A man lives an isolated life in a concrete room. Each workday he walks through abandoned infrastructure to his job where he is fed some milky substance through a tube. This is his life, until he crosses paths with a coworker of the opposite sex.
Tag Archives: 2014
SATURDAY SHORT: PAMON (2014)
Human-like creatures in a florescent world use their shape-shifting hair to hunt, and grope each other’s chest hair to communicate. It has a cuteness to it, but belongs here more than it does in a playlist of kitten videos.
CAPSULE: BUZZARD (2014)
DIRECTED BY: Joel Potrykus
FEATURING: Joshua Burge, Joel Potrykus
PLOT: After his latest con goes bad, a slacker and small-time scam artist goes on the run, taking along his homemade Freddy Kruger glove.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s not that weird, although it is an outside-the-box indie with a unique slacking-class take on American society.
COMMENTS: “You’re just trying to cheat the system?” asks an exasperated bank clerk when Marty Jackitansky takes advantage of a loophole to get a bonus for opening a new checking account. “Absolutely,” he responds. “For fifty dollars?,” the clerk continues, incredulously. “Absolutely!” replies Buzzard, with pride. (Although Marty is never explicitly referred to by that avian moniker in the film, the name is perfect for this scavenger). Marty’s completely clueless, utterly unmerited self-esteem is hilarious, and tragic; it seems the smaller the stakes of the scam, the more jazzed he gets. You might conclude Marty’s self-worth is wrapped up in his ability to get by on his wits, but isn’t really self-conscious enough for such vanities. It’s just that Buzzard has little interest in anything beyond video games, junk food, splatter flicks, metal, and the minor adrenaline rush he gets from seeing a two-figure check made out in his name. Lying simply comes as second nature to him. Gaunt and rumpled, with a slouchy swagger, Joshua Burge plays the character as a young man perfectly confident in his own indifference to his social status. Director Potrykus plays cubicle-mate Derek, the Beavis to Burge’s Butthead. He’s a corporate drone whose equally blind to his own beta-male status; he has the temerity to call his basement apartment “the Party Zone” and has such meager social prospects that he longs for approval from big brother figure Buzzard.
The style might be described as “minimalist punk,” with long takes (the already-notorious five-minute spaghetti eating scene) punctuated by bursts of senseless vandalism scored to death metal riffs. The DIY aesthetic is authentic, and the film is as unpretentious and brash as Buzzard himself. Buzzard mixes a bemused, clear-eyed disdain for its title character with a gentle touch of affection for his adolescent antics. Marty scorns the system, but he doesn’t actually oppose it; he just is disinterested in playing the game, and so tries to skate by under the authorities’ radar. Buzzard understands the psychology and sociology of pathologically shortcut-obsessed losers; it also sympathizes with his plight, without endorsing his behavior. Watching Buzzard, we feel some measure of compassion for this blatant con dude, even while he’s staring us in the face with disdain and thinking up ways to rip us off. That’s some scam to pull.
This is the third in an unofficial “animal” trilogy by Potrykus, all starring Burge. The first was the werewolf (!) short “Coyote,” followed by the 2012 feature Ape (about a pyromaniac comic). Buzzard is the best-received and distributed of the three. Both Potrykus and Burge are talents to keep an eye on.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
CAPSULE: LOST SOUL – THE DOOMED JOURNEY OF RICHARD STANLEY’S ‘THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU’ (2014)
DIRECTOR: David Gregory
FEATURING: Richard Stanley, Fairuza Balk, Edward R. Pressman, Robert Shaye, Tim Zimmermann, Rob Morrow, Marco Hofschneider, Graham Humphreys
PLOT: A documentary on the troubled production of 1996’s flop The Island of Dr. Moreau.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: While there are more than a few weird stories featured in the film, a documentary about a film that ultimately did not get made is in itself not that weird anymore—there’s practically an entire genre now.
COMMENTS: The 90’s adaptation of H. G. Welles’ The Island of Dr. Moreau has the reputation of being among one of ‘the worst films ever made’. That is an overstatement; the film’s actually a pretty decent time-waster, on its own terms. However, it is not among the greatest films ever made, and certainly not among John Frankenheimer‘s best work (though I’d watch it over Reindeer Games anytime). At times, Moreau is an entertaining, muddled batshit mess, though it wasn’t intended to be.
It was meant to be the major studio debut of Richard Stanley, who, after making Hardware and Dust Devil (two films that I believe should be List Candidates), was poised to make the ultimate version of Moreau. Instead, it became a nightmare of production which ended up with Stanley tossed off of the film and replaced with veteran director Frankenheimer—yet the nightmare continued.
For years, stories have bounced around what actually happened. Lost Soul attempts to finally set the record straight about Moreau, to give a glimpse at what Stanley originally envisioned and to present what actually happened, as well as can be established from all of the guilty parties who consented to be interviewed. It’s a fascinating “unmaking-of” documentary that’s also illuminates the age-old conflict of Art vs. Business.
While it is a good accounting of the production, it isn’t by any means the whole story: noticeably absent from the doc is any input from David Thewlis, Ron Perlman or Val Kilmer, and Stanley doesn’t quite completely come clean about his state of mind at the time… but what’s there is suitably fascinating and quite damning. Actor Rob Morrow’s account of his experience, which I believe is the first time that he’s spoken at length about the film in any setting, is one highlight.
Filmmaking has largely become demystified over the past 30 years, but after watching Lost Soul, you will wonder how anything even halfway decent ever makes it out of the Studio Process.
DISC INFO: Severin Films has handled the recent releases of Stanley’s films to home video in grand fashion (great transfers with excellent extras), so of course there’s no exception with Lost Soul. For the hardcore Stanley/H.G. Wells/Moreau fan, the 3-disc ‘House of Pain’ Edition is the one to go for. The documentary is on Blu-ray disc, along with outtakes from several of the interviews (for those who couldn’t get enough of the already dishy stuff used, check out what’s dished in what they DIDN’T use…); a gallery of concept art by artist Graham Humphries with commentary with Stanley; an audio interview with Barbara Steele, who was intended to have a cameo in the film; an archival interview with John Frankenheimer; plus several smaller featurettes. The second disc— “The Wells Files”— is a DVD with the featurette “H.G. Wells On Film” with scholar Sylvia Hardy and another with Stanley talking about Wells’ work, and specifically on the themes in “Moreau” that attracted him. The most notable feature is a recently discovered German silent film, Insel Der Verschollenen (Island of the Lost) which appears to be the earliest film adaptation of Welles’ story (and which maintains the tradition of deviating wildly from its source material). There’s also an Easter Egg hidden on this disc… The third disc is a bonus CD-ROM, an audiobook recording of Wells’ novel “The Island of Dr. Moreau” read by Richard Stanley. If that’s too much immersion, then just go for either the 1 disc Blu-ray or DVD edition (buy
The Island of Dr. Moreau script – Screenplay by Richard Stanley, Michael Herr and Walon Green
SATURDAY SHORT: ELI (2014)
An Israeli soldier is harassed by a Palestinian boy in a rabbit suit. As the soldier chases after the boy, he leaves reality behind him.