OTL - JASON'S FILMS

On The Lot (OTL) is going into its final episode (Fox, Tuesday 8/21, 8:00), The Finale!

There are three finalists, Adam Stein, Will Bigham, and Jason Epperson, one of whom is going to be the grand prize winner of a $Million dollar development deal at DreamWorks.

Each of the contestants made a series of films. I'm posting my reviews of several films of the three finalists, and, later perhaps, some other directors as well, notably Zach Lipovsky who was the #5 finalist, and may have been the most gifted, proficient, and original director of them all.

Here are reviews of the films of Jason Epperson. As of now, when this post is posted, these films can be seen by going to On The Lot, looking at the tab marked CONTESTANTS and selecting Jason.

AUG 7, 2007

Oh, Boy
Starring: Todd Waring, Patrick Kerr, Oscar "Big O" Dillon

I found this to be a mean spirited revenge film that was not very interesting. I don't know why people call Jason's films "sweet" or "kind." I don't like practical jokes. It's just one kind of bullying. When the explosives (which looked like wooden blocks from a kid's toy box) blew up, and sent a pillar of fire higher than the house, it would kill anyone but a cartoon character. Similarly, a punch that sends the guy clumsily flying twenty feet is cartoon stuff. That would be a whole change of genre not justified by the rest of the film. So I think this was a mixed up, nasty and uninteresting film.


JULY 31, 2007

The Move
Starring: Jerry O'Connell, Rich Pierrelouis, Randall Park

Mean spirited. Doesn't make sense. The dialog neither explains, nor is even really consistent with the "payoff". Mean spirited has payed off for Jason before; his Getta Rhoom was a vote getter. His strange ending also worked -- he survived -- in Blood Born. I think he deserves to lose, but the voters may not agree.


JULY 24, 2007

Old Home Boyz
Starring: Allan Wasserman, William Stanford Davis, Lin Shaye, Anthony Vatsula

This film was not good looking -- it was too dark, with an ugly color palette. It was a pretty good story. Jason did fine as an actor. The story was a nice one.


JULY 17, 2007

Sweet
Starring: Kirk Zipfel, Erin Cahill

A sweet film. Nice ending. Yeah... could've been a better bouquet. Not much action.

(But check out Zach's submission film, "Crazy Late," http://films.thelot.com/films/595 for a much more inventive and technically difficult -- as well as earlier -- version of almost the exact same story.)


JULY 3, 2007

Eternal Waters

I wasn't quite sure of the story when I saw this on TV. Watching it online, my first impression seemed to be correct: the dead boy's ghost, leaking water out of the photograph, trips up the slasher. But I still have reservations. I would have liked to see blood showing the stabber actually fell on his knife, or have the ghost more explicitly tell his mother she is safe. I have other reservations. There is no explanation for the slasher coming (just the exposition of a fragment of news). The mother is never really threatened much by the slasher. (Granted, it's hard to put in much buildup in such a short-short film, of course.) On the other hand, despite the judge's comments, I have no problem with the costuming or appearance of the mother, although she does not add much value to the story. Give this 1 fright mask and 1 bonus horror book for a complex story.


JUNE 19, 2007

Blood Born

This is a very interesting film. It does not really make sense to me what is happening, or why the shots look the way they do, but it still feels as if the director understands. So the film almost works.


24 HOUR FILMS

Wilted

http://www.thelot.com/episodes/?ep=2&vd=25
Jarrett Conaway, Jason Epperson, Tamila D Amico


HORROR LIGHT - He is coming for you.

The script has good and bad moments. The first scene starts out great and looks great. The film kind of goes a bit downhill from there, and some of the acting is a bit off. The music works.


SUBMISSION

BOMB’S AWAY
http://films.thelot.com/films/1619


Student gets up in school to give a talk… there is a music video.

This is an inventive film. Very high energy. However it doesn’t make much sense. Unless the title is a contraction of Bomb is Away, or it’s about the away that belongs to the bomb, the title is a grammatical error – perhaps on purpose. Jason’s intro is essentially, “Pick me because I’m from Kentucky and not LA or NY like everybody else. "

OTL - WILL BIGHAM'S FILMS

On The Lot (OTL) is going into its final episode (Fox, Tuesday 8/21, 8:00), The Finale!

There are three finalists, Adam Stein, Will Bigham, and Jason Epperson, one of whom is going to be the grand prize winner of a $Million dollar development deal at DreamWorks.

Each of the contestants made a series of films. I'm posting my reviews of several films of the three finalists, and, later perhaps, some other directors as well, notably Zach Lipovsky who was the #5 finalist, and may have been the most gifted, proficient, and original director of them all.

Here are reviews of the films of Will Bigham. As of now, when this post is posted, these films can be seen by going to On The Lot, looking at the tab marked CONTESTANTS and selecting Will.

AUG 7, 2007

The Yes Men
Starring: Greg Collins, Lin Shaye, Fred Koehler, Travis Wester

This was a well-told story. It carries many characters and gives them all an individual life. It has a lot of sly satire throughout. And it more-or-less completes the story with a nice joke at the end. (But left dangling is the question of how or why he got into the dress without remembering.)


JULY 31, 2007

Road Rage 101
Starring: Kirk Zipfel

This had some great shots in the beginning; the initial set up, the eyes... It kind of makes sense all the way through. The driver's road rage leads him to beat up on his car. The car takes revenge, goading the other driver to pummel driver. He (driver) apologizes (questioningly, to be sure) to the car and then the car helps him. I haven't seen or read Christine, Steven King's take on a independent car, so I don't know how derivative this is.


JULY 24, 2007

Unplugged
Starring: Randall Park, Tatyana Ali

This was a cute idea, but I didn't think it was particularly well executed. I couldn't find a real logic in the things that the lamps were able to do and not able to do. I was confused by that noose-looking thing. (Was the lamp about to commit suicide for love?) It was quite dark and not all that beautiful to look at. The ending was lame. It could have been terrific if somehow the lamp romance had deliberately facilitated the couple's romance (but in any case all they did was look at each other).


JULY 9, 2007

Spaghetti
Starring: Erin Cahill, Travis Wester, and Todd Waring

This film has a nice look and a nice sense of humor.

But it is completely incomprehensible that the guy from the present world isn't scared when someone completely menacing says, "Today's a good day to die." That ruins the whole thing for me.

Present-world-guy seems to know he's in a movie. Cowboy seems to be totally oblivious. Neither character acknowledges the other. (If each one is supposed to be seeing something different from what we see -- something from his own world -- then that's gotta be established -- for example, in some POV shot -- without being corny).


JUNE 26, 2007

Nerve Endings

This film was also OK. It had good slapstick humor. Maybe that went on too long without being inventive enough. The pretext for the doctor to leave was ridiculous, and tainted the beginning. I felt a little cheated that the camera mostly hid the way the intern was manipulating the patient. The end was cute, but not strong enough to match the energy of the slapstick.


JUNE 19, 2007

Glass Eye

A pretty good film. However, the main character never seems to be really trying very hard to get his eye back. It's also careless that you can see his eye from time to time when it's supposed to be out of its socket.


24 HOUR FILM

Sponsored By

http://www.thelot.com/episodes/?ep=2&vd=22
Kai Soremekun, Daniel Tenkman, Will Bigham


Drama -- Suicide prevention

OK story. The bat bit doesn't work too well. The ideas of realizing the log line "Out Of Time" by "raising the stakes" with a suicide prevention is a little bit film-school-exercise-ish. Will does OK as an actor in this film.


also

http://films.thelot.com/films/2040

In this film, directed by Danny Tenkman, Will appears as an actor, doing a nice job.

OTL - ADAM'S FILMS

On The Lot (OTL) is going into its final episode (Fox, Tuesday 8/21, 8:00), The Finale!

There are three finalists, Adam Stein, Will Bigham, and Jason Epperson, one of whom is going to be the grand prize winner of a $Million dollar development deal at DreamWorks.

Each of the contestants made a series of films. I'm posting my reviews of several films of the three finalists, and, later perhaps, some other directors as well, notably Zach Lipovsky who was the #5 finalist, and may have been the most gifted, proficient, and original director of them all.

Here are reviews of the films of Adam Stein. As of now, when this post is posted, these films can be seen by going to On The Lot, looking at the tab marked CONTESTANTS and selecting Adam.

AUG 7, 2007

Army Guy

Starring: Dan Gauthier, Heather Vandeven, David Burtka, Stuart McLean, Ian Bodell, Ariel Winter

On first watching, I found most of the action uninteresting and too silly. It did not work for me moment-to-moment. It had a nice ending. Typical of the directing/editing errors was the girl pointing correctly to the girl on our left, but not accurately pointing to the girl sitting down at our right.

Knowing the punchline, the movie makes sense and is a lot of fun on second viewing. (Someone pointed out that on second viewing they realized the "pointer" was a stewardess and she was doing what stewardesses do when they point to the exits.) It's an interesting "theoretical" issue -- is it "good filmmaking" to make a film that can not be understood until the second time you see it. (I've seen a lot of French films made like that.)

More to the point, in this case, is whether the number of voters that like the film well enough on first viewing, plus the voters that watch it twice and like it, are enough to carry Adam to the next round, and then to DreamWorks.

JULY 31, 2007

Driving Under The Influence

Starring: Tatyana Ali, David Burtka, Patrick Kerr

This was a joyous romp. However, the dancing at the end didn't seem quite right; and kissing the cop as the finale is not a resolution to the driver's traffic problem: What happens when the music stops?

JULY 24, 2007

Girl Trouble

Starring: Fred Koehler, Travis Wester, Patrick Kerr

This was really dreadful and painful to watch. It wasn't funny. It wasn't well acted or look very good. It didn't make sense. If Trent (Guy-2) knows a guy from a girl then he knows a guy from a girl... It was obvious that when he opened the door it was not going to be a beautiful girl: that would not have been funny. So it had to be something else. But another guy??? Doesn't make sense. Maybe if it was a gorilla, or a sheep...

JULY 9, 2007

Worldly Possessions

Starring: David Burtka and Janet Varney

This has the best story of the week. The magnifying glass setting fire to the tree is a brilliant little stroke. I agree that the destruction of the entire neighborhood is a bit much, but it's completely consistent with the set-up in the story. I wasn't too fond of the acting, especially of the wife.

JUNE 26, 2007

Discovering the Wheels

This film was OK. The acting was sort of iffy. The device of making the car appear and disappear with a click of the remote got old very quickly. The final stranding of the caveman did not resolve any story point. And I did not understand how the caveman was able to drive so well (even better than the stunt driver they talked about in the intro). There were a few good jokes. I liked the square wheel (but that idea never got developed), and the picture of the horse. Product placement hell, by the way (sponsored by Ford).

JUNE 5, 2007

Dough: The Musical

I'd have liked to see Adam do something that was not a dance/musical. It was a bit like a new-fangled-type broadway/off-broadway show. The singing wasn't great. (Other notes: Lip sync didn't always work. He sings out loud just when she comes in the store -- but there's no soliloquy convention, so why can't she hear him?) However, the lyrics and the story concept were very clever. It was the one cast I'd like to know more about. It had a great spirit. All in all, it was the most original, most ambitious, and most interesting of the shorts.(The strongest film of the night.)

MAY 29, 2007

Dance Man

Fun. (This film was actually made after Dough. Dough was a submission film, made before Adam was selected as a finalist.)

24 HOUR FILM

Time Out

Excellent -- Best film of the night.

http://www.thelot.com/episodes/?ep=2&vd=21

The 24 hour films were each made in twenty-four hours by a team of three directors, in this case:

Zach Lipovsky, Sam Friedlander, Adam Stein

Sci-fi/drama/FX --

A conflict makes time stand still. Great! Coherent story. Nicely shot. The special effects work perfectly.