"2012" Trailer Actually Kinda Awesome

Let's face it: Roland Emmerich hasn't really had a hit film in a while. He experienced mainstream success with Stargate and Independence Day, hit a snag with the box-office bomb (but still fun to watch) Godzilla, rebounded with The Patriot, then returned to disaster movies with The Day After Tomorrow. (He also did 10,000 B.C., but we don't really need to mention that, do we?) Anyway, his new one 2012 looks a bit too much like The Day After The Day After Tomorrow, but I'm willing to give it a shot, mainly because of its badass teaser trailer:



I'm sure you're wondering, "Devin, what makes this trailer so badass? Freaked-out monk gets devoured by giant tidal wave, that's it. Not sure what all the fuss is about." Really? Well, let me point you over to this:



So, really, I could change the title of this post to just read "Song from 'Shining' Trailer Kinda Awesome," but figured including the "2012" trailer would make it more topical.

Favorite Thing of the Day

The End
Originally uploaded by Dill Pixels

As seen on Yewknee. A Flickr set comprised entirely of ending title cards from a wide variety of sources. See if you can guess which TV show/movie each one belongs to.

Cucalorus Watch '08: The Aftermath

Well, Cucalorus 14 is said and done. Thanks to the recent political sea change, the mood at this year's festival was decidedly chipper and optimistic. As a result, politically charged documentaries like Crawford and Secrecy were skipped in favor of more lighthearted fare, such as Good Dick, a comedy about a young video store employee who becomes obsessed with the girl who stops by and rents nothing but porn, and We Are Wizards, a documentary delving into the wide span of Harry Potter fandom.



The eccentric characters of Chicago were represented in a pair of documentaries, one of whom was present for this year's festivities. Vincent: A Life in Color, directed with an experienced eye by first-time filmmaker Jennifer Burns, follows Vincent P. Falk, who takes breaks during his programming job to dress up in flamboyant suits and dance on the bridges of the Windy City for the benefit of passing tour boats. Burns premiered the film at Cucalorus, and brought Vincent (as well as her editor, Christine Gilliland) with her. Vincent proved to be a fascinating figure, both on film and at the festival. He and Burns frequented many of the films my friends and I did, including Wesley Willis's Joyrides, a doc about a similarly eccentric Chicago figure, albeit with a somewhat more tragic story. Willis achieved modest success for his mathematically-precise artwork, but it was his disjointed and offbeat music (which has appeared in Super Size Me and Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law) that made him a star of the underground rock scene. Directors Chris Bagley and Kim Shively spent equal time focusing on Willis's art and his music, as well as the strange circumstances that turned this sometimes-homeless, borderline-schizophrenic into a household name, until his death in 2003 due to leukemia.

4 Films (and 5 Shorts) You Should Probably See At Cucalorus 14

The 14th annual Cucalorus Film Festival has arrived and, as with the presidential election, change is in the air. Unlike last year, which focused more on big studio releases with an indie slant (Rocket Science from HBO Films, Control from The Weinstein Company), this year promises more truly independent productions with a larger amount of attending filmmakers to discuss their work. Some of the bigger names in attendance are Jason Ritter, the star of the quirky comedy Good Dick; Emily Hubley, director of the breakthrough live-action/animation hybrid The Toe Tactic; and Kelly Reichardt, the director of Old Joy, the hit of Cucalorus 12, and this year’s entry, Wendy and Lucy. But the real meat-and-potatoes of Cucalorus has always been the films themselves, and with that in mind, here are four features (and one block of shorts) that I think will be more than worth your time.

Deadgirl (dir. Marcel Sarmiento & Gadi Harel)
When two young men discover a female corpse in the basement of an abandoned asylum, they decide that she is a prize worth keeping in this sick and twisted hybrid of horror and black comedy. Cucalorus’s website promises this one will be the most talked-about film of the festival, and with both of the directors present to give a Q&A, it’s the one film you can’t afford to miss.

Deadgirl will be shown with short film Ashes Friday, November 14, Midnight, in Thalian Hall, Main Stage.

Lightning Salad Moving Picture (dir. Kenneth Price)
If you attended any screening at Cucalorus last year, you’ve probably met The Superkiiids, a trio of improv comediens who specialize in absurdist humor and bizarre sketches. Well this year, they are proud to present their feature-length debut, in which the Kiiids are faced with the challenge of creating Back to the Future Part IV. It’s a premiere screening that’s guaranteed to be insane, with director Kenneth Price and The Superkiiids on hand afterwards for a Q&A.

Lightning Salad Moving Picture will be shown with the music video “Me-I” by TV on the Radio Saturday, November 15, 4:30 PM, in Thalian Hall, Black Box.

Los Cronocrímenes (Timecrimes) (dir. Nacho Vigalondo)
Director Nacho Vigalondo introduced himself to America with a short entitled 7:35 in the Morning, in which he stars as a man who holds a café hostage and forces the customers and staff to put on a musical number in order to impress a pretty woman who frequents the place. It was simultaneously hilarious and poignant, and ended up getting an Oscar nomination for best live action short. His feature-length debut promises to dispel with the dark humor in place of brooding suspense and twisted imagery as a man accidentally travels an hour into the past and must deal with his former self who is trying to kill him.

Los Cronocrímenes will be shown with short The Mark Thursday, November 13, Midnight, in Thalian Hall, Main Stage.

Wendy and Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt)
Old Joy director Kelly Reichardt returns with this heartfelt look at the relationship between a young drifter (Academy Award nominee Michelle Williams) and her dog (played by Reichardt’s real-life pet labrador). Produced by I’m Not There director Todd Haynes and featuring gorgeous cinematography by Sam Levy, Wendy and Lucy is an American indie classic. Reichardt will be giving a Q&A after the screening.

Wendy and Lucy will be shown Saturday, November 15, 7:30 PM, in Lumina Theater at UNCW.

Glass Coffin Shorts
A police deputy and his passenger stumble upon an insane aslyum where the patients have taken over. Four young friends go on a holiday that soon turns into a macabre nightmare. A culture war is set off in a miniature train shop. An epic 1988 clay animation film is given a much-deserved revival. What more can be said about this amazing block of exceptional short films? Oh, how about all of them have Q&As afterwards?

Glass Coffin Shorts will be shown Friday, November 14, 10:00 PM, in Thalian Hall, Black Box.

Keep in mind that this is just a fraction of the awesomeness at this year's festival. There's also The Toe Tactic (Thurs. 3:45 PM), Good Dick (Thurs. 7:30 PM), Wesley Willis's Joyrides (Thurs. 10:30 PM), We Are Wizards (Fri. 10:15 AM), A Good Day to Be Black and Sexy (Fri. 7:15 PM), The 27 Club (Fri. 9:45 PM), Nerdcore Rising (Fri. 10:15 PM), Absurdistan (Sat. 7 PM), Linkeroever (Sat. 9:45 PM) and tons more. Also, don't miss my short documentary Firewall of Sound as part of the UNCW Visions '08 collection of student films, Wed. at 2:45 PM in Jengo's Playhouse.

Cucalorus Watch '08: Lessons Learned from Being a Programmer

It's official. The 14th annual Cucalorus Film Festival is one week away, and I am more than excited to see this year's films. This year, I was invited to be a programmer, and ended up watching over 50 feature-length films from every corner of the globe, from South Korea and Australia, to Germany and Austria. In the end, only four films I saw actually ended up in the festival, giving you a good example of how competitive it is (over 1,000 entries, shorts and features, were submitted this year, but only 145 will be screened). Coming away from the experience, I have amassed a list of do's and don'ts (mostly don'ts) for aspiring filmmakers, based on the majority of the films I had seen:

1. Avoid spelling things out. Take out blatant exposition and let the audience deduce things out on their own. They’re smart. They’ll figure it out.
   
2. Avoid “realistic” conversations if they don’t advance the plot. Quentin Tarantino wrote the “royale with cheese” bit, not you.
   
3. Make sure you record your dialogue well. It doesn’t matter how good the quality of the picture is. If the sound sucks, you’ve lost your audience.
   
4. Don't exploit a tragedy. If your lighthearted comedy can’t work without copious references to the ’92 L.A. race riots, then it can’t work.
   
5. Don't namedrop all your favorite movies into your characters’ dialogue. I don’t care how much you love Full Metal Jacket. Having your character recite the entire “This is my gun” speech isn’t going to help your movie.
   
6. Avoid having a character say the title of your movie unless it’s absolutely necessary to the script.
   
7. If you’re the director, don't put “a (your name) film” at the beginning. That privilege is reserved for people who actually have an Oscar nomination.
   
8. Don't insert a blooper reel into your end credits. You’d be surprised by how many people actually did this. Adding one is the same as saying “I know you hated my movie, but look at how much fun we had making it! Surely that must be worth something, right?”
   
9. Don't waste a lot of time and effort on the DVD sleeve. The best movies I saw came in unmarked slipcases and the discs had nothing but the title and the running time on them.
   
10. Don't use label-makers. Thick paper stickers make the discs hard to read in regular players and nigh on impossible in slot-loading players.
    
11. Finally, the goofy little shorts you made with your friends may have been a big hit on YouTube, but so was “2 Girls 1 Cup.” Neither have any place at a film festival.

Alright, that was the end of my ranting. I'll be posting a list of movies to see this year, so stay tuned.

Oh, and one more time for those who missed it: VOTE!

Two Interesting, Yet Radically Different, Video Clips Deserving of Your Eyeballs

My close, personal friend* John Hodgman recently wished everyone a Happy Halloween by giving the YouTube community a brief taste test of the much talked about Crystal Skull Vodka, which sparked the interest of the world after a bizarre infomercial featuring Dan Aykroyd surfaced:



As promised by my long-winded post title, I have another completely unrelated video clip to share with you, courtesy of Drawn! It consists of a Japanese artist showing off his latest sculpture: a "papercraft heart" complete with working gear mechanisms! Like most things Japanese, it looks awesome and I must own it:



Oh, and I almost forgot: VOTE!

*Not really. I met him at a lecture and book signing in Durham. He is awesome, though.