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 As the self-appointed leader of the monkey cage here at MFM, one of my greatest joys is seeing what filmmakers do with their future films, based on the information we give them in our critiques. While it seems like Kari Ann Morgan gets the most repeat customers, I get my share, as well. One such filmmaker is Michael “Mick” Wannenmacher, a filmmaker whose short, “Hotel Motel”, won our “Best of Show” award just seven months ago. Well, now he’s back with an extremely solid short in “Tea and Physics: A Story of Black Holes and Renovations”.
Tea and Physics was created by Wannenmacher for the short film festival, the 2008 Sony Tropfest, (billed as the World’s Largest Short Film Festival). I’m always worried whenever a filmmaker says his film was created for a film festival, as there is something about film festivals that cause filmmakers to lose their minds, especially when they’re creating one specifically for a festival. I’ve seen otherwise-talented filmmakers submit pretty egregious films, because the crunch to make the deadline caused them to make poor or uninspired compromises. Even more painful are some filmmakers who sink to the depths of banality by creating works that fawn on a specific film festival, hoping to inspire the judges to select their films and catapult them into the big time of Hollywood society. (Not commenting on whom I know in that last camp, but let’s just say it involved a certain baldheaded magazine editor, who used to be a rather naïve documentarian, and a certain “solar-powered” film festival.)
So with all of these things going on in my bald head, the question is: how did Mick do? (I usually refer to all directors by their last name, so as not to seem to show partiality. However, with a name like Wannenmacher--which I am only spelling correctly due to CTRL-Copy/Paste--I have no problem breaking this little rule!) Quite honestly, he did a very impressive job, especially when bringing equipment, time, and budget into the equation; more on that in the separate sections.
First, let us flesh out the basic premise. Mark (Fabian Lapham) is a suburban homeowner who has recently employed the services of Kunning Kitchens, a state of the art kitchen design firm. However, shortly after his new kitchen is installed, he goes to dump a milk carton in the trash under the sink and discovers a black hole under his sink.
Not being a masters-degreed student of physics, Mark calls up some of the contractors from Kunning Kitchens, who come to have a look at it. As they, too, are befuddled by the black hole, he begins a series of calls to various folks, in an attempt to resolve his problem; a carpenter, the City architect, a plumber (who loses his wrench in the phenomenon), a bar buddy, and finally an exterminator. All of whom drink his tea and coffee, while puzzling over the problem. All of them have their ideas on how to fix it; starting with filling it up with concrete, to spraying it for fire ants, but none of them has an actual solution. When Mark points out that the kitchen is brand new and still under warranty, everyone decides that there is no money to be made in dealing with his problem and quickly hotfoot it, out the door.
Since his problem can’t be solved by anyone else, Mark decides that he might have a creative solution for his black hole after all.
Content
The acting and the pacing of this short was spot on. Everyone had their quirky little part to play in this story and really got me to chuckling. Even though it’s clearly based in Australia, the colorful characters are such that you could imagine them populating virtually any city in the world.
Additionally, the film flows in a way that is much easier to follow than Mick’s last film, Hotel Motel, which had a few bunny trails that were a bit confusing.
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