Tuesday 18 Jun
 
 

Ninja III: The Domination

Don't ask why Ninja III: The Domination begins with a ninja assault on a municipal golf course. Just be grateful it does. You also may wonder why its sex scene employs a can of V8: Don't question it. Just lie back and enjoy it.
06/14/2013 | Comments 0

Lifeforce

Tobe Hooper got a raw deal. The director of horror hits The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist didn't deserve to be sent to movie jail for 1985's Lifeforce. It's a well-crafted, well-intentioned work that was mismarketed and misunderstood, losing a bundle of money and soon sending Hooper into the lands of episodic television and direct-to-video features.
06/14/2013 | Comments 0

Dead Souls

With Dead Souls, we can prove something about the Chiller cable network's original features that Remains could not: Source material is not to blame for their pervasive generic nature — it's the economy, stupid.
06/11/2013 | Comments 0

The Philadelphia Experiment

There's a theory about remakes that perhaps Hollywood should stop remaking good movies and instead remake the bad ones, so that they may be improved. The problem with that theory is one runs the risk of the remake being bad, too. Case in point: The Philadelphia Experiment.
06/12/2013 | Comments 0

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

A few surprising things about Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters:
• It comes from MTV Films,
• is produced by Will Ferrell,
• and is as fun as its title is dumb.
06/11/2013 | Comments 0
Home · Articles · Movies · Features · Manhattan cocktail
Features

Manhattan cocktail


With the local screenings of the Manhattan Short Film Festival, the power is with the people. Choose wisely.

Rod Lott September 28th, 2011  

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

That Internet thing has so hurt movie attendance that Hollywood’s resorted to gimmicks to lure people back to the ’plex. If it’s not unnecessary 3-D conversion every other week, it’s scratchand-sniff cards for “Spy Kids 4.” What if audience interactivity weren’t an afterthought, but a building block?

With Manhattan Short Film Festival, the power to pick the winner rests with the audience. After 598 entrants poured in from 48 countries, the field was narrowed to the 10 that comprise the showings Thursday through Sunday at Oklahoma City Museum of Art — just one of more than 250 cities across our globe’s inhabitable continents hosting the event.

I know what I would pick: “The Legend of Beaver Dam,” a 12-minute Canadian comedy surrounding an urban legend known as Stumpy Sam. But that’s because I found the melding of the rock musical, kiddie adventure and campground slasher to be novel. Perhaps bits on the recent Cairo uprising or a doctor moonlighting as a cabbie are more your Dixie cups of instant tea.

That’s the beauty of the festival: Its two hours are packed with variety ... but so much so that the wild mix has the potential to be a hindrance. While there’s something for everyone, not everything is for someone.

On the plus side, the Swedish “Incident by a Bank” is a recreation of a real robbery, but shot from the street outside, leaving your mind to piece events together based largely on auditory cues. On the minus side, Julia Stiles (TV’s “Dexter”), the only recognizable face in the bunch, stars in the American “Sexting,” a toothless work whose end is so predictable, I was surprised that playwright-turned-director Neil LaBute was behind it.

And somewhere in the middle is Australia’s “Dik,” in which a man’s misinterpretation of his son’s crayon scrawling of “I lik ribin tims dik” balloons into a situation so bad, it proves father doesn’t always know best.

Other films set their short sights on a teenager’s newborn baby to a dog eating dentures, so prepare to have your heart crushed and your stomach turned, respectively. More than anything, prepare to cast an educated, entertained ballot.

 
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