Remember when I said we'd be doing some short films and then we only did two? Yea, well, like I said in my introductory post, shorts are damn hard to come by. As it happens, I stumbled upon another one. Five, in fact; but there is only one that I want to bring here. If you want to look at all five, here's the link.
The one I'm bringing to you is called Abe. It is sort of in the same vein as The Gate; creepy futuristic sci-fi that will leave you thinking. If you haven't read any Isaac Asimov, you should probably start. His vision of the future may not be that far off.
Abe is about...well, you should probably just watch it.
So we've decided to branch out into the world of Short films. Is this because we're lazy and short films are, well, short? Probably. But more because alot of these are brilliant little stories that do more in about twenty minutes than most major blockbusters can do in two hours. And also some major directors got their starts doing short films. So it's a chance to see where they came from, where they learned to hone their craft. Seeing what they were while knowing what they become. So without further ado, I bring you:
Funny how things work out; we just review In Bruges and now I'm doing a write up for Martin McDonagh's first foray into film. Staring Brendan Gleeson, the film follows Donnelly from the hospital where he learns his wife has passed away back to his home. But if that's all that happened, it would be a ridiculous short film and you and I would have to wonder how it won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. But luckily, between the hospital and home, Donnelly finds himself on a train, talking and interacting with various people on board. A distraught husband and wife, an off-kilter teenager, a mouthy concession worker, and a cop or two. And this is where the film shines, in the characterizations of all of the people. They're engaging and real, all trying to cope with one thing or another. But instead of things going as simply as just talking about feelings, the teenager, who uses swears like buffers for words, speaks without a filter on his thoughts and works his way into everyone's issues. It's an incredibly emotional train, and this kid wants to just figure out the root of the issue, and keep poking it. But he never comes off as malicious, just incapable of seeing what he's doing. He's just being himself. And we watch and listen to them, engaged from the first word to the last.
Now this is Martin McDonagh we're talking about. We'll I'm talking about, but fuck it, that sounded better. So things are both depressing but funny. It's a humor that comes from sadness; that sometimes we need to laugh to shake off the pain. And there is a part with a cow and some explosions. Now if that didn't grab your attention, then check that pulse, cause I think you're dead. But it's not out of the blue; they're not passing a field were some cow has had it up to here and gone all Rambo on things. It flows well with the story, and creates some new ways to look at a character. But also being McDonagh , things get violent. Bloody violent. Which just goes to show how good of a writer and director McDonagh is that he can do so much and create so much character in so little time. But a final warning, this is not a happy film. McDonagh likes to show you how dark human life can be, and here he is letting us see how a day can go from bad to worse, though humor and blood.
And if you're thinking, "Jeez, that's a pretty long review for a short film", you'd be right. But that's kind of the beauty of this movie, and short films in general. The good ones have so much condensed in under 30 minutes that you can find so much to talk about. Find so much the filmmaker wanted to bring to light. And Six Shooter has that; the humor, the violence, the engaging characters and a storyline that shows us how how dark a day can really get. So go watch it. Do it.
Groovy! I think I figured out how to put a video right in the post. It may only work for YouTube videos, but that's a start.
Anyways, I came across this gem a week ago by accident. It's called The Gate, and it's by Matt Westrup. I'm going to assume you haven't seen it, because I'm pretty sure people don't watch short films. But it's interesting, creepy, disturbing, and surprisingly relevant. You'll never stay in the office after hours again.
It is basically our mission to watch films for the sake of watching films, to see things we haven't seen before, and to hopefully churn up some interesting things for like-minded readers. In that same vein, we have decided to throw in whole new section, to mention/recommend/note/talk about short films.
People always forget that these things exist until there's an award given to one they've never heard of and aren't really interested in seeing. I think the main obstacle is that they are hard to find unless you're really looking for one. They don't show them in theaters...do they? I know Pixar movies usually have a cute short before each movie, which I think is fantastic. But otherwise, no one really makes an effort to see them.
Which is a shame, because in a lot of ways, a short film is harder to create than a feature film. You have to take an idea -- a story, a theme, a message -- and compress in down into a 15 minute or less segment. It definitely takes a talent different from full-length film making.
Anyways, like most of you, we don't really watch short films either. But I think now is as good a time as any to get started. Now, I don't really know where we find these films yet. Hopefully they're on the internet somewhere. I happened to 'stumble upon' the first one that I want to recommend. Maybe I'll figure out how to get them to play right on this blog. That would be cool. I don't suppose we'll be talking about them very much; just putting them out there. Enjoy.
