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The Burning

It speaks to the strength of The Burning’s reputation among cult-film fans that what’s most memorable about the 1981 slasher is not that it was written by the Weinstein brothers, nor that it represents early appearances of the likes of Jason Alexander, Holly Hunter and Fisher Stevens. It’s that its Cropsy is just a damned good villain.
05/24/2013 | Comments 0

Dexter: The Seventh Season

There's no way to discuss the seventh and penultimate season of Showtime's hit Dexter without acknowledging how the previous year ended. Therefore, if you haven't finished the sixth season, stop reading now. You've got work to do.
05/21/2013 | Comments 0

Nightfall

As Simon Lam gets older, he gets better. The veteran actor has appeared in such in seminal HK action films of the 1990s as Once Upon a Time in China (opposite Jet Li) and Bullet in the Head (directed by John Woo); in the aughts, he graced audience and critical favorites Election and Ip Man.
05/20/2013 | Comments 0

Grand Duel

Lee Van Cleef enjoyed a secondary career in Italy cranking out spaghetti Westerns, with little regard to quality. However, 1972’s Grand Duel — aka The Big Showdown — is deserving of its Grand label. No wonder Quentin Tarantino borrowed its sweeping theme song by Luis Bacalov for Kill Bill; you'll recognize it in two notes.
05/20/2013 | Comments 0

The Last Stand

Early in The Last Stand, the small-town sheriff played by Arnold Schwarzenegger says, "It's my day off. Should be a quiet weekend." That's the new way of saying, "I've got one week to retirement," because it signals — with flashing neon and everything — that life is going to royally upend those plans.
05/17/2013 | Comments 0
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Features

Brevity, thy name is Sundance


See seven stories for the price of one in this year’s crop of shorts from the Sundance Film Festival.

Rod Lott December 14th, 2011  

2011 Sundance Film Festival Shorts
7:30 p.m. Thursday, 5:30 and 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday
Oklahoma City Museum of Art
415 Couch
okcmoa.com
236-3100
$5-$8

In its continued celebration of stories, per Robert Redford’s introductory narration, the Sundance Institute has packaged seven acclaimed short films from its 2011 festival into one feature-length presentation. The results screen Thursday through Sunday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, and as with many such loosely themed compilations, the results comprise a mixed bag.

From England, “The Eagleman Stag” (pictured) is the only animated segment, not to mention the lone colorless entry. Although it begins promisingly with a fetus remarking, “Yes, this seems about right,” its story of a miserable life compressed into nine minutes is nothing special, even if the stop-motion papercut animation is. Sorrow continues in “The Strange Ones,” a tale about a man, the child traveling with him, and the stranger to whom the boy spills chilling secrets.

The first winner is Sweden’s “Incident by a Bank,” a re-creation of a real robbery, but shot from the street outside, leaving your mind to piece events together based largely on auditory cues. Sound familiar? It should if you attended OKCMOA’s Manhattan Short Film Festival in September, of which “Incident” was a part, but it’s worth seeing again.

Bound to be the audience favorite is “Worst Enemy,” starring “Saturday Night Live” veteran Michaela Watkins as an insecure, single artist who inexplicably believes she’s in need of a full-body girdle, in which she gets stuck. It’s written and directed winningly by Lake Bell, an actress (TV’s “Childrens Hospital”) who’s usually quite funny herself.

The only documentary is the five-minute “The High Level Bridge.”

Shown in competition locally at last summer’s deadCENTER Film Festival, it concerns a bridge in Canada notorious for a high rate of suicidal jumpers. Its highlight arrives at the end, when director Trevor Anderson flings his camera over the edge.

“We’re Leaving” chronicles what happens when an American redneck couple lose their rental and try to find new housing. It seems landlords don’t cotton to their decade-old pet alligator. Its dark-humored streak works to court audience favor.

The program should end there, but the longest has been saved for last. Unfortunately, it’s the weakest, too: “Deeper Than Yesterday,” a 20-minute Australian work about a Russian submarine crew who have been underwater for three months, and it shows. What they find floating late in the film should make you feel terribly queasy, especially since the not-quite-sane men deem it “a miracle.”

All told, the good minutes of the program outweigh the bad, enough for a slight recommendation.

 
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