“Wherever we gotta go, we gotta plant a flag like Stratego.”
- Because Washington Is Hollywood for Ugly People, 2007
The Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah kicks off today and Eric will be blogging live all weekend as he covers the best in the Short Film Program. Check back throughout the holiday weekend for reviews, links, and maybe even some of the actual shorts themselves posted right here! This blog is also a part of the live coverage over at DigitalContentProducer.com, where Eric works as an associate editor. Head on over there for a podcast with Michel Gondry (”Eternal Sunshine,” “Be Kind, Rewind”) and more…
With so much attention focused on feature-length films at the Sundance Film Festival, it is easy for the short films to get lost in the shuffle. This year, however, Sundance is pushing the short film programs pretty heavily. Starting tomorrow, the “10 Shorts 10 Days” feature appears at sundance.org/festival/shorts/, where one short from the festival will appear for free for an entire day, with nine more to follow consecutively. In addition, 45 of the 83 short films in the festival are available at for viewing and/or download at iTunes, Netflix, and Xbox. The entries this year span a wide array of subject matter and themes, from straight-ahead comedy to action/thrillers and gripping drama. Entries have come from all over the world as well—from as far away as China, Iceland, and Denmark.
If you have a Netflix account, the entire animated film program is now streaming there for free. If not, just wait until Wednesday Jan. 23 to watch Director Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung’s multi-layered experimental short Because Washington Is Hollywood for Ugly People when it appears on the “10 Shorts 10 Days” site. This rapid-fire cutout animation piece is a biting satire of world politics and the public’s endless fascination with facile celebrity news. The effect of Tin-Kin Hung’s quickly moving and surrealistically adorned, flat images produces a film that’s very modern in its subject matter, but not too dissimilar from Terry Gilliam’s early work on Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
The Hong Kong-born video artist and Web activist (www.tinkin.com) modifies public figures to hilarious effect, such as John McCain, who wears a skimpy cheerleading outfit that shows he’s really rooting for the donkeys. Barack Obama morphs into Borat with his fluorescent green thong bikini. A three-headed Hillary Clinton with bumper stickers from major corporations plastered on her robot-body spars with Rudy the red-nosed Giuliani, who’s apparently only interested in flirting. And this is all in the first minute.
What’s extraordinary about this film is how much it crams into just seven minutes. Besides the obvious psychedelic inspiration, Tin-Kin Hung also borrows a bit from the Japanese playbook when five anime-style gap-toothed Schwarzenegger cuties appear just as an off-screen voice brags about gathering together “100 of the hottest girls.” The soundtrack itself is a barrage on the senses. Using overlapping sound effects, neo-Beat poetry from MC Paul Barman, and a jarringly eclectic music from John Blue, Tin-Kin Hung constantly keeps the viewer on his or her toes.
There is so much happening so fast in Because Washington Is Hollywood for Ugly People that repeat viewings should almost be required. It’s a challenging multi-layered animation experience with movement and depth to spare.
