Selected Narrative

Unfor­tu­nately our entry in the 48Hours film com­pe­ti­tion (“Cou­pled”) did not make the Welling­ton regional final. We thought we might have had a chance this year, but to cut a long story short: no. Still, last night I was able to see the cal­i­bre of films that did make it. There were twelve films shown and, like last year, I’ve decided I will say a few things about each of them. Before I start, I should note that the compère for the night stated that the films were shown in alpha­bet­i­cal order (with a cou­ple of excep­tions for “tech­ni­cal rea­sons”) and that the audi­ence shouldn’t read any­thing into the order they were shown. How­ever, by coin­ci­dence or not, it turned out the first film shown, “The Baby Farmer”, won first prize, and the next film shown, “16 Bul­lets”, came sec­ond. Plenty to keep the con­spir­acy the­o­rists going, no doubt. Any­way, onto the films themselves.

Oh, actu­ally, just hold that thought for a sec­ond. I should prob­a­bly give the avail­able gen­res and story ele­ments before con­tin­u­ing. The avail­able gen­res, and some exam­ples the organ­is­ers pro­vided, were:

• The Action Movie (eg kung fu, blax­ploita­tion, biker, lone man).
• Based on a True Story (eg biopic, fic­tion­alised, true crime, documentary).
• The Mon­ster Movie (eg eco-terror, killer wildlife, super­size, mad scientist).
• The Pre­ten­tious Film (eg wanky sym­bol­ism, for­eign, sur­real, exper­i­men­tal, avant garde).
• The Com­ing of Age Movie (eg any John Hughes film, friend­ship, seri­ous, unusual).
• The Fairy­tale (eg faith­ful, rein­ven­tion, Grimm, post-modern, redux).
• The Hor­ror Movie (eg slasher, psy­cho­log­i­cal, splat­ter com­edy, can­ni­bal, zom­bie, torture).
• The War or West­ern Film (eg his­tor­i­cal, con­tem­po­rary, con­tem­pla­tive, gung ho, clas­sic, exis­ten­tial, MTV, reinvention).
• The Super­hero Movie (e.g. tra­di­tional, action packed, spoof, silly).
• The Crime Movie (e.g. heist, gang­ster, detective).
• The Romance Film (e.g. rom-com, dark, bittersweet).
• The Musi­cal (e.g. rock opera, period, bol­ly­wood, pup­pets, weird).
• The Sci­ence Fic­tion Film (e.g. nature run amok, in space, in the future, space­Time, hard sci­ence, evil computer).
• The Road Movie (e.g. two char­ac­ter, the hitch­hiker, the des­ti­na­tion, existential).
• Two extra spe­cial Peter Jack­son ones: Par­ody and Pup­pet.

Each team got one, and only one, of the gen­res to run with. Each and every team, how­ever, had to incor­po­rate the same three story ele­ments: a char­ac­ter named Robin Slade, who is an eter­nal opti­mist, the line of dia­logue “That’s what I’m talk­ing about” and a prop, a mirror.

OK. Finally, onto the movies:

• As I noted above, first up was “The Baby Farmer” (Mon­ster) from team Clean Slate. Well, mon­ster was what they said the genre was. Per­son­ally I think it was most def­i­nitely a hor­ror and not really a mon­ster movie. Why? Well, for a start there was no mon­ster. There was a ghost. I guess it could prob­a­bly be argued that a ghost is a type of mon­ster, but I think that would be push­ing it a bit. A mon­ster movie to me — and to most oth­ers I would imag­ine — is one that involves a real, phys­i­cal mon­ster: a Godzilla, a Moth­man, a kraken, etc, etc. That being said, it was a very good look­ing film. And unlike vir­tu­ally every other movie in the com­pe­ti­tion it wasn’t a com­edy. It was actu­ally quite scary in places and the whole thing looked very pro­fes­sional. The story was ade­quate, although the end­ing did leave me scratch­ing my head a bit: there was a baby and a baby farmer, and the baby didn’t end up get­ting farmed (what­ever “farmed” means). So it was kind of like “huh?”. The baby farmer alluded to in the title seems to have been the ghost of Min­nie Dean, the only woman to have received the death penalty in New Zealand.
  My rat­ing: A–. Marked down for incon­sis­tent end­ing and Robin Slade wasn’t really an eter­nal opti­mist (he was in fact quite mean and self-serving). Marked up for pro­duc­tion val­ues, good act­ing and gen­eral spook­i­ness.
  Did it deserve to be there? Yes.
  Did it deserve to win? I think so, yes.
• Sec­ond (in more ways than one) was “16 Bul­lets” (Com­ing of Age) from Hydra Pro­duc­tions. Although tech­ni­cally not up to the stan­dard of the pre­vi­ous film — both in terms of cin­e­matog­ra­phy and act­ing — it was prob­a­bly supe­rior in terms of coher­ent story. That’s prob­a­bly why it came sec­ond. A very refresh­ing take on com­ing of age.
  My rat­ing: A-. Marked down for tech­ni­cal rea­sons. Marked up for story.
  Did it deserve to be there? Yes.
  Did it deserve to win? It had a great story, so I would have thought it would have come close.
• Next up was team Long Live Mega­tron with “Opti­mistic Prime” (Based on a True Story). Obvi­ously hang­ing out for a Trans­form­ers movie, they nonethe­less man­aged to work a ser­vice­able movie with­out hav­ing any Trans­form­ers in it at all. They went for the “true story within a story” aspect of the based on a true story genre, which seemed to be a com­mon motif. We used it. It was a very sim­ple true story; in fact it seemed more a gag-reel than a story. Of course, that accu­sa­tion could be lev­elled at most, if not all, 48Hours movies. There was cer­tainly no char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. They had the “Musi­cal” genre cov­ered as well, with con­stant inter­rup­tions from a bar­ber­shop quar­tet. Hav­ing said all of that, it was funny, although whether it would pass my sec­ond view­ing test is another mat­ter. (My sec­ond view­ing test says that if I find a 48Hours com­edy funny the sec­ond time through, it was a good com­edy.)
  My Rat­ing: B. Marked down for lack of story. Marked up for fun.
  Did it deserve to be there? Yeah, why not?
  Was it good enough to win? No.
• Then came “Robin Slade: The Actor’s Actor” (Pup­pet) from team Open Book. I think a Pup­pet movie would be quite hard to do (although Hadyn has a great idea about a real-life Thun­der­birds–type thing, a la the Thun­der­birds FAB stage show). So big ups to Open Book for this movie. How­ever. How­ever, they went the mock­u­men­tary route. Aaaaaaagggggh­hhh! Make it stop. If you ask me, and I did, mock­u­men­tary is a blight on the 48Hours. I think it’s an easy, and lazy, way out. There are only so many mock­u­men­taries I can take, and they have to be excep­tional or ground­break­ing (like “This is Spinal Tap” or “The Office”) before I’ll take note of them. So, on the whole a well exe­cuted, but com­pletely unre­mark­able, short.
  My rat­ing: B–. Marked way down for mockumentary-ness. Marked up (slightly) for pro­duc­tion val­ues, a cou­ple of smirk­able gags and the act­ing (the main actor — not the pup­pet — won best actor for the Welling­ton region).
  Did it deserve to be there? No. It pisses me off that shorts that try to come up with sto­ries are beaten out by mock­u­men­taries.
  Did it deserve to win? See my answer just above.
• Next up was “Emo­tional Res­cue” (Based on a True Story) by team North­side Steel­ers. One of many that lam­pooned the recent trapped min­ers in Aus­tralia. This one was a com­pletely bonkers take on it. Two guys in a garage, one under­neath an SUV, fix­ing it up, the other in a mono­logue to the cam­era, dur­ing the course of which he tries to take his own life through the old car­bon monox­ide sui­cide trick of run­ning the exhaust through a pipe into the car’s inte­rior. His mate fix­ing the car has no idea of this — it seems to him that the guy inside the car is help­ing him out by gun­ning the engine a bit. So far so kind-of good. It then dips into the sur­real when a cos­metic sales­woman stum­bles into the garage at the same time an earth­quake strikes, sub­sid­ing the garage 150 feet under­ground. The film gets totally ran­dom at this point, includ­ing the intru­sion of a pipe into one of the char­ac­ters, and a taxi dri­ver squeez­ing him­self through the pipe from over­ground in hopes of res­cu­ing them. Then, pretty much, the film ends. Wha?? Now, this was nom­i­nated for best screen­play for the Welling­ton region. My response to that: you have to be f%^$&$ jok­ing. For­tu­nately, it didn’t win — that hon­our went to “16 Bul­lets”, which deserved it — but even to be one of the three nom­i­nated grated more than a bit.
  My rat­ing: C–. Marked up for a promis­ing start and some OK cin­e­matog­ra­phy. Marked down for com­plete lack of story (best screen­play!?!???).
  Did the it to be there? Hell no. Some items were traded or other favours done to get this one in, of that I’m sure.
  Did it deserve to win? Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Good one.
• Surely “Mon­ster” (Mon­ster) by Traces of Nut couldn’t be any worse than the last film? From the team that last year gave us “Ananab”, which should prob­a­bly have won the Welling­ton region, you would expect big things. How­ever, while it was def­i­nitely a step up from the pre­ced­ing film, this year’s effort from Traces of Nut is some­what less than their effort from last year. A nice twist on the mon­ster genre, the monster-hunter becomes the mon­ster as he indis­crim­i­nantly lays waste to the mon­ster com­mu­nity. A nice con­cept, but the exe­cu­tion seemed a bit dis­jointed to me, and per­haps didn’t do enough with the scope such a story offered. Also they went mock­u­men­tary at times. Aaaaaaaaggggh­h­hhh! Will they never learn? All sur­face and no depth for what is a deep idea: what is the def­i­n­i­tion of a mon­ster?
  My rat­ing: B–. Marked up for inter­est­ing con­cept and hav­ing actual mon­sters. Marked down for not liv­ing up to the promise, only pay­ing lip-service to the three story ele­ments and doing f&^%*$#! mock­u­men­tary bits.
  Did it deserve to be there? Meh, bor­der­line.
  Did it deserve to win? Nope.
• The next film shown was “Gun­ther & Me” (Mon­ster) from Prime Rib. Another alumni from last year, where they did a pre­ten­tious art film that should have made it through to the final, but didn’t. They prob­a­bly rode the coat-tails of that effort this year and got into the finals this year with what I would call a sym­pa­thy vote from the judges. Cer­tainly this mon­ster effort from them was on the mediocre side; a nice idea, but exe­cu­tion and story-flow were not as good as their effort of last year. Although I must admit that their pre­ten­tious film last year didn’t really have story-flow — per­fect for pre­ten­tious, and maybe it was that that hid the flaws. The basic story revolves around a boy who lives with an imag­i­nary mon­ster. Or is it?
  My rat­ing: B–. Marked up for inter­est­ing con­cept and enthu­si­asm. Marked down for exe­cu­tion and unpol­ished screen­play (even given the 48 hour con­straint).
  Did it deserve to be there? I would have to say no.
  Did it deserve to win? Nah.
• On to “Seven in Seven” (Par­ody) from SE7. A par­ody of the film Se7en, if you couldn’t guess already. One of the stronger films on the night. Think­ing about it, that was prob­a­bly due to the fact that it was a par­ody and, like mock­u­men­tary, quite easy to do. Orig­i­nal­ity is not required, and it’s an oppor­tu­nity to run a gag-reel with­out hav­ing a story. Hav­ing said that, good par­ody can be hard to pull off, and this is a good par­ody. Hadyn got it right when he said that if Hol­ly­wood were to itself do a par­ody of Se7en, they may as well get some ideas from this short.
  My rat­ing: B+. Marked down for hav­ing an easy-ish genre to do. Marked up for doing it well.
  Did they deserve to be in the final? Emphatic yes.
  Did they deserve to win? No.
• Next was “That Fate­ful Day in April” (Based on a True Story) from team Ufo Film. A one-joke film. I quite enjoyed it; the pay-off at the end is a good one. Tech­ni­cally one of the best shot films I saw, and I thought one of the best shown at the final. I would have been tempted on the one view­ing to make it my favourite. How­ever, upon think­ing about it, it fails my “sec­ond view­ing” cri­te­rion. Also, I remem­ber the mir­ror and the line of dia­logue, but I’m not quite sure how eter­nally opti­mistic Robin Slade was. Also not so sure about it being based on a true story. It didn’t even attempt to make it inter­nally true (as “Opti­mistic Prime” did). In fact, it all looked decid­edly pre­ten­tious until the final few sec­onds, when all was made clear.
  My rat­ing: B. Marked up for nice cin­e­matog­ra­phy and nice lead­ing of the audi­ence down a path before sur­pris­ing them right at the end, and for keep­ing it sim­ple. Very nice loca­tions as well. Marked down for being a one-joke, insub­stan­tial story. And for only pay­ing lip-service to the required story ele­ments.
  Did it deserve to be there? In terms of being a pol­ished film, I think so.
  Did it deserve to win? It was an enjoy­able lit­tle short, but in short, no.
• Third to last was “This Thing Called Hate” (Mon­ster) from Unpro­duc­tive But Opti­mistic. This one gets points for actu­ally hav­ing a real mon­ster, albeit a slightly twisted one: a Frankenstein-like doc­tor cre­ates a spare-parts mon­ster whom he tries to imbue with evil, only for it to start act­ing nice. Very good take on the mon­ster genre, and an inter­est­ing screen­play.
  My rat­ing: B+. One of the bet­ter ones—it had a good story with a begin­ning, mid­dle and a good res­o­lu­tion.
  Did it deserve to be there? Yeah.
  Did it deserve to win? Prob­a­bly not strong enough for the win.
• The penul­ti­mate film shown was “Slade in Full” (Action) by White Tiger. White Tiger is Taika Cohen (aka Taika Wait­iti), Oscar-nominee, 48Hour win­ner from two years ago and pretty funny guy. “Slade in Full” is what you’ve all come to expect from Wait­iti in this 48Hour for­mat. He plays (well, over­plays) all the char­ac­ters him­self and employs very basic cam­era tricks (pretty well, I must say) to give a par­ody of action films. Funny on first show­ing, although not as funny as his 48Hours win­ner from two years ago seemed on first view­ing, this would fail my “sec­ond view­ing” test.
  My rat­ing: C+. Marked up for Waititi’s per­for­mances, but marked down for pretty much every­thing else.
  Did it deserve to be there? Debat­able. It’s a crowd pleaser, I’ll give it that.
  Did it deserve to win? No.
• And finally we come to “Faery Dis­en­chanted” from team Pan­cake. I missed the genre, but assume it was Fairy Tale. I thought this was prob­a­bly the least of those show­ing last night. It was a take on “if you don’t believe in them, the fairies will dis­ap­pear” trans­posed to a con­tem­po­rary set­ting. It included an Alcoholic’s Anonymous-type (Fairy’s Anony­mous?) group coun­selling ses­sion for those fairies who seemed to be out of jobs. Although for what rea­son they were out of jobs I wasn’t sure, as the film seemed to estab­lish at the start fairies dis­ap­pear entirely when peo­ple stop believ­ing in them. A few incon­sis­ten­cies there.
  My rat­ing: C. Marked down for most things. Marked up for the gnome and his gelig­nite method of fish­ing.
  Did it deserve to be there? I would say no.
  Did it deserve to win? No.

So, there you have it. 48Hours for the Welling­ton region for 2006. As for those films in the final last night: some good, some not so good. A good film won, so not too much to com­plain about. A few gen­res miss­ing from the final­ists: Pre­ten­tious, Sci-Fi, Hor­ror, War/Western, Super­hero, Crime, Musi­cal, Road Movie. That’s quite a few. I’m just won­der­ing if the gen­res got shared out all that evenly?

I’m dis­ap­pointed our film didn’t make it this year, again. I’m not quite sure what the judges are look­ing for. I think next year we’ll just do a gag-reel and try to find a cou­ple of celebri­ties to act for us. Nah. On sec­ond thoughts I hope we con­tinue our inde­pen­dent style and try not to pan­der to pub­lic opin­ion. And that we get a cooler genre next year: come on War, Super­hero, Hor­ror or Monster!