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Review of Earthling
Aug. 20th, 2010 11:13 amReview of Earthling:
(shown at the Queer Film Fest)
This film gives me great hope of the future. It indicates that any sci-fi I make, no matter ow terrible, will have a home at a Queer film festival.
Earthling starts out well, promising slow and emotionally intimate science fiction. Rebecca Spence and Amelia Turner deliver two fleshed-out yet mysterious character leads: a highschool teacher who has recently miscarried and a recently-transferred in student pot dealer (movies teach us that all troublesome or interesting students have recently transferred), who are afraid of their attraction to each-other. Spence realizes that she is something other than human, although she can't remember why. Turner already knows, and wants to bring Spence out.
This is, unfortunately. the only good part of the movie. There were other problems, which I dismissed as an amateur film shot on a low budget until I saw the credits and realized that this was a full production coordinated by experienced people.
Sound:
The sound was usually pretty good, but some dialogue had a chesty reverberation. I think the boom was too low, or maybe the sound tech quit.
Light:
Most of the indoor scenes were underexposed. While the inside of houses are usually darker than the outside - at least during the day - it is also true that, unless your iris muscle is injured, your eyes will adjust to this difference and the inside of a lit house will not look like a nuclear winter. Given that both of the protagonists drive, I assume that this underexposure is not a reflection of their visual disability, but a fuck-up.
The filmmaker could have solved this with any of the following: (1) check the camera's F-Stop or ISO settings, (2) use more lights, or (3) adjust in post.
This light-fail is notable as other footage in Earthling is high-quality. There is some beautifully solarized aquatic film, and an extended scene filmed primarily from a hood-mounted camera. Given that the bad lighting was synchronous with the bad sound, I think that they either ran out of budget partway though, or lost their better staff.
Makeup:
The makeup looked realistic, but marking aliens by small forehead bumps, which seem to be intra-species telepathy-organs reminds me of My Favorite Martian.
Casting:
I got the feeling that the alien in the toque was added so that there would be at least one person of colour with a line, albeit one who stands around for a few scenes, strangely silent, then quietly dies offscreen. Very 80s.
The main problem:
The film was directed, written and edited by the same person. This is strange on a movie with a big cast and crew. And it proved to be a bad call, as it is here that largest errors sat uncorrected.
The film is much longer than it needs to be. This happens when you edit your own material and don't want to cut anything
And then there's the writing.
Consider:
If a girl is pregnant
- at the age of eight
- because she was raped
- by her father who kept her locked in the basement
- and if she tries to carry the child to term she will die
Does the word "abortion" cross your mind? I'm not even asking if you are in favour of it. But if you threw her in with a musican, dykey pot-dealer, schoolteacher and a... quiet man in a toque, all living in suburban America, do you think that at least one of them would suggest terminating the pregnancy? If your answer was "yes," then you live in a different world than Clay Liford, the writer(/director/editor/co-producer) of Earthling
And then there was the astronaut character. At one point he rapes his sister via stomach-pseudopods. This appears to be a case of mistaken identity, see below.. The next morning, she shoots herself with an unforeshadowed handgun. Dad responds not by calling the police or paramedics but by quietly loading her corpse into a pickup truck.
This has something to do with how the astronaut once had a conjoined sister, the memories of whom he repressed. This is unusual as conjoined twins are identical and NASA astronauts (espeicially those with linebacker builds) are usually cissexed. So I guess his conjoined sister who died being amputated was MtF. Or the writer doesn't believe in doing a quick wikipedia check on major plot points.
Fimmakers take note. If you are going to write, edit, direct and co-produce your screenplay, get ouside input. Do a public reading, a test-screening and - actually disregard the prior "if" - don't edit your own material alone.
(shown at the Queer Film Fest)
This film gives me great hope of the future. It indicates that any sci-fi I make, no matter ow terrible, will have a home at a Queer film festival.
Earthling starts out well, promising slow and emotionally intimate science fiction. Rebecca Spence and Amelia Turner deliver two fleshed-out yet mysterious character leads: a highschool teacher who has recently miscarried and a recently-transferred in student pot dealer (movies teach us that all troublesome or interesting students have recently transferred), who are afraid of their attraction to each-other. Spence realizes that she is something other than human, although she can't remember why. Turner already knows, and wants to bring Spence out.
This is, unfortunately. the only good part of the movie. There were other problems, which I dismissed as an amateur film shot on a low budget until I saw the credits and realized that this was a full production coordinated by experienced people.
Sound:
The sound was usually pretty good, but some dialogue had a chesty reverberation. I think the boom was too low, or maybe the sound tech quit.
Light:
Most of the indoor scenes were underexposed. While the inside of houses are usually darker than the outside - at least during the day - it is also true that, unless your iris muscle is injured, your eyes will adjust to this difference and the inside of a lit house will not look like a nuclear winter. Given that both of the protagonists drive, I assume that this underexposure is not a reflection of their visual disability, but a fuck-up.
The filmmaker could have solved this with any of the following: (1) check the camera's F-Stop or ISO settings, (2) use more lights, or (3) adjust in post.
This light-fail is notable as other footage in Earthling is high-quality. There is some beautifully solarized aquatic film, and an extended scene filmed primarily from a hood-mounted camera. Given that the bad lighting was synchronous with the bad sound, I think that they either ran out of budget partway though, or lost their better staff.
Makeup:
The makeup looked realistic, but marking aliens by small forehead bumps, which seem to be intra-species telepathy-organs reminds me of My Favorite Martian.
Casting:
I got the feeling that the alien in the toque was added so that there would be at least one person of colour with a line, albeit one who stands around for a few scenes, strangely silent, then quietly dies offscreen. Very 80s.
The main problem:
The film was directed, written and edited by the same person. This is strange on a movie with a big cast and crew. And it proved to be a bad call, as it is here that largest errors sat uncorrected.
The film is much longer than it needs to be. This happens when you edit your own material and don't want to cut anything
And then there's the writing.
Consider:
If a girl is pregnant
- at the age of eight
- because she was raped
- by her father who kept her locked in the basement
- and if she tries to carry the child to term she will die
Does the word "abortion" cross your mind? I'm not even asking if you are in favour of it. But if you threw her in with a musican, dykey pot-dealer, schoolteacher and a... quiet man in a toque, all living in suburban America, do you think that at least one of them would suggest terminating the pregnancy? If your answer was "yes," then you live in a different world than Clay Liford, the writer(/director/editor/co-producer) of Earthling
And then there was the astronaut character. At one point he rapes his sister via stomach-pseudopods. This appears to be a case of mistaken identity, see below.. The next morning, she shoots herself with an unforeshadowed handgun. Dad responds not by calling the police or paramedics but by quietly loading her corpse into a pickup truck.
This has something to do with how the astronaut once had a conjoined sister, the memories of whom he repressed. This is unusual as conjoined twins are identical and NASA astronauts (espeicially those with linebacker builds) are usually cissexed. So I guess his conjoined sister who died being amputated was MtF. Or the writer doesn't believe in doing a quick wikipedia check on major plot points.
Fimmakers take note. If you are going to write, edit, direct and co-produce your screenplay, get ouside input. Do a public reading, a test-screening and - actually disregard the prior "if" - don't edit your own material alone.