“Santa's Camels” once again rears its glitchy head, this time giving us a visual that freezes thirty seconds in and no audio. I begin to wonder if I even want to see this short anymore, then I realize it wasn't me who wanted to see it, it was those women in the front row and they seem very disappointed every time there's an issue. Perhaps they've seen it before. Perhaps it's greatness personified. Well, not personified, but you know what I mean. The studio logos at the beginning are pretty impressive. Though I grow weary seeing more than one studio logo on a short. Nat Dykeman, head of the fest and all around prince among men comes in, waves his magic hands over the keyboard, switches to a different DVD program and gives us... “Santa's Camels” After all the build up, perhaps it is destiny that I be disappointed. Or perhaps it's the fact that this 3D animated short is far too long, and features several character designs that don't move their legs when they walk. I understand that 3D animation is hard, but this makes me wonder if we should just accept that it's hard and overlook things like that, or if we should want more from “Santa's Camels.” Then I feel bad for that thought and wish it hadn't been built up so much.
“Script Cops” impresses me far more. It's Cops but they're on the look out for bad screenwriters. Get it? This is a short that in lesser hands could've been atrocious, but they nailed everything about the look of cops, from blurred faces, to blurred random nudity to the tendency of cornered bad writers to run. But it hits a brilliant moment when, while arresting the writer of Freddy Got Fingered (though I doubt it's the ACTUAL writer of Freddy Got Fingered as I imagine he'd never show his face to the harsh light of day again) one of the camera men is shot. His body remains, dead in the background as one of the cops talk about what it's like to be on duty and do this day after day. Another cop sites a deus ex machina in the climax of a perp's script as reason for his arrest. The end is the coup de gras, though as the cops wonder where all the scripts go, and we see them wheeled in a cart, and put into storage in the warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark. (see fig. f) FABULOUS!
fig. f
Again, the pizza question is posed, and the audience doesn't even seem remotely interested now, so the order is downgraded from four to three pizzas. I wonder if my "yay" vote can be counted twice to get us back up to four. No mention is made of Nosferatu.
“Three-Fifty” is far too long and has a guy returning a video late and selling the souls of his children to get out of the $3.50 late fee. It's an example of a great premise, setup, shooting, and lighting being marred by simply running on beyond the audience's good-will period.
I request “A Tale of Two Cemeteries” because it sounds interesting. But my interest vanishes when I realize that this film is a comparison of two German cemeteries told entirely with stills and voice over, showing movement by dissolving between pictures the way those old cartoon videos that were too cheap to actually be cartoons so they just had still images with voice over were. (wow, that's a great sentence just then) I mean, that's not an entirely fair comparison, but it wore thin very quickly making me wonder: if you wanted to tell this story, why not borrow a mini DV cam and tell it. Otherwise it's a glorified slide show.
Ahh, the pizza has arrived! And so has partner in crime Mike. So we eat pizza. Ground beef pizza in fact, and settle in to watch Nosferatu. Our enthusiasm is short-lived, however, as one of the first interstitials contains a word that I don't think is used in the vampire film: Potemkin. So, we continue watching and see a mutiny play out on some battleship which may or may not be called Potemkin in a silent film which may or may not be Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 film Battleship Potemkin. (It is.)
About forty five minutes into the film, Nat comes in with an announcement: “It has been brought to my attention that this may not be Nosferatu.” There are some confirming grunts from the audience as he confirms our suspicion that the film we are watching is, in fact, Battleship Potemkin. Not wanting to miss the famed Odessa Steps sequence, (see fig. g) we agree to continue watching the film while Nat runs home to grab the hard drive with Nosferatu on it. The Steps scene comes and...DePalma did it better in The Untouchables. I'm even leaning towards Naked Gun 33 1/3 doing it better, though that was a parody of DePalma; and probably some sort of filmic blasphemy when I get right down to it...it's a conundrum.
fig. g
Potemkin comes to a close and Mike and I decide that one 1920s silent film is enough for one night. We spend time in the lobby thereafter, circling the films we'd like to see. Each film plays twice, and at the same time as several others, so it's an odd guessing game to be able to see everything we'd like. In the introduction to the program Nat mentions that someone there for every screening would only be able to see eleven features. Not at all confident we've made the right choices, we decide to let the dice fall where they may, grab some more pizza (there was ground beef on it! GROUND BEEF!) and call it a night.
