Change Your Image
janinehco
Reviews
A Series of Small Things (2005)
afterschool special thinking its bigger than it is
A friend of mine who is an aspiring actress picked up a copy of this film after seeing it at the Damah film festival. She knew of my interest in directing and writing my own shorts and thought I should give it a viewing. I did. Yikes. Our next meeting for wine and cheese was very interesting.
The acting is heavy handed and Kristy and Rochelle, who were watching it with me, were lost after the first half. We were all taken aback by the behind-the-scenes reel on the disk. Talk about comedy relief. The director and producer Steven Ordower act and talk as if they have done so much. Doing a general look around google and even IMDb shows to the contrary. The most underhanded of it all was when my friend Kristy pointed out how they attacked a member of their own crew and put her face on screen while being critical of her. Poor Lisa, if you are out there you need to do something girl. Most disappointing of all was that one of the recent links we found for the director was an interview in a.....get this....Christian web magazine. I guess that is what religion teaches you to do?
Special overacting scenes/things to pay attention to: -Main actor (and also director) turning on the pier to look back at his brother "ghostboy." Exudes "I think I'm so cool." -Korean girl telling her life story in a cafe to someone she barely knows as the camera slowly creeps in on them. Then creepy actor guy reaches for her hand. That was "real". -Picture of korean boy wrapped in plastic is clearly not the same boy pictured in the cafe photo. Kristy, who is Korean herself, was the most appalled by the filmmakers decision to think that we would just assume all korean people look alike and no one would notice. Real sensitive.
Plenty of other great shorts and great filmmakers out there that deserve your time. Its a flick that thinks its important wrapped up in an afterschool special with an...."ohhhhhhhh, so you really are supposed to mean something but you don't" ending. I would say decent first try for a filmmaker but then I saw that it's his second. Sophomore slump? This movie will make anyone want to take up film-making.
-Janine
I have a pile of other shorts to get to and will post my comments as I watch.