Showbits

In sharp contrast to last week's colorful Flower Warfare, this week's Summer Short is a film whose humor and tone is not nearly as stark as its black-and-white imagery. But then, it's rather hard to take seriously a romantic musical comedy set in a men's bathroom. You'll soon be sold on Rent-a-Person:

Given that some of my favorite films are Office Space and Stranger than Fiction, it's no wonder I like this short: it's almost as if either of those were adapted to a musical. Despite that, there's not much to dissect here — Rent-a-Person is a silly, fun tale about how even nice guys don't have to sleep alone. There's some attempt at character evolution as our hero thinks he can substitute money for women (or use one to get another) before realizing his life is as empty as before. But even if that arc proves futile, it's encouraging to see him recognize his life's potential and find the motivation to actually do something about it. Too many people are satisfied with the mundane and subpar without taking advantage of their natural talents to realize the good fortune that could be theirs.

Coming next week: the exciting conclusion!

Just as Kungfu Bunny melded live action with animation, today's short crosses genres by having elements of both action and comedy — and, like Paintballing, it demonstrates a unique approach to violence. Enjoy Flower Warfare:

I enjoyed Flower Warfare not for the plot or the acting, both of which are paper-thin, but for the visuals and the exuberance. Being shot with flowers is apparently no less fatal (or surprising) in this short than in real life, but the bright colors and renewal of life make it seem so much less regrettable. That's not to say violence should be trivialized — but there's a big difference between how it's portrayed in Space Invaders and Mortal Kombat, for example, or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Saw.

A similar short uses armaments made of cardboard, but the militaristic approach to the short makes it far less fun. By contrast, the Flower Warfare actors are obviously enjoying themselves and don't get caught up in the dark, brooding, fatalistic nature usually involved in such territorial encounters. The closing double rainbow, though gratuitous, underscores this light-hearted atmosphere.

(Hat tip to Epic Win FTW)

At last month's KansasFest, an annual convention for Apple II geeks, I gave a presentation that was followed in the schedule by a 45-minute gap. It was too little time for a technical session, which usually requires 15 minutes beforehand to set up and another 15 afterward to break down, but it was also too long to ask attendees to wait. So I volunteered to fill the time with an off-topic fluff session: Know Your Meme.

Thanks to the Internet and social media, cultural artifacts can be disseminated in a distributed fashion faster than ever before. When something attains phenomenon status via viral means, it becomes a meme. But, just like a real virus, memes can quickly die off. What's everyone talking about today that will be gone tomorrow? Ken Gagne demonstrates what a double rainbow means and who your man could smell like.

The timing was perfect, as in mid-July 2010, two different Internet phenomena were swiftly making their way into the public consciousness: Double Rainbow and Old Spice Guy. In fact, interest in the latter peaked the week of July 11–17, the week leading up to KansasFest, yet many geeks were still unfamiliar with these memes. KansasFest 2010 was a limited-time opportunity to share this hot topic before it became yesterday's news.

The first meme was "Double Rainbow", which has as its root this video of a mountain man who is overcome by the double rainbow in his backyard. The longer he records the experience, the more emotional he becomes:

The video, uploaded in January 2010, didn't achieve viral status until June, when it was tweeted by comedian and television host Jimmy Fallon. Soon, the video was everywhere, as were its spoofs — from the autotuned music video and the KFC drive-thru (both available in the above YouTube playlist) to Bill Amend's own FoxTrot strip.

I then moved on to a more voluminous meme. (more…)

Inception has been out long enough, and enough people have formed their own opinions, that I now feel confident expressing mine: I didn't like it. I would think that sci-fi fans would find it unoriginal, and other theatergoers would find it confusing. Popular opinion has proven me wrong, yet I'll attempt to defend my position, though it will likely cause me more nightmares than Inception did its cast.

This summer blockbuster stars Leonardo DiCaprio as an expatriate whose job is to enter people's dreams and steal confidential data. The reverse — planting an idea in someone's mind and making it seem organic — is nearly impossible, but he accepts such an assignment knowing that it could clear his criminal record and allow him to return to the States and see his children (who he apparently never considers having flown to France). He enlists Ellen Page and teaches her the subtle rules of creating a dreamscape: basing it on other's realities but never your own, so you know what's real and what's not; creating a personal totem that serves an indicator of dream or not; how dying in a dream simply wakes you up, but if someone in the real world needs to wake you up, they need to convey a "kick" — a sense of falling.

It sounds like a neat science-fiction plot, but Inception can't decide if it wants to play to the action crowd or the sci-fi one. As a member of the latter, I found many of the film's devices hackneyed. Is this a dream, or is it reality? The Thirteenth Floor, Dark City, and ExistenZ asked the same question. I suspect the director, Christopher Nolan of The Dark Knight and Memento fame, was inspired by these and other media, though to suggest its origin lies with Scrooge McDuck is a bit far-fetched.

The ability to create and inhabit fictional worlds was also explored in both films and The Matrix, except inhabitants of the matrix could achieve awareness of the nature of reality and use it to their advantage. Inception's dreams are remarkably lifelike, where people put on suits, go to work, then get a drink at the bar to unwind, with one scene flowing naturally into the next. Since DiCaprio's team is often tasked with lulling their victims into a false sense of security, it is vital that the world seem realistic, such that the nature of the trap is not revealed. In that respect, the dullness of these dreams makes sense. But in moments of urgency, we rarely see DiCaprio use the dreamscape to his advantage. There are two instances of one person disguising himself as another, and only one of an Escher-like trap into which a dreamer lulls an enemy. But we see no one leaping over tall buildings, pulling bazookas out of their pockets, or — if you really wanted to make this dream-like — finding talking elephants in their closets. It's not what I would expect from lucid dreaming.

I also failed to understand how multiple people could share the same dream. One person going into one other's seems plausible, but the film usually had a bank of dreamers networked into each other by nothing more complicated than IVs. Just before they'd fall asleep, they'd ask amongst themselves, "Whose dream are we going into this time?" and, without rhyme or reason, one person would pipe up, "Mine", with no parallel action to suggest how or why.

The final, prolonged sequence of events features multiple layers of dreams. In each dream, time supposedly moves faster than in the dream before (or above) it (though we never see days turn into weeks or months as they suggest). In this sequence, we see a van falling off a bridge, providing its sleeping occupants with a waking kick. It takes about a half-hour of dream-time for the van to fall, as we're reminded every five minutes by a slow-motion sequence of its progress. I understand the temporal mechanics of this technique, but the tension of the moment is insufficient to sustain the suspense over such a long period of time. Slow motion is intended to bring attention to a brief, singular moment, as bullet time did in The Matrix. To have it last thirty minutes causes it to lose momentum, so to speak. Compounding the situation is that, throughout this climax, the action sequences aren't terribly exciting — though one fight scene in a hotel hallway with variable gravity was definitely cool.

One thing Inception consistently does well is pace its plot. As the film progresses, nuggets of DiCaprio's background are slowly revealed to the audience, each one elaborating on what we already know while raising new questions, until finally, all is revealed. Though the acting throughout these revelations is impeccable, the story itself didn't engage me enough to be enraptured by the film's indefinite and unoriginal conclusion. Friends tell me they went to see the film multiple times to see everything they missed. Though it's true that any film has details that are overlooked in an initial viewing, just like the first time I saw 12 Monkeys or Memento, I didn't walk out of Inception feeling I'd missed anything mission-critical.

I confess that I went into this film petulantly biased: there were other films I wanted to see, and the group I was with voted to see none of them. I tried to keep an open mind and let Inception in to work its magic, but I found it somewhat less than dreamy and not up to the creative and inspired storytelling of which Christopher Nolan has previously demonstrated himself capable.

Spoofing Star Wars never seems to go out of style. From RiffTrax to Robot Chicken to Family Guy, many artists have used this theme for more than just an independent one-off, making it a continuing commercial venture.

But few have the history or duration of Pink Five, which debuted as far back as 2002 with sequels appearing in 2004 and 2006. This independent fan series presents an alternative perspective on the events of the original Star Wars trilogy (episodes IV–VI). Paralleling the well-known tale of a rebellious young moisture farmer, the audience instead follows a dim-witted but obstinate Valley girl. It may sound annoying as all heck, but stick with it, as the writing is actually quite clever — her landing on Dagobah will have you laughing out loud. The character even proved popular enough to have a cameo in the official Star Wars expanded universe. The shorts' special effects are also inspired, their many subtle touches effectively inserting our heroine into George Lucas' universe.

The official versions of all four shorts don't load as quickly as your typical YouTube video so are included after the break.

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Most of Showbits' live-action summer shorts are either dark or funny. Few try to be either touching or poignant. Paper or Plastic makes that effort, but rather than run long and actually have a moral, it goes for an easy ending:

I was struck by this film at first, as it puts on the surface the "different" that we all feel inside. Being pretty is hard. Being in college is hard. Hell, being alive is hard. Many of us suffer in silence, but this story's protagonist can't hide what makes her different. Whether she's doing it as a courtesy to her friends (if any), or to protect herself, the concept of living life with a bag on one's head is both funny and sad.

The first few scenes made me wonder how the actress would convey emotion. On Star Trek: The Next Generation, LeVar Burton couldn't use his expressive eyes yet still managed the full range of sentiments. When Paper or Plastic's protagonist started magically changing bags when a real-life scenario would've afforded her no such opportunity, I felt a bit cheated.

The ending was also a letdown. Perhaps it would've been too cliché for the boy to have wooed her out from under her shell, revealing her to be the beautiful young woman she is. And though true love persists "in good times and in bad", I believe it should not simply prompt equilibrium within the couple, but also inspire each person to be his or her best. Is that the metaphor the title is suggesting?

I did enjoy the short's soundtrack — but the credits include none for the music, leaving me unsure where to find more of it.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this film, and it's supposed to be just a cute love story. What do you think?

Most of the films seen here this summer are either live-action or animated. Today, those two media merge in a comedic short that is the third and best in its series. Please enjoy Kungfu Bunny 3:

This cartoon's theme of turning one's loved one into a weapon is reminiscent of "Family Dog", the animated episode of the Steven Spielberg anthology series Amazing Stories, in which the family's efforts to turn their pet into a security system met with equally disastrous results. Won't dog owners, Elmer Fudd, and their ilk ever learn that sacrificing what's good in life to hurt another only ends up hurting oneself? But then, if they ever did learn that lesson, we bystanders would be poorer their wonderfully screwball antics. So maybe things are fine just the way they are.

Just as There She Is!! was a demonstration of Korean art, Kungfu Bunny 3 is Chinese in origin, though both films defy what foreigners might expect from that region's style. It's good to mix things up now and then and be reminded that not everything is anime.

Few actors and directors are talented at multiple genres. Michael Bay, for example, is known for directing explosive action films that lately have not been very good; conversely, James Cameron was as skilled at the character-driven science fiction of Terminator 2 as he was the sappy romance of Titanic.

For this reason and others, it is often effective for a person or team to choose a speciality to focus on and master, building a reputation for quality in their chosen field. But from a creative perspective, such dedication can be boring, and the temptation to flex one's artistic muscles is ever-present. Still, I never expected the creators of the ludicrously funny Star Wars satire series Chad Vader to investigate the horror genre, resulting in the excellent Life and Death of a Pumpkin:

This film won multiple awards at the Chicago Horror Film Festival in October 2006, a timeline that places the short's airing at around the same time Chad Vader made his own debut. I'm guessing Blame Society Productions, the team behind both shows, was at the time experimenting to find their niche and eventually settled on the comedic styles of the imperial day shift manager. But the above short demonstrates their talent at a diverse range of cinematic stylings. The macabre perspective, tremulous voice, and bittersweet climax remind me of another award-winning horror short, Unloved, which has also been featured here on Showbits. Among those qualities is the occasional effort at injecting Blame Society's trademark humor into the pumpkin's monologue, suggesting that the film is not meant to be taken seriously — yet it works whether you view it as as genuine and satirical horror.

Who are some of the actors or directors that you have found to be as effective as Blame Society at crossing genres?