New Lynch Short Film for 42 Below
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1W7wbaU-2s
ok that was a piece of shit. Lynch needs to shut the hell up big time. link's dead so
here's a youtube channel with 8 other 42-second shorts from the same festival, including such freaks as Asia Argento and Kenneth Anger (still alive??).
my favourite, and the only good thing that came out of this otherwise total waste of time, was "Last Day Dream" by Chris Milk, i recommend you watch it and digest it yourself first cos i'm about to talk about it and digest it for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hozuUrgQ52sMilky, if you didn't know, has directed videos like Kanye's Touch the Sky and Gnarls Barkley's Who's Gonna Save My Soul. here he seems to be the only one who made any effort to come up with something interesting. i love it cos EVERY SHOT WORKS. it's the kind of cool gimmick you'd usually only see used in an exploitative format like a commercial. even the technical details are interesting, he shot it on a Canon 5D Mark II SLR camera, which goes perfectly (and still gimmickily) with the snapshot aesthetic.. but what's impressive here is the rhythm, he makes this kind of easy IDEA look easy to DO.
fact is if you can't tell a story as effectively and concisely as these three shots did, you should either admit you are kevin smith and/or stop making movies:
i also like the title, it has at least 3 possible meanings all of which are satisfied by the film itself. Last Day Dream:
1. it could be the last dream of a life, so the dreamer in this case is the POV in the last shot and each beat - obviously like a heartbeat - is the approach towards his very final moments of life.
2. it's a dream about what it would be like to HAVE a final dream. this makes the dreamer the filmmaker (and us as spectators) who is currently not dying (presumably) and is just imagining what it would be like have a LAST DAY. so it's a dream about a last day.
3. or a combination of the two: the dreamer is still in the story, but it's not the filmmaker or the spectator, it's the person in this shot:
and every shot after it is the idyllic life he never got to live after this accident. this could be supported by the sweetness of everything that follows this shot. the white gown is angelic and it is followed by a repetitive sequence of children (angels) and more serene kind of imagery. even the death of his wife seems to take place after a toast in paradise.. and the waves hitting his feet are just a final incrementation of the recurring lull into death but ALSO a self-contained encapsulation of an eternity already at his feet, he's above death, this makes anything after it a kind of rebirth.. which becomes clear when the final shot is a repetition of the first:
the crash shot occurs almost at the centre of the 23 images that make up the short, so it's definitely a turning point. but the actual middle spot of the short is taken by the image before the crash, which is this:
as Stefen and RK have recently attested, to be emotionally attached to animals is a profound experience, and this quick little shot before the crash packs a lot of information. it's the only non human attachment made in his life, it doesn't show any obvious action to give it any forced emotional response like the grasping of his thumb by the tiny baby finger, or the unveiling of his wife, or the smile of the kid on the swings.. it's just a dog standing at attention and looking loyally at him.
it would be a really interesting exercise to see how other filmmakers could put a life in 42 seconds, this isn't the only way, but at least it has a self-contained logic and rewards at least one rewatching. the other filmmakers seem to have only showed what it's like to put 42 seconds of thought into a film and pass it off as "something".
