reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (05/10/85)
I just saw a program of science fiction/fantasy short films
at a local revival theater. A couple I'd seen before, a couple
I'd heard of, and the rest were new to me. As might be expected,
they were a mixed bag.
"It's an OK Life" is an animated short chronicling the life
of a man born in 1999. It's brief, fairly funny, indifferently
animated, and painless.
"Sam's Arcade" is a Canadian film, product of the infamous
Film Board of Canada. Sometimes it seems to me like they'll pro-
duce anything if the animation technique is even moderately inno-
vative. That is the only reason I can see for "Sam's Arcade".
As best I can make out, it's about a fellow who has some slightly
sf-toned nightmares when he eats food near bedtime. Years ago,
Winston McCay made an interesting animated film on this theme,
taken from the Little Nemo comic strip. "Sam's Arcade" isn't at
all interesting. It uses a rotoscoping technique somewhat simi-
lar to the Eleanor Rigby sequence from "Yellow Submarine", but
apparently different enough to gouge some money out of the pock-
ets of Canadian taxpayers. (No flames about the good works of
the Canadian Film Board, please. They've done some good stuff,
but too much of their output is self indulgence in technique.)
"Contact" is a Russian animated film about an alien en-
countering a human artist out in the country. It's modestly
amusing, modestly animated, just plain modest overall. The big-
gest laugh may come from the film's insistent use of the love
theme from "The Godfather", a film I would bet never saw release
in the USSR. I'd also bet Nino Rota, who wrote the theme, didn't
see a penny for its use in "Contact".
The centerpiece of the program, indeed, its reason for ex-
istence, was "Futureopolis", a homemade 40 minute science fiction
extravaganza. Almost all of it is animated, much of it in pixil-
lation. For those not up on animation terminology, pixillation
is a technique in which live actors are photographed a frame at a
time. You shoot one frame, the actors move slightly, you prepare
for the next shot, shoot one more frame, and so on. At twenty
four frames per second, pixillation isn't easy. I'm not quite
sure why they chose to use so much pixillation, unless it is for
consistency of tone. Much of the film could have been shot as
live action, saving a lot of effort.
"Futureopolis" cost somewhere between $20,000 and $40,000 to
make, and took 9 years to complete. It contains some impressive
effects, a lot of pretty good effects, only a few really bad
ones. There are also some very funny bits. It is, however, ul-
timately a cinematic equivalent of Dr. Johnson's dancing dog:
the remarkable thing about it isn't that it's good, but that it
works at all. I doubt if $40,000 dollars has been made to go so
far for quite some time in a film, but the ideas behind the film
are weak. It's meant to be sort of a Buck Rogers spoof, but
those making it know much more about art and special effects than
they do about writing. The hard core science fiction film fan
will definitely want to watch for "Futureopolis". Others will
probably enjoy it well enough if they stumble across it, but
shouldn't worry about missing it.
"Highrise" is another pointless demonstration of good spe-
cial effects. A spacecraft rips a skyscraper out of the ground
and drops it in the middle of the desert, nearly crushing a
parched man crawling along looking for water. It's very short
and the effects are pretty good.
"The Plant" is one of the films I've seen before, and I com-
mented on it in this newsgroup about a year and a half ago.
Briefly, it's the story of a plant that takes over a man's house.
Well worth seeing, as it is wittily told.
"Nun Fu" has an irresistable title and a neat pseudo-sf
premise, set up in a lengthy precredit crawl which had the audi-
ence in hysterics. Unfortunately, the inventiveness flags quickly
and the film lasts much too long. A couple of martial artist
nuns try to wrest a briefcase from each other. The idea is funny
for three or four minutes, but the film drags it out another ten
minutes, and tries to get laughs time and again from having one
of the combatants return from seemingly fatal wounds to take
another shot at it. None the less, any film with this title
which claims to have been shot on location at the Vatican and
which lists Travis Bickle as the religious advisor can't be all
bad.
"Cambium" is a weird, brief series of strange images. In
some ways it is reminiscent of "Eraserhead", perhaps in part be-
cause it is in black and white. I didn't understand it, but it
was interesting. Since it's very short, I doubt if anyone will
be much put out by it, unless the odd symbolism is deciphered by
someone and turns out to be as offensive as it vaguely hints.
The last film was "Quest", which I had also seen before.
Directed by Saul and Elaine Bass, this was the only film in the
program which really looked professional. It even looked pretty
good for a professional film. Saul Bass has been a widely recog-
nized creator of opening credit sequences for films for some
years. He also directed "Phase IV", an ecological disaster film
involving ants and dazzling scenic design. The effects in
"Quest" are first rate, especially the sets which are produced in
a variety of ways. The story, by Ray Bradbury, isn't special,
but gives many opportunities for interesting effects. The real
flaw in "Quest" is that it plays more like an audition film than
a work of its own. None the less, the splendid effects and scen-
ic design make it worth seeing.
There seem to be plans afoot to make these films into a
package which will be sent around the country, in the same manner
as various animation collections. If you are deeply into SF, or
special effects, or animation, you might want to watch out for
the package. None of the films in it are so special that they
demand attention, but they make an interesting assortment. The
whole runs only about two hours, and most of the films are under
ten minutes, so even the low points are bearably short and the
concept doesn't outlive its welcome.
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher