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.

Lindsey barely survives visit to BC Natural History Museum

The Royal BC Museum Corporation is one of the foremost cultural institutions in the world. The museum was founded in 1886; the archives in 1894. In 2003 these two organizations integrated to become British Columbia's combined provincial museum and archives, collecting artifacts, documents and specimens of BC's natural and human history, safeguarding them for the future, and sharing them with the world.

The pictures tell the whole story of how Keith Lindsey survived his visit to the Natural History Gallery.

He reported that he actually really enjoyed the First Peoples Gallery, but since they don't allow photographs in that location, we have no actual proof that he really visited there. I never saw him there. He made his way to the restroom and when we bumped into each other an hour later it was in the Modern Historical Gallery.