Fantastic Fest '06 Severance

Tongue-in-cheek? Goodness yes, why ever not? What Shaun of the Dead did for the zombie flick, Severance aims to do for the slasher genre. And I do believe they've accomplished their production goals. It's whip-smart, witty and funny. I love it!

The European sales division of Palisade Defence are on a team-building retreat. You know the kind, paintball, motivational lectures, walks in the woods... those things. But a wrong turn leads them to the wrong lodge in the woods, and its residents don't like Palisade Defence.

So they must die.

Chased thru the woods, beaten, alone (sometimes together) the surviving members of the team must survive.

Even if we might not want them to.

Don't even look for novelty here, the standard slasher conventions apply, the novelty is the quality of the comedy. It's a sharp blend of sarcasm, sunny stupidity, and sight gags- which considering the amount of blood involved in some of them, you might gag, too. The death scenes aren't the most original (although the bear trap is pretty darn funny), but they're well filmed and paced perfectly.

Danny Dyer and Laura Harris play Steve and Maggie the (respectively) stoned and good-hearted employees trapped in the woods whist sharp objects are trust in their general direction and bear traps abound in the woods. Both have a grounded approach to their characters, and both entertain and they try (with varying degrees of success) to lead their team to safety. And the killers aren't amateurs, they're seasoned professionals. The cold precision of the murders lends a genuine sense of dread and suspense to what could easily be written off as a light lark through a graveyard, and Harris is an excellent and straightforward heroine to Dyer's bumbling hero.

This was easily one of the audience favorites of the festival as the humor and the gore worked seamlessly to entertain and to educate the audience on the cutthroat business of comedy. Talk about a bad day at the office.

Famous Last Words: This is my kind of comedy. Bloody. Is that so wrong?

Fantastic Fest '06 Nightmare

In my opinion, if it looks like a bad film school project, it is about a bad film school project, and it acts like a bad film school project, then... you get the idea. I've read online reviews that love this movie, but everyone I talked to at FantasticFest (including myself) hated it. I don't get it.

(Apparetly none of us did, the script walked away with the jury award in the horror competition.)

It's daring, don't get me wrong, and the plot is fascinating. Guy and girl wake up in bed together after a party and there's a camera set up at the foot of the bed. On the tape is murder. Bloody, violent, and gleeful murder. There's no evidence, they have no memory, they have no leads. In a moment of desperation, the man pitches the scenario to his film class for a project and to his dismayed wonder, they take it. Filming begins and all hell breaks loose. The filmmaker pulls no punches with the sex, the violence, or the paranoia, but it's not enough. Or in some cases too much.

Several reviewers site the lead's acting range as a plus, and I'll admit he does have a range. But they're all to the extreme. He's not afraid- he's VERY afraid. He's not aggressive, he's VERY aggressive. He's not angry, he's VERY angry. There's a lack a subtlety that makes every emotion feel pushed, he's not asking the audience to empathize- he's demanding it. He's trying to channel Christian Bale in American Psycho (suave, powerful, only with paranoia and doubt from the first) and doing it badly.

I know the line between passion and violence is a thin one, and sex and anger are intrinsic to the plot of this piece; but the sheer amount of sex and nudity and sex and nudity (and sex and nudity) were overwhelming. I'm not a prude when it comes to movies, but parts of the piece felt like we were watching soft-core porn.

There are layers and layers to this piece, and each one is more depraved and confused than the last. Reality sheers off the surface very quickly, leaving the audience with little more than an finale montage of violence, confusion, pain and suffering with no regard to what is real or what is imagined.

If this is all a dream, can I wake up now?

Fantastic Fest '06 Isolation (with The Descendant)

Cows.

Why is it always cows?

They're everywhere, in tornadoes, shilling for cheese, being abducted, they're everywhere! (They even have guns! Cows with guns!) And now they're here to kill you- horribly, bloodily, and if they don't kill you, they'll give you their evil virus. And it's scary, folks, scary!

I'm not kidding, really. It's a movie about killer cows. Granted, it's a freakish genetic experiment gone horribly awry (big surprise), and it's technically a killer calf, not a cow, but still.

It's the old story we're all familiar with. Down on his luck man lets driven scientist into his life and doesn't ask too many questions. Financial desperation leads to complacency, and complacency leads to disaster. Science isn't always the answer, and it can't save you from the monster at the door.

The production values are excellent. It's slick, frantically paced, the sound and the effects add to the movie, not detract. Very rarely do you get a monster movie that is able to resist showing the entire monster, and here we're very glad we only get the glimpses. But what we do see, and what our imagination fills in for us, is more than adequate to make even the most jaded movie goer look over his or her shoulder. There are shadows, pools, corners, barns, and labs and the monster can be in any of them. It is a very dark movie. Dark, wet and cold. And while the ending is a cliched as any I've seen, it was still one of the most satisfying films of the festival.

Cows. Go figure.

And I have to say, it's paired excellently with The Descendant, a simple tale of a pair of hitmen on a job. Just a simple job that is anything but. It's a professional production; the actors, stunts and effects are pristine, and while I've seen this general plot before, it felt fresh and still managed to give me the chills.

Fantastic Fest '06 Hatchet (with If I Had a Hammer)

Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

There is nothing redeeming in this movie, it's glorious! It's a slasher flick in the truest sense of the word. There's a thin skin of a plot, a passel of stock characters, a freakish monster of killer, and... was that Robert (Freddy Krueger) Englund, and Tony (Candyman) Todd, in cameos? Why yes, yes it was! And there were plenty more where that came from.

I'd go into some sort of analysis, but there really isn't a point. Folks on vacation go on a tourist-trap of a haunted swamp tour. Big, bad, hard-to-kill, killer guy with a tragic back story starts hacking. Blood, guts, and a trail of bodies later and there you have it.

Famous Last Words: Fun Times!

Hatchet showed with If I Had a Hammer which is an animated look at what would happen if Thor had to replace his hammer at the local hardware store. Funny as hell.

Fantastic Fest '06 Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (with Existence)

It's not very often I walk out of a movie not knowing exactly what I've seen, but that's what's happened here.

It can be a good thing, in theory, to see something I don't quite understand. It can give me something to mull over, or something to examine. I can discuss abstract symbolism or the conflict of the rational mind and irrational art. I could ponder the nature of obsession, possession, and the dual nature of creation and destruction. I could almost admire the Phantom of the Opera-esque adaptation of a mythic morality tale like the The Nightingale.

I could marvel at the intricately animated automatons and be haunted by their purpose. I could stand awed by the dreamlike quality of the film's cinematography. I could be chilled by the isolation of the seaside setting, the nearby woods, and the elegant cage created by a brilliant madman. I could be seduced by the sultry housekeeper and protective of the naive Piano Tuner invited into this tableau.

Or I could be pissed off that I wasted this much time on a movie that began with a decent plot, OK acting, and wonderful art direction, but ultimately degenerated into a near-incomprehensible mess of sexual imagery, pretty animations, and an ending that makes the whole thing feel like it was a pastel, psychedelic hallucination brought upon by a bad night at the opera, insomnia, and a burlesque show.

Guess which one I'm leaning toward.

Famous Last Words: Huh?

Existence, on the other hand, was a wonderful short whose oddball images and cast of characters fit the premise perfectly. And the disorientation they create were perfectly suited to the journey the main character's on.

Fantastic Fest '06 AICN Screening- Apocalypto

Wow, score one for Ain't It Cool News.

AICN got Mel Gibson to let them screen a rough cut of Apocalypto for the VIP ticket holders. And to boot, Mel and his leading actor, Rudy Youngblood, stuck around afterwards for a Q&A.
For the sake of my sanity, I'm going to limit my comments to the movie; the Q&A, while entertaining, was fairly standard, and I'm sure AICN will have something up shortly.

First of all, it was a rough cut, fx weren't done, the score was temporary, and even Mel admitted he was still shaving the middle. (Which I had to admit dragged.) But even with that, I have reservations about the movie.

My issue is this: one man's archetype is the basis of another man's cliche, and I tend to the latter. There really isn't anything original in the plot. Man has happy family, man is taken from happy family, man escapes, outruns the bad guys, and returns to said family. I'm sorry, but I think I've seen this a few times. The novelty here is the setting (spectacular) and the whole dialect/subtitle issue (I... got nothing, I don't speak Mayan).

That said; it will be a beautiful movie, it's visually stunning, and very well researched from what I've seen. James Horner is working on the soundtrack, and I'm sure it will be up to his usual spectacular standards, and the chase scene at the end was wonderful even in its rough form. Will it be an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon, yes. Is it going to change the world of cinema as we know it, no. And watch Youngblood, if he doesn't get stuck in a type-casting rut, he may be one to watch.

Famous Last Words:
I'm not waiting in any long lines, but if I see it again I'm sure I'll be entertained. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Fantastic Fest '06 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

I know, I know, I said I was going to go see something else, but when I saw the New Line security team scanning people with metal detector wands and making people turn off their cell phones, I just had to get in on the fun.

I didn't really have any great expectations. I liked the original, but nothing else (remake included) really grabbed my attention. But this, wow. I mean, WOW. I haven't seen f'd-up family values like this since House of 1000 Corpses (and the Devil's Rejects as well).

I don't really want to give anything away, but suffice it to say, this totally blew the '03 remake out of the water. You don't waste much time on back story, although what's there is perfectly suited to the plot, and once the blood starts flowing it is incessant. Horror villains are always kinda like the Energizer Bunny of Doom, but this is brutal. Gore, gore and more galore. And some of it with that dark, sick, humorous variety that almost makes you want to laugh if you weren't so busy squirming in your seat. I have to say I'm with this guy (scroll to the bottom) in wondering who did what to whom to get this an R from the MPAA. (And after, the director told the audience that two of the goriest scenes were pretty well shaved to get it, hello, DVD!) I think it was the fact that there was no nudity.

There is a bear trap, meathooks, and, of course the chainsaw. But no nudity.

And here's the kicker. Leatherface doesn't become a major player until the almost the third act. The whole movie is driven by R. Lee Ermey, who is one of those quintessential, "Hey, It's That Guy!" types. Only now he's sick, demented, and he's just trying to care for his family. Awwww, it would be sweet if it weren't completely psychotic.

Famous last words:
Nothing will ever approach the original, just by the virtue of it being the original, but this comes damn close.

And to answer the burning question: Yes, you do find out where Leatherface got his leather face.

Fantastic Fest '06 Haze (with Oculus)

Oculus is an excellent example of the KISS principle. Keep It Simple, Stupid. One room, one man, one creepy-ass mirror. Clocking in at just over half an hour, it's long for a "short," but it really doesn't feel like it, as the plot unfolds at its own pace without feeling rushed. The director has paced the action/drama very well within the confines of this piece, and the actor does an excellent job of toe-ing the line between sanity and madness, right up until he crosses over it.

This piece is an excellent example of the never-ending struggle to rationalize the irrational or to prove the un-provable. It's a scientific study of a most unscientific event; and like all rational beings in the horror genre, the descent to madness comes when our protagonist's rational underpinnings are ripped out from underneath him and all he's left with is his fear. This is assuming our scientist isn't "mad" to begin with. After all, he's convinced the mirror killed his parents. But this is all theory, and let's move on...

The color palette (or in this case, complete lake thereof), works to create the clinical setting the protagonist desires for his experiment. It is clean, sterile, and away from outside influence. It is also cut-off, isolated, and completely without refuge. There are some technical sound issues, echoes and the like, but the usage of the clock alarms and phone rings add to the distortion of time and breakdown of the protagonist's awareness of anything but the mirror.

I have one major gripe with the short, and unfortunately it's somewhat linked to the ending. I'll try to keep this as general as possible, but it's still kinda spoilery. Throughout the piece the history of the mirror is relayed to the audience through a series of stories, people die, people disappear, people kill other people. Got that. Mirror bad. Check. The whole creepiness of the set-up is that no one really knows what the mirror does, and I think it should have stayed that way. Let me put it like this, the freakiest thing about The Blair Witch Project was that you never saw the witch. You saw things happen, you saw the campers freak out, but you never saw who/what was behind it. The scariest things are what we pull out of our own memories, and once you show the "monster," you're done. Glimpse it out of the corner of your eye, catch it's reflection, feel its breath on your neck, but in a piece like this, it's best left unseen. Once fear has a face and a name it's dimished. Which isn't to say that what we saw in the theatre wasn't creepy, believe me, it was, I just think it would have been much more effective in the abstract.

And speaking of abstract, let's move onto the main feature, Haze.

One part Saw, one part Cube, and Asian to boot. I should love this, but I don't. I was actually kinda disappointed. Don't get me wrong, it's creepy and claustrophobic as all hell. (I didn't immediately think, "It's the Habitrail(c) from Hell!" for nothing.) The monotone concrete walls with their blind turns, and a well-developed bleakness to the entire production design from costume to lighting adds to the paranoia and anxiety. The traps are vicious, but not entirely original. (Although I have to admit, there's one that set my teeth on edge and reminded me how long it's been since I went to the dentist.) But it seems to jump in continuity, and the ending leaves a great deal to be desired.

The concept is solid, a man wakes up with no memory, a nasty stomach wound, and only a series of trap-laden tunnels in front of him. But it's not very trap-laden, this movie is only about 50 minutes long, and that's not quite enough time to rachet up the tension to a point where the audience is squirming, anxious and desperate to know what's going to happen next. There's also a lack of exposition, which is normal for J-horror, but what we do get is mainly in a voice-over. That's not horrible, except for the fact that it is repeated almost verbatim 10-15 minutes later when the lead meets up with his fellow captive. Why have the V-O at all? And the ending...? I don't expect my horror movies to have rational endings, but I'd like to know that there is one. There's a mishmash of a montage that makes no sense of time, place, or even if it's relevant to the plot. Not cool.

Famous last words:
This may be the only time where I recommend a feature so you can see the short. Haze isn't entirely bad, but Oculus was better and worth the time.

Who needs sleep? v2.0

Here we go again...

Sunday
Isolation
Dir. Billy O'Brein- Ireland- 94 minutes
A down-on-his-luck farmer allows genetic experimentation on his cattle. Gee, do you think that could be a bad idea?
Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (Trailer link)
Dir. Brothers Quay- Germany/France/UK- 99 minutes
A disturbed genius kidnapps Malvina, an opera star, in order to turn her into an immortal mechanical masterpiece. When an innocent piano tuner is called upon to service the malevolent abductor, he becomes entwined in the "perverse universe" of Malvina's captor. Looks like Phantom of the Opera meets The Nightingale.
Starfish Hotel
Dir. John Williams- Japan- 98 minutes
Yuichi Arisu loses himself in novels about a place called Darkland. His wife disappears, and the lines between what he reads and what he lives begin to blur. The police think he's guilty, there's an underground brothel and there is a man in a rabbit suit helping Arisu. And we're wondering why it's getting comparisons to Donnie Darko?
I'm on the fence on this one, there's another film playing at that time that I want to see, so we might change over... Moving on...
Broken
Dir. Simon Boyes and Adam Mason- UK- 110 minutes
Just in case the world doesn't have enough survival horror, here comes another one. It may be cliche, a mother and daughter kidnapped, mother subjected to horrors to protect her child. It's another I might jump theatres on- Crispin Glover's on the next screen over with Simon Says...
Frostbite
Dir. Anders Banke- Sweden- 95 minutes
What do you do when there are vampires in a town where dawn is a month away? Don't know, but I'm skipping a special presentation of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre to find out!

Monday
Hatchet
Dir. Adam Green- 82 minutes
Teens go on a "Haunted Swamp Tour," murder, mayhem, and much nudity ensues. Campy it may be, but Harry Knowles from Ain't It Cool News is raving about it, and there's a cameo by Robert Englund. Like I'd miss that!
Bug (Trailer link)
Dir. William Freidken (Yes, the Exorcist, French Connection, that guy!)- 95 minutes
Ashley Judd, Harry Connick Jr., and psychosis. According to Roger Ebert, "A paranoid personality finds its mate, and they race each other to madness." I can't wait to see who hits the finish line first!
Ek Hasina Thi
Dir. Sriram Raghavan- India- 120 minutes
Indian. Gothic. Women's. Revenge. Flick. Got a problem with that?
Severance (Trailer link)
Dir. Christopher Smith- UK- 96 minutes
Screenwriter James Moran is presenting his unique slasher flick. What starts as something resembling The Office, or Office Space, quickly dissolves into a slasher film in the middle of the woods as the hapless employees of Palisade Defence start dropping. It's getting comparisons to Shaun of the Dead, and I get to play, Hey! It's that gal from 24!. Hi, Laura Harris!

Oi, leaving off there. Anime, Freddy Krueger, and Darren Aronofsky to come!

Who needs sleep?

The schedule's up, I made my choices, now all I have to do is wait. Here's where I'll be and what will be keeping me up at night.

Thursday
Haze
Dir. Shinya Tsukamoto- Japan- 49 minutes
Saw meets Cube as a man wakes up in a small, cramped space and a stomach wound that is killing him slowly.
Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream
Dir. Stuart Samuels- 88 minutes
The directors, critics, and theatre owners that created, panned, and proudly showed "Midnight Movies" like, Night of the Living Dead, Pink Flamingos, Eraserhead, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and many others talk about these "cult" films and their journey into the wide, wacky world.
Last Supper
Dir. Osamu Fukutani- Japan/Hong Kong- 92 minutes
Based on the book by Kei Ohishi, and produced as a multi-country project, some said this could never be done. Never say never, so here is a gore-fest of a brilliant plastic surgeon with a taste for human flesh and the murderous impulses to fulfil it.
Parasite 3D (Link goes to a trailer)
Dir. Charles Band- 85 minutes
The first starring role for Demi Moore! Yup, it's that Parasite movie presented in 3D, with corporate assassins, a mad scientist, hoods, and... parasites. Charles Band is in town to present it and do a talk-back.

Friday
Inside (Link goes to a trailer)
Dir. Jeff Miller- 100 minutes
"...voyeurism gone very, very wrong." Really, do we need to know more than that? Jeff Miller's in town for the Q&A after the film.
The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell
Dir. Jonny Gillette and Kevin Wheatley- 97 minutes
Post-Apocalpyse, year 2096, The Vice-King of New America- Tex Kennedy (heir to the Kennedy clan), android bodyguards, and the great-great-great grandson of Fidel Castro. Oh! And there's Benny, the rightful King, too! Yea, ya got me, too, but it looks like it will be fun!
Zhest (Junk)
Dir. Denis Neimand- Russia- 127 minutes
An investigative reporter follows the trail of a pedophile and rapist into B.F.E. Russia. It's fringe vs. mainstream as the reoprter devles into the often surreal Russian landscape where the denizens hunt the city-folk for fun.
Unrest
Dir. Jason Todd Ipson- 85 minutes
Stuck without a home until her student loans come through, first year med student Alison is living in the hospital where she takes her gross anatomy class. Curious, she looks into the history of her cadaver, and the murders begin. The director (a former teacher and surgeon himself), had the cast filming in a real morgue, with real bodies. Fun.

Saturday
Tideland (Link to homepage.)
Dir. Terry Gilliam- 122 minutes
You want more than just a title and a director? OK, Jeliza-Rose has lost her mother to a heroin OD and her Dad's taken her out to a rural setting to recover. She talks to Barbie-doll heads. There's a woman who's always in a bee-keeper's helmet. It's "odd" and "taboo." What can I say, it's Gilliam.
Nightmare
Dir. Dylan Bank- 111 minutes
What would you do if you woke up with a strange woman and a video camera that shows you committing a violent murder in a room that's now completely clean? You'd make a movie of it, of course. The line between film and fact blurs as the director struggles to find who's filming the murders he can't remember, as he's filming the murders he's not convinced he's not commiting. Confused yet?
The Hamster Cage
Dir. Larry Kent- Canada- 92 minutes
Ahh, holidays. Inappropriate gifts, family you love to hate, and a "hell of Oedipal scenerios." It's dark comedy at its freakish best!
Lie Still (Link goes to the trailer.)
Dir. Sean Hogan- UK- 80 minutes
It's a haunted house movie. A VERY haunted house movie.
Blood Trails (Link goes to the trailer.)
Dir. Robert Krause- USA/Germany- 90 minutes
A chance encounter leads to a night of violent sex that cyclist Anne would rather forget. Escaping to the mountains with her boyfriend, a hellish encounter with her one-night-stand leads to a hellish race downhill. Lion's Gate has snatched it up as the next Haute Tension or Wolf Creek, so look for a wide release next year.

And this is just the first three days! More to come, gore to come.
(Sorry, I just couldn't help it....)

Counting down!

So I finally printed out my festival schedule, and I'm probably more happy than I really should be.

I can't help it, my greedy little inner demons are going to get to feast on some of the best horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and any combination thereof, movies that are out there to be found. There are panel discussions, and special hosts, and all sorts of goodies to be had. Advance screenengs of movies like Gilliam's Tideland and Aronofsky's The Fountain. Asian, Irish, American, and films from all over will be screened for a very enthusiastic crowd.

I will not sleep and I will spend way too much money on the awesomeness Drafthouse goodies.

It's gonna be great.

Animate this, mother-ufckers!

My childhood was dominated by cartoons. Light, humorous, adventurous, and while often preachy, they didn't ask to much of me in the higher thought processes. (And considering the early morning, or post-school time slot, the simpler the message, the better.) I loved 'em. Gimme more. Adventure, other planets, other realities, more than I could imagine and then some. They were so innocent.

And then I grew up. And so did my animation.

For years, decades even, mass-market animation meant Disney or Warner Brothers. We were fed nice, saccharine, pretty animation. They were the ones with the investors and the names to actually make money at it. Add Don Bluth to the mix and you have sugar-sweet, fairy-tale, happy-ending overload. Fold in the 1970's/80's robo-anime from Japan that was edited and dubbed for the innocent US child masses and you have the action/adventure set covered. Happy Saturday mornings for all!

But like I said, we grew up. And then we took control.

Today, some of the hottest trends and obsessive buys on E-bay are the toys of my childhood. (It's a little scary.) We all grew up, but all that means is that we now have the assets to buy back our childhoods. To take the things we loved about our youth and bend them to our adulthood. Even our animation, which brings me to Spike and Mike. (You knew there had to be a point to this, right?)

Every year, the proclaimed "Kings of Tasteless Toons," showcase the good, the bad and the gross in animation across the US. A trip to the Alamo Drafthouse, a beer, some pre-show blow-up doll on doll porn (not joking....), and we have Spike and Mike's Festival of Sick & Twisted Animation. It's sick, it's twisted, and it certainly is animated. Is it good? Eh,it has its ups and downs. The animation ranges from student projects to established families of shorts like the Happy Tree Friends. You have to hand it to S&M, it's a cross-section.

Awwww, look at the little- WTF!?!?!?!

In my mind, some the best entertainment (in movies, TV or anything) involves classic misdirection. While the entire animated format lends itself to this, I'm talking about The Usual Suspects-type misdirection. The gimpy, wimpy little MASS MURDERER!! For the Happy Tree Friends, this is their bread and butter. They're some of the cutest creatures this side of Bambi, right up until they start impaling themselves on nails, and carving eyeballs for lemonade. Who'd've thunk such cute little creatures could have such problems? But they're the A-side to this festival. The B-sides include Dick and Jane doing porn with Spot, the little classical ballerina Pig & Bunny voyeurs, and the true story of what happened when Jack and Jill went up that hill (a personal fave).

Innocent...

Just because the festival bills as "sick and twisted" doesn't mean it has to be. One of the stand-out pieces this year is Thomas Schoeber's Pinata. It's as good as anything Pixar could produce and has a similar absurdist innocence to it. A children's party, from the Pinata's perspective- whack! EatPez.com provides a short entitled KaBoom, a found-object, stop-animation piece. At a minute and twelve seconds, it's one of the shortest bits in the program. But it's one of the best, with an excellent audio track to go along with an extremely dynamic, yet smooth visual style. Episodes of Good Cat Bad Cat, from Curtis Jobling, takes a Spy v. Spy/ Wylie E. Coyote & Roadrunner/git 'em structure and applies it to kittens. All three of these (possibly excluding the Cat, depending on the actual episode) could be easily shown on TV, as they're doing nothing worse that what I used to watch Bugs Bunny do to, well, everyone he came across.

...and Evil

Of course, the festival IS billed as sick and twisted, so we really have to sell it. For the gore-lovers, there's Chris Kasten's Magic. Which Made. Me. Squirm. Something about squeezing a bloody, dead rabbit out of a severed... ew, never mind, I'm pretty sure you get the general idea. This year's installment of No Neck Joe seems really tame if innuendo-filled, until you realize it comes from Craig McCracken. Yes, that Craig McCracken- you know, Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Lab.... yeah, you'll never look at the Professor the same way again. ("Girls, oh girls! Time for bed now!") You get to Learn Self Defense from Chris Harding, and wonder if he's been giving lessons to the US Dept. of Defense on the side. And Mike Bloom introduces you to The Zit. (I don't really need to explain this one, do I?)

A Lone Disappointment

While some of the shorts just made me fall out of my seat laughing, some made me uncomfortable, and others just had me laughing out of sheer confusion, only one left me asking, "Why am I sitting through this?". One of the top billed pieces was a nine-minute piece by Brad Ableson. Combining traditional animation with live action, Save Virgil includes the voice talent of Adam Corolla and special appearances by porn-star Ginger Lynn and Gary Coleman. (Yeah, there was my first clue.) The animation itself was OK, but the live-action integration was shoddy- someone should have worked with the actors more on proper sight lines and looking at thin air right next to your face. Everyone seemed to be focusing through Virgil to, what, the X on the wall? The plot had potential, Gary Coleman could have been played for more laughs, but the overall execution was just...meh. It was like watching the bastard child of Family Guy's Stewie and Baby Herman from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (admittedly, according to an interview WFRR? was an inspiration for Virgil) telling the meandering story of his life. Pointless and mercifully short. No one seemed to care, not even the extras in the back of the shot. (Ohh, look the camera's on me- time to wave now!) I'm sure somewhere, some die-hard fan of The Man Show saw this and thought it was the funniest thing in ages, but I didn't, and neither did most of the people in the theatre.

I'm told it's not the best presentation to come out ot the Spike and Mike pantheon in recent years, but on the whole it was pretty entertaining. I'd recommend it, at any rate. Hey, any show where you get to see a cute little squirrel's face ripped off by a plank of wood has got to be worth something, right?