A Night of Short Films

Welcome to the SPA Film Club’s Night of Short Films! Tonight we present a variety of brief works, some animated, some live-action, some traditional narrative, some avant garde, but all great examples of the kind of film-making we don’t usually see. Really, working in the short form is harder than making full-length films, the same way that writing a short story can be harder than a full novel. There’s no room for wasted frames; every shot has to work toward a sense of completeness whether the film is 15 minutes long or five. So enjoy these, and if you’re considering making a film for the SPA Student Movie contest, don’t be afraid to grab a few good ideas.

1. “King of the Rocket Men” – serial chapter (12:00) – Not really a short film, but a great example of how to put together a narrative on a low budget. What is that helmet made of?

2. “Mr. Resistor” – Mark Gustafson (8:00)
In this stop-action animation, a little guy made of spare parts, wires, and some wild hair looks for an elusive boon – a pair of golden arms.

3. “The Morning Guy” – Mark W. Gray (4:50)
Do you have a clock/radio that wakes you in the morning? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be married to one? Sometimes a cool film idea comes from a very wacky premise.

4. “Eramos Pocos” (“One Too Many”) – Borja Corbeaga (15:15)
When a man’s wife leaves him, he turns to his mother-in-law to help care for him and his son’s domestic needs. A lot of short films use the ironic “punch line” approach to narrative structure; this one does that really well.

5. “More” – Mark Osborne (5:50)
We tend to take animation more lightly then live-action film, but “More” reminds us that even claymation can have a lot to say about the forces that control our lives: hope, capitalism, sacrifice.

6. “Eye Like a Strange Balloon” – Guy Maddin (5:11)
Not every film you make has to be a traditional narrative. Maddin’s is unabashedly surreal (think Luis Bunuel), with elements of German expressionism and that avant garde thing where you mess around with the physical celluloid itself. Follow the plot. If you can. (Yeah, yeah; plot is irrelevant here.)

7. “Our Time is Up” – Rob Pearlstein (12:00)
This is a straight up character study arranged around a simple structure: establish a character, throw a huge complication in his life, and watch what happens.

8. “The Ninja Pays Half My Rent” – Steven Tsuchida (5:00)
Guy needs a new room-mate. It’s a Ninja! ‘Nuff said.

9. “West Bank Story” – Ari Sandel (18:30)
Modern media is all about the mash-up. This film takes Romeo and Juliet adaptation West Side Story, turns its tragedy into parody, and resets it in the middle of the middle-eastern conflict. Full of wonderful visual puns: check out the allusion to a famous musical film about a third of the way into the film.

10. “Bride of Resistor” – Mark Gustafson (6:04)
Mr. Resistor is back! And this time he’s looking for love. It’s fitting that in this stop-motion animation sequel made up of found objects, our hero learns that love is often found in unusual places.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Richard Thorpe's Jailhouse Rock (1957)

A lot of performers have made the jump from music to film, and done it well. Check out Beyonce in Cadillac Records or Queen Latifah in Hairspray and The Secret Life of Bees. Certainly, being in the entertainment industry prepares you for more than one genre, and Hollywood has a long history of capturing charismatic talents and presenting them on the big screen. But we wonder if Hollywood still thinks of these performers as exploitable celebrity – hey, this guy’s popular; let’s put him in a movie and rake in the dough from his fans – rather than exploitable talent.

Take Elvis Presley. From 1956 to 1969, Elvis made 31 movies, and it may have been "Saturday Night Live" that used to have a joke about them. In a skit, Elvis is portrayed as showing up a little dazed to a film shoot. A director runs in and tells him he’s going to be playing Sam or Dave or Jim, or some other innocuous name, and that he’s going to be in a particular situation. Like:

“Elvis, in this movie you’re Sam and you’re in the biggest car race of your life.” And the Elvis character would sing “Gonna win that race!”

Or, “Elvis, in this scene you’re Dave, and you’re a sea captain trying to save your ship from sinking,” and “Elvis” would sing “Gonna save that ship!”

Or, “Elvis, in this scene you’re Jim, and you’re making out with the Larimer County beauty queen at the State Fair,” and “Elvis” would sing “Gonna kiss that girl.” Etc.

The point was that from a popular perspective, Elvis’s movies were cookie-cutter formula flicks with generic scripts designed to place a visually (if increasingly pudgy) Elvis on screen for his legions of fans and collect their ticket money without much regard to the quality of the films. Just stick him in front of the camera, get him to sing, and people will pay. And that’s certainly true of forgettable movies like Clambake, Spinout, and Harum Scarum.

The irony to all of this is that, in the beginning, Elvis really wanted to be a great actor. His early roles, in films like King Creole and Loving You and Jailhouse Rock, are dark and James Dean-esque, and, dare we say it, require actual acting. As early as 1961 Elvis was explaining to anyone who would listen that he wanted his acting to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, the movie studio failed to hear those pleas because it was easier, and cheaper, to throw together lame scripts, go through the motions, and still make money. They considered him more of a B-movie actor and by the mid-1960s he was saddled with regrettable claptrap like Tickle Me.

Here, in Jailhouse Rock, though, we have the early Elvis, a good script, some good actors, and some very memorable songs. It’s no surprise that people still remember this movie after they see it. The images from it have been reused and imitated for decades (see the final scene of the original Blues Brothers), and one can only think wistfully at what might have been if Elvis’s film producer, Hal Wallis, and his manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker, had respected Elvis’s wish to become a serious actor. Perhaps Elvis wouldn’t be consigned now to be remembered as an actor by comedy sketches and a critic’s statement that “No major star suffered though more bad movies than Elvis Presley” (Wikipedia).

Fortunately Jailhouse Rock isn’t one of them.

R. Findlay
SPA Film Club Adviser