Clockwise from top — I Sell the Dead Hansel and Gretel Nerdcore Rising and Died Young Stayed Pretty
Our look at the first half of the Calgary Underground Film Festival
I SELL THE DEAD (Dir. Glenn McQuaid 2008)
Like Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm but with a sliver of the budget and 10 times the charm I Sell the Dead is a goofy little film about two grave robbers whose nasty habit brings them under the guillotine’s blade in 18th century Ireland. The film centres on Arthur (Dominic Monaghan of Lord of the Rings and Lost fame) recounting to a monk (Mr. Hellboy Ron Perlman) his sordid tale of digging up corpses to sell to an evil and greedy doctor ( Phantasm’s Angus Scrimm). Along with his toothless pal Willie Arthur haunts the countryside stealing dead bodies. One evening the two accidentally dig up a vampire and quickly discover that there’s more money to be made by trafficking in the undead. The film features a few gory and creepy sequences (owing a great debt to The Evil Dead ) but feels more like a drunken and bawdy Tim Burton film than a kinetic and violent Sam Raimi film. The shoestring budget shows with an overemphasis on poorly computer-animated backgrounds and animated transitions but the film ultimately wins with a giddy charm and macabre humour.
BRYN EVANS
HANSEL AND GRETEL (Dir. Yim Pil-Sung 2007)
This excellent Korean fantasy-suspense film doesn’t directly follow the plot of the Brothers Grimm’s tale but it does borrow from the story’s dark tone and candy-coloured esthetic. Eun-Soo crashes his car on a rural highway and after stumbling through the woods finds himself being lured to an isolated house by a young girl. Inside are three adorable children two perfect parents platters of cupcakes mountains of toys and a general atmosphere of creepiness. Eun-Soo tries to find his way out of the forest but keeps circling back to the house. The children soon reveal that they are not as innocent as they seem and Eun-Soo is trapped in a nightmare.
While it is a tad too long at almost two hours Hansel and Gretel is a beautiful well-crafted film filled with imagery worthy of the fantastical subject matter. Director Yim Pil-Sung hasn’t crafted a horror movie; he’s made a film with a duelling sense of wonder and fear. Despite the expert styling and eye candy though none of it would work if not for the skilled performances from Cheon Jeong-Myeong who plays Eun-Soo and especially the three children at the centre of the story.
ELIZABETH CHORNEY-BOOTH
DIED YOUNG STAYED PRETTY (Dir. Eileen Yaghoobian 2008)
This documentary by Canadian Eileen Yaghoobian delves into the insular and very nerdy world of gig posters. And not just any gig posters — Yaghoobian chooses to stick with the very specific topic of high-end indie and garage rock posters mostly from the last decade or so. These aren’t the cheesy photocopies cranked out by local clubs but quality silkscreens produced by a small and disjointed community of artists who put unbelievable care into images that document relatively tiny shows.
Yaghoobian’s film is a patchwork of interview snippets with about half a dozen artists shot in the ragtag DIY esthetic embodied by the posters themselves. The problem with this film is that it doesn’t set out to actually educate or even make a point at all — the interviews are presented with little context and Yaghoobian lets her subjects prattle on at length about almost anything they want. With that said there are a lot of gorgeous posters presented in this film and a couple of solid Calgary connections (namely The Von Zippers and Clay Hayes the proprietor of the astounding Gigposters.com) to make up for the lack of cohesion.
ELIZABETH CHORNEY-BOOTH
NERDCORE RISING (Dir. Negin Farsad and Kim Gatewood 2008)
Ostensibly Nerdcore Rising is a music documentary about the first tour of Damien Hess a.k.a MC Frontalot who has since gone on to become the most recognizable name in the nerdcore sub-genre. What elevates it beyond a mere chronicle of events however is the wide focus directors Negin Farsad and Kim Gatewood have taken with regards to nerdcore’s place within its larger constituent cultures of geekdom and hip hop. As a result the talking heads extend past the usual lineup of producers and acquaintances in order to properly examine what bigger cultural trends nerdcore may be an expression of — comedian Brian Poesehn parodist Weird Al Yankovic former De La Soul mastermind Prince Paul and hip hop renaissance man J-Live are only the beginning of Farsad and Gatewood’s eclectic sampling.
The only real problem with Nerdcore Rising is a direct result of this otherwise intelligent approach. Perhaps it’s because they’re geeks themselves or perhaps it’s just because geeks are quite the pathetic lot but there are a few eye-rolling moments in the film where Farsad and Gatewood apparently can’t resist transforming the geek into some kind of cultural martyr. There’s just one too many interviews with some greasy-haired dweeb who’s transcended the stigma of his hockey-taped spectacles to band with his ilk and be a part of this “movement.” Nerdcore Rising is an interesting often hilarious journey and a well-made film but for anyone without an affinity for either nerdity or hip hop all of this “fronting” might ring a little false.
KYLE FRANCIS
