Movie Details
| Title: | Isolation | |
| Director: | Billy O''Brien | |
| Year: | 2005 | |
| Genre: | Monster | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 09.28.06 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 09.28.06 | Alamo South Lamar | This Screening is part of event: FantasticFest 2006 So after that... well there was one more movie slot for the festival and then it was either gonna be staying for Terror Thursday or going to the festival afterparty. First though, I ducked into Isolation because I'd heard the short was good and the movie was good and I'll be able to see Edmund tomorrow. Isolation is a movie about killer mutant cows. Yeah, you read that right. Due to genetic meddling, these little exoskeletal fetal cows start chewing through the herd and any people who happen to get in the way. Call it The Thing on a farm, Alien for cows, or whatever... It sounds ridiculous but it was actually a pretty good movie. This was actually the movie which made me squirm in my seat the most. Mostly because I don't like farms and how filthy they are... the beginning scene has a vet shoving her arm up a cow to check on the fetus and something in there bites it. Later on a guy comes as close to literally being up shit creek without a paddle as you can come, and has to wade through neck-high slurry inhabited with unseen mutant cow fuckers... gah. Plus there's lots of steam coming off things like guts and blood that make the whole setting seem all the more authentic and grimy. It does get a bit unclear toward the end but for the most part the story flows nicely and the movie looks pretty slick (meaning competant, not glossy). Plus there's a scene with one of those slaughterhouse hydraulic spike guns where they try to put down the evil misshapen calf that they've just had to hand-winch out of the mother... man squirmy... I think another good aspect of the film is that it has a very limited cast... so you can't really stack up the body count too fast because there aren't that many codies to count... so you end up having to spend time with these people and, thanks to the writing and acting, you actually get to like them. Plus, for some unheard-of Irish movie, it looks like a real movie and has someone I recognize (the guy who played Ian Curtis in 24 Hour Party People). so yeah, it was a good time. I liked it for sure. so Terror Thursday had a last-minute schedule change (Vampire's Kiss instead of Last Rites) so I decided to hit up the party and hear who won the awards. It was held down the street at this "saloon" that was converted from a gas station... kind of odd. I usually don't go for these festival parties because I always end up talking to people I talk to all the time... but whatever. It was pretty much the same with this one... I sat around talking with friends until they announced the winners (they had like 38 awards that don't mean anything. Why does a second-year film festival need an award for best supporting female performance in a horror film?)... the winners were pretty much all political... whatever. So right after that we all kind of took a powder from the party and ate at IHOP, returning just in time for the bar to close and a pretty sloshy Tim League to yell out "afterparty at my house!" A few minutes later, I was getting a glimpse inside Tim's abode. It's pretty awesome, fitting his personality to a T. He had a black velvet painting of Farah Fawcett, a card catalog in his upstairs hallway, and a gigantic photograph of meat (taken from a grocery store) above his fireplace. There on the table was Kier-La's horror trivia game!!! I geeked out a bit. So we all sat down to play... The crowd broke into teams made up of the visiting filmmakers, austin regulars, and various festivalgoers. The Frostbite producer was on one team, the Severance screenwriter on another... my team was Jarrette, Jeff, Cargill, Tim Leage and myself. We got thrashed. It was pitiful. I will probably blame it on bad luck (i don't think we got one easy question the whole time, and even drew what Kier-La called the "hardest question in the entire game") but for the sake of full disclosure, we also sucked. We had a Street Trash question... we've all seen Street Trash and Tim had even been at the festival screening where this tidbit had apparently come up, but none of us knew the answer. So we lost pretty hardcore... it was humbling because a couple of guys around the table were actually pretty good at it (sure it helps if you write a book on Italian horror movies)... and we had a good time trading brit vs. american insults back and forth (particularly harsh on the Severance guy, forever tormented for getting a Shaun of the Dead question wrong in an earlier game). Tim threatned to ban us forever if we didn't roll good numbers, we all looked at each other with blank stares every time a question came up... it was fun. I actually did know maybe 4 or 5 (easy) questions that other teams got... but for the most part I felt like a 6 year old let in to play no limit texas hold-em. Basically I spent a lot of time looking around with glossy unfocused eyes. So THIS felt like the festival closing night party to me... really fun time. And now it's over. So... I guess maybe a little recap is in order. My own meaningless awards. # of things seen: 29 # of things actively liked: 18 # of things I wanted to see but had to miss due to scheduling: 13 Biggest surprise (positive): The Host Biggest surprise (negative): Renaissance Biggest surprise (mediocre): The Woods Common themes: Bear traps, important trees, mayans Biggest Regret: Missing Funky Forest for Shock Waves Biggest semi-regret: missing Simon Says for a VJ competition Biggest non-regret: missing A Quiet Love for the acquisitions panel best day of films: Monday Worst day of films: Friday Top 5 favorites: 1/2. The Host / The Fountain (tie) 3/4. Severance / Hatchet (tie) 5. Beach Party and the threshold of hell |
