Satan’s cooool. Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival has come and gone, and now that I’ve had the weekend to ruminate on the fest, I’m ready to give you my picks for best of the fest. PUFF 2 was an excellent four days of genre and cult programming that I was delighted to be invited to again.…
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PUFF 2017: Day 4 Focuses on the Local and the Exceptionally Weird (31 Days, Day 2)
[Editor’s Note: Garrett’s PUFF Day 4 and Best of the Fest posts (today and tomorrow) are also running as part of out 31 Days of Halloween, because there is sufficient Halloweenyness in PUFF to genuinely make it appropriate. Thanks to the folks from PUFF for letting us participate in said Halloweenyness for a second straight…
PUFF 2017: Day 3 – Real Frights and Gaslights
We do this just for you. Listen PUFF, I know that’s not true, but goddamn do you make it feel like it’s true. Day 3 of Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival was jam packed, not just with movies, but a crowd that hung around all day. And boy were you rewarded if you did – the…
PUFF 2017: DAY 2 in Review… Smoke ‘Em If Ya Got ‘Em
I guess that makes two shit-demons in cinematic history. The Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival is the only place you can say that sentence directly to the distributor of a movie you just watched. And Day 2 of PUFF 2 provided me just such an opportunity. I arrived a few minutes early and was immediately offered…
PUFF 2017: Highlights from This Year’s Short Film Crop
Signal to Noise (2017) Dir. Jarret Blinkhorn Signal to Noise feels very much like a proof-of-concept short version of a potential splatter feature in the vein of Joe Begos (who director Jarret Blinkhorn has worked with previously and gets a special thanks in the closing credits). Following a radio broadcast from the president, massive numbers…
PUFF 2017: Heavy Metal Fun and Brutality, DEATH METAL Be Thy Name
Death Metal plays tonight at PUFF, along with feature films Imitation Girl and Terrifier. Get tickets to the film or a full pass at FilmFreeway! This is a short film, 5 minutes to be exact, and it goes by in a blink. However, the fast pace and short runtime don’t stop this from being one…
Terror TWOsdays: Short on Runtime, But Not on Gore
I’m a week late on posting this, but the movies are good and I didn’t want to wait till next week. So, here are two recommendations of wildly different short films. One hilarious horror comedy short and one disturbing avant-garde short, the two films are both interesting glimpses of the creative minds at work in…
Over at FGBFF, We’re DYING OF LAUGHTER: A Short Film Block Highlight Reel
A Tricky Treat (USA/Canada, 2015) Dir. Patricia Chica I first saw Patricia Chica’s delightfully macabre short A Tricky Treat back in 2015, when it was going by the title Ripe N’ Bloody in a slightly truncated version for the 2015 Women In Horror Blood Drive PSA. I say slightly truncated, because even in its full…
SWMFIFF 2017 Short Film Roundup
Unfortunately, none of our staff live outside of North America, with most of us residing of what Borat would call the “U-S-and-A”. This means that we weren’t able to get our asses down under to Tasmania’s premier film festival, the amazing Briony Kidd’s Stranger With My Face International Film Fest. Yet, we were lucky enough…
CFF 2017 Best of the Fest… as Far as I’m Concerned: MAYHEM and FEEDING TIME
I had the pleasure of taking in a good chunk of this year’s Chattanooga Film Fest and have enjoyed virtually everything I saw (appreciated Ape Sodom, but I can’t say I “enjoyed” that one). However, one feature film and one short stood out above the pack as the ones I’d probably revisit most often and/or…
CFF 2017 Presents Casey T. Malone’s Short Documentary DEAD MAN’S CARNIVAL
I’ll be honest. This short film is less entertaining to me than it is enticing. To me, it plays very much like a long form commercial, highlighting all of the best parts of what the actual carnival act in the film’s title is about. A long form documentary on Milwaukee’s Dead Man’s Carnival feels warranted…
CFF 2017 Presents APE SODOM: A Fable of Actual WTF
“A Post-Consumerist Fable”… I mean… I guess so… This short is 10-15 minutes of What-The-Fuckery that I can’t do a whole lot of justice in describing. Rather than attempt so, I decided to present to you some of my notes from watching… in no particular order: This is weird… and slow… Oh, maybe not slow,…
Don’t Look Back into the Sun: Comedy Shorts at BUFF 2017
Chicken Tuesdays (USA, 10 min.) Dir. Brandon Daley A man in a bunny suit takes his internet date to a photography competition in Brandon Daley’s inspired and hilarious Chicken Tuesdays, though that plot description doesn’t do justice to the inspired lunacy on display here. Wonderfully acted and filmed, with a dreamlike edge reminiscent of the…
You’ve Been Warned: Doug’s Look at BUFF 2017’s TRIGGER WARNING Short Film Block
Fucking Freak (USA, 15 min.) Dir. Salamo Manetti-Lax A screaming migraine of a short designed to offend and confound in equal measure, Fucking Freak packs plenty of obnoxious action into its frenetic 15 minutes. It’s critique of mass media culture feels a bit half-baked, and a final surreal musical number falls flat, but the bad-taste…
And the Winner is… Oscar Live Action Short Films
And now we move on to the Short Film – Live Action nominees, and we’re here to help with your Oscar Pool ballot. We’ve continue our coverage of the short-form nominees and offer you some more predictions and even more hedging. This year, the nominees for Best Live Action Short Film are as follows: Ennemis…
31 Days, Day 25: Castel’s THE PUPPET MAN Hits Brooklyn Horror Film Fest
Jacqueline Castel’s The Puppet Man harkens back to 80’s style slashers very much in the vein of John Carpenter. This is no accident. John Carpenter not only wrote the score to The Puppet Man, he also has a cameo as a cab driver in the 9 min short. Full of style and atmosphere, The film…
31 Days, Day 24: BHFF Catches Themselves a Mermaid
The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival was a few weeks ago, and I had the pleasure of reviewing this short film for the site. This is probably one of the best horror shorts that I have ever had the pleasure of viewing. The premise of The Man Who Caught a Mermaid surrounds a man with a…
31 Days, Day 7: PUFF 16 Opens with Some SMALL TALK
Paired with a screening of CRSHN ON U (a 2-minute short described as a “a stylish EDM nightmare date” that you can watch right here) Small Talk marked the opening of the very first Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival, or PUFF. Small Talk is a decent little genre short in which a phone sex operator starts…