BUFF 2005 opening night

Went to the opening night of the Boston Underground Film Festival with cthulhia and friend. I felt like I had better luck than usual, with these mixed-bag events: I liked it more than I didn't.

God is So Close Now Nonsense tale set to sketchy, punchy animation. That's about it. Short. No complaints.

Nightlight The pretentious art piece. Views of Boston's streets and skyline shot with time-lapse photography, over and over and over again, and playing around with the camera's focus and aperture the whole time. So I not only found it boring, but headache-inducing.

Bad habits I picked up from the SF marathon came out towards the end (sounds of hope when the shot would fade to black, then groaning as it faded back in), though I tried to be quiet about it. Razzing the closing credits was probably over the top, though, and I deserved the dirty looks I got.

The first Q&A session featured the guy who made this thing, and the directors of "The Black Balloon". Most people with questions had them for the Nightlight guy, all clearly quite enamored with it. I was rather gobsmacked. Ahtists.

The Black Balloon A trilogy of short films, all in silent monochrome. The first two are whimsical but somber period pieces that belong together; the third is a wacky comedy sketch (with bonus hot goth chick) that had nothing to do with the other two, and could have stood on its own. This imbalance bothered me so much that I didn't applaud it, even though I would have applauded the third piece by itself, or the first two alone.

During the Q&A, I told the directors that I really liked it, but would have liked it so much more if the vampire had a mustache. I was rewarded with appreciative murmurs from throughout the audience. I swear to you that this will make sense if you see the thing yourself.

Thundercrack! (trailer) Intentionally ridiculous trailer for a 1970s Canadian porn/comedy epic shot in the style of a 1950s horror flick, except with more naked Canadians. Had the most (only?) T&A of anything on the evening's venue, and it was just the trailer. The full monty will apparently be shown later in the festival.

Roommate From Hell Straight-up short comedy with extremely literal title. Another triumph of DV and the will of a few people to make something wonderful with just a few bucks, as far as I'm concerned. I'm adding this to the list of shorts I will suggest to the SF marathon people, if I ever get around to giving them my list of things I want to suggest to them.

Sissy Boy Slap Party Why is this film following me around? I have already blogged this. Go away, you silly little movie.

The Meaning of Life Yeah, the Hertzfeldt thing. The figure animation was his typical fun style and the basic premise was nothing but cynical, so I had to like that much. But I question why the rest was there, and suspect that it was just so the animator could tell us the story of how hard he worked on it.

Something Red I liked it, but it could have been tighter. Once the punchline is revealed, the setup looks really long in retrospect.

Broadcast 23 After some deliberation I decided that I don't like this one. Had the main character been a woman rather than a man, and everything else been the same (assuming that the romantic interest probably wouldn't be too picky about the difference), then the film would have been a bald obscenity. As it is, it's just a weak laugh, for the wrong reasons. Meh. (Also, the punchline was telegraphed halfway into it. I said "OHH NOOOO" in call caps.)

Ryan Wonderful, brilliant, beautiful. The gem of the evening. I appreciate how much the program undersold it, so that I was expecting a traditional documentary, not at all the truly unique animated work that I saw. I didn't know that it had won an Oscar until after the show was over, and was not at all surprised to learn it.

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A lot of it is pretty stupid, but I laughed out loud at many of the comments on this boardgamegeek.com list of creepy/inappropriate/off-topic game photographs. Like accusations that one gamer feeds his children Carcassone pieces by the spoonful, or my favorite line: "I don't want to alarm anyone . . . but what's holding the camera???".

(Note there is another page of photos and comments after the general comments on the first page. BGG's sense of layout and usability somehow becomes worse every time I visit. Oh well.)

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Another DoW feature I like: public player profile information includes the daily time range that the person tends to be online and playing.

That said, I'm not convinced it's accurate; it suggests I like to play between noon and 1 EDT, and I'm pretty sure I don't. Maybe the thing is a liar and just says that everyone likes to play during their respective time zones' lunch hours. But it's a good idea anyway.

Just played a quick game of Gang of Four; nobody bolted and I handily beat my three francophone opponents, so am less cranky now. (As queue observed, during the GMTish evening GoF fills up with Frenchmen, while I notice that all the Germans seem to favor Ticket to Ride. Shrug.) Maybe I'll pick up a copy of the physical game before the next game night...

(I notice that I might get grumpy but never get angry playing electronic games against humans, so long as they play fair. My favorite trash-talk verb is "school", used transitively. If one schools another, the overt meaning is that a sound thrashing took place, but there's the charitable implication that the thrashee's game was improved in the process (unless he or she was a nitwit who wasn't paying attention). So I always feel that I get something out of losing to other people.)

Fashion Victim, Pt. 1

Have commenced wardrobe refreshment with a visit to the HSq Gap today. My bank is being mean to me and wouldn't let me spend too much money today (there is a pathetic reason for this I may share some other time) so I bought only a shirt. It's the first patterned shirt I've bought in many a year. Lots of crazy-colorful vertical stripes seem to be the thing on men's shirts right now; I've noticed this around town, and the Gap was pushing them mightily. They were also the cheapest casual shirts there, so I chose up the most demure one I could find. I think it's pretty good.

Still on my list:
(1-2) pair of blue jeans. I haven't owned blue-colored jeans in years and years. Maybe not since college. Maybe not since high school. Any reasons I had for a black-only jeansdrobe are now long forgotten. But I'd really like to wear jeans and a black shirt at the same time and not get shit from strangers about being in all black.

(1-2) more shirts. I also have several perfectly good shirts with dead buttons that I really ought to fix sometime. They are all black. I haven't cared too much about them since most of my pants are black as well, and therefore these shirts have been unwearable. (So long as I insisted on wearing pants.)

(1) nice blazer. The Gap has some promising-looking, light-material black blazers on sale now, but they were all attached to the floor via elastic cords with alligator clips, and this intimidated me, so I let them alone. Will visit the Burlington Coat Factory later.

(200) socks. I still insist on black crew socks. There is no other sock for me. But they are stupidly hard to find... plenty of black dress socks (I may as well strap on some paper towels, thanks), white crew socks (white? fooey) and those weird things that are shaped like shoes but are actually socks (cognitive dissonance is unwelcome in my closet).