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CoffeeTime:
Drinking In The New Year

by Steve Piper

Well, I hope everyone's feeling fine and fat after the festive season, and that you all got that Red One you were hoping for, no? Me neither...

So, a new selection from the Coffee Shorts network, selected and mini-reviewed for MicroFilmmaker Magazine! You may have noticed quite a European flavour to everything so far and I'm pleased to say we have started getting some great submissions coming over from the Americas which are going to be turning up here in the next few months, in the meantime though it's a selection of Brits and a lone Australian this month. Don't forget, if you want more short films take a browse through MicroFilmmaker Magazine's own short film archive, or hop back to a previous selection of Coffee Shorts through the archive links near the bottom of the page.

Nazareth
If you've been paying attention over the last few months you'll be familiar with the work of the UK's Hum-Drum Films already. Nazareth, to me, is one of their greatest acheivements, it really defines them stylistically with incredible confidence, flair, unease and creativity throughout and that trademark feeling of having witnessed something very profound that you can't quite grasp hold of.

The film is constructed of a trilogy of films which have very little in common other than seeming perfectly at home alongside each other. We see a parallel human society where everyone walks with an egg and spoon, which could be a vessel for the soul, or just an egg on a spoon. It's intriguing and a little comical, but also feels profound and meaningful. In the next section we find ourselves in a dark nightmare of a society; almost everyday scenes are transformed into malevolent, restrictive, alienating and highly disquieting situations with just a careful twist on reality and change in music tone. Escaping that world's sense of hopelessness the final part of the trilogy switches to a twisted homage to old silent films. A Lloyd or Chaplin-esque sequence of events ensue with a dramatic and jarring resolution.

Like so many of the Hum-Drum Films the technical aspects are just right, it isn't overproduced but it has style, substance and flair; everything is in tune and working with all the other parts. The actors all do an excellent job, details in the silent filming are spot on and the music throughout is exceptional in creating the dark and bizarre atmosphere.

So what does it all mean? Is this a crew of British stoners having fun with pretentious experimental film fans? You can never completely discount the possibility, but watching the film definitely leaves you with a whole bunch of thoughts, emotions and feelings that speak of a society that seems kind of right, but just isn't, and whether it was the intention or not I think that's something we can all empathise with in todays world.

Coffee rating: 9/10
Notes: Unique, creative, fun and profound, Hum-Drum Films at their very best

0800-FINAL-GIRL
In England, 0800 is the commercial freephone prefix you find on all truly awful infomercials, and Final Girl is a nicely thought out parody of the genre put together for a 2-minute-horror-film competition. Creators Crestfallen Productions (who also did A Plaster, A Paper... in last months Coffee Time) took an alternative slant on the obvious 2 minute slasher option managing to display both their love for the horror genre and their ability to laugh both at one of it's conventions, and in the ability of dodgy companies everywhere to come up with a product or service for just about anything no matter how niche.

The opening half is really well directed, coloured and scored in classic horror film style; shooting in low light on miniDV rarely yields results anyone likes very much but 95% of the shots here are nice and crisp and just right. The well parodied switch to infomercial mode is equally well done with an eye watering burst of colours, captions and scrolling texts and a classically cheesy presenter explaining just what's on offer.

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