United Monster Talent Agency by Greg Nicotero

Just in time for Halloween, here's special effects whizz Greg Nicotero's directorial debut, a snappy short entitled United Monster Talent Agency. If I had to make a note, I'd ask if it wouldn't have been a fraction funnier to see some of the more humanoid actors being a little more compliant - who doesn't want to see the Wolf-Man talking about his craft?

When not beavering away on minutely detailed homages to American horror cinema, Mr Nicotero can be found working on basically every well mounted genre film made in the last twenty five years - everything from Day of the Dead and Evil Dead II to Boogie Nights and Casino Royale, with the lion's share of Quentin Tarantino's movies thrown in for good measure. Nicotero's work can currently be seen in AMC's adaptation of Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charles Adlard's The Walking Dead, where Nicotero has perfectly captured Adlard's grimacing, lip-chewed, zombie drafts. Want to hear him talk about his work? Head over to Ain't It Cool News for a great chat piece with Capone.

Happy Halloween!

Elephant

Happy Hallowe'en! After last year's double bill of sweaty illogic, I think a skew in the direction of bleak realist is in order. Embedded for your existential horror is Alan Clarke's 1989 the Troubles short Elephant. Partly based on actual police reporting, and the brainchild of then producer Danny Boyle, Elephant dispassionately tracks eighteen sectarian murders. The removal of any political or ideological agenda stumps justification, it's just killing. Likewise, no reasoning is ever offered, instead you get ethereal Steadicams zoning like an accomplice. This being a BBC production, and given their increased presence on YouTube, you'd figure they'd want to shout it from the rafters that they used to produce thought provoking mind splinters like this? Not a bit of it! This was uploaded by a fan under a misspelled name.

Propaganda Basterd

Eli Roth directed ad for Inglourious Basterds' in-universe propaganda piece Nation's Pride - presented like a modern Weinstein roll-out for a forgotten foreign language gem. Easy to imagine this pre-menu, burning up precious disc room on a Dragon Dynasty kung-fu flick. Nation's Pride spins the fictional tale of Fredrick Zoller, a Nazi sniper who, holed up in a resplendent bell tower, manages to off several hundred enemy troops over the course of a few days. Script placed the unfortunates as Soviet, while the film apparently skews American. Zoller plays himself in propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels' Fuhrer affirmed masterwork. Another layer to a work suffused with the love of the mechanics of cinema.

Via

Involved In Creative Endeavours: Trespasser

Another short for your viewing pleasure. Trespasser is a dimension-hop, time travel mash-up puzzler specifically designed to leave your head wringing. Director Gary Ellison asked me to write a time shift slanted piece for his final Film and TV Production project, I fired back a brief slice of undo dead-ending, inspired by constant GTA4 restarting. Gotta get that mission perfect. And what if you met yourself coming back? Once again, it's an uncommon treat to see and hear scribbled bits and bobs spring to life. Gary did a fantastic job with zero financial backing, and uncooperative British weather.

A big thank you to everybody else involved in Trespasser's production. That'll be: Peter Shuff, Adam McCarthy, Giorgio Riolo, Nicola-Elizabeth Potts, Soraya Deria, Elizabeth Ellison, Malath Abbas, and George Ellison.

Trespasser Part 1
Trespasser Part 2

Trespasser HD Part 1
Trespasser HD Part 2

Hope you folks enjoy.

DAICON III and DAICON IV

Rooting around for Gunbuster info, I happened upon some snappy shorts. Daicon III and Daicon IV are amateur animation pieces produced by DAICON Film for two Nihon SF Taikai conventions. The DAICON Film group would go on to found the Gainax animation studio, responsible for such delights as Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise, Gunbuster, and FLCL - not to mention rolling remake franchise Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's especially interesting to see key Gainax themes already in place: hidden-strength waif kids involved in fraught pop culture love letter wars for a start.

The two Daicon shorts are unfortunately tied up in numerous legal wrangles preventing any kind of retrospective release. Ho-hum. That'll learn 'em for using Playboy Bunny outfits without greasing Heff's palm. Not to mention their complete failure to clear the cream of late twentieth century pop culture icons the world over: Bunny Girl beats Vader!

Anyway, here's them shorts:

DAICON III

DAICON IV

Enjoy!

Boxing Tonight

Please find enclosed the inaugural animated short by Bricovision. With thanks to my pal Mal, ladies and gentlemen I give you: Boxing Tonight.*

This piece was animated by Camilo, a Parisian artist who has dabbled in all manner of image-pop mediums, from emulation and comics to java. The 8-bit chip-seizure music is by Sidabitball; tunes generated by tinkering on Nintendo's original handheld, the Gameboy. Find Sidabitball's webpage here, his MySpace there. Boxing Tonight's obvious pop-visual touch point would be arcade and NES box 'em up classic Punch-Out!!; a fine series that had bestowed upon it the coveted Mike Tyson seal of approval, and a superb parody in the first series of The Simpsons (Episode 6 Moaning Lisa). A little further off that beaten track, I can't help but think of Monkey Punch comics, low income boxing superstar manga: Ashita no Joe, MAD Magazine, Dragonball Z and Tetsujin 28 when I cue the short up for the umpteenth viewing.

A fantastic piece of work, and hopefully the first of a great many like it. Well done fellas!

*High quality version here.

The Alphabet

Another Halloween horror short for your Autumn evening viewing pleasure: David Lynch's second short film, The Alphabet. Rather fittingly, 1968's The Alphabet had it's beginnings in an account about night terrors told to Lynch by his then wife Peggy. Peggy's niece had tossed and turned her way through one night, frenziedly reciting the alphabet in her sleep. Possessed of a harrowing scream-bleed soundscape that plays like a prototype run for reproduction anxiety feature Eraserhead, Alphabet combines live action footage and animation.

The Alphabet.

If you're feeling less naughty / spend-thrifty, The Alphabet is available as part of the excellent The Short Films of David Lynch DVD collection, which, I believe, finally got a Region 2 release just last week.

La Cabina

Happy Halloween! Being a generous sort, I thought I'd jab your present at you a little early. No need to thank me. I'm great like that. Traipse after these links below and find 1972 Spanish horror short La Cabina. For non-Spanish speakers that's: The Telephone Box. Cabina is a queasy, sweaty short, in which a knock-about silent comedy pratfall slowly matures into a pitiless desperation horror. Directed by Antonio Mercero, Cabina was infrequently broadcast on BBC2 as either late night filler in the 70s / 80s; always on hand to freak out night-owls when live allocated programming didn't quite fill a slot; or in a horror double bill with George Romero's lesser seen riot shocker The Crazies. Outrageously, Cabina is not easily available anywhere. There are rumours of an out-of-print multi-disc retrospective DVD release collecting a slew of Mercero shorts in the director's native Spain, although, unfortunately, I've never quite managed to find out much about the set. So, failing a brief root around torrent sites, youtube will have to do. The version linked here lacks English language subtitles, but fret not! All dialogue is merely perfunctory, and superfluous to the cringe inducing, unknowable machination frights. Broad, expressive, continental European acting helps too. Once seen, never forgotten. LA CABINA!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4