Jason goes to Holehead--Day 8

The big second weekend begins with four shows Friday. Here we go:

First up, the hit short from Cinequest, BY A HAIR: still hilarious, still a cautionary tale about picking at a stray hair.

That was the lead in to the feature, THE BLEEDING HOUSE. Out in the middle of small-town nowhere lives a dysfunctional family. On the outside they don't seem too weird--an artistic mother, hard-working father, a teenage son who's embarrassed to introduce his girlfriend to them (or is it vice-versa). The one odd bit is the daughter, a Wednesday Addams type goth (though not quite so pale) who pins dead bugs to her walls. Enter a stranger named Nick, dressed all in white and talking all fancy. Seems he had some car trouble, or so he says. But of course, there are some surprises in store. Of course, I immediately guessed that the stranger is pure evil/a representation of the devil. And for quite a bit the film neither surprised nor disappointed me. Although predictable, I was reveling in the over-the-top gleefully evil acting. And then the ending took a slightly less predictable turn, and I loved it even more.

Next up, another representation of evil/the devil, in BREATH OF HATE. Jason Mewes, sober and stretching as an actor, stars as a regular client who falls in love with an escort. So in love, he offers to take her away, but her pimp has other plans. And he sends her on a call with two other girls, for an all-night party in a mansion. There they meet their creepy, creepy clients--a melon-fucking retard, an S&M mistress, and the ringleader Hate. Hate has a deranged plan to fix the world by...I don't know, killing whores I guess. So we're in for a bloody night. Very well done, and it plays a little with disoriented time and takes a bit of inspiration from the short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" which makes it a bit of a puzzle film, but not one that's too difficult to untangle.

Next up, Holehead/SF Indiefest continued their relationship with Uwe Boll by playing AUSCHWITZ. You know, I go to a lot of film festivals and pretty routinely I see movies where the director says he wants the audience members to interpret the film for themselves. So it's rare and odd to see a film where the director is so excruciatingly explicit in his intentions for the film. It opens with Boll introducing himself and taking full responsibility for the film. He talks about how 60-70 years after Auschwitz was in operation as a killing factory, we still see genocide in places like Darfur, and he's afraid that we've forgotten the lessons of the past (side note, from meeting him a couple of times I can say this is something of an obsession for him). What films are made are in the SCHINDLER'S LIST mold--showing the tiny rays of hope in the darkest of situations. He wanted to show the bleak truth, no silver lining, so that we may never forget what happened there on a daily basis.

He backs that up by bookending his film with interviews with German high school students. Disturbingly, with one major exception (one kid can recite all the facts, figures, and litany of horror) they seem to know surprisingly little about the Holocaust. Now I don't know if there's selective editing going on, I hope that he found several more kids who did know plenty but was more interested in showing the ignorant ones.

And then the meat of the film was a dramatization of a day at Auschwitz. Actually, "dramatization" is the wrong word, since it's specifically stripped of any drama. In his un-dramatization, Jews are marched in, stripped, and sent to the showers--where instead of water of course they are gassed. Meanwhile Nazi guards (including Boll) watch dispassionately (Boll takes a nap outside of the gas chamber while frantic victims are pounding on the door). Babies are shot in the head (too small to be of any use), soldiers drink and play cards, Jewish workers are sent in to pick up the bodies and carry them to the ovens, and black smoke blocks out the sky. It's bleak, horrible, and perfectly effective at its goal of showing both the extremity and extreme mundanity of absolute horrific evil. And that's a goal worth achieving, even if the end result is hard to watch.

And after that, I could use a wacky comedy, and that was the midnight movie, ATTACK THE BLOCK. Executive produced and co-starring Edgar Wright [note: Edgar Wright doesn't act in the movie. I confused him for Nick Frost. See comments. I left the incorrect statement in as a sort of 'own-your-mistakes' kind of integrity] (SEAN OF THE DEAD, HOT FUZZ, etc.) and directed by frequent collaborator Joe Cornish, it opens with a scene of a young woman getting mugged by some street tough kids in London. Then a meteor lands, a vicious little alien pops out, and the action starts. The thing is, in your typical monster movie these kids would be dead meat. They started out very unlikable, and unlikable kids die in monster movies. But in this one, they're the heroes. Sure, some die, but they also save the planet. And there's never a typical Hollywood "redemption" scene where they tearfully apologize and swear to live right. Hell, later they break into the same woman's apartment for refuge, and finding out she's a nurse they force her to perform first aid on one of them. But remember, they're the heroes. There's an important scene early on where she looks at the aliens, looks back at the thugs, and after a quick deliberation runs to the thugs as the lesser of two evils. So while I was watching it, I enjoyed the action and comedy (particularly Ron's weed room as the ultimate refuge) but I was a little put off by the fact that the "heroes" were thugs who mugged a woman for no apparent reason in the opening scenes. But while thinking about it the next morning, I realized there was a reason. It was a scene I didn't really pay much attention to at the time, but there's a part where they admit when they mugged her their knives were just for show, and they were just as afraid of her as she was of them. And they say they didn't know she had just moved into the block, and wouldn't have touched her if they knew she was a local. And this is very important to the 'we-take-care-of-our-own' ethos of the block. When they mugged her, they were simply defending their turf, attacking any stranger who enters the block. Exactly the same reaction they have to the aliens. They don't need a redemptive moment because their moral code never changes, and given their living conditions they were correct all along, and her mugging was a simple mistake.

I apologize for totally over-analyzing the morality of this movie. In fact, it's totally a popcorn action-comedy flick. It's just that to enjoy it as a popcorn flick, you have to either ignore morality or learn and embrace the block's morality. Belief!

Total Running Time: 345 minutes
My Total Minutes: 239,197

Jason goes to Holehead--Day 7

Two more movies Thursday night, before the big second weekend. Let's jump right in.

First up was a short and a feature about ghost hunting, in perhaps the first well-matched short/feature combination of the fest. The short, ENTER THE DARK was a very clever and surprising story of a man enlisting the help of his highly skeptical and sarcastic best friend to investigate the odd paranormal happenings in his house. Starts kind of conventional, then has some really good scares, and an excellent surprise ending.

And the the feature, HAUNTED CHANGI from Singapore. Changi hospital is famous as "the most haunted place in the world." First as a British military barracks, then a base for the occupying Japanese in WWII (where unspeakable torture and mass beheadings took place). Finally after the war it was turned into a hospital, but most locals would prefer to let their illness linger than receive treatment among the ghosts there. Well, a group of young, cocky documentary filmmakers decide to make a movie about it, and this is the 'found footage' from their adventure. We see them joking around in their office, reviewing footage, etc. And they get permission to film for one day and one night. Day footage has just a few oddities, but nighttime is when the true creepiness happens. There's a good mix of humor with the horror (the scene with the Ghost Hunters of Singapore is pretty funny). And although the ending is fairly predetermined, they still do a good job of building up to it and keeping surprises coming the whole time. It does suffer a little from the handheld shaky-cam syndrome. Part of the concept, so it's forgivable, but there were some shaky sequences that just dragged on too long (run frantically through more underground corridors, please) and even in the conceit of 'found footage' could've been edited down. But overall, it was still fun and effectively scary.

And then the late show was another wacky Japanes violence comedy from Sushi Typhoon, YAKUZA WEAPON. What can I say? Shozo was already the toughest damn yakuza ever when he returned to Japan to avenge his father's death. No man can defeat him. Women, on the other hand.... Well, after a particularly vicious battle, he gets his missing arm replaced with a machine gun and his knee turned into a rocket launcher. Now he's really ready for revenge, even if he is now government property. And the insanity never really lets up. Old loyalties, a naked lady weapon, and a nuclear finish--all the things I expect Holehead and their Japanese connection to deliver. Awesome!

Total Running Time: 205
My Total Minutes: 238,852

Jason goes to Holehead--Day 6

After skipping days 4 and 5, I was back Wednesday night. Here we go.

First up, the short ONE SMALL STEP: The story of the moon rocks who weren't brought back to earth after the Eagle landed.

And that, despite having no connection beyond being Australian, was the lead-in to the feature BAD BEHAVIOUR. This is one of two films I brought to Holehead from Cinequest, so I'm a bit biased, but lets take a look at what I said back then:

And then, after just a couple of drinks at the meetup, I was back for the midnight film BAD BEHAVIOUR. That extra U in "Behavior" is for "Uuuhhh...we're Australians!" It starts off fast, with the psycho brother-sister team Emma and Peterson killing a poor tourist for no apparent reason other than he's French (okay, not a bad reason). They're cutting a swath of murder across Australia, and they end up in the small town of Cecil Bay. But before we get to that inevitable mayhem, we meet some of the residents of the town, who are all engaging in more or less bad behavior of their own. There's a wife cheating on her husband (with her boss), there's a husband kidnapping his wife's lover, and there's a party full of drunken teenagers who break into the neighbors house looking for more booze. There's a lot of build up, followed by buckets and buckets of blood. Awesome. It's also done a PULP FICTION-esque non-linear timeline, that totally works. But seeing it at midnight when I was exhausted means I'll probably have to see it again in order to really get all of it. Maybe I can convince the guys at SF Indiefest's Another Hole in the Head to play it this summer.

Holy crap, I was prescient, I did get Holehead to play it! And I can now say that it's even better when you don't nod off for bits of it!

Okay, the second show started with the short 52 TAKES OF THE SAME THING, THEN BOOBS, by Indiefest alum and Dirty Little Shorts filmmaker T. Arthur Cottam (BEER GOGGLES, PORNOGRAPHIC APATHETIC). Just remember, the most important aspect in filmmaking is a good story.

And speaking of a good story, the feature A CADAVER CHRISTMAS had that, plus a silly, bloody sense of humor that tickled me just right. It's an old school homage to early Sam Raimi splatstick comedies (even including the Delta 88 and an Evil Dead poster). Set sometime in the past in small town America (aren't the best horror films in small towns), before cell phones, after 911 was implemented (that's right you kids, when I was really, really little you had to memorize the local police, fire, etc. numbers. 911 was implemented in my hometown when I was in grade school), when rotary phones still existed (that's right kids, there was a thing called rotary phones and...never mind. And get off my lawn!) Anyway, we're in a bar on Christmas Eve. No one there but the bartender and the miserable town drunk (bartender's keeping tabs on him to prevent his annual Christmas Eve suicide attempt). Suddenly, a guy in a janitor's overalls and covered in blood walks in, uses the bathroom to clean up a bit (not enough), sits down for a beer, and starts telling a wild story about zombies...no, cadavers...that are walking around the university where he works. Enter a cop and his goat-f**king perp. And against all better judgement they go back to the university to check things out. And lots of bloody, funny, hijinx ensue. The end. Awesome!

Total Running Time: 184 minutes

My Total Minutes: 238,647

Jason watches PLAYTIME

I'm missing nearly all of the Castro's 70 mm film series to go to Holehead, but last Tuesday night I had a break to catch Jacques Tati's PLAYTIME.

I'd never seen a Tati film before, and it's my understanding this one is his most ambitious. Well, I now want to see all his work. It's a nearly-silent comedy, where the visuals are paramount. What words are spoken are a mix of French, English, and German (and no subtitles, so I imagine there's a uniquely different experience for the speakers of each language). Tati's Mr. Hulot bumbles his way through a modern Paris (well, 1960's modern) of glass walls. This isn't the Paris of the Eiffel tower (which is only seen briefly in a reflection), but a maze of glass. He tries to meet an official but gets lost in the office maze. He stumbles into a group of American tourists. He goes to the opening night of a trendy new (so new it's still being built) restaurant/nightclub. And whimsical hijinx ensue. But the movie isn't all about the slapstick, it's about the expertly choreographed shots with many layers of overlapping action and clever visual jokes. It's the sort of richly layered comedy that can leave you finding new things every time you watch it. And I can pretty much guarantee I'll be watching it again.

Running Time: 122 minutes

My Total Minutes: 238,463

Jason watches HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN

I had a day off from Holehead, but I kept the genre flowing with this one. And it's pretty freakin' awesome! Rutger Hauer (who deserves a Mickey Rourke style resurgence in popularity) stars as the titular Hobo. He's never given a name, but he arrives riding the rails to a scum-filled city ruled by ruthless psychopath The Drake. He sees some mindless violence, but tries to keep his head low. But he just can't help himself when The Drake's son abuses a young lady (okay, a prostitute, but she still deserves to live). He gets cut up, but finally the abuse gets too much and he goes all vigilante with a shotgun.

It's got that great 70's grindhouse feel, with insane, cartoonish villains, the scratchy film look, even the classic Technicolor logo and the yellow text title and credits. It's apparently based on a fake trailer made for a SXSW grindhouse trailer competion and attached to the Canadian release of Tarantino/Rodriguez's GRINDHOUSE. It's the movie GRINDHOUSE wishes it was (and I say that as a big fan of GRINDHOUSE). With this and MACHETE, it appears that GRINDHOUSE might be even better as an inspiration for a revival of genre homage movies than it was as a movie in it's own right.

Running Time: 86 minutes

My Total Minutes: 238,341

Jason goes to Holehead--Day 3.

The first weekend wraps up with a four-film Sunday

We start in old school Japan with the classic GODZILLA, MOTHRA, AND KING GHIDORAH: ALL OUT MONSTERS ATTACK! Okay, so "old school" is 2001, but it's the venerable Godzilla vs. The Guardian Monsters. Three monsters who defend the homeland (not the nation, the homeland, there's a difference) of Japan. First Baragon, the burrowing red horned monster without a good enough agent to get his name on the title. Then Mothra, the giant moth (with nothing but an oblique insider reference to the fairy twins). And of course there's King Ghidorah, the three-headed 1,000 year dragon. And there's the defense force, a plucky young woman (who is the daughter of the commander of the defense force) and plenty of old school monster on monster action. This is also a throwback to the first Holehead, when they played it 7 years ago. Back then we saw the subtitled version, this time all they could get was the dubbed. It was awesome then, it's still awesome now.

We then moved from old-school Japan to new-school (or new-school remake of a 70's TV show) Japan with KARATE-ROBO ZABORGAR. Non-stop cotton candy childish fun from the maker of MACHINE GIRL. Daimon fights for righteousness with his trusty motorcycle/robot Zaborgar. Their nemesis is sigma, the evil organization responsible for his father's death. Crazy silliness, and there's even a message of free will, redemption, perseverence, and fighting for who or what you love. But most importantly, the crazy silliness.

Next up was the comedy program, staring with the short ROID RAGE. An angry mutant hemorrhoid runs amok, getting revenge on the real assholes of the world.

And that led into the feature, THE MOLE MAN OF BELMONT AVENUE. A Chicago production, starring people who are allegedly legends of the Chicago sketch comedy scene, and Robert Englund. All the pets are disappearing from a rundown shithole apartment complex, and the two idiot brothers who run the place (after inheriting it from their mom) can't seem to do anything about it. Of course, they also can't seem to stay sober long enough to try. They have enough problems just collecting rent, paying the bills, and maintaining the extension cords they use to steal electricity from the church across the street. So of course they're not going to be a match for the Mole Man. But they're excellent at drinking and making fun of each other. Not much of a story in this no-budget flick, but it's plenty funny watching the idiotic, self-centered brothers and their equally deranged tenants screw everything up.

And finally, the last show of the night started with the short HAWKINS HILL. A classic setup--a teenage couple in an abandoned house, someone comes in and they find there's something sinister going on. Very well constructed in this case, with an interesting take on murals and inspiration.

The theme of art and inspiration continues in the homage to classic Italian horror, UBALDO TERZANI HORROR SHOW. Alessio is a young up-and-coming film director. Or at least he wants to be. He wants to make a horror movie but his producer doesn't like the splatter style of his scripts, he prefers something more atmospheric, psychological, classical. So he sets him up with a co-writer, a famous horror novelist Ubaldo Terzani. Prior to moving in with Ubaldo for an extended writing session, Alessio reads all his novels, and starts having nightmares about them. Clearly he's is a brilliant writer, and Alessio is eager to learn his secret. Ubaldo is charming and takes Alessio to a party so that he'll learn to let go, have fun, live life, and find his muse. There's something more to him, though, and you can probably guess without me saying anything. So I won't. Instead I'll note the humor (including a gasp-inducing dig against Clive Barker. For the record I like Clive Barker) and the great gore effects by Italian master Sergio Stivaletti. And I'll note how they got the balance and flow of psychological to gory in just the same vein as the Italian classics. Nicely done.

Total Running Time: 410 minutes
My Total Minutes: 238,255

Jason goes to Holehead--Day 2

Now the first weekend begins in earnest, with a 5 movie day. Thank god they don't do noon matinees anymore, since the bus home Friday night didn't get me home until about 4 am (but at least I got a chance to write all my reviews).

Anyway, I was back up at the Roxie bright and early at the crack of 3:20 for ITALIAN GHOST STORIES. An anthology of works by young up-and-coming Italian directors, produced through their University in Rome. There isn't even a framing device to the anthology, which makes it much more like seeing a short film program (just with all the credits at the end). An effective grouping of young horror talents, that went together very well and generally kept a good creepy atmosphere.
17 NOVEMBRE: Descendants of a recently deceased writer gather in his home to remember him, although he seems more like the kind of guy you'd want to forget.
OFFLINE: A young man gets an IM from a friend, and later finds out he killed himself earlier that same day. And then things get really creepy.
FABIA DI UN MOSTRO: Celeste doesn't speak, although there's no reason he can't. The other kids say he's the son of the devil, but one little girl believes in him. Maybe she shouldn't.
LA MEDIUM: An old woman works as a fake psychic, fleecing suckers by telling them pleasing stories. Until she gets a strange visitor.
URLA A COLLINA: The most American-influenced of the bunch (director Omar Protani was there and said he's a big fan of American horror and Stephen King movies). Three girls driving through the country at night hit...something. An animal? A person? Too dark to tell. Anyway, no doubt it will come back to haunt them. Very cool.

Next up was Michael Biehn's (THE TERMINATOR, GRINDHOUSE) directorial debut THE VICTIM. He was inspired to make this after making GRINDHOUSE with Robert Rodriguez and thought it would be fun to make his own grindhouse flick. He made this on a low budget and just 12 shooting days, so it does have some cheesy lines and less than stellar acting, but for what it is--a completely unserious bit of sex and violence--it's a lot of fun. Biehn plays a hermit living out in the woods, miles outside of the nearest town. One night, a frantic girl (Jennifer Blanc) pounds on his door screaming for help and insisting "they" are right behind and want to kill her. "They" turn out to be the cops...crooked cops who already killed her friend when a bit of rough sex went bad. He wants nothing to do with it, but he's pulled into helping her (and doing more with her, of course). It's funny and cheesy and not at all to be taken seriously. It's very predictable, but in a way that I was constantly thinking, 'and now they should do/say this...' and then they did. So it's fair to say it was predictable in exactly the way it should be. Oh, and the ending was awesome!

Michael Biehn was there along with his girlfriend/co-star/producer Jennifer Blanc. They were a hoot, I wish Holehead had scheduled more time between films so we could've had some Q&A afterwards. Oh yeah, and musician Randy Chance was there to jam a little of his soundtrack music before the film started.

Next up was a local production, THE CRAVING. Chef Ronnie Sixtos of Diabla Pica is taking San Francisco by storm--tearing through both the culinary world and the lesbian scene. Oh, and there's a maniac cannibal killer on the loose, too. There might be a connection. Crazy-ass story with crazy-ass outsized characters and a go-anywhere outrageous feel, with the FBI, a vengeful ex, and an important cover article in Wine and Food magazine. My only complaint is the sound levels were way off, which almost made it impossible to get into the movie at all. If they can fix that before releasing it in whatever fashion they can, they could have a cult hit on their hands.

The next show started with the short OFF THE BEATEN TRACK. An Australian wildlife show goes horribly wrong when they explore the site of a plane crash. An homage to the Italian cannibal films of the 70's like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and CANNIBAL FEROX. It even includes a recreation of the scene in CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST that is among my top 5 favorite cinematic de-phallusings.

The short was nothing like the feature, THE OREGONIAN, which was, in a word, weird. In another word, surreal. A blond woman wakes up in a crashed car, covered with blood, with a staticy version of Pomp and Circumstance playing on the radio. With a face covered with blood, she wanders down the road and has a series of dreamlike adventures. She meets a creepy old woman, a guy who pisses the rainbow, rednecks drinking fruity gasoline drinks, and a guy in a furry green monster costume. And she has flashbacks to her time on a farm, and something about an abusive relationship. My interpretation is it's the nightmare in the time between being brutally raped and being killed. Often (I assume) intentionally annoying, but fascinating. At the end I had no idea what to make of it (other than my interpretation above, of course). I decided to make a conscious decision to love it, since that's not the sort of thing that would happen naturally.

And finally the midnight show started with the longish shot AN EVENING WITH MY COMATOSE MOTHER. A cool, classically structured movie about a girl watching over a house on Halloween night while the wealthy owners are at a party at the Governor's mansion. The wife's mother is 92 and comatose, she just has to check in every few hours and change her if necessary. But the creepy doll and eyeless Dickensian trick-or-treaters ruin everything. Excellent film.

Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the feature. ZOMBIE UNDEAD is possibly the least original, least interesting zombie movie I've ever seen. There's a zombie outbreak and a few survivors in a hospital they run around, fight the zombies, and...fuck it, if you've seen any zombie movie, you've seen all of this before. And that's not counting the plot holes. All I'll say is the end credits show brief scenes of the military coming in to clean up and search for survivors. It's the only part where the movie got at all interesting. If you see a trailer with military scenes in it, and you think that looks cool, remember IT'S NOT IN THE MOVIE, IT'S JUST SNIPPETS DURING THE END CREDITS!

And that's day 2 of Holehead 2011

Total Running Time: 468 minutes
My Total Minutes: 237,845