Movie Details
| Title: | Eagle vs Shark | |
| Director: | Taika Cohen | |
| Year: | 2007 | |
| Genre: | Comedy | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 03.11.07 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 03.11.07 | Alamo South Lamar | This Screening is part of event: South by Southwest 2007 SXSW Day Three. Daylight Savings suck. I only saw three movies today because I attended three panels in the morning. In brief: Grindhouse 101, starring Robert Rodriquez who got there late and immediately confessed that he didn't know anything about grindhouse movies ("that's Quentin's thing") before introducing Harry Knowles ("This guy found a movie seat he liked so much he put some wheels on it and takes it everywhere") to co-moderate and talk about the subject (AKA random childhood anecdotes about his parents letting him watched messed up movies). At one point it sounded like RR was about to bring Tim League up (which could make sense because he actually knows quite about about grindhouse cinema) but Harry interjected with more random anecdotes. For the record, the movie where the guy drops a ball bearing on his shoe then kicked it to kill people by hitting them in the forehead is Adios Sabata, the movie where the scientists explains the difference between black sperm and white sperm is Girl on a Chain Gang, and the classic grindhouse double feature trailer where the guy coming out of the theater says "e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e" is BLood Spattered Bride and I Dismember Mama, not Night of the Bloody Apes. Eventually, they showed a 2-minute clip from Planet Terror (which admittedly looked really fun), a couple of classic exploitation trailers (Green Slime, Boss Nigger, They Call Her One-Eye, The Crippled Master), then the top three fake grindhouse trailers submitted for the contest (Hobo with a Shotgun, Maiden of Death,... one other one), and Eli Roth's fake grindhouse trailer (Thanksgiving) that was pretty great. That was about it. Next was a case study for The Ten and Diggers, with David Wain, Paul Rudd, Ken Marino, and various producer and directors. Not a lot of people there considering how packed screenings of both movies were but they were really funny. One guy asked if they wrote their scripts with contingencies for natural disasters in mind. There was lots of Friends joking before Rudd noted that Wet Hot American SUmmer is what got him Anchorman so has really defined his current funny-man statues. I had an urge to raise my hand and tell them that Chris Meloni was hilarious in that movie but then it occured to me that that wasn't a question and it always sounds idiotic when you chime in with some lame praise so I didn't do that. You hear that fellow festival-goers? I didn't do it! Think twice before doing it yourselves. Please. Finally there was a panel on the current state of horror films and their possible future. Critic and nice guy Scott Weinberg, Behind the Mask director Scott Glosserman, a couple people from Borderland, Rider Strong, Zack Carlson (of the Alamo) and moderator Harry Knowles were all up there. I'm not saying anything bad about Harry's moderator skills because I want to get into next year's BNAT but... I really didn't think the moderator's job was to answer every question and cut off the panelists. Huh. But when he wasn't expounding or sayign Curse of the Demon was his favorite horror film, he did a good job of steering the conversation and getting everyone to talk. The things said though were pretty much what every horror fan already knows so... Eagle vs Shark has incessantly been described as a New Zealand version of Napoleon Dynamite, so much so that I was anxious to see this movie just to say that it was more than that. It wasn't. The first part of the movie is really enjoyable though, meeting the characters and getting introduced to the quirky world and whatnot, but the second half seemd to drag for me. That festival exhaustion kicked in... it's really a better feedback than any test audience or scholarly criticism or whatever. I am now at the point where I've seen enough movies that my primal base brain will switch off if it's not good enough to keep me enthralled. So yeah, I didn't not like it but it pretty much IS just a kiwi version of ND |
