Fantastic Fest 2008

ah, santos. anyone who likes superhero stuff AND has a sense of humor will love this movie. a nice light yet quite moving film, perfect after the darker morning fare, as far as my day went. somewhere between quite funny and hilarious. i really hope this gets a wide dvd release so more folks can see it.

a child's fantasy, very dreamlike, delightful animation.

i had high hopes for this one. evidently it is already getting something of a cult following - there were quite a few repeat audience members. apparently it's basically a vanity project, a musical by the guy who directed "saw" parts 2 - .... wait, what? huh? yeah. like i said, reading about it, i really was hoping for something unexpected and, dare i say, wacky... and honestly, it could have been pretty good, but for one minor point: the music! they should have hired mike patton to write this one, or someone who knew what they were doing; the music alone had me itching to escape about half-way through, but i realized i had missed my bus and was in for the long run. very simply, it fucking sucked. i'm sure it will be a big hit with the 13-16 year old goth crowd, although having been a 13-16 year old goth myself i still think i would have hated it. it seems that this saw guy has a very rudimentary idea of what musicals are, or operas... or maybe i do, i don't know. i do know i really wish i hadn't seen this, but hey, four out of five ain't bad, eh? they can't all be winners, and so forth. i think i was the only person in the audience who felt this way, there was a lot of cheering after each and every mediocre tuneless musical number, so maybe i'm just spoiled by "velvet goldmine" and "the american astronau"t or something. probably. if you like seeing gothic people in bad wigs and makeup dance around and sing poorly, by all means, go see this.