Rant: ultra-low-budget movies

I have a fondness for ultra-low-budget movies.
 
Prime examples:
Blair Witch Project - Actors, with just camping equipment and mundane audio/video equipment (which was part of the story), were actually sent into the woods for 5 days, and were given cryptic directions they would find on scraps of paper lying in their path. They really did get tired, dirty, stressed & scared.
Cube - Aside from a handful of simple digital effects shots, the entire film was shot in a 10’ cube. Change of “location” was achieved by color filters on lights.
El Mariachi - Made for $7000, raised by the director/producer submitting to paid medical experimentation. Lighting was just two cheap lamps cleverly arranged. Extras included two local hostile-to-the-production talk-show hosts won over by giving them cameos. DVD includes fascinating 10-minute lesson on cutting corners.
 
Done right, the viewer has no clue there was practically no budget – because the story, directing and acting were right.
 
El Mariachi’s director, Robert Rodriguez, went on to become a major Hollywood player. He still does all post-production work in his garage.
 
All too often, when you pare a big-budget production down to the story and its truth, there’s nothing there to convey. If you don’t have a story to tell, but have to tell one, money can still buy fame.
 
 
Tangent:
I’d love to do a series of shorts that take the start of blockbuster movies, then apply a moment of realism which abruptly cuts the film short. There’s a 007 film that starts where Bond jumps off a cliff to freefall into an uncontrolled airplane, then a long blind pause reveals he has succeeded in catching up & taking control before it crashes; I’d edit in a fireball, then roll credits (backed by a slow zoom in on a dark smear on the canyon floor). Likewise a slasher movie where the first would-be victim grabs a 12-gauge, performs the indicated response, then resumes the night of fun & frolic with the others.
Edit: xkcd wins...

 
Tangent to the tangent:
The high point of Executive Decision was 20 minutes in, where a big-name actor abruptly falls out of a plane and is not seen again.

Blatant Plug: The Survivalist Blog

M.D. Creekmore over at the The Survivalist Blog – a survival blog dedicated to helping others prepare for and survive disaster – with articles on bug out bag contents, survival knife choices and a wealth of other survival information is giving away a Go Berkey Water Filter System (a $139.00 value)! To enter, you just have to post about it on your blog. This is my entry. Visit The Survivalist Blog for the details.

Pun: 5th of May

Nearly 100 years ago, Mexicans discovered a European condiment made of whipped oil & eggs. They went crazy over  it, and would not be satisfied with homemade Central American versions of it – no, they demanded the real thing from Great Britain. Arrangements were made for a large shipment of this smooth, white delicacy via the Titanic.
 
Well, you know what happened to that shipment.
 
News of the loss of the huge and much-anticipated cargo reached Mexico on May 5. Enthusiastic expectation turned to horror and lament, so great that every year the nation remembers the loss with ... Sinko de Mayo.

Rant: Perception

We sense an incredible amount of data, far beyond what gets filtered down to a tiny articulable amount. Sometimes some of that data bypasses some of those filters, or seeps thru anyway, and reaches conscious cognition anyway – kinda freaking us out in the process with the manifestation of the perception & interpretation. AFAIK the phenomenon of autism is the lack of certain mental filters, inundating the autistic’s cognition with huge amounts of raw data, allowing for the “savant” ability to perceive & recall intricate details, and as a consequence be unable to focus on particular details which are socially expected by “neurotypicals”.
 
For a more sane analysis of nuanced perception, read Tom Brown’s “Science and Art of Tracking”. Might help translate the weirdness of perceptive dreams and nutcase supernaturalism into the reality of better understanding what you do perceive.

Movie: Taken

Teenage daughter vacations in Paris. Father has 96 hours to rescue her from kidnappers. Visceral, compelling tale - to parents, about what evils may befall their offspring; to older children, a reveal of how evil others can be and how playful ignorance can kill.

I put this with Braveheart as a story parents should share with their older (!) kids, a platform for frank discussion of how much of the world operates and how we should behave in response.

Well done as an entertaining thriller. Downfall is how so much of the story relies of nick-of-time coincidences; consider how different an end if only actions spanning days occurred a few seconds off. As a father of a playful little girl, I hoped for somewhat more applicable solutions to every parent's nightmare. Perhaps a trip to Storm Mountain's High Risk Personnel training (to wit: how to survive a kidnapping) is in order.

Movie: X-Men Origins Wolverine

Teeth-grinding adrenaline-pumping low-cognition guy movie. The three prior X-Men movies alluded to the mysterious amnesic history of the unsophisticated yet compelling character Wolverine; this story at long last unfolds his 175-year lifespan - and why that one nasty badguy is so keen on almost but not quite killing him.

Understand that this movie is a tangent to the obsessively complex X-Men comic book series. Lots of characters are introduced, many with very brief involvements featuring unexplained extreme behavior which will leave fanboys smiling and nodding while their SOs tilt their heads wondering "what the heck was THAT all about?" Relax, enjoy, and recognize this is just a small part of a much bigger story.

Movie: The Woman in White

Another nicely-done Victorian-era chick-flick about aristocrats jockeying for positions to marry up, access fortunes, and bump off anyone in their way. This one is a bit darker than usual, as we discover why the ghostly, disheveled & deranged woman in white is the key to the high-society combat that unfolds.