Ladies and Gentlemen, DDA has announced that
it is officially at war with everyone, specifically Auburn University.
It has been brought to our attention that the epic Legend
of Monkey Fight (which premiered in Mobile Saturday)
did not make it into the Jay
Sanders Film Festival finals this year. Now, you
may be thinking, "Hey, that's the way it is in the big leagues,"
but no, no big leagues here. What we're dealing with is more akin
to the mongoloid love child of the Starmaxx
Media competition. Take that, Carl. Let me give you
a rundown of the "finalists" from last year:
1) "At Wit’s Vend" A
CGI candy bar that pooped peanuts. That's right. Now, you may
be thinking "well, naturally CGI looks pretty and therefore
could swing the vote." Wrong again, kids. This was bad CGI,
animation so lazy that THE HUMAN CHARACTER IS HAND DRAWN.
"Hell, this peanut-pooping candy bar's so great, guys, let's
get Jerry to just DRAW the other guy." And it was a terrible
drawing. I haven't mentioned the complete absense of consistency
or humor, as that's a given. Just imagine the most juvenile attempts
to goad laughter from a nine-year-old and you've got a solid estimate
of what they had to offer.
2) "The Skylands of VanMorse"
A stop-motion movie made by Lutherans. Granted, this
is probably the closest thing to a movie we saw, but this by no
means implies that there was any quality to be seen. Imagine if
you will what those live-action RPG kids actually do out in the
fields behind the trailer park and then translate it directly
to a script, only instead of pimply Lutherans spouting magic spells
you have dolls. I'll go ahead and ruin the ending by revealing
that the guy you thought wasn't the bad guy WAS.
Unbelievable.
3) "Remote" Now this
is when we really started to doubt the sobriety of our audience.
One shot, two guys and an obvious split screen. One guy has a
remote. Can you guess? That's right he starts changing
the other guy like channels. Not actual channels, of
course (he didn't bother to change settings or even outfits),
but he did go in reverse and even paused and DISAPPEARED.
Now I know most of you don't realize that pausing, reversing and
making cuts in film are some of the most difficult special effects
concievable, but to go the extra mile and actually center an entire
short around this ability is just genius. It was originally titled
"Look, we understand the fundamental concepts of editing,"
but they opted for something a litter hipper for the kids.
4) "Phone Booth on Main Street"
Six seconds. In the time it would take you to stop reading
this page I watched a guy run up to a phone booth and mumble something
incomprehensible. This wasn't some "snapshot" of fright
or some equally asinine cop-out either, just six seconds of nothing.
There were a lot of entries to the film festival, one of which
was ours, and somehow they were all overlooked because someone
saw six seconds of this and said "Jesus Christ, we have to
have this one in there." Speaking of the judges...
5) "Prime Passion" This
was truly the ultimate slap in the face so far as legitimacy was
concerned. First, we have a movie made by one of the judges. That's
right, this guy got to vote on whether his own film would make
it into the finals. Second, this movie features Optimus
Prime, Barbie, music and ANIMATION
from the Transformers cartoon, even though the rules of the competition
clearly forbid the use of copywritten materials. Third, this movie
was really really bad. Maybe not as bad as the Peanut
Pooper, but still bad. It was just still shots of this guy's monstrous
Transformers collection with voiceovers from the damned cartoon.
And not even clever out-of-context voice samples either, just
generic things like "transform!" I can't wait to see
what this guy has in the finals this year.
I don't know why we keep submitting ourselves
to crap like this, entering the most awful and shady film festivals.
The only reason we ever won Starmaxx was because regular people
were able to vote, but with this Auburn abomination everything's
up in the air. With as much popular support as DDA gets, you'd
think that we'd be able to win by democracy alone, but it looks
like if we're ever going to get any respect (and more importantly,
money), then we're going to have to start entering legitimate
film festivals. As to whether or not we'll be attending the screening
of the finalists, I'll go. It's hard as hell to sit through, but
I have to see what these idiots consider "better" than
Monkey Fight. If you're interested in coming to boo these other
guys or if you're just curious as to how bad student films can
get, it's in Auburn on March 16 (during South's spring break,
conveniently). You can get all the details here.
