Rob Parrish’s approach to making shorts is by taking clips from the Internet Archive, and recording his own audio over it to change the story completely. This particular short was altered from an education film about hygiene, to simply a man monologuing about his lifelong abhorrence for his sister’s smile.
“Judy’s Smile” recently won a “Rosebud Award” at the Rosebud Film Festival. Parrish releases one new video a week at his site Next to Heaven.
This review first appeared in a slightly different form at Film Forager. Alex Kittle’s complete coverage of the Toronto After Dark festival can be found here.
DIRECTED BY: Astron-6
FEATURING: Adam Brooks, Conor Sweeney, Matthew Kennedy, Mackenzie Murdock, Amy Groening, Lloyd Kaufman
PLOT: A crazed cannibalistic killer goes after fathers in his rape/murder spree. One-eyed assassin/maple syrup maker Ahab, young priest Father John Sullivan, paranoid streetwalker Twink, and mystery-solving stripper Chelsea all seek revenge, teaming up for a strange and scattered mission.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: An eye-patched vigilante, a topless stripper with a chainsaw, a nearsighted cannibal rapist, incest, demonic possession, trips to both heaven and hell, a non sequitur commercial for low-budget sci-fi “Star Raiders,” hallucinogenic berries: Father’s Day has a lot of weirdness to recommend it. It starts off as a fairly standard (and insanely gory) grindhouse throwback, but evolves into a bizarre and fantastic adventure that just might be weird enough for the List.
COMMENTS: Known for their impressive output of horror and comedy shorts, Winnipeg-based collective Astron-6 combines DIY filmmaking with a sick sense of humor and unadulterated love for 80’s straight-to-video schlock. After making a trailer for the fake exploitation flick “Father’s Day,” Troma offered the group $10,000 to produce a full-length feature of the concept. At the start it seems like a standard, and completely gruesome, grindhouse throwback with grisly close-ups of penis mutilation and sickening rape/murders set alongside over-the-top character archetypes and an enthusiastic score. As Ahab (Adam Brooks), Father John (Matthew Kennedy), and Twink (Conor Sweeney) team up in the wake of several close-to-home father murders, it begins to take a turn for the ludicrous and eventually plunges into all-out wacky fantasy, seeming to forget its initial narrative and stylistic leanings—and becoming better for it.
With real pig intestines, buckets of fake blood, and a well-laid green screen, Father’s Day maintains a dark, grungy aesthetic that works well with its 70’s appropriations while exuding DIY innovation that sets it apart from some of its peers. Steven Kostanski’s stop-motion hell creations and an extended trip around the world for Father John are among the many segments that vary in style and tone. There’s even a goofy commercial for a fake Star Wars rip-off thrown in about two-thirds of the way through (the feature itself is introduced as a “midnight movie” tv program). Astron-6 seems to have hundreds of ideas and little interest in streamlining, resulting in a surprisingly dense 99 minutes as myriad references, off-kilter jokes, side-trips, and subplots arise and descend. Luckily, most of them work, but the ones that don’t result in some unevenness, especially in the overall tone. The noticeable shift towards the middle is somewhat jarring, but not a dealbreaker.
Father’s Day may be sick and twisted in many ways, but it manages to be most of all fun. The Astron-6 gang looks like they’re having a blast just being silly together as the plot becomes more and more ridiculous. The whole cast is great, injecting equal amounts of parody and imagination into their roles, and I especially enjoyed the main three male leads, who have excellent comedic chemistry. The film’s biggest flaw is its tonal inconsistencies, but for many viewers the inclusion of so many ideas and exploitation references will likely be appreciated. Astron-6 decided to really go all-out for this film, and by holding nothing back they will impress many and alienate those who wouldn’t get it anyway. And I have a feeling they’re fine with that.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
“Snowballs” is evidently the more bizarre of Harmony Korine’s two shorts sponsored by the designer brand Proenza Schouler. (The previous Korine short in the series, “Act da Fool,” is also available on YouTube.) “Snowballs” features two characters in Native American inspired clothing, and, not surprisingly, white trash.
CONTENT WARNING: This short contains some profanity.
DIRECTED BY: Bruce Robinson
FEATURING: Johnny Depp, Aaron Eckhart, Amber Heard, Michael Rispoli, Giovanni Ribisi
PLOT: An alcoholic journalist goes to Puerto Rico where he encounters unscrupulous capitalists and bottomless mini-bars.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: The confluence of three offbeat talents—-seldom seen cult auteur Bruce Robinson (How to Get Ahead in Advertising) directing quirk king Johnny Depp in an adaptation of a semi-autobiographical novel by gonzo godfather Hunter S. Thompson—produces a movie that’s far more conventional than you might have guessed.
COMMENTS: For better or worse, it’s impossible to avoid comparing Rum Diary (unfavorably) with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The film’s producers can’t complain the comparison is unfair, because they cut a trailer that’s obviously aimed at hooking Loathing fans: it’s filled with boozy shenanigans, a bowling ball knocking down ten pin rum bottles, and Johnny Depp promising, in his best deadpan Hunter S. Thompson drawl, “all of this might sound like some crazed hallucination…” Diary even contains a mild LSD trip sequence that sees Michael Rispoli’s tongue extend six feet in the air “like an accusatory giblet”; of course, this sixty seconds of psychedelics occupies a prime place in the marketing scheme. There’s also a scene with a voodoo priestess who coughs up frogs—and that’s about it on the weirdness front. The rest of the movie is a series of drunken war stories in which part-time journalist, full-time imbiber and would-be novelist Paul Kemp (Thompson’s alter-ego, played by Depp as a less manic and assured Raoul Duke) worries about “finding his voice” and flirts with joining up with the “Bastards.” Why the Bastards (represented by real-estate developer Aaron Eckhart) are so keen to recruit horoscope writer Kemp into their venal cabal isn’t clear; corrupting idealists is what makes them Bastards, I guess. Also not clear is what’s so darn evil about their plan to build a hotel that would supply thousands of jobs for the local populace on land previously only used for the noble purpose of naval test bombing. Their marketing plan, which would involve Kemp slipping some favorable words into his columns, is unethical, sure, but hardly a screaming headline, page one outrage. But the scheme’s investors smoke cigars and complain about Negros and Communists, so they are pretty clearly villainous. Despite their wickedness, though, the only moral objections Kemp actually raises have to do with the way Eckhart treats his flighty, arm-candy lover (Amber Heard, who looks fabulous in a bikini but disappears from the movie like a neglected girlfriend). Joining Depp, Eckhart and Heard are Rispoli and Giovanni Ribisi as a couple of colorful drinking buddies (Rispoli plays his photographer role like a 1940s New York City cabbie, while Nazi-obsessed basket case Ribisi affects an annoying whine). The trio’s wandering adventures build to a remarkable anticlimax. None of the plot lines dangled off this tropical pier snag a catch, but Kemp/Thompson does eventually find his literary voice—too bad for us it only happens after he’s finished narrating this tale. It’s pleasant to see Depp reprise his role as Thompson, and there are memorable lines of dialogue and set pieces (all of which find their way into the trailer). But the movie sips at drunken insanity rather than gulping it down; it never goes four-sheets-to-the-wind crazy. The tone of muted madness here doesn’t do justice to Thompson’s gonzo spirit. Call it “Mild Concern and Dislike in San Juan.”
“The Rum Diary” was written by Thompson some time in the late 1950s or early 1960s but was rejected by several publishers. Johnny Depp reportedly discovered the manuscript in Thompson’s basement while he was researching the writer’s mannerisms in preparation for his role in Fear and Loathing. Depp encouraged Thompson to revise the lost novel; it was published in 1998. The actor also served as executive producer for this adaptation.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
DIRECTED BY: Tsui Hark
FEATURING: Andy Lau, Carina Lau, Bingbing Li, Chao Deng
PLOT: When court officials begin spontaneously bursting into flames as her coronation
approaches, Empress Wu suspects a conspiracy and hires the one man she believes can uncover it: Detective Dee, whom she imprisoned years ago for treason.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Although there are some strange fantasy elements (an talking deer courtier called “the Chaplain”) existing alongside historical material (Empress Wu and Dee himself are real figures), when you get right down to it, Detective Dee is probably only as weird to Western eyes as Indiana Jones was to Asian eyes.
COMMENTS: Detective Dee does just about everything above average, and it does one thing really well: art direction. From the skyscraper-sized Buddha being built for the Empress’ coronation to the flooded underground city where lowlifes go to hide when the heat is on to the everyday pageantry of the Chinese imperial court, Dee is a fantastic looking film, and it’s always a pleasure to watch the film’s ass-kicking characters cavort across these carefully rendered backdrops. The fight sequences (orchestrated by cult choreographer Sammo Hung) are typically spectacular—the scene where Dee kicks a leaping stag in the head as he flies by is amazing—but they sometimes lack spontaneity and soul, feeling over-studied and over-crafted. (I admit to a prejudice here: I miss the balletic martial artistry of the old Shaw Brothers films that relied solely on the performers’ athleticism. But I accept that wire fu is here to stay). The abundant CGI effects are of acceptable quality, a few years and a few million dollars behind contemporary Hollywood standards; fortunately, they are mainly used for artistic rather than realistic effect. The only place where Dee drops the ball a bit is in the plot. Continuity and clarity are not qualities one expects to see highlighted in Hong Kong fantasies, but considering that this one is explicitly couched as a “mystery,” the audience might have expected a little more misdirection and revelation. Instead, clues pop up arbitrarily, sending our detective to yet another exotic locale where enemy agents await him in ambush. And with the introduction of various rebel factions and their separate schemes that may or may not be related to the main mystery, the plot gets confusing, without being particularly intricate. Still, those are minor objections, easily solved by going into the movie with the expectation you’re going to be watching a detective who solves riddles with blows from his feet and his magic mace, rather than his mind. Among its weirder features, Dee sports a talking deer with symbols scrawled on his head, robed robots, a kung-fu battle on top of two teams of thundering horses, and a character named “Donkey Wang” who disguises himself using acupuncture. Dee isn’t a game-changing epic, but it is a two-hour mix of history, fantasy, pageantry, mystery, novelty, intrigue, spectacle and thrills—and that’s a lot for your entertainment dollar.
University of Texas-educated director Tsui Hark is one of the most important figures from the Hong Kong New Wave, basically founding the modern fantasy wuxia genre with his groundbreaking Wu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain (1983). He has also been enormously important as a producer, financing and guiding odd fantastical projects like the unforgettable A Chinese Ghost Story (1987). Before Detective Dee, Tsui had helmed a number of financial and artistically disappointing features since the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong in 1997. This film has been widely hailed as a return to form by the beloved fantasy icon, and a prequel is already in the works.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: