Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life (Directors: Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski): From the makers of Madame Tutli-Putli comes another innovative short film with a rhyming title. Based on a story by Maurice Sendak, this short (24 minute) film will be included on the Blu-ray DVD release of Where the Wild Things Are, coming out this Tuesday here in Canada.
The story concerns a terrier named Jennie (voiced by Meryl Streep) who senses that something is missing in her life, even though she leads a pampered existence. “There must be more life than having everything,” she says, and sets out to find adventure. When she applies for the job of leading lady at the World Mother Goose Theatre, she’s told she needs more experience. It soon arrives when she hitches a ride with a feline milkman (a milkcat?) and gets a job as a nurse to a baby who won’t eat.
I haven’t read Sendak’s story, but it seems he is taking some familiar fairytale elements and mixing them together with a rather modern heroine. Jennie is bored and spoiled and always hungry. Her rude behaviour and selfishness don’t lend themselves to the reader’s (or viewer’s) sympathy. The directors use a mixture of puppetry and live action to create a very unsettling atmosphere, and soon the action turns frantic, dark, and a bit scary. Certainly younger children might be pretty frightened by this. Unfortunately, the story failed to draw me in and the puppetry never seemed quite as impressive as the stop-motion work the same filmmakers used to great effect in Madame Tutli-Putli. In the end, the film succeeded in creeping me out but never really engaged me.
Official site of the film
(7/10)
Tagged as:
animation,
nfb,
shorts
I’ve been paying a lot more attention to short films over the past few years, and I’m exited to have found a really excellent resource for finding and seeing these bite-sized gems of cinema.
Short of the Week is a fabulous site where short films are presented, reviewed and discussed. Not only is it attractively designed, but the curators have done a great job in presenting a variety of great work, both animated and live-action. Short films are difficult to see in the same way as we consume traditional films (theatrically and on DVD) so it only makes sense to present them online, and this site, established in 2007, has been amassing a great collection. The short reviews are also well-written and informative. I’ve made Short of the Week a regular stop on my film surfing, and so should you.
While we’re on the subject of shorts, I held an event for a few friends last weekend that I hope will develop into a regular series. Shorts That Are Not Pants featured a mixed programme of recent short films mostly screened from issues of Wholphin:
- El ataque de los robots de nebulosa-5 (The Attack of the Robots from Nebula-5) (Dir. Chema Garcia Ibarra, Spain, 6 minutes)
- Land of the Heads (Dir. Cédric Louis and Claude Barras, Canada, 6 minutes)
- Isabelle au bois dormant (Sleeping Betty) (Dir. Claude Cloutier, Canada, 9 minutes)
- Love You More (Dir. Sam Taylor-Wood, UK, 15 minutes)
- Glory at Sea (Dir. Benjamin Zeitlin, USA, 25 minutes)
- Two Cars, One Night (Dir. Taika Waititi, New Zealand, 12 minutes)
- Tørt og kjølig (Cold and Dry) (Dir. Kristoffer Joner, Norway, 12 minutes)
- Smafúglar (2 Birds) (Dir. Rúnar Rúnarsson, Iceland, 15 minutes)
- New Boy (Dir. Steph Green, Ireland, 11 minutes)
The two that generated the most discussion were Glory at Sea and Smafúglar (2 Birds), which didn’t surprise me at all. They were the two most dramatic films in the programme, and I look forward to more great work, of whatever length, from both directors.
Tagged as:
shorts
Editor’s Note:
Love You More is available on
Wholphin No. 8, a great compilation of short films from the same people who publish
McSweeney’s.
Love You More (Director: Sam Taylor-Wood): Based on a short story by English playwright Patrick Marber, this slice of life evocatively recalls the powerful combination of music geekery and sexual discovery that makes our teenage years so awkward and exciting. Buzzcocks fans Georgia and Peter meet at the record store on the day the band’s new single is coming out, but there’s only one copy. Cool Georgia invites the geeky Peter back to her place to listen to it. Their awkward attraction is unshackled as the 45 spins on the turntable, again and again.
In just 15 minutes, Taylor-Wood, known mostly for her photography, is able to convey so much. The swagger of teenagers, and the underlying terror of not knowing as much as you think. The way that shared musical taste can make you notice someone you never noticed before. The crumbling border between childhood and adulthood. It’s a beautiful piece of work, anchored in two brave performances and a couple of killer Buzzcocks singles.
Official site of the film
(8/10)
Tagged as:
buzzcocks,
coming-of-age,
music,
punk,
shorts,
wholphin
Over time, I’ve grown to appreciate short films more and more, and since their opportunities for theatrical release are so limited, I’m always glad to see shorts popping up in interesting places. For the past few years, Air Canada has sponsored the enRoute Film Festival, in which shorts by emerging Canadian filmmakers are featured on the seat-back entertainment systems on Air Canada flights. But it can’t rightly be called a festival unless there are awards and a big public screening, right?
So on October 20, there will be a free public screening of the shortlisted nominees for the fest’s awards. It will take place from 7:00–8:00pm at the Scotiabank Theatre here in Toronto. You can get an idea of the quality of the nominated films by visiting the web site, where many of the films are streaming. In addition to being able to see the films on the big screen, several members of the jury will be present, including actors Remy Girard and Lisa Ray and director Deepa Mehta.
Tagged as:
shorts
I met Paramita Nath a few months ago when we were classmates at the Summer Institute of Film and Television in Ottawa. We were both in Peter Wintonick’s Docology workshop and over the five days we were there, I got a glimpse of both her perfectionist side and her considerable charm. Near the end of the week, she let it slip that she had a completed short film that she might like some feedback on. Despite playing back on a small laptop screen, Found (review) knocked our socks off. On the last day of the workshop, she found out that it had been accepted by the Palm Springs Shortfest. Since then, the film has played several other US festivals and now, on the eve of Found’s hometown premiere at TIFF, I sat down to talk to her about her background and the experience of making her first short film.
[click to continue…]
Tagged as:
#tiff09,
canada,
shorts
