Saturday

I stayed up a little late yesterday, a product of my finally being able to access the web on my own computer again. Getting up by eleven was so difficult I didn't do it, and therefore only had about twenty-five minutes to jam down a salad in a little hole-in-the-wall Italian place across the street. I also got some take-out to jam down during one of the half-hour gaps between movies today. Then, with a little extra daylight-driving time to spare, I finally discovered the real route back to the highway from the theater, and then drove it twice so I wouldn't have any trouble tonight at midnight when I was doing it for real. Then I watched four different feature-length horror movies and two scary short films. Both shorts were excellent. Otherwise, Nevermore Film Festival is an interesting mix of offbeat horror movies from around the globe as well as amateur productions from the US that might otherwise be difficult to see. So far the mix of amateur American to professional foreign movies has been fifty-fifty. I watched one amateur production last night, and two more today. I have also seen a Bangpop* dark-haired-ghost story from Thailand, a South Korean giant monster slash searing social indictment film, and New Zealand director Peter Jackson's peerless zombicide Dead Alive. I wish that this horror festival had more than that one classic title, but I also understand the impetus to feature new material that might not otherwise have a venue. Still, slogging through too many underdeveloped, wooden, washed-out, and tinny shoestring productions in a row ends in tedium. After a while I stop seeing the good ideas and plausible up-and-coming talent and start to dwell on the bad editing. A fifty-fifty mix is about the most amateur I can take. [Cavin]