SXSW 01–Ginger Snaps/Lontano In Fondo Agli Occhi (Pictures Deep In One's Eyes)/Mutant Aliens/Ladyporn

In one day I saw the goriest, the most pretentious, the strangest and the sexiest movies I’ve ever seen at SXSW. I guess it was a good way to end the festival. Let me tell you about ‘em. GINGER SNAPS

Let’s start with the gory one.

This is the story of two teenage girls, Bridgett and Ginger (Emily Perkins from It and Katherine Isabelle from Snow Day), who also happen to be the biggest rejects in the whole school. Goth girls all the way. They hate everyone else and everyone else hates them.

Meanwhile, a mysterious monster is running around the suburban neighborhood killing off all of the dogs in horrible, nasty ways. When the girls decide to make it look like their chief rival’s (Danielle Hampton) dog was killed they get attacked. Luckily the monster is killed. Unluckily Ginger gets bitten.

At about the same time she finally gets her period. Her mother (Mimi Rogers) has been so worried about the girls because they’re 15 and 16 and they haven’t “become women” yet. (Mimi is probably the creepiest part of the whole movie. She bakes a cake with dripping strawberry icing when Ginger finally flows. [shudder]) Ginger, on the other hand, thinks that all of the weird stuff that’s happening (the unwanted hair, the strange draw towards violent sex, the tail) are all part of growing up.

This movie totally should have been the sequel to And American Werewolf In London. Call it An American Werewolf In Suburbia. It had that same kind of sick sense of humor that Landis’s classic had. (For the vampire version check out Innocent Blood. Great mostly unknown horror/comedy flick.) And it’s got to be twice as gory. Not only are the attacks blood soaked, but in an homage to Harold And Maude, the girls take pictures of themselves faking their own deaths. Their parents must have been giving them plenty of money for their hobby, because these were some elaborate deaths.

The whole outcast thing may be a cliché now, but what isn’t is the idea of a female werewolf. I can’t think of another flick with a woman turning into a werewolf. And the minstrel cycle thing just adds a whole new dimension to the monthly full moon fever.

Does that make this a feminist horror film? Well, yeah, sort of. The guys in it only help out the girls. Bridgett is the real hero here. Sam (Kris Lemche from eXistenZ and the tv version of Joan Of Arc), the local drug dealer, helps her quite a bit, but she’s the Ripley. In fact, she never really even wants his help. He just kind of thrusts it on her, until things get really out of hand, that is. Then she needs everyone’s help. Even her mother’s.

The girls are great in what could be their break-out roles. They are the epitome of the old “Their Own Best Friend” Syndrome. They would do anything for each other…including kill. Sometimes.

And it doesn’t hurt that Katherine is HOT!!! And she hides it pretty well early on.

Ginger Snaps should be coming out pretty soon. Check it out if you’re into funny horror flicks. It’s got to be one of the best.

LONTANO IN FONDO AGLI OCCHI (PICTURES DEEP IN ONE’S EYES)

Two words: “Um, what?”

This may end up being one of the most highly acclaimed foreign films in history, but as far as I’m concerned it sucked. The story (what little there was) had something to do with a little Italian boy who occasionally (and inexplicably) sees things like eels coming out of people’s mouths. This only happens two or three times throughout the entire movie, but they happen the be the most interesting occurrences in its hour and a half running time.

Supposedly this is about the little boy’s growing into adolescence in 1954 Naples. I guess the main problem here is that the little boy is too young to be even a beginner adolescent. He’s probably about 7 or 8.

And some of his adventures are just creepy. There’s a servant girl who is having an affair with some random dude who hardly shows up except to screw her. At one point she appears to sexually molest the little boy. I’m not sure if she did or not, but she was certainly rubbing his, erm, “ant” as she called it. I think that counts. Either way she went too far. And she’s supposed to be the hero of the movie! At least, the kid seemed to like her a lot after he got over the initial shock of the whole scene. Sorry, but I pretty much hated her after that.

Basically, if you crossed Igmar Bergman and Fredrico Fellini I think you would get this film. But you would have to take all sense out of them first.

And when you don’t even make as much sense as those guys you’ve got a real problem.

MUTANT ALIENS

Speaking of no sense, but in a good way, this is the new animated feature from Bill Plympton, he of some of the best MTV commercials ever.

This time out we’re learning about an astronaut who was stuck in space for twenty years. When he comes back his mutant alien friends, his daughter and her boyfriend have to help him get revenge on the guy who dumped his fuel and blamed it on his daughter.

But the story never really matters in his films. What matters is what the story is used to show…the freak of nature jokes that this guy comes up with. Things like a sucking off a rocket or putting people on a platform that lowers them so that he is above them. These are the kinds of things that Plympfans love. Who cares about the story?

Now, those of us who know Plymptoons we know that this will not be a straight forward cartoon. No, it will be plenty weird with lots of sex and violence to offend everyone except the most accepting of us.

And boy did this one have plenty of both. With giant noses going to war with giant eyeballs and fingers and men having sex with animals and a boyfriend who thinks that his girlfriend is always going down on everyone she comes near, this is among the strangest animated features you’re likely to see.

But here’s the problem: as with all Plymptoons, this one goes on a little too long. It probably would have worked better as a short than an 83 minute feature. This one, however, had its funny parts spread out a little more. In I Married A Strange Person it seemed like Bill had put all of his jokes into the first 20-30 minutes. This time he’s learned to space them out. But that may be a downfall because we get a little tired of waiting for the next laugh.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I love Bill Plympton and I really liked this movie. I just think he needs to learn how to edit down his ideas. Or at least come up with more jokes to fit into a feature.

LADYPORN

How many of you ladies out there (and I know that there are at least one or two…well…nevermind) have ever thought, “Wow. There are just no porn movies out there for me! All these guys ever show is weird angles and money shots.”

Well, ladies, your wait is over. Sort of.

Maggie Carey and Elena Carr got sick of it, too, so they went out and interviewed a bunch of women to find out what they would want in a porn flick.

Turns out that they want romance. They want foreplay. They want more than three minutes of heavy breathing and then the girl getting squirted in the face. (One girl even said that she gets off on men having sex. Um, I’ve never heard that before. Most women are as turned off by that as we hetero guys are. Well, whatever floats your man in the boat.)

Then Maggie and Elena made their own porn. Before you guys get too excited, it’s not a lesbian porn. They auditioned people (some of which auditioned even though they didn’t want to do nude scenes!) and then filmed a real live porn. All under the confines of the University Of Texas!!

(As a disclaimer here, the ladies weren’t allowed to say where they filmed it except that U.T. allowed it. But if you spent a year in the exact same studio in the Communications Building as they did, you can tell where they filmed it. Now that’s a weird feeling. I don’t think my prof would have let us do that. They were, however, very proud of the fact that they got an A on their project.)

The first part of the film is the documentary that they made about the making of the short porn. These two girls went through quite a bit to make this thing. Their casting calls went pretty well until the female cast member decided that she couldn’t have sex with the guy because she had started dating his roommate! Luckily they found an actual married couple who were willing to do it for them AND they found a way to keep the other couple in the film. Pretty ingenious stuff.

And, of course, to keep the doc exciting for the female porn fiends out there, all of the male crew members took their shirts off for the set up. There are plenty of shots of them moving heavy objects for no reason. I guess it’s time for the men to be exploited, huh?

One thing that they thought that they would get in trouble for is the fact that their DP was a guy. They said that he was very professional and realized that he worked for them, although they did get quite a few shots of the girl that they hadn’t originally planed on.

The porn itself was pretty damn good. It was short, but it had a story that wasn’t totally intrusive. Women are more interested in character development, so we actually get to know some of the characters before they just start going at it.

Two big problems, though. First off, one of the complaints of regular porn was the music. (One girl called it disgusting.) Well, their music wasn’t a whole lot better. In fact, it was way too loud and really, really bad.

And then there was the end. The original couple shows up again. The girl jumps on top of the guy, looks into the camera and says, “Ladyporn” in a semi-seductive voice. That, I’m sorry to say, is pure cheese. If they ever make another one (and they are thinking about it) I suggest highly that they DON’T do this. I guess it was supposed to be a jab at the cheesiness of those soft-core Skinemax type flicks, but that’s not what this was supposed to be, so it just undermines the whole thing in less than one second.

Other than that it was very interesting to kind of see the porn industry from the other side. Women certainly have a softer idea of sex than men do, and it’s not a bad vision. (Although I personally could have done with less shots of random guys in gold bikini briefs, but since this is for women…whatever.)

It’s also good to know that women aren’t just interested in looks. Of course we learned that when we saw Pornstar, right? Why else would Ron Jeremy be so popular? The guys in this are, for the most part, just regular guys. The guy in the gold underwear was a muscle head, but other than him the guys were very normal looking. It just goes to show, it’s not what you’ve got, it’s how you use it.

In a male dominated world it’s good that women can get their say every once in a while. There are some female porn directors who have actually made a name for themselves (I can’t remember who they said last night, but there were at least two), but it’s always been the men who got rich and famous. Unless, of course, you’re an actor. The women are paid SO MUCH more than the guys. Even Ron isn’t rich after 25 years of being the most popular in the business. Funny how that works. That is why Maggie and Elena don’t believe that porn is exploiting the women. They’re getting paid VERY well for their jobs. And, as they found out, it’s much harder to find women who are willing to have sex on film than it is to find guys.

Unfortunately Maggie and Elena have decided that this is not their calling. They may make one or two more just for the fun of it, but they won’t throw their real film careers on the back burner just to make porn. Although they did say that they now have something to fall back on.

I don’t know how you’ll ever have a chance to see this flick, but if it ends up on IFC or Sundance (which I doubt since there is actually hardness and penetration) check it out. Sometimes it’s a good idea to see what women actually want in their sex life. It could give us that slight edge that we need. (Heh heh heh.) Plus it’s a pretty interesting movie about sexual ideas in the 21st century.

So that’s it for SXSW this year. And what a way to top it off.

Lets hope that next year they get The State Theatre back and get rid of The Bad Dog. That’s got to be the most uncomfortable place to see a movie. I’m sure it’s great as a comedy theatre, though. The shows aren’t as long and your ass doesn’t get as abused. (Although I hear that it went bankrupt two or three weeks ago. Too bad. It is a pretty cool place.)

Let’s also hope that they get some better and more interesting flicks next year. Yeah, there were some great ones this year, but there were a lot more good ones in years past and more that were instantly appealing.