the way life should bleed, and bullying

so Thursday evening, I went to see Damnationland, a series of 7 short horror films made in Maine. last weekend I saw Derek's new short film, too, so there's been lots of local short films in my life.

Derek's short film is called The Bully, and true to (Derek) form, it's about how randomly cruel kids are and how disappointing adults can be. There's a funny chub friend and a reserved boy who decide to maybe try to beat up the class bully to impress the cute girl with the glittery silver flop hat. They run into a bit of trouble and the reserved boy gets abandoned by the funny friend and reserved ends up sort of participating in the bullying of the bully by the bully's older brother. older brother bully ends up getting reserved totally drunk and when reserved gets home to his sister's birthday party, he is totally drunk and his parents don't notice. it was overall charming and high on moments that are really common where nothing happens but are heavy with normalcy. it looked really beautiful, it was shot in wisconsin, and the kids were really good actors. i had to leave right after the first short film because i had to do my radio show, but from the applause i could hear as the door hit me on the ass on my way out, he got a good reception. good work.
you can watch the trailer here, if you feel like watching a trailer: http://www.lasthouseproductions.com/thebully.html

and then, yikes, i went to damnationland! here's the trailer for that one if you feel like you can watch another trailer: http://www.damnationland.com/
i haven't seen it so i'm going to watch it now...okay, i watched it. with no sound, but i did see it. anyway, it was great! and not great, too! it was great because local film is great. it was not great because two of the films were about crazy dudes who kill chicks. seriously, kill ANOTHER prostitute why don't you, horror makers of the world? ew, in this one the guy made the hooker dress up like the ex gf that he killed when she exed herself. yuck. and then the other one was about a guy with a crush who kept fantasizing about killing his crush. there was a pretty sweet yr-cooking-and-oh-no-now-yr-face-is-on-cast-iron-pan scene. then there was a nice one about those bells they put in coffins so that if someone was buried alive they could ring the bell and be saved. there was an adorable zombie one where a survivor guy is totally kicking zombie brains until he is shot by another survivor guy who thinks sg#1 is a zombie and sg#2 never even knows he killed a possible friend. there was a stand/apocalypse type one where a supercomputer makes everyone kill themselves because of radio waves, kinda dull. there was a great one about two killers, one who wants people to die with fear and another who wants people to die happy, and they race each other around killing people and the fear killer is winning and the happy killer is trying to catch up. that one was neat, lotsa stuff about "how you die shapes the next world you go into" and all that jazz. it had the best humor, too. so all in all, it was worth it and totally not scary. i guess there were some jumpy moments. i love local film around here. maine is great sometimes.