CATO September '07 Final Film Premiere Reviews

Tonight I got to witness some premieres of some student films. Sadly my short isn't quite ready yet, music is in the works, see previous post.

12 and Hyde - I walked in a bit late on this one and pretty much found it to be a boring torture porn film. I have to admit it had some nice lighting and colours, but script and violence and ending was not there. Something tells me I'd still feel the same if I saw the first handful of minutes. Grade: C

Short Tail - I have no idea who directed this one... but there was some real problems with it. The story was about two pot heads played by two guys who can't act and an archaeologist who is digging up dinosaur bones. I know, dino bone hunters are called Paleontologists. Anyway, the Paleontologists over acted and the pot heads underacted and brought the film to a climax that was meaningless. There was also a huge continuity error when one of the pot heads losses his beard between scenes. The credit sequence was also tough to read, had no connection to the film and went by too fast. Remember people, you should be able to read a credit about 3 times before it disappears. Grade: F

The Very Long Goodbye - Due to technical difficulties, the film was shown was very grainy, but at least it was there. The film was over the 20 minute mark, but was far better then the previous films shown (* my trailer not included since it was a trailer, not a film). The short was a nice homage to the film noir and detective stories from the golden era of Hollywood. Script was good, but another rewrite could have really tightened it up great. The use of black and white was nice, but contrast could have been pushed to get rid of some greys. The film had a lot of homages to such films as The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, with similar angles. One of the main problems with the short was it's audio qualities, the bad compression could have added to it, but there was always a white noise and the voice over changed volumes several times and got a little annoying, that and there were some audio pops in there as well, most notability the door knob falling off the door (nice touch). Grade: B (better contrast and sound would have landed this film at an A-.