I remember reading the book Mrs. Frisby & The Rats Of Nimh as a child and being utterly transported by Robert C. O’Brien’s prose and storytelling. I think it’s the duty of any filmmaker adapting a literary work to do three things; 1) keep the spirit, themes and intention of the sacred source material on hand and implement it accordingly, 2) present a great deal of their own artistic and personal flourishes wherever they can and 3) utterly transport their audience to the world they are both adapting and further exploring. In the case of Don Bluth’s The Secret Of Nimh he has outdone himself by keeping the dark, often threatening beats of the book intact while offering up a dazzling galaxy of unbelievably gorgeous still-frame animation tableaus for equally stunning animated animals in motion to inhabit and tell this unique story. Mrs. Frisby (Elizabeth Hartman) is a widowed field mouse living in a vast and dangerous farmyard realm with her wee mousie children, one of whom is very ill. Every year when the farmer comes to plow the fields, all the woodland creatures are violently displaced in an apocalyptic ritual they refer to as ‘moving day.’ Because of her youngest child’s illness, moving day would be especially torturous for them this year and so she sets out on a mythical quest to find a better life for her family, a quest that puts her in contact with many other animals in the realm including friendly crow Jeremiah (Dom DeLuise), a spooky old great horned owl (John Carradine), the vicious and predatory farmer’s cat and a troupe of scheming rats, some trustworthy and others treacherous. This is a dark, prophetic, devilishly imaginative story that isn’t just children’s nursery rhymes but gets intense, introspective and downright menacing, I can see how this would scare the ever-loving soul out of young kids. Bluth’s animation is the real star here and every breathtaking backdrop is gorgeously hand painted, detailed and atmospheric tapestry of swirling colour, borderline abstract shapes and boldly audacious expressionism. The animals are vividly drawn with a touch of the surreal and the images and sound on display are dreamlike wonders of artistic creation. The world feels frightening, full of wonder, lived-in and soaked in ambience whether it’s overgrown forest thickets, arcing wheatgrass meadows, cluttered farmyard dwellings and even a brief trip to a nocturnal cityscape in a hellish flashback that holds the key to the story’s central mystery. This film is an unbelievable artistic achievement and benchmark in the medium of animation.
I’m just a kid from Canada who blathers on about movies on Facebook, I have no formal literary training or real clout in the journalism foray, and as such every once in a moon there comes a film that’s so good, so powerful, profound and so potentially life changing (what is cinema for, if not that?) that I feel it’s a bit above my pay grade to review it, but in the case of Edson Oda’s Nine Days I feel like I need to or you might miss this unbelievable, perspective shattering indie that seems to have come from nowhere but is here to rock our collective worlds and the lands beyond. The film presents to us a stoic, lone man called Will (Winston Duke, Us). Will lives in a rustic bungalow on a desolation of endless salt flats, and he sits in his house observing a wall of tube TV’s all displaying various human lives unfold in hazy POV. He takes periodic notes, records some of these moments onto VHS tapes and catalogues them in droves of filing cabinets. He’s visited by a colleague and advisor called Kyo (Benedict Wong, Annihilation, The Martian), and the two seem to be the only ones out there. It soon becomes clear that the people on the TV’s are humans living their lives in this world, and that Will and Kyo are in some other plane of existence, their task being to observe those who are alive and when an opening appears, to interview/audition potential new souls for a chance to be born in our world. When, through a heartbreaking tragedy, an opening does show up Will invites several souls into his house for the interview process including a quiet, observant introvert (Bill Skarsgard, It), a gregarious good timer (Tony Hale) and a startlingly observant, intuitive soul called Emma (Zazie Beetz, Deadpool 2, Joker). Now, usually a premise like this in films would be played for satire or just… not taken completely seriously but somehow this very wild concept couldn’t feel more down to earth in the hands of this creative team and, in hushed reverence, I believed every beat of it was happening for real. As Will interviews souls it becomes apparent that he is wounded from his time on earth in a way that is so deep and so painful that even these half formed human souls who aren’t even full beings yet, can somehow intuitively sense it. This goes especially for Emma, who is like an unbelievably precocious child that just picks up on intangible things as a sort of gift. As the selection process unfolds and more souls are eliminated it becomes clear that Will has to fix something broken deep within his own psyche, and this is where the film becomes downright transcendent and also where I just don’t feel qualified to properly convey the messages or themes, which are deep, dense and essential. It’s a film about not taking your time alive as a human being for granted, because there are so many unborn souls who may never get a chance. Not only are the themes compelling and thought provoking, they are multilayered, meditatively introspective and just ambiguous enough to feel like a real and flawed system of beings interacting in a world beyond our own. Wong’s wonderful character comments on the mysterious nature of both our existence and theirs and the aching existential wonder that any sort of being finds themselves in, the forces governing them always just out of reach. Duke and Beetz are unreasonably good here and if the Oscars ever took the time to recognize independent films they would both be front and centre, as would first time writer director Edson Oda (I simply CANNOT comprehending the fact that this is a feature debut, it’s TOO assured) and composer Antonio Pinto who weaves an original score too beautiful for words, full of melancholic, celestial string passages and hypnotic, dreamlike beats in between. One reviewer I saw on IMDb said about this film, and I quote, “After 60 years of watching movies, I’ve finally found the best one.” Well it’s obviously all subjective and personally I could never pick a singular, definitive “best movie ever,” the notion itself is redundant. However, I would consider Nine Days to be just about as close to perfection as one can get in the medium of film, that rare piece that just soars on every level and has the power to change lives. It’s getting a limited theatrical run at the moment and if you notice it playing in your city please go, it’s that one in a million film that lingers in your thoughts and dreams for a long time after, that elusive piece of art that doesn’t just exist onscreen for two hours before fading, but rather lives on in the hearts and minds of those who see it and takes on a soul of its own. Masterpiece and the best film of the year so far.
CBC’s Schitt’s Creek was kind of an unassuming watch for me in the sense that I don’t usually go for sitcoms and when I do it’s for breezy background noise, or simply reruns of stuff like That 70’s Show that I’m already intimately familiar with; the genre just isn’t really for me. This show, however, grew on me like no other and from the first quaint little episode to the emotionally uplifting grand finale it has now become one of my all time favourite pieces of television. Ostensibly the story of one disgustingly rich family who is embezzled out of their fortune by a disloyal employee and forced to relocate to a tiny backwater town they once purchased as a prank, this is so so SO much more than just a “riches to rags” comedy lark and such an important piece, and what’s more is it becomes important and essential without even trying to be, which isn’t easy to do. Eugene Levy is Johnny Rose, former video store tycoon relegated to rural life with his frequently hysterical prima Donna wife Moira (Catherine O’Hara) and two adult children David (Dan Levy) and Alexis (Annie Murphy). As they are jarringly propelled from their ultra-bougie existence into a bucolic world of motels, diners and quiet country life we are swept up in a pithy, hyper-satirical slice of life small town dramedy that gradually and cunningly becomes something so good, so well developed and so engrossing the effect is almost profound. Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara already have roots in SCTV satire from their days of yore and bring every inch of that pop culture sendup energy here, as Levy’s own kid Dan co-creates with pops and we get the sense that every creative engine involved here is just firing on all cylinders and perfectly in sync. The epic and incredibly dense yet somehow blessedly lighthearted six season run see these four characters go through unbelievable, surprising, touching, hilarious and always realistic arcs as they adjust to life in the sticks, make friends, find love, bicker absolutely non stop in the most lovable of ways and simply just… live their lives. Others orbit them including the town’s incredibly offbeat mayor (Chris Elliott is too funny for words here), his darling of a wife (Jennifer Robertson), the local motel owner (Emily Hampshire, who I fell in love with within minutes), David’s eventual boyfriend and colleague (Noah Reid) and many, many others all portrayed wonderfully. What makes this show so special and such a standout amidst the absolute galaxy of sitcoms out there is a delicious mixture of a few things: it’s relentlessly, consistently funny, like you don’t even get a chance to breathe in between the airtight, intimidatingly verbose jokes especially when O’Hara and her priceless pronunciation is concerned. The characters here are real, developed human beings who you grow with, learn to care for deeply, are frequently exasperated with and the sense of community, family and love permeates everything. The themes are relevant and the tone is compassionate, understanding and candid in terms of LGBT content and the whole thing just hums on every level, it’s about as close to perfect as you can get in the television storytelling world. It’s a bittersweet turn that the show only achieved real, worldwide acclaim near the end of its run because I feel like it could go on to say and do so much more, and influence so many more people with its fun, positivity, empathy, masterclass writing and once in a lifetime performances. Could not recommend this highly enough for how great it is.
Grief. Mental illness. Turbulent family dynamics. A battle to maintain one’s identity amidst a myriad of struggles both internal and external. These are deep, difficult themes to work through in film and it’s so often that we see them not done proper justice, not explored in a fashion that feels fair, realistic or respectful and overall misses the mark. Steven Adam Renkovich’s The Awakening Of Lilith is a film of strength, assuredness and striking meditative intuition that approaches these themes from a refreshingly, staggeringly mature and relatable standpoint, between his his strong, hypnotic direction and an otherworldly, deeply instinctive lead performance from Brittany Renée as Lilith, a woman lost in the darkest corners of her own mind following a shrouded tragedy that we learn more of bit by bit. I always think of depression, anxiety and any mental illness as a relationship between space and time: these affliction are spaces we wander into, for an indeterminate amount of time, and while you are in them it quite literally feels like you will never, ever make it out; it’s like tunnel vision in fog. Lilith and her fiancée Noah (Justin Livingston) both suffer from variations on this and we see in flashbacks the strain it puts on their relationship as they try to work through their issues, individually and as a couple until… well, until we get back to present day Lilith, living with the fact that Noah, for reasons made agonizingly clear, is not around anymore. Lilith is not only navigating life without him but everyone else in her life who is not properly there for her including a coldhearted mother (Mary Miles Kokotek) and some friends who don’t quite have the proper empathy to support her. Renkovich’s script approaches the subject of mental illness with a precision, understanding, blunt realism and compassion that is all too rare in cinema overall, and the medium is immediately stronger with his feature debut voice in it. He uses eerie, haunting sound design and blurred, Rorschach-test like imagery to disorient and draw us into Lilith’s tempestuous and confusing internal landscape with terrific support from Seth Anderson’s often terrifying, frequently beautiful and always atmospheric score. Renée is a revelation as Lilith, possessive of the kind of old world poise, timeless anachronistic aura, clearly annunciated, carefully thought out expression and ethereal essence that is so rare in human beings and is always a truly special quality for an actor to have. She imbues Lilith with the kind of resolute, lonely sadness of someone who is used to living in their head and fiercely facing their demons in implosive silence. Livingston as Noah plays it a bit more clipped but underneath the curt vernacular we see someone who is sensitive but has never been allowed to outwardly own it, who guards a hurt so deep it’s clear he’s only ever allowed Lilith in to share it, a dynamic that both strengthens their relationship and puts it to ultimate test. My favourite scene is the two of them in a camping tent, together beyond the world; Lilith gives him a gift that has immense personal meaning to her and their bond is so deep the silence in the air around them can hear it, it’s a wonderful moment that’s made all the more affecting and heartbreaking when you look at their arc overall, accented in finality by a gorgeous ending credit song sung by Renée herself that leads you out of the narrative perfectly. There is a lot to unpack here for a film that clocks in just under 90 minutes, and I’ve only just brushed the surface of this textured, complex, beautifully crafted piece. Wondrous film.
Grief. Mental illness. Turbulent family dynamics. A battle to maintain one’s identity amidst a myriad of struggles both internal and external. These are deep, difficult themes to work through in film and it’s so often that we see them not done proper justice, not explored in a fashion that feels fair, realistic or respectful and overall misses the mark. Steven Adam Renkovich’s The Awakening Of Lilith is a film of strength, assuredness and striking meditative intuition that approaches these themes from a refreshingly, staggeringly mature and relatable standpoint, between his his strong, hypnotic direction and an otherworldly, deeply instinctive lead performance from Brittany Renée as Lilith, a woman lost in the darkest corners of her own mind following a shrouded tragedy that we learn more of bit by bit. I always think of depression, anxiety and any mental illness as a relationship between space and time: these affliction are spaces we wander into, for an indeterminate amount of time, and while you are in them it quite literally feels like you will never, ever make it out; it’s like tunnel vision in fog. Lilith and her fiancée Noah (Justin Livingston) both suffer from variations on this and we see in flashbacks the strain it puts on their relationship as they try to work through their issues, individually and as a couple until… well, until we get back to present day Lilith, living with the fact that Noah, for reasons made agonizingly clear, is not around anymore. Lilith is not only navigating life without him but everyone else in her life who is not properly there for her including a coldhearted mother (Mary Miles Kokotek) and some friends who don’t quite have the proper empathy to support her. Renkovich’s script approaches the subject of mental illness with a precision, understanding, blunt realism and compassion that is all too rare in cinema overall, and the medium is immediately stronger with his feature debut voice in it. He uses eerie, haunting sound design and blurred, Rorschach-test like imagery to disorient and draw us into Lilith’s tempestuous and confusing internal landscape with terrific support from Seth Anderson’s often terrifying, frequently beautiful and always atmospheric score. Renée is a revelation as Lilith, possessive of the kind of old world poise, timeless anachronistic aura, clearly annunciated, carefully thought out expression and ethereal essence that is so rare in human beings and is always a truly special quality for an actor to have. She imbues Lilith with the kind of resolute, lonely sadness of someone who is used to living in their head and fiercely facing their demons in implosive silence. Livingston as Noah plays it a bit more clipped but underneath the curt vernacular we see someone who is sensitive but has never been allowed to outwardly own it, who guards a hurt so deep it’s clear he’s only ever allowed Lilith in to share it, a dynamic that both strengthens their relationship and puts it to ultimate test. My favourite scene is the two of them in a camping tent, together beyond the world; Lilith gives him a gift that has immense personal meaning to her and their bond is so deep the silence in the air around them can hear it, it’s a wonderful moment that’s made all the more affecting and heartbreaking when you look at their arc overall, accented in finality by a gorgeous ending credit song sung by Renée herself that leads you out of the narrative perfectly. There is a lot to unpack here for a film that clocks in just under 90 minutes, and I’ve only just brushed the surface of this textured, complex, beautifully crafted piece. Wondrous film.
Whenever contemporary filmmakers attempt a homage to cinematic styles, tones and artistic mechanics of bygone eras in cinema it’s very easy to tell whether they know their shit and have captured their intended aesthetic or missed the mark. Every culture and era of the medium has their own unique and distinct flavour woven into every aspect of the artistic process, and any pastiche is just going to be a delicate undertaking. In the case of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Let The Corpses Tan they have done an impeccable job of emulating this kind of… 60’s/70’s Italian pulp/murder/spaghetti/cop/splatter/action vibe that’s so specific to that time and region I can’t even properly describe how… unmistakable the palette is. It’s like Italian genre cinema went to sleep one night and this film is a window into into its REM cycle. On a remote, sun drenched island in the Mediterranean (shot in beautiful Corsica), a gang of murderous thieves spearheaded by a vicious femme fatale (Romanian cult icon Elina Löwensohn) hide out in the crumbling ruins of a Hellenic ghost town, harbouring a stolen trove of gold bullion. As they languidly await some vague deadline, others approach including a gaggle of unfortunate civilians and two intrepid motorbike cops, whose arrival heralds the furious, bloody, beautiful extended gun battle that becomes the film’s centrepiece. That’s all for plot really, but trust me it’s all you need, this film is all style, aesthetics and nightmarish visual poetry and contains some of the most outright striking imagery, editing and production I’ve ever seen in cinema. The weapons are all gorgeously retro and have this… ‘Spaghetti SteamPunk’ mechanical anatomy, the violence has a Giallo singed, pop art bloodiness to it, and the editing is some of the most painstakingly detailed work I’ve ever seen. Closeups on craggy faces, hyper-quick zooms, pans, jump cuts and jarring chops that are so off the wall, intense and unconventional they nearly give the viewer a heart murmur in the best way possible. Amidst the gunplay that although supremely stylish is very down to earth there is also this wonderful flourish of shocking surrealism woven into the story, as we see a mysterious, Venus-esque maiden appearing occasionally surrounded by tantalizing, erotically charged symbolism, gunshots explode into otherworldly blasts of coloured paint and all manner of dreamlike cutaways, hyper-stylized mysticism and enough bright colours and sunshine to get a rave going. Absolutely astonishing film, highly recommended.
There are many ways to symbolically impart real world events in film, and sometimes when the events are particularly grim it helps to bathe your message in a healthy dose of artistic abstraction, as not to overwhelm your audience in grisly details or bring the mood down with a stifling sense of literacy. Joaquín Cociña/Cristóbal León’s The Wolf House is based upon (in spirit) the true life tale of a horrible former Nazi who started a nightmarish, controlling doomsday cult who abused hundreds of children in the Chilean mountains sometime after WWII. After one young girl is punished for allowing pigs to escape, she runs away from the commune herself and it’s this basic framework that allows a terminally surreal stop-motion Dreamscape to play across the screen. There is no actual story to the events onscreen and one would have to either read up on the film or come across a review like this to even fully grasp the theme and backstory. There’s a quick and deliberately ominous infomercial for the commune right at the start of the film but even that is untethered of context and quickly segues into a consistently unearthly theatre of the bizarre. This isn’t succinct, structured stop motion animation in the way someone like Tim Burton would create, this is something so wild, so artistically expressive I can almost not even put it into words, but my review is accompanied by a PhotoGrid mood-board as always, so feast your eyes. The tactility and sculpted bazaar of mâché, clay and many other materials creates a swirling, never placid, always metamorphosing subconscious ballet of scintillating, melting, dissolving image and sound that is truly, singularly unlike any other medium I’ve ever seen. The film reportedly took five years to make, and honestly I would have guessed double that with how complex and elemental the design is. One has to watch it at least that many times to fully absorb everything on display as we see figurines constantly disintegrating mid-scene, transforming into inanimate objects, suddenly becoming ectoplasmic vapour that creeps across the walls of the detailed dioramas they inhabit in forms of movement that are anything but of this world. Because of how non-traditional the experience is, the viewer must use mood sensors and subconscious intuition to intake the film’s essence, and abandon all hope of a clearly discernible plot. A scene where the animated figurine of three German children sing a haunting lullaby together was the emotional core and the closest the filmmakers get to outright exposition, it’s a heartbreaking image when contrasted against the Wikipedia knowledge about the cult in real life, which was a horrible and senseless event that could have been avoided. This is an art installation come to life, not a narrative story, and inside the circus of paint, colour and dynamism we can sense the undertones of menace and tragedy if we’re tuned into the film’s far out frequency. Highly recommended for creative types who enjoy films that not only function outside the box of what’s considered normal and palatable, but barely seem like they’re from this dimension at all. A wonderful experience, streaming on Shudder for anyone interested.
DRY BLOOD . . . WOW! What a movie – minimal in construction, but ocean-deep in subtext . . . with a type of gleeful depravity.
The dynamic filmmaker duo of Clint Carney(writer/producer/actor/artist/musician) and Kelton Jones(the man who induced GOD to Mel Gibson/director/actor) have conjured with the combination of immense talents – and with the aid of a rich assortment of family and friends – a film that stays with you as the credits roll.
The film is a tense, slow-boil of a horror picture that, when it explodes, you’re never quite ready. It is a journey into the tormented mind of character gripped by fear and self-loathing which overflows into a gruesome cesspool of vicious insanity, coupled with exciting, delicious, mischievous and frightening portrayals for Messrs Carney and Jones.
DRY BLOOD has recently completed a very successful festival run, having received an astounding thirty award wins (including many for “Best Picture,” “Best Actor,” “Best Director,” and “Best Writer”), with another twenty-three nominations as well. Highlights from this festival run include “Best Feature Film” and “Best Actor” wins from the Bram Stoker International Film Festival in the UK, as well as the top spot at the Indie Film Playoffs, where DRY BLOOD swept the board (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Writer) in a competition against numerous films from multiple festivals.
Clint Carney, who wrote, starred, and composed the score, says, “It’s been a long and exciting journey to go from writing the script almost four years ago, to now releasing DRY BLOOD to the world. We are beyond excited to work with Dread Presents. They already have number of great films in their catalog and we couldn’t be happier to be a part of their roster, and to be welcomed into the Dread family.”
DRY BLOOD is directed by Kelton Jones, written by Clint Carney and starring Clint Carney, Jaymie Valentine, Kelton Jones, Robert V. Galluzzo, Graham Sheldon, Rin Ehlers, and Macy Johnson.
“Clint and I set out to make our favorite horror movie,” remarks Kelton Jones, the film’s director. “We wanted to make a film that was true to the genre and lived up to the potential of what a great horror film could be. We knew this would be an ambitious task. We hold such a great love for the genre and the masters of cinema who had shaped our childhoods. We felt the best way to honor them was to pour our hearts and souls into making DRY BLOOD. We knew our toughest audience would be ourselves and we endeavored to make a film that we were truly proud of. I feel very grateful to have been able to be a part of such an amazing project, made with love, by people I love. I am beyond thrilled to be releasing this film with Dread Presents.We set out to make our favorite film; my hope is that it becomes your favorite film as well.”
It’s a great little gem of a horror movie that shows us a glimpse of the evil that lurks within us all, but as a production, it showcases what a group of like-minded, talented, and hungry filmmakers can do when they pool their resources. And it is my pleasure to present them to you now…
KELTON JONES
Director Kelton Jones’s love of cinema began as a child in the seventies. His mother owned a quaint flower shop that shared a wall with the singular movie theater on the rural main street of Buffalo, Texas. Kelton would spend his afternoons watching and rewatching the afternoon showings as he waited for his mother to finish the day’s work. When the rare feature film would be shot on location in a nearby town, Kelton would find a way to the set so that he could watch from the sidelines, as the filmmakers would spin their magic. Finally, at age 16, Kelton’s first feature in front of the camera gave him the chance to ask the crew if he could join them after he finished his work as an actor. From that very first film, Kelton has permeated the boundaries between actor and filmmaker craftsman. DRY BLOOD is the culmination of a lifetime spent studying film, working on sets, writing scripts, and acting. While on set, it was not unusual to see him in full character wardrobe setting a light, operating a camera or pushing a dolly as he directed the scene. Though this marks his first feature film as director, he has worked every other crew position on set of previous films, ranging from small independent pictures, to huge Hollywood productions. Ultimately, his choice of projects has always been driven by a deep love of the medium, a passion for a great story, and the opportunity to learn and push his own boundaries.
CLINT CARNEY
Clint Carney is a well-known Los Angeles-based musician, artist, writer, and filmmaker. His musical work first came into the spotlight in 2004 when he released his first official album under the name SYSTEM SYN. To date, SYSTEM SYN has released seven albums and multiple singles, and performed all over the world. Throughout the years, Clint has also served as a keyboard player and back-up vocalist for the bands Imperative Reaction and God Module. As a fine artist, he is best known for his graphic and disturbing oil paintings. His artwork has been shown in galleries and private collections worldwide and has been featured on magazine covers, clothing lines, and musical albums. His work can also be seen in many major motion pictures, television shows, commercials, and music videos. Clint has created iconic imagery through artwork and props for films by such directors as J.J. Abrams (Star Trek Into Darkness), David Fincher (Gone Girl), Oliver Stone (Savages), Wes Craven (Scream 4), Cameron Crowe (We Bought a Zoo), and more. In recent years, Clint has turned his focus toward film making, working on many different projects as a director, producer, screenwriter, editor, and actor.DRY BLOOD marks his first feature as a producer, writer, and actor. Clint is currently in development on his feature length directorial debut.
Podcasting Them Softly 