The Arctic Circle

This stop-motion animation short is Canadian producer/cinematographer Kevin Parry's cautionary tale about greed.

In a story as cold as it's arctic setting, it is the little things that demonstrate the craftsmanship of the storyteller.  Brevity at its finest, surgical editing, all that it needed to be and not a frame more.

The body language and eye movements of the puppet were so well articulated I quickly forgot that I wasn't looking at a real person.  Captured the vice in a smart, intuitive, clever fashion.

Ihor Dawidiuk's original music underscored the action brilliantly.

A grad student project, advised by Chris Walsh, this 3:40 film was made on a budget of $750 CD.   Can't wait to see what this exciting new film maker is able to do with real money.

The Wild Hunt

 Exquisite, masterful and compelling.  Not the biggest fan of Medieval Times or the Renaissance Fair, but Director/Producer/Co-writer Alexandre Franchi's dramatic tragedy is a cautionary tale so well told it completely sucked me in. 

The Wild Hunt is an ancient myth where a lost soul joins a phantasmal group of huntsmen in their mad pursuit.  Seeing the Wild Hunt was presage some catastrophe, and mortals getting swept away by the Hunt could be kidnapped and brought to the land of the dead.  This feature film grabs the human experience tightly with both hands and kisses it deeply.

A fantasy reenactment game mirrors real life when Erik Magnasson, brilliantly played by Ricky Mabe, crashes into the event and discovers his lost self through roleplaying. 

His reluctant girlfriend, the wickedly beautiful Tiio Horn, has escaped the drama of real life to play a captured Viking princess seduced by being held a prize.

Erik's older brother, Bjorn, nailed by co-writer/actor Mark A. Krupa, takes him on a quest to steal her away from the celtics to save her from the bloodlust of the Shaman Murtagh's (Trevor Hayes) Wild Hunt.

 

The script is tight, Claudine Sauve's shooting is mystical, the editing is transparent, the music intuitively supports the action are a subtle, even the credits are subtle and engaging.  

Mid-movie, I was so sucked into the story that I completely forgot I was watching a film.

Definitely a contender for Best Feature at the Anchorage International Film Festival.

The Last Stop [Son Istasyon]

My first experience with Turkish drama was a poetic one, The Last Stop [Son Istasyon].  This beautiful film was intimately shot on location in Istanbul and Usak, Turkey by cinematographer Tolga Cetin.


The Last Stop is the first full length feature for writer/director Ogulcan Kirca.  His father, Levent Kirca, stars as the retiring railroad worker Ruhi. He is a steady, hardworking man whose simple dreams include a house that has a roof that doesn't leak and a vegetable garden.

His children wish for more.  Turgay (Gokcer Genc) has established himself as a conductor, Esra (Basak Dasman) tries to elevate her lifestyle through fame, Onder (Korel Cezayirli) decides to forego traditional employment and education to make his way on the streets of Istanbul.  

I don't pretend to understand Turkish culture, and watching it through this vehicle offered a disconcerning look at what happens when old traditions come into conflict with the modern age.  The conflicts between the generations, and between the sexes, leave one wondering what life in Turkey has to offer for the next generation.

Karma Calling

This move had a lot of promise, but failed to deliver.  The storyline is compelling, a Hindi family in New Jersey gets wrapped around an "Its a Small World" theme when the drowning-in-debt father gets played by an underworld Don who is connected to an Indian call center, where their smoothest operator falls for his daughter and his son mans-up to fall in love with a girl from the old country.

The treatment in this romantic comedy is so riddled with cliche that the humor fell flat.  There simply was no dramatic tension to balance the madcap.  Opportunity was there, it was all over the script, but this film became a study in what happens when you always take the easy choice instead of the hard one when writing a script.

Sarba Das and Sarthak Das co-wrote the script, as well as directing and producing the feature.  My thoughts are it needing more maturing and editing before it was ready for the screen.

Take the Raj family.  The father, Ram Raj (Darshan Jariwala) has his mailbox overflowing with collection notices, takes a loan out on his cab to buy-in to a credit fix scheme...with no consequences.  The eldest daughter, Sonal (Barnali Das), answers the constantly ringing phone which seaways to her developing a relationship with Rohit Rao AKA Rob Roy (Samrat Chakrabarti).  They both pretend to be someone they are not, discover the shame of misrepresenting themselves on such a superficial level that it is embarrassing to watch.

The only slightly funny moment for me was when the son, Shyam (Ansuman Das), decides to produce a Japanese rap album titled Hapa Means Weed in Japanese.  He falls for Radha (Kaci Ladnier), a beautiful Indian mail order bride who is flown in to marry Dollar Store mogul Nikhil (Rizwan Manji) whose personality is as shiny as his 99 cent mechandise.

The youngest daughter Jamuna (Ishani Desai), dreams of having a Bat Mitzvah, which is expressed in a disconnected dream sequence that reads very gratuitous.

The only true comic relief comes from Mausi (Sulekha Das), Ram's sister who comes to visit from India bringing her traditional ways with her.  It takes Das a while to settle into the role, but by the film's end she has become the sole character that has any creditability, although Ansuman Das was close to making that mark.

For some inexplicitable reason, Tony Sirico of The Sopranos provides voice for Ganesh, the Hindu god of success.   He narrates the film and is the protagonist for the happy Hollywood tie-it-all-up-in-a-pretty-pink-bow ending.  Why a Hindu god that looks like an elephant is supposed to sound like a gangster is beyond me.

New Jersey loved the film, it won Best Feature at their International Film Festival.  It also has taken home an Audience Award at the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival and the Grand Festival Prize at the Berkeley Film & Video Festival.  See a preview of this feature at  Karma Calling trailer.