Fool's Views (5/1 – 5/31)

Howdy, pardners,

May was an interesting month, with the flickers coming in fits and starts, and none of them before the halfway point following my return from Barcelona. (Flying back on Air Canada, we were denied the anticipated glory of in-flight entertainment and had to settle for – sigh – READING. Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, in case anyone was wondering.) The Enlightened Warrior Training Camp experience kept me more-than-occupied while abroad, and once I had returned, there was little time to enjoy the recliner since I had a ton of personal training sessions to make up for having been gone for two glorious weeks in the Spanish countryside.

However, the joy that marked the second annual Turkey Day in May festival out in the Krypt du Kitley delivered the goods (and another seven titles) and the Memorial Day weekend allowed for sufficient chill time to enjoy a few civilian treats as well. (My Jason Bateman festival, by the way, is pretty nigh at its completion. Couple more on the list, but I think I’ve pretty much seen all I need to see for now. That said, it might be time to renew my Robert Aldrich exploration – still quite the unexplored bounty there.)

As always, feel free to leave your two cents worth – we’ll make sure you get some change back.

Enjoy!

EXISTS (2014) movie review

Exists (2014) d. Eduardo Sanchez (USA) 86 min.

“Since 1967, there have been over 3,000 Bigfoot encounters in the U.S. alone. Experts agree the creatures are only violent if provoked.”

So begins Exists, which marks Sanchez’s noteworthy return to the “found footage” format that he and co-director Daniel Myrick helped popularize in the summer of 1999 with their wildly successful indie venture The Blair Witch Project. But what a difference a decade and a half can make; in the age of the iPhone, the faux documentary style that was once a novelty has become a Hollywood-adopted subgenre, and the question of “Why would they keep filming?” has been answered a billion times over by countless YouTube video subjects far less interesting than mysterious dangling stick figures or hairy missing links.