Marc Osborne’s award-winning animated short film More has been given the blue ribbon treatment with the recent release of a two-disc special edition. This new edition features a lovingly preserved and unabridged digital transfer of the original six minute short, as well as commentary tracks, links to information about Osborne’s more recent work, an hour long documentary on the making of More, and other short works by Osborne himself and some of More’s principal animators.

The short film is, of course, the most exciting element of this two-disc collection. Originally released in 1998, More enjoyed much critical success and popularity on the festival circuit. It was given an award for best animated short at both South by Southwest and Sundance, and was nominated for an Academy Award for best animated short film of 1998. More is a showcase for Osborne’s creative genius and the work of the film’s talented team of animators. Without dialog, the film portrays life in a stark and twisted alternate reality where individuality is lost. Surely this isn’t the first work to speculate on the nature of life in a place and time like this, but More’s brilliance is in its re-imagining of this world in such a brief and poignant way. Osborne and company’s work populates this world with animated characters possessed of a ghostly vitality. Two tracks accompany the the remastered transfer that feature Osborne’s reflections upon both the thematic and technical aspects of the work.

The hour long behind-the-scenes documentary that accompanies the remaster is called Making More. The film is a compilation of video-taped footage of the day-to-day work on the film from its earliest days, through the bliss and excitement of a successful festival tour culminating in an Oscar nomination. Alongside this footage are interviews with those most intimately involved with the making of More — Osborne and his family; the animators, sculptors, and editors; and those concerned with the film’s financing and distribution. The film follows More from its earliest conceptual sketches through to its release. The audience is given the chance to hear the reflections of Osborne and his crew, a group of student animators and stop-motion animation enthusiasts who, on a meager budget and with borrowed or donated equipment and facilities, found themselves on the cutting edge of large-scale cinema at the time, being the first group to attempt a stop-motion work on 65mm for projection on an enormous iMax screen. The documentary does a fine job of showing that bringing More to life was a grueling labor of love for those on the crew, capturing the obstacles that had to be overcome to bring the miniature world of More to life on an iMax screen.

The disc also features Osborne’s student film Greener, a work that anticipates some of the formal elements of what would become More. A collection of Osborne’s other student works is featured that showcases his abilities in working with a number of different familiar animation techniques. Also of interest is the haunting and beautiful animated short film Mum by Nick Peterson featuring work by David Candelaria, both principal members of the More crew. The interesting work Twice Daily by Keith Lowry, an original crew member as well, is also enjoyable. Both are well worth checking out if you enjoy More.

Silent Venom – The greatest danger to the mission is already on board.

In Fred Olen Ray’s thriller Silent Venom, Luke Perry plays Commander James O’Neill, twenty year veteran of the US Navy up against a court-martial for disobeying a direct order that he felt jeopardized the safety of his crew. Veteran actor Tom Berenger is Admiral Bradley Wallace, a man who hopes to rescue O’Neill from the court martial by sending him on one last mission: escorting the U.S.S. Santa Mira to Taipei, where the Mira — a relic of a pre-nuclear type Cold War submarine — is to be sold to the Taiwanese navy.

En route to Taipei, O’Neill and the Mira’s inexperienced skeleton crew are redirected to the remote island of Maku in the East China Sea to retrieve two scientests engaged in a clandestine research mission on behalf of US Army intelligence to synthesize an anti-toxin using the venom of a rare Asian pit viper indigenous to the island. Recent intelligence reports indicate that the Chinese Navy plans to engage in tactical exercises in the area, and the US fears for the safety of the two scientists and the necessary secrecy of their work. Dr. Andrea Swanson, played by Krista Allen of Emmanuelle fame, along with her bungling and conniving assistant Jake Goldin (Louis Mandylor) are caretakers of a menagerie of deadly venomous snakes in a remote research facility deep in the jungle. Swanson and Goldin, at the behest of the US Army, have cross-bred several diamondback rattlesnakes with the island’s indigenous vipers in hopes of producing the necessary venom upon which to base an antidote the US Army hopes to use to defend against possible neuro-toxin attacks by international terrorists.

Once the two are safely on board the Mira, it is discovered that — along with the few hybrid vipers that are a result of the pair’s research — the assistant, Goldin, has smuggled aboard twenty-or-so of the rare indigenous vipers with the hopes of selling them to the highest bidder. To make matters worse, the hybrid snakes are discovered to be genetically altered as a result of chromosomal damage suffered by the Asian vipers during Chinese nuclear testing in the area. The result of the unfortunate mutation is a dangerous rise in metabolism resulting in rapid increase in growth and aggressive behavior. Soon the snakes are loosed upon the crew of the Mira by a nosy young seaman, and — to make matters even worse — the Chinese Navy begins its tactical exercises ahead of schedule, within the very waters where O’Neill and his crew are traveling with the scientists.

The script, penned by MTV alum Mark Sanderson, is a terse, tense thriller well complimented by the film’s low-key and streamlined production. Perry and veteran TV actor Anthony Tyler Quinn (playing officer Eddie Boudreau) highlight a convincing and likable cast of sailors charged with protecting the lives of Swanson and Goldin. Louis Mandylor is especially likable as the snivelling assistan Goldin. There are plenty of genuinely creepy-crawly thrills in this enjoyable direct-to-DVD creature feature.

2009, 87 mins.
Unrated
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

There are films that we are drawn back to, again and again, because of the place to which they take us. It isn’t the depth of the characterization or complexity of the plot that fosters an enduring love for certain films; instead, it’s the way that they preserve a time and place like life in a jar of formaldehyde. For me that time is the seventies, and that film is Let’s Scare Jessica to Death.

Sure, I didn’t see this film until I rented it on VHS in the late eighties. I am certain that I rented it on one of those terribly long and boring summer days you encounter during your teens when you’re on summer vacation. Likely I was wearing my beloved red-striped shirt and a pair of cut-off jeans. I walked all the way to what was then called Loehmann’s Plaza on 98th Street and Normandale Boulevard, a depressing little strip mall about a mile and a half away from my house — a long way for a fat kid to walk, for sure. Loehmann’s Plaza always had a scant few shops during those years: a family restaurant called ‘The Cottage,’ a Pizza Hut, a bank, and The Dress Barn. Nowadays it’s come back to life a bit. It’s got Subway, Famous Dave’s, a Lund’s, and a Haskell’s.

The only real place of interest back then was 98th Street video — an independently owned video rental place that, along with renting videotapes and games for the Sega, sold used movie posters. I would save up my allowance and the money I made from doing odd jobs and spend it on buying posters that had advertised upcoming video releases, a practice my father found almost pathologically objectionable. My favorite was a poster for the James Bond film A View to a Kill. Roger Moore and Grace Jones appeared on that poster, back-to-back, both holding pistols if I remember correctly. Grace Jones, with her butch demeanor, good looks, and muscular thighs was a prototype for the domineering woman I would grow to find so interesting in later years. Watching Grace Jones beat Christopher Walken in a karate fight, then throw Roger Moore around in bed was likely fodder for my burgeoning adolescent sexuality.

What drew me immediately to Let’s Scare Jessica to Death was that it looked to be a genuinely frightening movie. I don’t recall how it was that I was allowed to rent it, surely I didn’t have the legal rights for renting quasi-vampire films back then; it must have been un-rated having emerged from a time before the MPAA decided to ruin the childhood of every horror film fan below the age of seventeen. Anyhow, I was able to rent it, and I returned home with it to the air-conditioned comfort of my parents’ neo colonial-style suburban home. While most kids were out playing basketball or running relay races, I was inside, with the curtains drawn, watching horror and science fiction films on VHS… a practice that was the right of every latch-key child in suburban America during the eighties.

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, or Jessica as I will begin calling it now, tells the story of a group of friends who decide to leave the urban blight of 1970’s-era New York City behind in exchange for an old house in God’ country (which is somewhere near Connecticut) when one of them, Jessica, suffers a nervous breakdown. The group of friends begins working on keeping up an apple orchard on the land and selling off the odd junk that was left in the house by the former owners, an old couple who’ve not lived on the premises in many years. On the first night in their new house, the group stumbles upon a young woman who’s been squatting in the abandoned home. Of course, she plays the acoustic guitar and wears tightly-fitting corduroy jeans. What’s surprising is that she may or may not be the former tenant’s vampiric daughter. As Jessica is the only one of the group that suspects there is something amiss in the old house, the others begin to question her mental stability. What began simply enough as Jessica’s voice-over narration becomes the increasingly bizarre inner monologue of a woman doubting her own sanity when she is confronted with the possibility that she and her friends have happened upon the supernatural.

The film absolutely reeks of the seventies. A decade I know, from photographic evidence that exists like android memory implants in boxes around my parents’ house, that I existed in but scarcely can grasp memory of. Watching Jessica is like visiting some kind of a living history museum, where historical re-enactors eat fondue, walk around in burnt orange turtlenecks and say things like “groovy.” This is a world primarily preserved by the kinds of films I saw in high school health class, movies with sickly sweet soundtracks featuring acne-ridden teenagers sitting in bean bags, eating cotton candy, and discussing issues of personal hygiene. While watching it again recently I was struck with an odd sense of disbelief as I watched the early-thirtysomething cast of Jessica sit around their kitchen table having an impromptu sing-along with the homeless woman they’ve found living in their house. When were white people ever this comfortable with themselves?

It’s interesting the way history binds an individual to their times… one doesn’t think of George Washington doing anything other than crossing the Potomac or chopping down cherry trees; in this same way it is difficult to rescue the characters in Jessica from their times… I can only see them becoming the type of people who at some point put aside their LSD and their vegetarian cookbooks in exchange for selling insurance policies, giving birth to oddly-named children, and eating organic produce. Nonetheless, in the odd way in which I have pieced together my unremembered seventies existence from borrowed memories used to tear away the remembered years of my life like layers of old wallpaper, so Jessica lives on as a testament to a time when there was no kitsch value in macrame wall-hangings and men were allowed to emerge from the waters of a lake after skinny-dipping, naked and uncircumcised like something savage and prehistoric.

The makers of Jessica use lots of horror film axioms to their advantage — the old dark house, isolation, and the questionable sanity of the main character — in crafting a uniquely frightening vampire film that is rivaled only by Let the Right One In and Martin for originality in the vampire genre. Jessica’s re-issue on DVD is well-deserved. Its erie atmosphere and unsettling story of a town possibly in the clutches of an ages old vampire clan are enough to make it worth adding to your queue.

FROM THE JOURNAL OF DR. ABEL MERRIWETHER
16 AUGUST, 2008

It was in the spring of the year that I was first approached by the carrier of the following document. Having spent much of my retirement studying certain obscure and fabled tracts, such as the black tome known as The Necronomicon of Dr. Abdul Alhazred, it was with no small measure of excitement that I gained possession of the final copy of The Netflix Ratings Rubric. The messenger turned the papers over to me with a brief word of caution that I proceed with great care in any attempts I might make at understanding the original author’s haphazard and fumbling summation of his personal application of the Netflix ratings scheme.

At first I was skeptical. I had for some time read various reports in Internet newsgroups that a document such as the one now being offered me existed. I took the papers into my hand and offered the messenger something in the way of a reward for his diligence in having procured the papers I had for so long sought proof of. He refused and made a hasty retreat to his white Dodge Intrepid that was parked at the end of my driveway.

Over the next several months I made an attempt at translating the Rubric into the common vernacular, as well as penning my own reflections on the rather meandering logic exhibited by the author. I include my translation in this journal entry and hope to follow with my own testament to the authenticity of the documents.

The contents of the papers given to me by the mysterious messenger were as follows…

[FRAGMENT BEGINS]

Dearest Warren,

I hope that you are keeping well. Please find attached to this e-mail a copy of the most up-to-date version of my Netflix Ratings Rubric, as well as a brief forward regarding its origins. I hope that your university chums will find it edifying. It is in .docx format. I trust you will not have a problem opening it. If need be, I will gladly convert it to a .pdf file for you. Merely say the word!

Regards!

Jim!

(more…)

With the arrival of the newest Star Trek film, I thought it was a good time for me to write an article with a Star Trek theme. Of all of the Trek films to date, the one that stands out in my mind as my favorite is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Of course, an article on my love of STII might be lots of fun to write, but it isn’t exactly in keeping with the motto of this site, imagined by our editor and creator The Matt Gamble: “Watching what nobody else does…” or something.

No. For my Star Trek article, I thought I’d spend a bit of my time reflecting on what I feel is the most under-appreciated of all of the Star Trek films — Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

ST5 was much ballyhooed upon its release. The first ST feature to be directed by William Shatner, it was to be a departure from the excesses of the fourth film and a return to Star Trek’s roots. Aware of its pedigree, ST5 has lots of fun poking fun at the characters and situations so familiar to fans of the original series. However, along with much self-referential humor, ST5 relishes Star Trek’s status as a 60’s-era Wagon Train in outer space and employs themes of the western genre like brotherhood, bravery, and loyalty in order to tell a poignant and thought-provoking story with familiar Trek characters and situations.

ST5’s premise is a simple one: a charismatic loner with prophet-like intentions has kidnapped three galactic diplomats and is holding them hostage on a failed, run-down contrivance of a planet within the Neutral Zone. Enter Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the rest on board the freshly minted U.S.S. Enterprise mark 3. Yanked on board during shore leave, and with a skeleton crew, Kirk must guide his ship into Neutral Zone territory to rescue the captured diplomats. However, where this premise leads us is anywhere but simple when Kirk and company discover that the three kidnapped diplomats are no longer being held against their will, but are willing participants in a plan hatched by none other than Sybok (brilliantly played by Lawrence Luckinbill), Spock’s long lost half brother and Vulcan philosopher who has abandoned his race’s strict adherence to logic in exchange for emotion. The crew are taken hostage themselves and are forced to join Sybok on his quest for the mythical Sha-ka-ri — a godly planet residing within the galactic core.

A key to what makes ST5 so interesting and likable is Sybok. He is by far the most interesting Vulcan character in the ST universe outside of Spock himself. Sybok, having come to emotion in a way similar to the way a person acquires a second language, is a ware of the abstract constructs that emotional language is made of. He is able to twist them to his own purposes and manipulate those whose lives depend on them, like the crew of the Enterprise and the motley band of subprime mortals that accompanies him on his quest for Sha-Ka-Ri. Sybok, while twisting the internal emotional landscapes of his captives, hopes that his trickery will benefit them in the long run — he truly believes that he is destined to unite mankind with God, who, in a SF spin on the evil trickster of Descarte’s Meditations on First Philosophy, is actually an evil force eternally marooned on a planet at the remote center of the galaxy.

Sure, ST5 didn’t have Christopher Lloyd playing the coolest Klingon in the history of Star Trek like ST3 did. Sure, it didn’t have all of the daring, drama, and excitement of ST2. Likewise, ST5 is not without its faults. At times the film-makers struggle with bridging the gap between the film’s comedic elements and the more dramatic moments of the film; the Abbott and Costello antics of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are badly contrasted with moments where real drama is attempted. The film gives Sulu and Chekhov short shrift, as the moments of their conversion to Sybok’s cult are not featured on screen as those of Spock and McCoy. At times the film’s irreverence borders on absurdity, particularly when Spock attempts the Vulcan nerve pinch on the nape of a stallion. And lastly, the idea that a malignant intelligence living on a translucent blue planet at the center of the galaxy in need of a starship is, admittedly, preposterous, even if it is put to good use by the writers.

But what ST5 did have was a return to Star Trek’s roots as a work of speculative fiction; with its (God in Outer Space!) premise, its dissection of the minds of the central and most beloved characters of the ST universe, and its reflections on the human (and Vulcan, for that matter…) condition, ST5 is a solid SF film that ought to be remembered as a film as worthy of entry into the Star Trek feature canon as any of the preceding or subsequent ST films.