Entertainment
created by and for the no-budget filmmaking
community. We all work our asses off making movies not enough people watch.
FASTFORWARD is a chance for us to talk to other people just as messed-up as we are, relax and laugh about it. Send
submissions/comments/complaints to
New Trailer: Radio Man: The Movie!
Uh oh. Can the world withstand a movie starring our own Radio Man? I doubt it. But here's a trailer for one. I have no idea if there's actually a movie to go with this. From Orange Cow Productions and Garrett Gilchrist comes the most epic, anticipated motion picture of 2002, 2003 and possibly 1982. Look out world, here comes Radio Man! (6mb, Realplayer) The story: when corporate interest is shown in his radio program, our hero must finally leave his mom's house and journey to the big city. He must evade the mob, reunite with his long lost brother, and win the hand of a girl he likes. Actually none of that has anything to do with this trailer. Watch it anyway - it's Radio Man! With a special appearance by Deejay.
Gorilla Interrupted Exclusive: David Ashe vs. Jay Bauman!
Double your comedy with twice the David Ashe. (3 mb, Realplayer.) We are proud to present, thanks to GMP pictures' Mike Stoklasa, not just one, but TWO completely different (and hilarious) takes on the same scene. Dave was asked to mail in a cameo for Stoklasa's unreleased epic schlock masterpiece, ("Gorilla Interrupted," which Dave had done a script rewrite for. I wrote him a gratuitious little scene he could play, and Dave sent in two versions of a scene ... one in which he played it normally, and one in which he played it as a flamboyantly gay Marxist. Mike edited together both versions. I'm not sure which he intends to use in the final cut, but I'm proud to present them both. You decide! Watch the video already! (3 mb, Realplayer) It's the former Orange Cow star vs. Blanc Screen Cinema's Jay Bauman, as Jay tries to call up a girl he likes, Julie, and gets Ashe instead. (Gorilla Interrupted is still unreleased, but you can watch nearly an hour of other scenes from it, in the unauthorized "bootleg cut" available in our video section.)
Interview: Jason Santo talks to Mike Stoklasa!
Or, as I call it, Best. Interview. Ever. Here's the official story I'm going with, which is probably a lie. A bit back, Mindscape Pictures' Jason Santo began a series of interviews at that other site, interviewing me and then Mike Stoklasa. In Stoklasa's inimitable style, he made the interview so dark, bitchy and strange that Santo decided never to run it. The interview passed into obscurity, and legend. However, I ran across a blind one-armed pirate who was running a liquor store in San Bernardino. He held in his hand a withered scroll and told me that this was the fabled interview, and that for five gold pieces he would sell it to me. I didn't have five gold pieces, so I hit him with a rock and took it from him. Running away, I quickly scanned the contents and post it here for you. This is highly unauthorized, and both parties would have my pirate head for posting this here, but ARRRR, I say to them! ARRRR! Have at ye! A pirate dies fighting! A pirate dies drinking! Here is, apparently, the lost Interview Between Jason Santo and Mike Stoklasa. Unless of course it isn't. And if you haven't read the original interview, where Santo talked to me, check it out, it's kind of interesting and might tell you a bit more about why I made this site (the interview was done shortly before this site launched). The Mad Orange Cow: Garrett Gilchrist Interview.
Fastforward Premiere: Mega Man!!
He does whatever a Mega can! Everyone's favorite blue video game star comes to life in Tim Carras' CGI special effects extravaganza, Mega Man! Can the blue bomber, with the help of Dr. Light and his robot dog Rush, defeat Air Man and learn Proto Man's terrible secret before a final showdown with the evil Dr. Wily? Featuring more great cheesy special effects than you would have thought possible in one film, along with lame sound editing, this is the most fun you'll have watching people play video game characters at the movies this year. Hell, it beats the hell out of Jean-Claude Van Damme in "Street Fighter." That movie sucked. From Bonus Light productions. Carras showed the film in class on a strict deadline and notes that he was still editing the movie as his class was starting, so it's unfinished and error-filled ... (he plans to do a fixed up version this summer.) You've gotta check out this 35-meg Quicktime DL. And if you like Tim's work, check out another special effects wonder he did recently, Unity (requires Quicktime 6.) And see outtakes and more footage of Rush and Air Man by viewing the teaser trailers at the Tim Carras Mega Man website (Requires Quicktime 6). Fight, Mega Man! For everlasting peace!
Interview: Warren Blyth talks to Alan Winston!
Here's the interview. Here's my writeup: After having spent his growing years creating hours and hours of entertainment on his local tv series Delusions of Grandeur, Alan Winston seemed to find himself as a filmmaker just as his show was coming to an end. Often noted as one of the most promising talents in the underground film world, the Bravado Entertainment founder has managed to launch the film dreams of many others, inspiring spinoff companies - Jenn and Kshawn Edgar's Junk Productions and Warren Blyth's Funeral Home Entertainment. However, his own work to date has left critics unsure. Is Alan creating ambitious, funny, dark, genre-bending, popular-culture-commenting great television, or just an incomprehensible gobbledygook of inside jokes no one on earth understands but him and his Bravado cohorts? Here at Fastforward we like to piss off both sides, so I'd like to say both. And in the spirit of that, we present the ultimate inside interview, as Alan's frequent collaborator Mr. Warren Blyth gives us two installments of In-Depth Inside Interview with Alan Winston: Questions of Grandeur. Enjoy, or just stare at it looking confused. I wouldn't have it any other way, either way.
New Comic Strip: Vitreous Humor!
Warren Blyth, known for his out-there Gauntlet films and the design of this website, has checked in these past two weeks with a new comic strip every single goddamn day. The strip is called Vitreous Humor, it's about a blue guy and a red guy (Viddy and Seedy) discussing matters of the mind, and it's been taking over our forum daily. It's very strange in that way only Warren can create ... If Warren doesn't stop being so peculiar, he's going to get a reputation for this. Keep it up, Warr. And click here to read all of Vitreous Humor. It is funny in a way that it challenges strangers!
Fastforward Premiere: New Junk from Junk Productions!!
"Thanks," said K. Shawn Edgar of Oregon's Junk productions as he handed copies of his two latest shorts over to me. "Don't make the baby Jesus weep." I assume he meant he wanted me to post these on the site. We're proud to premiere Eighteen and Bleeding (22.8 MB, Realplayer), as well as present Full Metal Misognyist (14 MB, Quicktime) and Deja vu, Descending (Quicktime, 7 mb). These somewhat disturbing, abstract little videos are the latest entries in Warren Blyth's Random Eyes Gauntlet series of sinister short films. The last one loosely based on a script by Robert Kirkpatrick, the first two loosely based on scripts by Random Foo. Junk Productions, like Warren Blyth's Funeral Home Entertainment, is of course a spinoff of Alan Winston's Bravado Entertainment. Enjoy. Or baby Jesus will cry. Eighteen and Bleeding (22.8 MB, Realplayer), Full Metal Misognyist (14 MB, Quicktime), and Deja vu, Descending (Quicktime, 7 mb).
Amateur Film Star Makes History, Idiot of Himself Amateur film star and director Evan Lazlo made history recently, as he became the first actor in history to play fifty-seven different roles in a single motion picture, none of them leading roles. Additionally, in doing so Mr. Lazlo made a complete idiot of himself. It was a historic occasion. By taking on so many roles and playing each one with a different loud, strident, forced and rather annoying voice, Lazlo set a new gold standard for amateur comedy acting. Lazlo, though not the star of the film, has quite a bit of screen time, often playing or providing voices for three, four or more characters in a single scene. All of these characters tend to shout a lot, providing a new and bold form of film acting best described as "annoying." Critics were wowed, saying "There's that same guy again," and "Couldn't he get anyone else to be in this?" Yes, truly Evan Lazlo made history, and an idiot of himself. As famous film critic Mike Ray puts it, "It set a new bar for nihilistic self-destruction." With this historic film, Lazlo proves his extreme range as an actor, and also proves that we never want to see him act in anything else ever again.
Obscure Video Pick of the
Month: The Maxx
(1996) What's the all-time best translation from a comic book to the screen? Sure, there's the Batman animated series, Sam Raimi's silly Spider-Man, Ghost World, whatever. My vote easily goes to Sam Keith's The Maxx. In 1996, MTV translated the first dozen or so issues of the popular Image comic book into animated form, as part of a double bill with "The Head", on its series "MTV's Oddities." "The Head" was forgettable and badly animated. But "The Maxx" was and is absolutely amazing. It's a crash course in how to take a brilliantly-written, well-drawn comic and make it a TV show ... almost nothing whatsoever was changed ... the drawing style is the same, often taken directly from the comic and including Sam Keith's great paintings. Nearly all the writing from the comic was kept intact. Computers and incredible low-budget ingenuity were used to create way-above-par special effects and bring the drawings to life on a budget. But what's most remarkable about The Maxx is how fascinating it is as filmed entertainment ... with the exception of the hip, cliched, neo-noir pilot, this is not a superhero series but rather a shockingly intelligent philosophical deconstruction of one ... the series is intensely dark and depressing in a way few Hollywood films would touch, but its characters are so well-written they all feel like real people, with real problems, working through their own childhood and current traumas in a strange, unconscious, fantasy land of myths, legends, and big purple heroes. The video version is currently out of print but can be found on Ebay and at some rental shops ... it omits an episode in which Maxx fought with a large shark, which is actually a good choice, as it now works as a 2-hour film ... it's brilliantly written, visually amazing, scary as hell and guaranteed to keep you up nights thinking about what you've just heard and seen. Seek this one out if you can find it. There's never been anything like it before or since.
Mad Link of the Moment:
Leisuretown.com "YOU'RE CORDIALLY INVITED ........... (open card) ........... TO SUCK COCK!!" It's safe to say there's never been a website quite like Leisuretown. Brilliantly-written, lengthy illustrated stories starring a cast of rubber bendy animals, most of whom have severe mental and emotional problems. They look for jobs, look for love, look for answers ... or just go nuts and kill each other. It's all funny as hell, and the only real complaint I have is that there haven't been any new installments in a while!
Film Reviewers are Idiots presents:
LOTR:TTT at JuicyCerebellum.com All film reviewers
are idiots. Today I present you with some proof of this, Alex Sandell's recent review of "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers." To quote: "The Two Towers is wearying, muddled, poorly-paced and hard to sit through. Jackson brings us an LOTR film that's actually WORSE than the last. If the third takes another step down in quality, I won't hesitate to declare it the worst sequel to an event film ever put on celluloid. As things stand, The Two Towers is the least entertaining sequel to an event film this side of, Men in Black II.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the D&D section of your local comic shop, along comes Peter Jackson's follow-up to last year's semi-successful, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Luckily for Jackson, the first was a geek-driven near-blockbuster and would have warranted sequels even if they had not already been in the can. Unluckily, for Jackson, myself, and any individual who may tire of slo-mo shots of people staring at each other in melodramatic fashion for a good third of a three hour "epic," the director dropped the ball and that dropped ball fell into a pit of artistic despair far deeper than that of the fiery Hell of Mount Doom. In this newest installment, Jackson traded slo-mo shots of a ring flying through the air for slo-mo scenes of epic battles. Additionally, we are given more of the moments of one character staring into another's eyes, as though an elementary school staring contest can be a life-changing event. All of this is emphasized by the quasi-operatic singing of an over-zealous chick straining her vocal chords on the overbearing soundtrack. Much like it did last year, all of this has me asking, "what went wrong." I know that Jackson isn't solely at fault for the mess that is, The Two Towers. I feel that it's Jackson's need to be faithful to Tolkien that has screwed up both of his, The Lord of the Rings' films.
Tolkien, while a great intellect, couldn't grasp character development for the life of him. He struck gold with The Hobbit, which was entertaining, in an L. Frank Baum sort of way, but then his brain went geographically haywire and he began caring about maps more than motivations, settings more than saviors and languages more than liveliness. Because of his need to explain each intricate detail of the world that encompassed his adventure, the LOTR trilogy that Tolkien released turned out to be one overly-long story that couldn't keep a coma victim's attention span.
The proof was in the pudding when the stories failed to sell for years. It was only when the hippies took note of the numerous drug references, which may or may not have actually been there, that the series began to sell. Essentially, Tolkien's tale could only be tolerated by stinky goofballs whacked out on weed.
As in The Fellowship of the Ring, both female actresses are wasted in, The Two Towers. Cate Blanchett, in her most inane role to date, plays some elf girl who mumbles a few words for about 45 seconds and disappears. The film is muddy and unpleasant to look at. The character development is exceedingly poor, which is also symptomatic of the first film, and all three of the books, but could have been improved upon in The Two Towers movie. Jackson should have beefed up Ian McKellen's role. Instead, we get a ton of bad comedy from that "proud" dwarf, in the most inappropriate of places. During important battle sequences he'll pull a Jar Jar, ending up taking a large part of the impact out of climatic fight scenes, tense dramatic scenes, or any scene you really care about. This weakens an already weak film to the breaking point.
On a scale of 1-10?
3 (but an "A" for effort)"
I rest my case. Feel free to send in
your own installments of "Film Reviewers are Idiots."
New Trailer: 
Gorilla Interrupted Exclusive: 
Interview: Jason Santo talks to 
Fastforward Premiere: 
Interview: Warren Blyth talks to 
New Comic Strip: 
Fastforward Premiere: New Junk from Junk Productions!!
Obscure Video Pick of the
Month: The Maxx
(1996)
Film Reviewers are Idiots presents:
LOTR:TTT at JuicyCerebellum.com