An elderly cosmonaut rises each day as if he’s still living in a space shuttle while his loved ones debate on relocating him to a nursing home.
Tag Archives: Animation
13*. PROMETHEUS’ GARDEN (1988)
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“I guess danger and weirdness have always been the main features in most of my stories.”–Bruce Bickford
DIRECTED BY: Bruce Bickford
FEATURING: Bruce Bickford’s handmade clay models
PLOT: A man discovers a garden and figures oozing out of a hole, who he fashions into miniature people who then begin multiplying on their own. The man is then sucked into a planet which he has created, and chased first by vikings, then centurions. There is no coherent start-to-end plot, but some segments of the film enact mini-stories.
BACKGROUND:
- Animator Brice Bickford gained modest underground fame when his animations graced Frank Zappa‘s concert film Baby Snakes (1979) and The Dub Room Special (1982). Prometheus’ Garden is the only film Bickford made over which he had complete control, however.
- Prometheus’ Garden was completed in 1988, but rarely seen until a 2008 DVD release.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: We’ll go with the gang of newly-minted werewolves enjoying slices of pizza; an octopus lies on the pie along with the other toppings. Don’t like that pick? Skip to any random point in the movie and you’ll see something just as weird.
TWO WEIRD THINGS: Werewolf paint; monster pizza
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Human heads grow in a field. Imps and demons spontaneously generate from the soil. Clay figures disembowel each other. Nude Viking women slather themselves with Vaseline in the sauna. Every element of the movie is in constant motion for thirty minutes. Weird hardly even begins to cover it.
Original trailer for Prometheus’ Garden
COMMENTS: Flesh-colored flowers grow out of a green field, turning into big-headed monsters as cotton ball smoke wafts across the Continue reading 13*. PROMETHEUS’ GARDEN (1988)
SATURDAY SHORT: MAN MEETS WOMAN (2014)
When an older, aloof woman captures the interest of a man, he is willing to go to horrifying lengths to keep her close.
Content Warning: This short contains nudity.
CAPSULE: LAVA (2019)
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DIRECTED BY: Ayar Blasco
FEATURING: Voices of Sofía Gala Castiglione; Janeane Garofalo (English dub)
PLOT: The world is invaded by mysterious beings whose arsenal includes broadcast hypnotism and giant cats; a tattoo artist and her friends try to survive.
COMMENTS: There’s a threat to mankind, and it goes well beyond the mysterious bus-sized cats, the paralysis-inducing video broadcasts, and the ever-increasing horde of giant Wicked Witches patrolling the streets. Yessir, the real threat is the rise of the “Lachrymal Culture”.
For a movie as silly as Lava, the nigh-archaic term “lachrymose” crops up a lot. However, it’s what Débora and her friends must fight against. We are told that the tattoo artists are the chosen ones, and they will be saved; we are told that “fanzines” are the only way to combat the menace; we are told that the cats can be thwarted with a K4 automatic rifle—or, as with regularly-sized cats, spritzed water will do. We are told a lot of things as this gang of Argentine misfits wanders around. Further topics of discussion include: mythology (particularly Norse), fluid identity, and layered conspiracies.
With something this breezy and laid-back (and adequately amusing), it’s tough to be too critical. It’s also tough to find much to write about when the “Plot” description above hits just about all the major points. Between that and the screen-capture provided, you’ll probably know if Lava is right for you. The movie’s barely over an hour long, and it feels like a web-toon series pasted together (the animation style strongly suggests it, with cuts to black every five-to-eight minutes reinforcing the sentiment). I haven’t watched it in the original (Argentine) Spanish, but the dub worked well enough—perhaps even adding some amusing incongruency, what with Garofalo and others performing in their American tones while referring to Spanish-language signs and newspapers.
On a personal note, as an advocate of interpersonal communication in person, I approved of Lava‘s general “anti-smartphone” attitude. And, naturally, the giant cats were darn cute.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
SATURDAY SHORT: CUT IT OUT (2021)
Tara, an EOD technician, is sent to disarm an “extreme threat.”
Content Warning: This short contains artistic nudity.