Bad Movie Night
Short notice and other factors limited who I could invite and who of the invitees made it, but bad movie night was successful despite this. Junk food, pasta fasul and ice cream (and a little rum) distributed among guests, we watched a lovely cavalcade of videos.
We started with some short films I downloaded from here (under media type "Prelinger Archives"). These tend to be hokey enough that there's some good entertainment value and great mockery to be thrown at them. My selections:
All-American Soap Box Derby:
100: Boys from 8-15 build soap box derby cars.
200: Three soap box derby cars roll gently downhill while a grown man exalts the practice as an almost god-like activity.
300: GOTO 200.
Back of the Mike:
There were three visuals to this one: a kid sitting on his bed, listening to the radio, a western, and the radio studio where the western is being produced, with a considerable emphasis on foley. This short is actually pretty cool, if for no other reason than foley is an art form that has always impressed me, but there's a lot of really silly stuff in there, too.
A Coach for Cinderella and A Ride for Cinderella: Chevrolet presents a strange retelling of Cinderella, in which a bunch of gnomes and their woodland friends make her a dress and build her a Chevrolet. In part two, the evil stepsisters hire a witch to keep her from getting home at midnight, but none of the inclement weather sent her way is a match for the Chevrolet's amazing suspension and tight steering. When the prince finds her at home the next morning, the Chevrolet and the dress are still present and accounted for, so it's actually unclear why she had to hurry home. Sure, her car could handle the elements, but it would have been smarter for her to just crash there if she wasn't going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight.
The animation here is actually very good -- Fleischer studio quality, actually -- but it's positively ridiculous. Of note is the odd decision on the animators' part to model Cinderella herself after a ballet dancer (she might even have been rotoscoped; it's unclear).
What's It To You? (and Part II: A well-coiffed guy explains the benefits of mylar with the help of some stewardesses.
Why We Respect the Law: a kid who stole some lumber seeks legal counsel. Legal counsel involves imagined scenarios of gun-wielding desperadoes breaking into his house and a disappearing constitution.
Consuming Women: At best guess, this is a short designed to teach ad-men in the '60s how to advertise to women, now that they were allowed to handle money, though I can't really imagine learning anything from this short other than "causality is a lie."
How Much Affection?: A young girl ends a date terrified by how intimate it had been. Her mother consoles her with some heavily ambiguous advice, her schoolchums gossip about another girl who dropped out because she was pregnant (John Lithgow in a role that will surprise you), and then she goes on another date with the same guy, but neither of them seems to enjoy it, and I still have no idea how far they went the night before.
I Want to Be a Secretary: Apparently secretaries require more training than medical doctors.
The Powers of Congress: It's basically It's a Wonderful Life, only the guy wishes the US Congress had never been born, and Clarence is a disturbing Charlie Chan-ish protean creature. One minor mistake -- abolishing congress would not do anything to the circuit court or any of its officers. Also, it really weakens your premise when one of the important things on your list of Congressional Powers you need in your daily life is "Miscellaneous."
After the short film festival was over, it was on to something along the lines of movies.
The Washingtonians: Actually an episode of Masters of Horror, the Washingtonians is a conspiracy movie in which a hapless suburbanite gets caught up in a secret society's interest in covering up the fact that George Washington was in fact a cannibal with a taste for live virgin flesh. Saul Rubinek represents the movie's star power, and chews the scenery as he delivers the revelation speech just like an old pro. Features a powerfully, hilariously anticlimactic ending and a fat guy who acts with his tongue.
Straight Up: Actually an anti-drug PSA starring Chad Allen of My Two Dads (sort of a budget Ricky Schroeder) and Louis Gossett, Jr. (who I'm certain was fulfilling a public service requirement from a court ruling). Ben, who can't ride a skateboard, gets picked on by the ugly kid, the fat kid, the badly-dressed Asian kid and the adorable black kid because he's straight-edge. Lou Gossett takes him on an elevator and locks him in a dungeon full of psychotics armed only with a headband that informs him booze and pot... are drugs. When he escapes, he returns to the elevator with Lou Gossett, and for some reason seems happy to see him. He then tells his friends, using a tortured spaceship analogy, why drugs are bad.
There are six fifteen minute episodes, split among three lessons for Ben to learn:
1) drugs are bad.
2) beer commercials may not be entirely accurate.
3) it's harder than it might seem to resist the peer pressure of hobos.
Seriously.
Josh Kirby: Time Warrior in The Human Pets: Actually the second of six in a series of direct-to-video kids' movies. Josh Kirby is a geeky kid who breaks watches, is obsessed with his bike, and has a crush on a pre-Buffy Charisma Carpenter. He gets caught up in a time travel thing with a bumbling scientist, a cute warrior girl and an obnoxious animatronic creature. Honestly, I have no idea what the main story arc is about, but the second episode is kind of like The Indian in the Cupboard, if Omri was a sadistic bastard who brought his toys to life so they could fight. The main cast joins a WWI flying ace who has an inappropriate relationship with his plane, a cowboy, a caveman and a Musketeer to escape from the Michelin Man's mutant spawn.
We started with some short films I downloaded from here (under media type "Prelinger Archives"). These tend to be hokey enough that there's some good entertainment value and great mockery to be thrown at them. My selections:
All-American Soap Box Derby:
100: Boys from 8-15 build soap box derby cars.
200: Three soap box derby cars roll gently downhill while a grown man exalts the practice as an almost god-like activity.
300: GOTO 200.
Back of the Mike:
There were three visuals to this one: a kid sitting on his bed, listening to the radio, a western, and the radio studio where the western is being produced, with a considerable emphasis on foley. This short is actually pretty cool, if for no other reason than foley is an art form that has always impressed me, but there's a lot of really silly stuff in there, too.
A Coach for Cinderella and A Ride for Cinderella: Chevrolet presents a strange retelling of Cinderella, in which a bunch of gnomes and their woodland friends make her a dress and build her a Chevrolet. In part two, the evil stepsisters hire a witch to keep her from getting home at midnight, but none of the inclement weather sent her way is a match for the Chevrolet's amazing suspension and tight steering. When the prince finds her at home the next morning, the Chevrolet and the dress are still present and accounted for, so it's actually unclear why she had to hurry home. Sure, her car could handle the elements, but it would have been smarter for her to just crash there if she wasn't going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight.
The animation here is actually very good -- Fleischer studio quality, actually -- but it's positively ridiculous. Of note is the odd decision on the animators' part to model Cinderella herself after a ballet dancer (she might even have been rotoscoped; it's unclear).
What's It To You? (and Part II: A well-coiffed guy explains the benefits of mylar with the help of some stewardesses.
Why We Respect the Law: a kid who stole some lumber seeks legal counsel. Legal counsel involves imagined scenarios of gun-wielding desperadoes breaking into his house and a disappearing constitution.
Consuming Women: At best guess, this is a short designed to teach ad-men in the '60s how to advertise to women, now that they were allowed to handle money, though I can't really imagine learning anything from this short other than "causality is a lie."
How Much Affection?: A young girl ends a date terrified by how intimate it had been. Her mother consoles her with some heavily ambiguous advice, her schoolchums gossip about another girl who dropped out because she was pregnant (John Lithgow in a role that will surprise you), and then she goes on another date with the same guy, but neither of them seems to enjoy it, and I still have no idea how far they went the night before.
I Want to Be a Secretary: Apparently secretaries require more training than medical doctors.
The Powers of Congress: It's basically It's a Wonderful Life, only the guy wishes the US Congress had never been born, and Clarence is a disturbing Charlie Chan-ish protean creature. One minor mistake -- abolishing congress would not do anything to the circuit court or any of its officers. Also, it really weakens your premise when one of the important things on your list of Congressional Powers you need in your daily life is "Miscellaneous."
After the short film festival was over, it was on to something along the lines of movies.
The Washingtonians: Actually an episode of Masters of Horror, the Washingtonians is a conspiracy movie in which a hapless suburbanite gets caught up in a secret society's interest in covering up the fact that George Washington was in fact a cannibal with a taste for live virgin flesh. Saul Rubinek represents the movie's star power, and chews the scenery as he delivers the revelation speech just like an old pro. Features a powerfully, hilariously anticlimactic ending and a fat guy who acts with his tongue.
Straight Up: Actually an anti-drug PSA starring Chad Allen of My Two Dads (sort of a budget Ricky Schroeder) and Louis Gossett, Jr. (who I'm certain was fulfilling a public service requirement from a court ruling). Ben, who can't ride a skateboard, gets picked on by the ugly kid, the fat kid, the badly-dressed Asian kid and the adorable black kid because he's straight-edge. Lou Gossett takes him on an elevator and locks him in a dungeon full of psychotics armed only with a headband that informs him booze and pot... are drugs. When he escapes, he returns to the elevator with Lou Gossett, and for some reason seems happy to see him. He then tells his friends, using a tortured spaceship analogy, why drugs are bad.
There are six fifteen minute episodes, split among three lessons for Ben to learn:
1) drugs are bad.
2) beer commercials may not be entirely accurate.
3) it's harder than it might seem to resist the peer pressure of hobos.
Seriously.
Josh Kirby: Time Warrior in The Human Pets: Actually the second of six in a series of direct-to-video kids' movies. Josh Kirby is a geeky kid who breaks watches, is obsessed with his bike, and has a crush on a pre-Buffy Charisma Carpenter. He gets caught up in a time travel thing with a bumbling scientist, a cute warrior girl and an obnoxious animatronic creature. Honestly, I have no idea what the main story arc is about, but the second episode is kind of like The Indian in the Cupboard, if Omri was a sadistic bastard who brought his toys to life so they could fight. The main cast joins a WWI flying ace who has an inappropriate relationship with his plane, a cowboy, a caveman and a Musketeer to escape from the Michelin Man's mutant spawn.