LowerySound design by: Brad MitchellCinematography by: David LoweryWritten and directed by: David Lowery6 min/Austin, TexasDisclosure: Some Analog Lines is one of my favorite short films and the main reason I asked David to participate in the Uber-Indie Project. David Lowery's Some Analog Lines is a thoughtful, nuanced look at the creative process, the nature of art, and the inherent nature of audience perception. Lowery narrates himself, sometimes doubling, tripling his voice into uneven layers, sometimes letting it run solo. He chronicles the genesis of his filmmaking career, starting with a ghost story he made as a child along with his younger brother Benjamin. Cut to today where they're both still making films, only now they're animated, David's a stop-motion animation and Benjamin's CGI. He ponders the differences between the two mediums, how the stop-motion gets more respect from a cineaste, how the CGI doesn't get the credit it deserves, how the fact that we can see the fingerprints in the clay somehow means something to us on a fundamental level, much like the homemade bookshelf or the Super-8 footage of a ghost story or the hand-written message in a book. Because it's easier for an audience to identify with something when we can see the humanity in it. The ability to see those fingerprints is important somehow.But does that diminish the CGI? Of course not.What's interesting to me about Some Analog Lines is how in talking about the fingerprints, Lowery so freely uses technology to make his point, almost as if he's showing the audience that the computer can too have a soul. He pulls the screen out of the computer and puts it in the air around him, manipulating the controls with his hands, must like he did with his stop-motion animation. He literally takes two clips and splices them together in the air, almost exactly as he does earlier in the projection booth. It's a fascinating marriage of two aspects of the medium that all too often seem to be at odds, fighting over who will survive. What Lowery's effectively saying is that we can take the best of both worlds, we can use the digital wizardry to enhance the tried and true analog methods, and vice versa. At which point we'll really have achieved something.Web Series - Episode 1Starring: Nathan Lowery and Anna LoweryCinematography by: David LoweryWritten and directed by: David Lowery4 min/Austin, TexasIt's difficult sometimes to get an accurate sense of a potential web series from just one four-minute episode, but I'll try. The story follows a brother and sister who are, for whatever reason, on their own in the wild (or, at least in the woods near a town with a train). The brother leaves the little girl hidden in the woods while he scouts for an empty house they can inhabit, at least temporarily. At first, you'd think maybe they're just wandering the country, but the brother seems to have set up some sort of trap out of twine (or perhaps he's just putting their food up in a tree where people can't reach it, I'm not sure), so perhaps there's something larger at play. I'm reminded of Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973) and Denis Johnson's novella Jesus' Son, and that's a pretty good start.Land of NodStarring: Michelle Proksell and David LoweryWritten and directed by: Michelle Proksell and David Lowery3 min/Austin, TexasFinally we have a music video for an uncredited song. What's most impressive here, besides the shot where the pills rise out of the bottle, is the fact that Proksell and Lowery both play multiple characters in the same scene that interact with each other seamlessly. Rather than the standard move of having them stay in separate parts of the screen, where you can easily edit the performances into one shot, these characters pass in front of each other without it really occurring to the audience that these characters are being played by the same actor. And, sure, this isn't such a big deal in a Hollywood blockbuster, but in an uber-indie? It just doesn't happen all that often without looking terrible. But beyond that, it's a nice looking video, with crisp photography and a vintage set that contrasts with the final scene in the overwhelming brightness of a hospital. It just shows the value of cinematography in setting the mood for a film, and it's this that Lowery does exceptionally well. That's the unifying theme in all these shorts, the ability of a filmmaker to sustain a mood, and not just one, but several different ones, unique to each project. The point being that Lowery's talent is undeniable, his grasp of the medium innate. He is, beyond question, a filmmaker worth watching. You can read David Lowery's insightful blog, where he not only chronicles his own filmmaking journey, but also makes available some of the films you've read about here. Also, you can check out the official webpage and his profile at IMDb and IndieFilmPedia.Got a film you'd like to submit for the Uber-Indie Project? Go here for details.

Lucas McNelly runs the film collective d press Productions. Both his films and his writings about film are enjoyed by audiences worldwide.

Movie Review: Confusions of an Unmarried Couple

Lucas McNelly — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 09:30:58 EDT

In all of cinema, there aren't many filmmakers who would complete a feature-length film and, for whatever reason, scrap the end product and start over. The desire to get films seen, to have the satisfaction of the work resulting in something, often causes us to overlook the fact that some things are better served as educational failures, tucked away on a shelf somewhere far from the public. Some films are better utilized chopped into guitar picks and not all publicity is good publicity. Few artists realize that sometimes you just have to destroy your work before it destroys you.Fewer still are able to fix it.Which brings us to Confusions of an Unmarried Couple, the latest brew from the Butler Brothers, two Canadian brothers whose previous efforts include the unseen-by-me Alive and Lubricated (2005) and Bums (2006).As you may have guessed, this is not their first attempt at Confusions of an Unmarried Couple. The first, shot two years prior on Hi-8, survives as a video diary inter-cut with new footage (shot over one weekend on a Panasonic AG-DVX 100 in 24p for the cost of tapes and, I assume, food). As a result, we see two characters at slightly different ages, as there's no question time has passed between the confessional and the here and now. It's a pretty good unintentional effect, and might even have been a great one with slightly better execution. The story is this: Dan and Lisa, the titular unmarried couple, find their relationship shattered when Dan discovers Lisa cheating with another woman. Several months later, Dan returns to their apartment to reclaim some of his things. The confessional footage takes place somewhere between the breakup and the rest of the film, which takes place over the course of a few hours. Only the confessional footage is older than that. The characters have aged too much for the timeline to hold up. It's a tiny thing, for sure, and few audience members will even notice, but it's worth mentioning, nonetheless.The premise is a nice one -- simple and direct with echoes of Bergman, and the script is either not quite polished enough or just a little too polished, I'm not quite sure which one. But the film hinges on Butler's performance. Imagine if you will, someone who's a cross between the Hanson brothers from Slap Shot (1977) and Mark Borchardt from American Movie (1999) with black-rimmed glasses, shoulder-length hair, a long goatee, and an orange mesh baseball hat flipped backwards. He speaks excitedly in a thick Canadian accent, rattling off profanities, and operates almost completely by his own single-minded ethos. As an actor, he's serviceable, but as a screen presence, as a character, he's a delight to watch. Consider his confessional of why cheating with someone so similar to who you're with is pointless, and his list of the types of women he might theoretically like to be with for a change of pace. Clearly this is something he's previously considered in great detail. Or, take the fact that the first item he attempts to take out of the apartment is none other than the mattress, even though Lisa is in the other room. Where the film suffers, where it lags, Butler keeps it going by the sheer force of his charisma. He's easily the best part of the film.As for the look of the film, it's awfully hard to fault a film shot this quickly, but in a perfect world, we'd lose some of the repetitive set-ups, as at times there's a feeling that visually we're looking at the same scene several times over, just with different words and in different rooms. A bit of variety from the camera could do wonders, but, in a production moving so fast, the need to get the story trumps elaborate visuals, so call it more of a wish than a critique.Really, though, the important thing is that Confusions of an Unmarried Couple, while far from perfect, is one hell of an enjoyable 73 minutes, and you can't really ask for much more than that.Starring: Brett Butler and Naomi M. JohnsonCinematography by: Jason ButlerWritten by: Brett ButlerDirected by: Brett Butler and Jason ButlerCAD 500/73 min/Toronto, CanadaYou can check out Confusions of an Unmarried Couple on IMDB, MySpace, or the official web page, where you can check out this and other Butler Brothers Brews.Got a film you'd like to submit for the Uber-Indie Project? Go here for details.

Lucas McNelly runs the film collective d press Productions. Both his films and his writings about film are enjoyed by audiences worldwide.

Movie Review: Date Number One

Lucas McNelly — Sun, 8 Jul 2007 15:04:17 EDT

I have this friend who married a karate instructor, which isn't by itself all that remarkable, except that it allows everyone else to refer to him as "the ninja" and give them Christmas presents of plastic throwing stars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures and the like. It's one of those running jokes that's more amusingly self-referential than actually funny to anyone outside a radius of ten people.To some extent, that's the feeling I get when I watch Sujewa Ekanayake's Date Number One -- that I'm watching a self-referential film that's much more entertaining to the creators than it is to an uninvolved third party. The film revolves around five first date vignettes, ranging from a ninja (punk musician John Stabb Schroeder) looking for love to the pursuit of a long-term threesome to a woman who uses air quotes to the point of overkill. All five contain the same lo-fi production values and are indistinguishable in terms of writing and stylistic techniques, which gives the film a certain cohesiveness that, depending on your point of view, may or may not work to the film's advantage. That is to say, you could certainly make an argument for each segment to have its own distinct look. Whether or not they should, I'm not sure.But if I had to choose, I'd say they should, since one of the chief problems with Date Number One comes from a production style that's so consistently frustrating. Virtually every shot in the film is a loosely-constructed composition, sloppy and with an abundance of head room, where the camera seems completely unsure of where it wants to be, almost as if it wandered in off the street and happened upon these first dates. It reminds me of things I shot before I knew how to shoot things. As a stylistic choice used for a specific purpose, this isn't so bad, but without some fundamental framing and composition, the camera looks disinterested, like it can't be bothered to get in place for a two shot that does something as simple as have both actors in the frame. So, what you get is a two shot where the ninja is in the frame, but his date is just out of it and the camera has to pan over slightly to catch her dialogue, at which point the ninja is out of the frame. Rarely does the camera seem to make any strong, artistically-driven choices that further the story, nor does it do something as simple as backing up a couple feet and having the confidence to stay with a master shot. There's a distinct feeling that the film might at any moment get fed up with these characters and move on to something else, but not in a way that invests the audience. Rather, it gives the impression that if the film doesn't really care, why should we?But maybe the camera doesn't care because the characters haven't given it anything to care about. With a few exceptions (Jennifer Blakemore comes to mind), the performances are wooden and stilted, the sort of thing you get in student films where the filmmaker recruits actors from the football team, and the script feels like a first draft of something that might eventually become substantial and inventive. The actors play it like they've just recently memorized the text and large chunks of the dialogue have the feel of something inspired either by a textbook (most of the dialogue on quantum physics) or a soapbox ("...the enemies of choice are not interested in dialogue and discovery of new and better perspectives. They want women to go back to 'their place' so their neo-conservative, God-fearing, moral majority crap..."). Clearly this is a cast comprised of friends and cohorts willing to give up their free time to get the film finished, and it's hard to fault a no-budget film for going in that direction, but when the performances range from adequate to embarrassing, there has to be a better approach. You could, for example, limit the size of your cast or make a film that isn't as heavily dependent on dialogue, thus minimizing the impact of the performances. But relying on a large cast of non-actors in a film with long stretches of conversation is a recipe for disaster. A good cast can hide a lot of awkward scripting, but an inexperienced cast with anything less than a great script is lethal.Sadly, the script for Date Number One is littered with cliche and exposition, constantly running afoul of the mandate to "show, don't tell", is mostly devoid of subtext, contains dialogue that reads better than it sounds, and you can see most of the jokes coming far in advance. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good screenplay. The title cards don't help, interrupting the film to tell us things we don't need to know, like that the bartender is the ninja's twin (Why do we need to know this? Why does it matter? Why are we seeing this actor again?), or telling us a proverb seconds before the actors talk about it. Such is the mark of a film either completely unsure of itself or struggling to incorporate audience feedback.Part of the problem with Date Number One has to do with the sequence of events. The first two segments combine for over half of the 115-minute running time and both segments are at least ten minutes longer than they need to be. So, by the time we get to the second half of the film (which contains segments three and five, the two strongest), our patience is worn thin, especially by the ninja segment, which fills the first thirty minutes with what is easily the film's weakest performance. Trimming that first hour to something more manageable would do wonders.But that alone wouldn't make it a good film, just a shorter one with fewer problems. What it needs is some harsh re-writes and a cast with a modicum of acting experience. There's no shortage of aspiring actors in the world more than willing to be in a film. Casting people just because they happen to be your friends and have free time is counter-productive and undermines the end product, especially when there are better alternatives willing and able to do the job. Similarly, it never hurts to get a director of photography who will do more than use the camera's auto focus and exposure. Such are the little things that a casual observer won't mind, but others will, and it severely limits the potential audience. There's value to doing everything yourself, but there's usually more value in seeing if there's people around who can just as easily do it better. This film would have been better served with the latter.Starring: John Stabb Schroeder, Julia Stemper, Jennifer Blakemore, Shervin Boloorian, Dele Williams, and Christine D. LeeCinematography by: Sujewa Ekanayake[1]Written and directed by: Sujewa Ekanayake$10,000/115 min/Washington, D.C.You can check out Date Number One on IMDb, MySpace, or the official web page. You can read the various writings of Sujewa Ekanayake at his blog.Got a film you'd like to submit for the Uber-Indie Project? Go here for details.

Lucas McNelly runs the film collective d press Productions. Both his films and his writings about film are enjoyed by audiences worldwide.

Movie Review: Mutual Appreciation

Lucas McNelly — Thu, 5 Jul 2007 07:34:42 EDT

Largely hailed as one of the no-budget triumphs of the 2006 film year, Andrew Bujalski's Mutual Appreciation (2006) found itself with a lofty score on Metacritic.com, a couple of appearances on critic's Top 10 lists, and the general consensus that Bujalski had fulfilled some of the promise of his debut, Funny Ha Ha (2002). Or, at very least he didn't squander it. This, of course, sets the bar of expectations pretty high for someone approaching Bujalski's work for the first time (as I am), so it shouldn't be all that surprising to hear me say the film doesn't exactly live up to the hype. But, to be fair, that's more the fault of the hype than the film itself.The story of Mutual Appreciation is something of a slice-of-life following Alan (Justin Rice), a musician recently moved from Boston to what I assume is New York City. His band has recently broken up over creative differences and it appears his relationship situation has followed a similar path. But he's newly energized -- sort of -- thanks to NYC and a couple of friends who share his artistic disposition.It's the sort of film where everyone has some level of artistic involvement, even if they don't see themselves as being at all artistic. Andrew Bujalski's Funny Ha Ha is generally credited with being one of the first entries in the mumblecore movement, which Bujalski refers to in an indieWIRE interview as "a bunch of performance-based films by young quasi-idealists." What this basically means is that the films are comfortable with raw dialogue and uncomfortable silences, the sort of thing that, you know, happens a lot in real life. The films feel improvised, when they are usually scripted (think of The Office as a network TV approved example of what the dialogue is like). In the case of Mutual Appreciation this results in a film that swings freely between being poignant, beautiful, funny, and... boring. Yes, boring.There's a lot to like in Mutual Appreciation, a lot of fantastic moments, but there's also a lot of time spent on absolutely nothing, with little to no substance percolating below the surface. A lot of time where I found myself wondering how I could get my hair to look like Justin Rice's. It's never good when a film lets my mind wander that much. Part of the problem was that at no time did I really find myself connecting with these characters on anything other than a surface level. The film never really lets us get close enough to these people to give us a reason to empathize with them. And this shouldn't have been hard. I know these people. Hell, I am these people. But the best feeling I could muster was "gee, it sure seems like these are people I should like."It took me awhile to figure it out, how bored and disinterested I found myself for long stretches. Then it hit me: the parts of the film that are least interesting almost universally involve the characters when they are pretty far past sobriety. What the film fails to realize is that two people "mumblecore-ing" is great -- until they get drunk. One of the universal rules of alcohol is that drunk people are only interesting to other drunk people, unless they're doing wild and crazy stuff like dancing on tables. The designated driver is almost always the one annoyed by how inane his friends are being, how boring their conversations are. And that's the chief problem with Mutual Appreciation -- at times it's a lot like being the designated driver. You're there because you feel compelled to be there, and more often than not you'll find yourself checking your watch once or twice before the night is over.That doesn't mean there isn't a lot of value in the experience, though.Starring: Justin Rice, Rachel Clift, Andrew Bujalski, Seung-Min Lee, and Bill MorrisonCinematography by: Matthias GrunskyWritten and directed by: Andrew BujalskiR/109 min/Boston, MAThere's all sorts of ways you can check out Mutual Appreciation, whether through Amazon.com or Netflix or any number of retailers. Or, you could just go to the official webpage where you can do all sorts of stuff, and even buy a Limited Edition poster.Got a film you'd like to submit for the Uber-Indie Project? Visit the website for details.

Lucas McNelly runs the film collective d press Productions. Both his films and his writings about film are enjoyed by audiences worldwide.