News You Can Bruise for 2009 February 26

Thu Feb 26 2009 20:59 A Survey Of James Rolfe's Non-Nerd Films: The past few days have brought little to report. We bought another story for Thoughtcrime Experiments, bringing the total up to five. We're going to buy four more. We should have all the acceptance and rejection letters out by the end of Saturday.

I thought I'd do something different tonight so as not to bore you with talk of anthologies and secret projects and other stuff that takes up my time that you can't see yet. I've mentioned a couple times in the past that I'm a fan of James Rolfe's Angry Video Game Nerd show. To my mind it's a perfect example of post-television entertainment, and one that predates Dr. Horrible or anything else that came out of the Hollywood writers' strike.

Lately Rolfe has been putting up reedited versions of the films he made before the Nerd character took over his life. Some of his fans are unhappy about this, and demand more Nerd instead. But if I may generalize grossly, that's an attitude generally seen among people who don't create a lot of cultural artifacts themselves. (Here it is again.) Instead of bitching, I've taken the opportunity to go through Rolfe's online filmography and check out his other films. In this entry, I point out the ones I enjoyed.

• Cinemassacre 200 is an amazing, inspiring documentary about Rolfe's lifelong obsession with filmmaking. Obsession is a harsh mistress. On the one hand, it kind of ruins your life, but on the other it gives you the motivation you need to put enormous amounts of time into projects of uncertain payoff. If you only watch one of these films, watch this one.
• The Deader the Better is probably Rolfe's best-known non-Nerd film. It's an excellent and very gory zombie movie done in the style of 50s B-movies. If they'd had the R rating back in the 50s.
• Spaghetti Western is a lot of fun, and the most family-friendly movie in this list. It was made as a constrained filmmaking exercise.
• The Death Suit is also a notable constrained film, though I think it's not as good as SW.
• Cinemaphobia is a meta-horror film. It's so well put-together that I think I can go up a level in my criticism and criticize the cheesy acting in any scene that includes more than one person.
• Legend of the Blue Hole, Rolfe's senior project from college, has great cinematography and decent acting to boot. I especially enjoyed the wilderness shots.
• Beer Man is a Wacky Comedy that crashes into a Serious Drama. There's an older edit that has one additional funny scene in it, but doesn't look nearly as good. I can see what the film is trying to do but I don't think it quite works. Still worth a look. If there's one of these films that should be remade, it's this one.
• The enormous History of Horror Films filled a lot of gaps in my knowledge.
• I found Rocky Jumped a Park Bench boring and stopped watching it after too long, but I have to admire it as a piece of nerdy completism.
• "The Herbivore" and "Death Puppy" have their moments. I'm not linking directly to them because I'd be linking straight to the movie file.
• Kung Fu Werewolf From Outer Space has a fun fight scene starting around 17:30.
• There's a really good movie inside The Mind That Makes The Matter, but I don't have the critical vocabulary necessary to describe the changes you'd need to make. Also, the really good movie might be Ghostbusters, which already exists. PS: I loved the stop-motion apple.
• The Spread of Malevolence is kind of a similar situation. It's got some great no-budget atmosphere, but it's mostly people wandering around or chasing each other. It's not a good movie in any sense except the sense that it's fun to watch.