The Escapist Film Festival 2010: Nintendobo

[tristan_n]

Please win. If you don't win, give us another episode anyway!

I have never seen such emotional entertainment on this site before. I would love it if you stayed. We need more dark humor.

The song at the end was priceless. Best remake I've heard in a long time.

No worries, young Dobo is bound to return someday, somewhere, somehow. And I'll pass along the remake compliment to Yosh.

And while I'm here at the keyboard, I just gotta say -- some of the kind words getting typed about this vid, I'm appreciative up to my eyebrows, very cool of you folks to let me know ya dug it. There's one thing I could add as a possible bonus-decoding for its strange flavor. Nearly all live action vids are made by groups of friends, and they give off this happy air of having been fun to make. But I always shoot the Nintendobo vids when no one else is around, and the production part isn't really a fun time (never mind the carpet burns). Even when I play the scotch-soaked dad, I'm still doing the Dobo part via split-screen -- it's all getting shot in complete solitude, with none of the happy-rebounding of ideas and feedback that you get with group projects. I suppose the most cogent way to put it is that the humor isn't social humor, it's solitude humor. I'm not sure what that adds to the discussion, but it was fun to type.

 

[tristan_n]

To those who don't know about this film, he participated last year. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-escapist-film-festival-2009/1020-Nintendobo-Dr-Mario-Says-Eat-Mommys-Pills] I found strange that last year's was done by Decovo Studios, now it's Lumalin Productions.

An good explanation would do.

Decovo broke up when the co-founder went to work for MTV (true story). I started Lumalin with two other guys from school. Still good friends with MTV guy, but he's off in New York now, living the high life (relatively speaking).

 

[tristan_n]

I'm weirded out by it. It's so weird... And so unappealing. I don't think this is gonna win, but if you made an indie film like this, you'd definitely win something.

Alas.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha2fHGEdCdk

Finished it in June, and so far all the festivals have rejected it. Not even any "nice try" letters. But I suppose "dark side of puppetry" is probably a self-defeating category to pursue at the festival level; puppets create an expectation of muppety antics, and it didn't help that the feature was even more odd and death-obsessed than the shorts.

But in O.I.P.L.F., it was clear that Dobo was coming from the grown man's imagination (except in the prologue, which takes place in the late 80's). In the Escapist short, I'm actually undecided if Dobo is "real", or if he's just the man's desperate projected wish to be a kid again -- and so the dad would actually be just a childless adult man, living alone, drifting into bits of age-schizophrenia from being so damn disappointed with life (plus the liquid assistance). So everyone can decide for themselves if Nintendobo is really there or being imagined, it works either way. There was a great movie called "Sunday" which had the same anti-conclusion about the main character --

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120244/

-- sort of making him a Schrodinger's Cat of two equally-possible-but-opposite identities, and never giving the audience the full answer -- which was far more intriguing than trying to make it a one-answer twist at the end. You'd have to see it to really get the "is he or isn't he?" impact, I'm not even close to doing it justice.

 

[maninahat]

I found this show to be Kind of tasteless really. If you're going to make a joke about something as serious as suicidal, child abusing parents, it better be funny. I couldn't decide if it was trying to be harrowing or amusing because it did a bad job of both. The relationship to video gaming only seemed incidental, and hardly the central focus of the video.

Sorry, but I wouldn't watch this.

 

[Syrus Vikeruce]

Fucking hell.

That shit was messed up.

 

[BENZOOKA]

The voice was extremely annoying and simply so bad it would've ruined the video no matter what visual imagery it did or would've included.

 

[TwistedEllipses]

This is bound to divide people. It's well put together, but it's really depressing...

 

[Ramaziel]

Too bizarre, I didn't find it funny.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DudeNotFunny

This guy has it right. Mental illness is not funny, at least that is what I get from the voice. As well as suicide isn't funny.

I agree with these guys. I actually felt physicly sick watching that

 

[fisheyehand]

"The concept of absurdity is something I'm attracted to."
- David Lynch

 

[fisheyehand]

Without question this guy will be a famous film maker one day. Watch the video people - watch it and pay attention. If you don't see incredible depth and potential in the person who make it fine, but you'll be watching (and paying) to see his movies one day. There is far too much "web series" trash on the internet. At least this one pushes the boundaries and clearly stands out and i'd love to see more. It has my vote.

 

[talenos]

Woah, another Newcomb in the contest. That's crazy.

 

[tristan_n]

That was genuinely impressive, but I honestly can't see it functioning as a web series, which is a shame as taken by itself it's probably the best entry in the whole film festival. Also, it seemed kind of odd you censored some of the f-words and not the others. Just curious, but was there a specific reason you did that?

Thanks mate. And the beeped F-bomb sound can't really function as censorship anymore, since we all know what word is being beeped. When I put the beep in, it's for expletive punctuation, an extra ! to the f-bomb -- so it isn't meant to hide the word, it's meant to make it less casual and a little more abrasive.

 

[Bespoke]

Whoa this stands on it's own. Not sure i'd agree that it *shouldn't* be a series. Why not is it too hard for people to understand? Could be but that's not a good reason not to vote for it. I could attack any of the other handful I've seen for being boring, at least this one engaged me the whole time which I can't say for a bunch of the others.

Props to the producer: amazing cinematography and depth of field work, lots and lots of very subtle things going on which I haven't seen in any of the other film festival entrants.

 

[Timbydude]

Very abstract, very dark, very entertaining.

This is in my top 3 favorite videos in this film festival. "Unique" doesn't even begin to describe it, and I enjoy it. It reminds me a lot of Salad Fingers.

You have my vote.

Also, I looked into the other stuff you've done. The thing you pulled at UCSD was nothing short of brilliant. (Although, I do hope the audience realized what the whole thing was at the end. It didn't seem like all of them understood that it was all staged, and I would've been pretty freaked out if I walked away from that thinking it was real.)

 

[slightly evil]

Powerful... but i'm really not sure i want to see more of it

 

[kmkent]

Weird and not funny. Sorry.

 

[LoserMyron]

This is a happy film.

 

[tristan_n]

Very abstract, very dark, very entertaining.

This is in my top 3 favorite videos in this film festival. "Unique" doesn't even begin to describe it, and I enjoy it. It reminds me a lot of Salad Fingers.

You have my vote.

Also, I looked into the other stuff you've done. The thing you pulled at UCSD was nothing short of brilliant. (Although, I do hope the audience realized what the whole thing was at the end. It didn't seem like all of them understood that it was all staged, and I would've been pretty freaked out if I walked away from that thinking it was real.)

Thanks mate, much appreciated. Funny you should mention that -- it actually was a bit of a problem: the students that flee the classroom eventually find out it was all a hoax several days later, but in the meantime they'd sometimes see me around campus, and give me that look like maybe they need to be calling security. I ended up tweaking the last couple of performances so people felt sorry for me instead & didn't make for the exits.

For anyone wondering what we're talking about (it's a bit of cruel hoaxing called GRRF):
untweaked + students in terror: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jctL9wiqvo
tweaked + students just morbidly bewildered: http://www.vimeo.com/6119911