Funny is Money, Ergo Shalini is Rich
Funny is Money, Ergo Shalini is Rich by Roxanne McDonald
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The fifth installment of “On the Lot” brings a format shift: this time, of the fifteen contestants remaining, five show a new film we get to vote on. |
The five chosen to showcase their talents with a no more than three-minute film made over five days are as follows:
Sam Friedlander has for the last couple of years been working to make a name for himself. He’s not doing too bad a job of it, making movies like “Lazy Sunday” with the You Tube group and making “Broken Pipe Dreams” for us.
Carrie Fisher says she really liked this cute and surreal piece. Who hasn’t experienced an event like that at some point? she asks, and comments on how she liked that the hero was human and the adversary was a toilet. The only thing missing, she jokes, is the slow motion “Noooooooo” when the conflict hits.
Ring a ding ding says Gary Marshall—a fish, a dog, and after fart film now a toilet film. While Marshall wishes Friedlander would make a piece that doesn’t make us want to go to the bathroom, he understood the story better than he did the last two Mission Impossibles.
And guest judge Michael Bay (Transformers; The Rock) starts his critique by asking if Sam killed that fish during production, for Bay cared more about the fish than he did the human. He continues that Sam took a two-minute story and stretched it to three minutes; and he could have therefore tightened up his editing—which would have helped the tension, as it got repetitive…. But, Bay concludes, it was fun.
Trever James worked in his small town movie theatre and now works to beat the competition, saying something about having a one-in-four not one-in-five chance before he introduces his movie, “Teri”.
Carrie Fisher says it is a very cute, very well-made film. She would say the acting is over the top, but since the characters were playing out the central character’s fears it worked. Then again, she asks, why not go all the way and get a murderer in there at the end—for the worst [date] could not be just that a man shows up. Still, she says, it is good overall.
Michael Bay says that James has good overall pacing; and the acting was confident. But, he says, the idea is a bit of a “re-tread”, and Trever has got to work on photography and a bit more on style.
Gary Marshall says the lead was excellent, but he liked Trever’s golf film better. While the lead was good, the characters seemed more like caricatures. And funny means money, he reminds everyone. Since Trever is from Montana, Marshall adds, he needs to do a bit better to compete with these people….
Hilary Graham felt that she dodged a bullet the first round but feels that this time around she has made a comeback. I thought so, too, with her “The First Time I Met the Finkelsteins” being a suffocating but rightfully so look at parents who are overbearing, obnoxious, and embarrassing, using classic but still fresh lines on the son and the son’s date he brings to dinner.
Fisher says she thinks Graham can write, but that she does a disservice with the directing—which is very claustrophobic. The hand-held, she says, is better for crime scenes than it is for dinner table scenes. Fisher is now a little worried, especially after Hilary’s offering last week.
Bay says in Hollywood it is called a “groaner”—for the audience is layghing at her not with her. Bay adds that she is hurt by the acting as well, and this film didn’t really work for him.
Marshall yells that he has two words for the young filmmaker: “Back Up!!” The camera is too tight, as if Hilary was doing a sketch for her cell phone and not the big screen. The writing is good—Kelly straddling a brisket is a bumper sticker (a keeper line that will get a lot of play)—and “we were rooting for you,” he says. Scorsese did shaking very well; Marshall thinks Graham should do Spielberg and back up and establish where we are.
Adam Stein (who I think looks like Tim Roth, doesn’t he?), after giving up law, worked any related job he could to get close to the film industry. He shows the range he has already exposed himself to, experienced, by way of his film, “Dough: A Musical.”
Carrie calls it “incredibly, incredibly original” while being based on two people’s yearnings—one for money, one for love. Totally entertaining, Fisher says.
With great lyrics, this fun film impresses Michael Bay, who says that musicals have always worked on visuals. All Stein needs do, he suggests, is work on photography and get more style…. Otherwise, he says, it is great.
Gary Marshall says that, well, we have another story about a baker with a girl after his dough. The only problem he has, he says, is with the finish: where the characters should be looking at each other, Adam has the guy looking at the girl’s back. He hopes Stein works out….
Shalini Kantaya has taken a risk, she says, with her subject matter: a gay Indian comic in a mockumentary that is darkly humorous and endearing at once, called “Laughing out Loud: A Comic Journey.” Her risk pays off, for
Carrie Fisher says it is well made (though Kantaya could do better than a “be yourself” advice message).
Michael Bay says that in three minutes Shalini has told a very succinct story and gave him a chill in the process—which, he adds, is what good directors do. Bay also says that he thinks Shalini has the most visual style of the five directors up tonight.
And Gary Marshall says that they all pounce on the need for a beginning, a middle, and an end…, but you don’t always have to have that formula to have a film that works. [This is where the exception to the “rule” cannot be taught, but must come through the creativity of the apprentice, if you will.] Marshall agrees that like dance, like symphony, Shalini’s film engages.
The “On the Lot” audience agrees as well, for the in-house votes put Shalini’s film as the favorite.
The judges’ favorites are Sam’s for Carrie Fisher; Shalini’s for Michael Bay; and Adam’s for Gary Marshall.
Whose do you love? My vote went to Shalini Kantaya.
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