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| A Mile in These Hooves |
The programme begins with the fun animated film What is Art (Stanley Ka Chun Chan; Canada, 2 min.), which is an intimate mediation on art's ability to teach, inspire, and nourish anyone with a creative spark. This brisk film lets images evolve as director Stanley Ka Chun Chan grows as an artist, learning and acquiring the different characters of art, like competitiveness and commerce, and in turn evolves along with the images onscreen. (Watch it online here.) A much different coming-of-age story comes in Dead Hearts (Stephen W. Martin; Canada, 17 min.), a darkly funny fable about a young boy destined to become both a mortician and a heartbreaker. Dead Hearts unfolds like a morbid bedtime story as the dry, droll narration tells of the destiny of Milton Mayberry (Valin Shinyei) and the long line of undertakers from which he comes. This whimsically offbeat film in a hodgepodge of horror, romance, and comedy rolled into one as Milton pursue a blind schoolmate, Lola Littleton (Lila Bela), until death do them part. Dead Hearts is a little all over the map as Milton’s story throws in everything including love, loss, zombies, wolves, bullies, and Kung Fu, but Martin unfolds it all with a sing-song cadence that’s mischievously funny. This black comedy is bloody good fun.
After Dead Hearts
comes Honor Code (Pascal Trottier; Canada, 10 min.). This steely
sci-fi film offers a showdown of samurai swords in an alternate world where
honor codes demand that lowly drones defer to their superiors and fight to the
death. Trottier, one of the writers of last year’s The Colony, creates an eerie setting in an Equilibrium-like world that feels much closer to contemporary
society than it does the distant future as Hank Middleton (The Animal Project’s Aaron Poole) defends his honour against an
arrogant higher-upper (George Tchortov) in the cold, impersonal world of
corporate finance. Strong performance and an intriguing time structure make Honor Code an enigmatic, yet darkly
humorous mind-game.
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| Papa |
Papa (Nathalie
Labarre; USA, 6 min.), on the other hand, is an adorable animated
father/daughter tale with sprightly energy and fanciful appeal. Bright colours
and a shade of innocence make Papa
the most adorable flick of the bunch. Similarly, the bright and fluffy Be the Snow (Amir Hanarnad;
Canada, 5 min.) is an adventure that sees a comfy pillow spring to life and
discover the wonders and perils that live outside the bedroom. This light, sunny
film lets the animated pillow bounce through the streets with a spring in its
step as it experiences all sorts of wonderful new things and has an unconventional
flight back home for a sentimental reunion with its owner.
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| Market Hours |
Market Hours
(Jon Goldman; USA, 15 min.), the aforementioned Weinstein Company film (and a
Lexus production), also offers a bright and breezy comedy. This tale of a
market security guard named Randall (Leonard Earl Howze) is a charmer. Randall
sports an indefatigably upbeat attitude and an innovative imagination as he
walks between the stalls of the market and wonders what goes on in the minds of
the merchants whose stalls he protects. His supervisor (Gary Cole, a notably
familiar face for OIFF) thinks Randall spends too much time daydreaming to be
an observant and effective force, but the sweet love story writer/director Jon
Goldman crafts between Randall and a lonely baker (Hong Chau) lets the guard prove himself in both work and
love. Buoyed by winning performances and an irresistible charisma, Market Hours is one of those films that
are impossible to resist.
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| Wired |
The impressive American flick, arguably the most professionally
assembled film yet to screen at the Festival, is then upstaged by the best
local flick to screen at the Festival so far. Wired (Nick Lacelle &
Nicholaus Hillier; Canada, 8min.) comes to OIFF 2014 after winning the top
prize at Ottawa’s Digi60 film challenge in
2013. Actioners tend to be the strong point of the local film scene, but
comedies generally don’t come around as often or nearly as successfully. This
solid crime comedy, however, shows that Ottawa talents have a firm grip on the
art form overall as Wired delivers
laughs and gunfire with equally sharp aim. Wired
sees a heist go awry as a doofus undercover cop (Nicholaus Hillier) finds
himself amidst an exchange of bullets between the po-po and the thugs looking
to blast whoever sold them out. The rapid-fire script is smart and funny, while
the technical finesse of the film is arguably the most impressive work to come
out of Ottawa in years. The rat-a-tat-tat tempo of the script is matched by the
sharp editing, while the slick cinematography makes this short visually
engaging and an all-around winner. (Watch Wired
online here.)
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| A Mile in These Hooves |
As a testament to the strength of the shorts at OIFF this
year, however, one final film slightly edges out Wired as the champ of the shorts so far. I could not stop laughing
through every minute of A Mile in These Hooves (James
Brylowski; Canada/USA, 15 min.) and simply have to declare it the best short to
screen at OIFF so far. It’s utterly original and absolutely hilarious. Director
James Brylowski takes a zany idea and runs with it as A Mile in These Hooves presents a silly mockumentary about two
friends (Jordan Grey and Ned Petrie) who decide to undertake a mammoth journey from
Toronto to Venice Beach, California while travelling in a donkey costume fit
for two. The sight gags are endless as the ridiculous donkey train stumbles
through picturesque settings with his oversized tongue dangling out and his
big, wide eyes making an ass out of the friends. Full credit goes to Grey and
Petrie, too, for selling the adventure with such deadpan seriousness as they
recount their adventure to the camera. A
Mile in These Hooves is wickedly funny, but it’s completely on target as a
feat of mockumentary filmmaking. This film is so ludicrous, yet so equally convincing
that it does for shorts what Spinal Tap
and A Mighty Wind do for mockumentary
features. A Mile in These Hooves is
one of the funniest and best shorts of the year!
Shorts Programme 1
screened at the 2014 Ottawa International Film Festival on Saturday, Oct. 18 at
the Mayfair Theatre.
OIFF runs Oct.
15-19, 2014.
More OIFF coverage
may be found here.
