Sunday, November 15, 2015

Hitting the wall and needing a break before reviewing POLDER and MAN VS SNAKE at Ithaca International Fantastic Film Festival

I hit a wall.

Somewhere in the process of trying write up more films from the Ithaca International Film Festival I slammed into a wall. I'm enjoying the hell out of the films they were running but I simply lost the ability to actually report on what I was seeing.

It's my own fault. I went from covering one big festival and then jumped head first into doing another, without any down time- or without truly finishing up the first fest- with the result that I was trying to write multiple things at the same time and failing miserably.

I knew I was in trouble about ten  minutes into MAN VS SNAKE. This is the truly great documentary on the effort to get a billion points on the video game Nibbler and what happened once that occurred. I loved it, and while its similar to KING OF KONG I like it sooo much better. It the sort of film I would gladly watch every time it;'s on TV.

Anyway the point of all of this is that about ten minutes in I'm having a grand time watching the film and I suddenly realize I can't review it. I can tell you how great it is and how much I love it but I know I have lost the ability to actually write it up in the timely fashion that I pride myself on. I can't do it even as a capsule.

Oh what the hell, I think, I'll let it go. I mean I've only not written up one film in six years of doing Unseen, A second one isn't going to kill me....

And then I think, no not a good answer- maybe I'll try  after I watch POLDER. I figure POLDER will snap me back to wanting to write, right?

For those who don't know POLDER is a really good science fiction riff on a new video game that will interface with your mind so that it's less taxing. Your real world desires are fed into the virtual reality game...of course things go sideways.

Hitting all of the virtual reality tropes and mixing things up with wicked low tech visuals and awesome sound design POLDER is a one of a kind head trip that I really want to see again because I need to see stuff I missed or didn't catch. Its one of those films that one could write a novel of a review on....

...but when it ended I was still burnt and I couldn't find the words. What am I suppose to say? I don't have anything clever even though I really want to tell you how much I enjoyed the films.

When POLDER ended I stared at the screen for a couple of minutes before putting my notebook away and heading to bed- figuring maybe in the morning...

Sitting at the table the next day, getting ready for the next round of films I realized I got nothing.  As much as I like both films I have nothing in me to tell you how much I liked them...

Basically I've hit the wall and I won't be reviewing either of them the way they need to be reviewed for a couple of days.

Keep watching the reviews are coming

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