Frank wrote on Feb 23^rd, 2012 at 4:15pm:

To be fair, you should see the other guys!  Or not.

Personally, I think Folklore is less a bad movie than one that apparently caught folks at the wrong time, and whatever else you say about it, the cast does work well together; I'd argue that the only other "ensemble" in the running with them was Dimensions.  Besides, from that awards list, it looks like Garen & company were hell-bent on giving anyone who showed up personally or who was half-competent an award.

Which is problematic in itself - it reminds me of the current owners of the Boston Film Festival who appear to be much more interested in having celebrity guests than showing movies.  Garen's weakness appears to be premieres; he boasted about how many world/NA/local premieres the fest had, but, honestly, most of those were not premiering at higher-profile festivals for a reason (The Millennium Bug, In the Renaissance, Neander-Jin, Sol, and Time Again were all pretty awful).  I tend to figure that the festival would be better off booking some good things that played Fantasia/Fantastic Fest/Sundance than a bunch of terrible premieres, and not just because I paid actual money to see those things.

Of the stuff that played the festival, The Last Push would have been a pretty great finale for the Marathon in the place of Folklore; folks should seek that out when it eventually gets some sort of VOD/DVD distribution.

Jay Seaver wrote on Feb 22^nd, 2012 at 8:37pm:


Thanks, Jay.  I think that did get past me.

I've been overthinking "Dimensions" and I had this thought.  Stephen appears in the opening sequence as the Professor, as an old man.  Why is he there?  It's not to take the jump-rope, obviously, because he doesn't take it in the version of the scene as we see it play out — Conrad goes on to drop it down the well.  So could this Stephen have come back to prevent Victoria from dying in some other way?  If so, it was futile: the jump-rope goes down the well and she still dies.  Which raises the question, in the scene at the end of the movie, is Victoria going to live, or will she die in yet another way?  Is there an endless chain of Stephens, doomed to travel back in time to try to save an endless chain of Victorias?

That depressing speculation doesn't really fit with the many-worlds idea expressed in the film.  But I am curious exactly what Original Stephen was doing there.  (...Goes looking for an email address for the filmmakers...)

Frank wrote on Feb 24^th, 2012 at 1:08am:

See, I think that's unnecessarily harsh.  It's a shotgun movie, tossing out 100 gags in the hope that 40 or so work, but to call it "terrible" strikes me as an exaggeration.  There's bits that work, and while it may strike you as damning with faint praise, I think the cast works well together, despite having stretches without anything interesting to do.  Even when gags don't work, it's not because the various actors aren't meshing.

kirok wrote on Feb 24^th, 2012 at 12:53pm:

It's not, actually; most writers just don't bother to fully sketch out the cause and effect, or vacillate between working a closed loop or a changeable future.  There's no reason not to have tight plotting in a time travel movie other than audiences letting writers and directors get away with it.

(Plus, I sort of get the idea that this one had a bunch of half-explored ideas meant to create deliberate ambiguity)

Anyway, from what I could tell, Stephen & Conrad weren't elderly because they'd hung around for years, but because traveling through the portal is damaging (remember Robert?).    As to why they just took the jump rope instead of doing something more proactive, I'm guessing they did in other timelines - the 1921 at the beginning is "one of many", and I suspect they traveled into another, making the 1921 - 1936 period the "tangle of threads" of the subtitle, as opposed to a loop.

Jay Seaver wrote on Feb 24^th, 2012 at 1:42pm:

Yeah, kinda like a shotgun wedding.

Re: Dimensions, it was a reasonably enjoyable film, though I felt it worked better as a period piece or romance than a time travel film. It kind of felt like a poor man's Somewhere in Time to me.

I found the relationship between the children pretty unbelievable. Well, throwing the jump rope down the well I believed but the kissy face goosey gander stuff, do kids ever act like that in real life?

I wondered too about taking the jump rope, it didn't seem like it would prevent the death. The little creep would have thrown something else of hers down there. It's kind of like the best scene in the remake of The Time Machine where (SPOILERS) Guy Pearce is able to go back and save his girlfriend only to have her run over by a carriage while he is buying her flowers. Watching that unfold through the window behind him made me laugh so hard. Nobody else was laughing though. Am I sick?

But compared to most of our indie premieres it was a decent movie. Pretty to look at certainly.

L.A. Connection wrote on Feb 24^th, 2012 at 12:03am:


I will take some loss in quality if we are able to open up titles found only on DVD/Blu-Ray and if we had a better projector.  Hell, we have shown some awful film prints over the years.  I don't suggest an all dvd  thon but one or two films not otherwise available would be fine with me and probably most of the audience.  There are a handful of purists who won't have it any other way but it's time to let that go and open up film availability.  Hell, we are having a tough time getting 35mm prints from anywhere but private sources.  I say go for it.  Major Tom and I were discussing this at the end of the thon.

For the first time in a long time I left before the last film to catch a bus back to NYC (the last time was weather related, and leaving early ended up saving me major headaches).
From all that I've read here it was a good thing.
As it was, I was left with the soft, comforting glow of a successful 'Thon, with no misses to speak of.
After watching that trailer I thank the scheduling powers above for sparing me the experience that was Folklore.

R_F_Fineman wrote on Feb 25^th, 2012 at 5:49pm:

Hey, sorry but it was there and I couldn't resist.

I thought the acting wasn't so bad. It did seem very improvish. I was wondering how tightly scripted it was. I think the same group given better material could be much better. I agree with others that it could have made a nice short.

Except the alien twins who seemed not at all alien and very much annoying. I thought the time traveler had potential but...it never really took off. I'm still not sure what to think of the shape shifting spider woman.

I think another part of the problem is that it's a bit too far afield for a Sci-Fi marathon, it veers too far into fantasy. I know we stretch the definitions and I often don't mind that. But it only works when something is really good. I could see this playing well at Arisia. Maybe.

The only movie of this sort that really seemed to fly was Invasion/Top of the Food Chain. And I honestly can't tell you why that worked when so many others failed.