“Everything we know, is everything it is not. And we become foreigners to our own familiarity.”
Chelsea Whitbread’s “Alienation” is heavily influenced by the style and techniques of surrealist Man Ray. Instead of watching, you will spend the next two minutes being watched, and it’s not a pleasant experience.
David Collins may not have a lot of material posted on video-sharing websites like YouTube and Vimeo, but the few shorts and trailers he does have out have certainly attracted our attention. Collins has the creativity to be a part of something big. For now, however, it appears that Dave will have to continue maxing out his credit cards for each humble release.
Bulb – Short Film from David Collins on Vimeo.
For more on David’s past, present, and upcoming work visit his personal site www.ssplayground.com
DIRECTED BY: Danny Perez
FEATURING: The music of Animal Collective and a bunch of unknown actors.
PLOT: Zilch. ODDSAC is completely without narrative, or much coherence. The only line of
dialogue is, “Yeah, he hates chocolate. He hates everything but green beans,” spoken by a young girl with a southern drawl. Oh, and there is a vampire.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: While it is certainly one of the weirdest pieces of film-making I’ve encountered in awhile, it is not a movie. It is an extended performance art video piece for a new, unreleased Animal Collective album. Although it has some very cool visuals and the weirdness never lets up during the 52 minute running time, I say the art form of music videos should be separate from a list of the best 366 weird movies of all time.
COMMENTS: If you are familiar with the oddball musical stylings of Animal Collective, you would expect a visual album from these guys to be an “out-there” extravaganza. Well… it is. The film is a barrage of acid-fueled, kaleidoscopic visuals that may melt your retinas if you stare too long. Like the band’s music, ODDSAC does not follow conventional structure in its visual montages. At times, it is reminiscent of the experimental art films painstakingly crafted by Stan Brakhage in the early 1960’s. Whereas Brakhage was a pioneer in the experimental film field, Danny Perez is just really good at quick-cut editing and manipulating his visuals into a trippy panorama. At an open-discussion forum after the screening of the film in Los Angeles, Perez and the Collective gang mentioned the influence of John Carpenter’s Halloween. Say what?!? There are elements of horror interspersed with the craziness, but I don’t see any connection to a straight-forward slasher film.
The film is divided into 13 chapters. Each segment features a different song, so essentially it is 13 music videos. The first segment sets a tone of darkness and dread with the creepy song “Mr. Fingers,” which writhes its way around images of a towel-headed man with a red-painted face. Ropes of fire rhythmically swing around him, brightly lighting the pitch black sky. Elsewhere, a young woman claws into a wall, only to be immersed in a stream of oil that Continue reading CAPSULE: ODDSAC (2010)
DIRECTED BY: Mike Schneider
FEATURING: Karl Hardman, Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea
PLOT: An animated recreation of the classic zombie film, Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated features a number of talented animators filtering Romero’s original vision through their own artistic viewpoints, expressing the universal messages therein in their own mediums.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: While aesthetically intriguing and at times very eerie, there never was much that jumped out as being incredibly weird about Romero’s zombie movie. Although it was the first of its kind in what is now a celebrated genre, Night of the Living Dead was always more of a message film than a meditation on the dead rising from their graves. This animated version does indeed add some visual quirks, but there is no real strangeness here.
COMMENTS: For fans of the zombie film, it doesn’t get much more better than the simple-yet-satisfying claustrophobia of the grandpappy of them all, Night of the Living Dead. More than a horror flick, this grainy 1968 indie is a meaningful, smart work of art that pushes the boundaries of what the genre is capable of and what it can stand for. So above any horror I can think of, this one definitely deserves an animated homage that explores it from a stylistic point of view. And Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated doesn’t disappoint in that department.
Using a cadre of young, experimental artists, this exercise explores the original movie nearly shot-for-shot with different styles of animation. The styles are incredibly varied: parts are simply still images, sometimes it’s a comic book-style series of cels, while at other times it takes on an anime quality. One artist takes the real footage from the film and animates over it to generate an eerie reality that blurs the line between realism and otherworldliness. The different mediums at work boggle the mind; whether it’s claymation, pencil sketches, Flash cartoons, or sock puppets, this project has something to evoke just about anyone’s personal aesthetic. It’s amazing what the creators do here to make you think of the movie in a whole new way. The different animators break from the stark reality of the original to steep the entire world in a haunting, eerie mood that was not there before. My favorite style, personally, is when they use the real life baby dolls to simulate some of the action scenes! It doesn’t fit well with the other styles to create that perfect sense of dread and the unknown, but it’s just too funny to leave out!
Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated is definitely a success in my book. The unsettling black-and-white animation combined with the oddly displaced archive voices of the original actors creates a mesmerizing experimental film that goes beyond the norm and pulls off something that few people have. The various styles of animation work fluidly together to pay homage as well as to press the boundaries of the original zombie survival template. My only complaint would be that the ending is the most clinical part of the film, when I thought it should be a bit more erratic in style. In those desperate moments before daybreak, Reanimated doesn’t hit any crescendo notes that the original did not already sound, making the last few scenes almost redundant if you’ve already seen NOTLD. That caveat, compounded with this film’s lack of utter weirdness, knocks Reanimated out of contention for a spot on the List, although it must be considered one of the more impressive movies released in2010.
If you’re a fan of the original, or just a lover of experimental animation, Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated has something for you. It’s a very strong feature that builds upon Romero’s work with a love and a care that is both heartfelt and reverent. Despite its lack of general weirdness, it is still one of the better films in a year devoid of cinematic life, and a must-have for any fans of the zombie sub-genre.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
Hedonistic, claustrophobic, original, and downright weird; “Derealiser La Faille” is a nightmare toying with our senses and psyche. Trust me, this one will remain in your subconscious for the remainder of your day.
Déréaliser la faille from Jeremy Zèle on Vimeo.