My Five Year Plan

At some point in the Babylon that was Hollywood in the 1970s, Carrie Fisher got hopped up on angel dust and repeatedly slammed her head against a brick wall until a chunk of her skull broke itself off and jammed itself into whatever part of the brain manages one’s artistic sensibility. It’s the only explanation I’ve got for her taste, her behavior, her unrelenting idiocy as judge on On the Lot. This goes way beyond the Paula/Randy brand of good natured dumb and into a world that’s scarily revealing of just how delusional the syntactical structures of Hollywood’s collective hivebrain is.

I wish I had evidence of her idiocy for you guys tonight, but whenever she started talking, I just shouted (really – Pam can confirm this) back at the screen angrily. Now, not that I like any of these films that played this evening (I don’t), but Carrie’s comments are so off-base, so ill-advised, and so mistargeted that it’s almost infuriating.

“Glass Eye” by Will – See, Carrie, what’s wrong with Will’s “Glass Eye” isn’t that it lacks dialogue, as you claim (though based on your talky scripts, I’d expect nothing less from you) – what’s wrong with it is that he takes a bad concept and executes it to its fullest. A man loses his glass eye – suddenly it can see, and when he puts his hand to his eye, he can see out of it, despite it being detached from his body. But his dog grabs it and he chases his dog, and watches idly as the dog eats it instead of swatting the dog’s nose like any sane, rational human being might do if a dog were eating one’s glass eye. Ill-advised black and white reveals just how muddled and mid-tone Will’s lighting is, and the aria, courtesy of his wife, is baffling. D.

“Blood Born” by Jason Epperson, Banjo Savant – What’s wrong with Jason’s “Blood Born” isn’t its lack of coherence, as Carrie said. Actually, it’s absurdly coherent, too coherent perhaps, spelling out every little bit of meaning and distressing its already mal-shot video beyond all point of indexicality. Jason’s film spells out its meaning every moment it’s on screen, and it’s nearly unwatchable. (I paused it multiple times to shake my head and mutter angrily.) A scene from a longer, probably worse work, it’s about a drug user who discovers that his blood heals cancer patients, and then is shot for failing to pay his dealer (Jason assures us in his pre-film bumper that he’s a god-fearing man who doesn’t believe in sex and violence in cinema). I’m surprised, frankly, that Epperson was able to find some of the more sophisticated retarded filters in Final Cut Pro, but I nevertheless am completely underwhelmed by his ‘talents.’ D.

“Sunshine Girl” by Zach, Boy Wonder – Before I get to the movie, I need to talk about this ‘conjurer of magic’ shit that Zach does in all of his bumpers, where he moves his hands around in a circle like the feyest David Copperfield knockoff. We get it, Zach. You create ‘magic’ onscreen with your second-rate special effects (note to voting audience: in Hollywood, the directors don’t do their own special effects, so Zach’s ability to make a terrible-looking giant robot should not reflect on your voting. Thanks.)

So what sort of magic does Zach conjure up for us this week? A bit of sub-Wes Anderson wackiness like last time? Nah, this time Zach goes whole-hog and delivers an obnoxiously maudlin Spielbergian fairy tale about A Girl Who’s Afraid of the Dark. She Steals the Sun. The World Plunges Into Darkness. She Shares the Sun With Everyone. The judges, all three of them, ate this up, though Gerry was sure to note that he didn’t quite get it. Does Gerry ‘quite get’ anything, because that seems to be his reaction to nearly every movie on this show? C-.

“Lost” by Mateen, Former Stock Trader - What’s wrong with Mateen’s “Lost” is not that its close-up handheld camerawork is more televisual than cinematic (as Carrie would have you believe). What’s wrong is that this is the worst sort of self-portrait filmmaking, a filmmaker waxing poetic on his own not-that-interesting life. “Lost” is a scene about a young, gifted, and black filmmaker who loses the love of his life because he’s paid too much attention to his documentary. Of course, we don’t see any of this – instead it plays out over a dinner table with some Filmmaking 101 shot/reverse shot. When Mateen does move his camera elsewhere, it’s the wrong place, defusing tension from the scene and revealing his own lack of experience with a weak framing of a waitress coming to the table. But. Well lit, and though clichéd, the payoff works surprisingly well. C.

“The Orchard” by Jessica, NYU Grad – No, Carrie, this isn’t bad because it’s not scary. That Jessica calls her movie a horror film is only her inability to communicate that it’s actually ‘an experimental work that draws on generic elements of horror.’ Which is to say, it’s crap! A retarded exercise in empty formalism about the pain and terror a tree feels as it’s being cut down. Carrie calls the film the worst thing imaginable other than ‘her man leaving her for another man.’ Wes Craven gets in on the idiocy by saying, “Horror is about blood, not sap.” This from the man who brought us the terrifying figure of Cillian Murphy in a purple ascot. Jessica, as bad as your movie was, it deserves much more intelligently damning judging than that. C-.

Vids aren’t up yet on the ON the Lot site, but I’ll link to them once they are. Not that you actually want to watch this crap…