In no particular order, here are the titles and premises of this year's DVDFest movies:
Night Flight: This chiefly involves a pair of stick figures who decide that one of them will fly the other to the moon on a kite. Then they get lonely, and so the other stick figure blasts off into space and floats onto the moon with a balloon. This one was the judges' top pick, and for good reason: it's animated, it's sweet, it's artistic, and it does not at all involve vomit. You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m31YDn0-jQ
Trapped in Goodhue: This was a parody of Trapped in the Closet, in which a Carleton student wakes up with no memory of how he ended up in the worst of all possible places to wake up... miles away from civilization, in Goodhue! The only solution, of course, is to start singing about it. But the situation only worsens as our hero finds himself hungry for a waffle, only to discover that Sweet Lou's has gone out of business.
L'Artiste: A man intently sketches a naked female figure, but at the end it's revealed that the model is the man himself. Very strange and nonsensical, but well-shot in black and white.
It's About Time: A superhero and villain engage in an epic battle (using their watches as weapons) while trading pithy one-liners that all include some sort of time pun. ("Your time is running out." "Not by my watch." "Don't get all wound up.")
Goldfish: An extremely short stop-motion animation about a pair of Goldfish crackers in love. As is generally the case for edible lovers, things do not turn out happily for them.
Dinner Date: A denizen of Musser embarks on an epic quest to kill the vampire who ate her roommate. Includes some well-deserved lampooning of Twilight.
The Phantasmagorical Adventures of Edgar Allen Poe: A trailer for a movie that, sadly, doesn't exist. Mr. Poe and his crime-fighting partner, Lenore, travel the world combating ghosts and zombies and being buried alive.
Sky Howard and the Talisman of Raajmani: Sky Howard, an Indiana Jones-type adventurer, travels to Nepal to recover the Talisman of Raajmani. Much suggestive humor ensues, including a long string of puns which do not need to be repeated in a civilized publication like this one. If you need to hear it, you can find this on Youtube. Featured prominently in last week's Revolution production.
And then, following in the grand DVDfest tradition, there were the films that just didn't make any sense:
1990 in Holland: This movie starts with a CAMS major calling his friends and suggesting that they all get drunk and then make a movie. Then it transitions into what is presumably the output of this endeavor. High points include a guy jumping off a vending machine onto another guy, and a rubber chicken being run over by a car. Low points include long shots of people staring into the camera and forming barely-coherent sentences.
La Peine de (Vivre) or "Perception": Translated into English, this fancy title means "The Sorrow of (Living) or 'Perception.'" The content is not nearly as fancy- it involves a guy going into a meeting, eating a lot of White Castle, and then barfing all over the place. It was followed by two films of similar premises: in one, a guy buys some sort of illegal drug (which looks like red jello), eats it, and then barfs all over the place. In the other, a drunk couple is kissing, and the girl barfs all over the guy's face. After this, I kept half-expecting the main character in all the other movies to suddenly throw up, but fortunately, the trend did not continue.
After the showing of the movies, the voting (by clapping) for the audience pick, and the re-showing of Trapped in Goodhue, there was an impromptu dance party in the Chapel. This partially made up for the movies described above, but next year it can only be hoped that DVDFest contestants produce more stuff like Night Flight and Trapped in Goodhue, and leave the fake vomit at home. Or wherever they keep the fake vomit.
