Monday, February 22, 2016

Jason goes to Indiefest--Day 11

Sunday started with a bunch of shorts. First up, the program Based On a True Story.
SANS PLOMB (UNLEADED): An environmental activist and his not-quite successful plan against an international oil company.
BIRTHDAY: A tribute to our wounded vets, as an injured Marine and his wife face the rest of their life together.
LOS NINOS SICARIOS: The life of teenage hitmen working for a drug cartel. Chilling.
THE WORLD OF FILM FESTIVALS: Important information from this guy, who has also been entertaining us in the trailer reel all fest long.
VESSELS: A cautionary tale of dangerous transgender surgery in an unlicensed clinic living room. What a girl has to do to get tits.
LAST BASE: Two friends go base-jumping one last time, to scatter their friend's ashes. As a storm approaches, they have to question whether the thrill is worth the danger. Especially when one of them is about to settle down and become a father.
MY DREAM'S A JOKE: Wes Austin is a successful patent attorney in Salt Lake City. But he has a secret dream to be a comedian. So he writes his own script for a sitcom pilot--about a patent attorney who dreams of being a comedian. This is the behind the scenes "making of" documentary, and if you want to check out the finished product, go here and use the password SFINDIE2016. Uh...at least according to the cards they handed out after the show. I haven't been able to get it to work. And it's limited to 30 days, so...good luck? [Update: It's working now!]

And then the "genre" shorts program, Revenge of the Shorts. My favorite shorts program.
LA FORCE DE L'AGE: An old guy with a rifle take on a few maintenance men there to check his phone line.
VICIOUS: A repeat screening of this Holehead short. A young woman afraid that there's something in her house that shouldn't be there. And she's too foolish to think of opening a door instead of reaching around it. But still pretty scary.
SYNCHRONICITIES: Peter Maxwell Slattery knows UFOs exist. He's an experiencer, and while I don't believe, I believe he believes (or knows) and there's something charming about him anyway.
TIME TRAVEL THROUGH TIME: Multiple hilarious overlapping timelines converge over a broken coffee maker. Excellent!
FILTHY BUT FINE: A hilarious animated adventure of a delivery boy and all the dangers he faces.
LA BUENA FE (FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS): A woman arrives at a hospital after her water breaks. There's no one there, no doctors, no nurses, just automation taken a ridiculous extreme. Meanwhile, her friends are trying to get through traffic to be there for her.
THE HOUSE IS INNOCENT: A documentary about an infamous house in Sacramento where several murders took place, and the nice older couple with a great sense of humor who bought the place.
LUXURE: Just because a man loves his wife, it doesn't mean he won't occasionally seek out a little strange. Sometimes...a little too strange.

And then for something a little different, a shocking music/performance art documentary, DEAD HANDS DIG DEEP. Edwin Borsheim was the lead singer of Kettle Cadaver, a shock metal band from Temecula, California. He was infamous for shocking acts of bloodshed and necro-bestiality (he allegedly fucked a dead coyote) on stage. And while the band is gone (ranging from dead to having families) he's still as wild, angry, violent, and destructive as ever. Wanna know how I know that growing up and having a corporate sponsor hasn't slowed Indiefest down one bit? Because this movie took me back to my very first Indiefest and the every-bit-as shocking (and far more political) performance art in UNSPEAKABLE: THE LIFE AND ART OF REVEREND STEVEN JOHNSON LEYBA. That was a heck of a trip down memory lane. And it's nice to know that as jaded as I've become, there are still potential shocks out there. 

And then over to the Alamo Drafthouse for way too much booze and BUNNY, THE KILLER THING. Those who know me know I have an affinity for genre flicks and for bunnies, so when I saw that on the schedule I had to assume this was made--or at least programmed--just for me. I will keep believing that. It's a hilarious romp of low-budget cheesy horror starting with the mad scientists abducting a man and injecting him with a serum made from rabbit DNA. He turns into a giant horny bunny-man (no pretense of realism, it's a guy in a bunny suit with a ridiculous prosthetic phallus running around looking for "Fresh Pussy!") Toss in a group of people (some friends, some mysterious guys with a secret they're hiding in their trunk) who are holed up in mountain cabin. And the bunny-man runs amok an bloody splatstick hilarity ensues. A great way to end to weekend.

Total Running Time: 349 minutes
My Total Minutes: 419,594

No comments: