Alice in Wasteland

I blame Commodore for keeping me from blogging the last couple of
days... he's kept me up working on a project for him. (ok, ok, so
maybe I can't blame him for the lack of blogging, but it's the excuse
I'm going to use)

I got confirmation that I get to see Narnia tomorrow morning. I really
hope, like I mentioned before, that I can say good things about the
film. I was in the aintitcool.com chat room the other day and
Morirarty mentioned that he had been to a screening and really didn't
like it. He referred to the movie at one point as "The Passion of the
Lion King" and that the kids didn't work and Liam Neeson's Aslan voice
wasn't right, but I've read positive things too. Just in case, I'm not
going in with any expectations and I think that's the proper way to go
into most movies...

I saw a movie yesterday evening called "Alice In Wasteland". It was
produced locally and with local talent and being that I'm involved
with the Colorado Springs Film Society, I felt obliged to go. I tried
to not go in with expectations, but the brother of the director had
mentioned that it looked slick so I had that in the back of my mind.
I'm not entirely sure what film was watched that looked "slick" but I
just can't imagine this was it. Everything about it screamed
mediocrity and the sad part is that they rounded up $300,000 to pay
for it. I'm not entirely sure where the money went. I really wanted to
like the movie, but between inconsistent framing, weird lighting, same
scene color shifts, shoddy compositing, a storyline that could have
been trimmed by a good 30 minutes, and dialogue that was hammy at
best, it was really hard to find something good to say about it. I
felt a bit like I had lost two hours of my life that I would never
retrieve.

My boss was there as well and this morning I asked him how he felt
about it. He mentioned that he liked it and couldn't see how anything
was wrong. What baffles me with that is that this is a guy who's even
more of a camera snob than I am. The thing just didn't look good and
with a $300,000 budget, they should have been able to make it look a
lot better than it did. I know they shot on video, and I can
understand that with shooting on video things aren't necessarily going
to look as good as they might if they had shot HD or even 35mm instead
of DV. That said, DV CAN look good if it's lit right. You have to know
how to work with your tool.

Here's a link to the <a
href="http://wattimagination.com/alice/">trailer </a>. Maybe I'm being
too hard on it... maybe I'm judging based on the criteria I'd use to
evaluate a feature film. Maybe I don't have the right to criticize
because I haven't made my own feature yet. I give them credit for
creating a film, but not the "A for effort" that giving credit just
for making a film independantly might earn.

Anyway, I couldn't believe my boss had enjoyed it. I also couldn't
quite believe all of the people who were literally guffawing all
throughout the movie. I left perplexed at the adulation of the crowd
after the movie ended and the Q and A began. I hope they're able to
turn a profit with their movie, but I wouldn't pay to see it again.