If you read last week's installment, then you saw my rant about "Cryptozoo". There were other films I saw at the Fancine, also called the Fantastic Film Festival of Málaga, Spain.
The opening night film was Keira Knightley's latest, "Silent Night". It starts out as a traditional Richard Curtis family holiday comedy - but then devolves into an end-of-the-world pandemic movie. Weird. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it's not really a feel-good film.
Then, the much anticipated "Belle", from the great Mamoru Hosada. Talk about big budget - it's a traditional 3-D animation mixed with gobs of CG. Thankfully, I saw in on the big screen so I could enjoy all the incredible detail. It's a story about a young girl whose internet fantasies take over her life - I recommend the film for all its beauty.
Then I watched "Prisoners of the Ghostland" starring the great Nicolas Cage. I won't talk about this film because you really don't want to see this film.
But the pick of the festival for me was a strange deadpan film called "Wild Men" by Thomas Daneskov of Denmark. It's a quirky film about a normal guy who abandons his family to live in the forest dressed as a caveman with a bow and arrow. The humor is very "Fargo-esque". This loser "wild man" has many adventures with a bunch of assorted wackos and criminals that leads to a violent ending. "Wild Men" is my kind of film, from the category I call "Twisted Noir".
This was my first festival trip since the pandemic started, and even though there was a LOT of paperwork to fill out to visit Spain and even more to come back, it was worth it! It's so great to be out traveling the world again! I got to serve on the Fancine jury and the festival also commissioned me to make drawings of cats dressed up, to represent each film. In the photo below you'll see me signing some posters with all the drawings of the cats on them!
More good news, I just finished the basic animation for my newest animated feature film, "Slide". I'm really loving watching the scenes fit together. In fact, I love them so much, I'll show you a few of them, with each episode of my Scribble Junkies blog.
Since it's near the holiday season, I'd like to remind all my fans that I'm available for caricatures and we have artwork available from "Your Face" and the "Simpsons" couch gags. They make amazing gifts for under the tree!
--Bill P.
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