Monthly Archives: October 2015

San Jose International Short Film Festival: The Best of the Rest

Posted on October 27, 2015 | Leave a comment

I’m writing this two days after the end of the festival, my mind still reeling from the sheer number and variety of movies I saw. It’s simply impossible to have seen everything, and my apologies go to many no-doubt worthy entries which I didn’t get to see.

Here’s a few of my favorites from the final two days of the show:

Papa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgynUed6bKs

An animated film by Natalie Labarre which beautifully captures the joys and frustrations of a guy raising a little girl. How do you ever breach the gap between the world of tea parties and stuffed animals with the adult world of work and responsibility? With a lot of love. Beautifully told and heartfelt.

Barrow

An incredibly ambitious Australian thriller that marries CSI style forensics with an intelligent ghost story.

The Smiling Man

Saw this one as part of the late night Saturday horror block, and A.J. Briones’ little 7 minute film is definitely the stuff nightmares are made of.  The only thing I could wish was a little more of a back story or reason for the action, although the titular character’s performance alone is enough to disturb.

Honorable Mentions/Well Worth Seeing

Dave – A comedy about a many who wakes up after an accident to discover a daughter he never met at his bedside. Awkward!

Carry On  – Overall winner of the festival – An Austrian movie about an elderly couple who scratch out a farm living and have to come to the decision to put down an old donkey. A bit bleak for my taste, but a great film nonetheless with pitch-perfect acting and technique.

The Holy Cave – A high school sex comedy from Spain, wherein a couple of outcasts with parents who travel a lot decide to become popular by turning their home into a hook up spot.

Love is Blind – A UK comedy about a cheating girlfriend who’s in the midst of a fling when her deaf boyfriend returns home.

Moving On – Imagine finding out the relationship is over when a moving service shows up at your door, hired by your former paramour, to get you and your stuff out of the house. Good concept, sharply executed, with a nice appearance by Robin Lord Taylor (Gotham’s “Penguin”) as one of the movers.

First Date – Another nice Australian comedy of sheer awkwardness and misunderstanding by Rob Innes. Won in the comedy category at the festival, but personally I thought it could have been funnier if they’d pushed the material just a little farther. (It was awkfward-funny instead of South Park-style-“Omigod I can’t believe what I’m hearing”-funny).

Enfilade – A minimalistic, and unique-looking film from Australia’s David Coyle. Imagine Cube done by someone who’s played too much Portal.

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Best of Day 2: San Jose International Short Film Festival

Posted on October 24, 2015 | Leave a comment

I’m beginning to come to the conclusion that the easiest form of short film to do successfully is comedy. Although there were exceptions, most of the films I saw on the second day struggled at least somewhat with the various demands of establishing characters, setting, and an emotional arc–particularly in the dramatic and sci-if genres.

That said, here are some of the best:

Joe Gonzalez’s story of a man who hasn’t been lucky in love, and has launched on a rather novel way to gain revenge. Funny, outrageous, and a movie that nevertheless has a heart.

A King’s Betrayal

From David Bornstein, a real gem of a short that manages both comedy and existential angst from the perspective of a Piñata.

Getting In

An all-too-relatable tale of a guy who gets into the college of his dreams on a sham squash scholarship (he ran the odds of a full ride as a star academic student (7%) against that of the most feeble of athletic scholarships (47%) and took the sensible route). But it all went south when an “injury” caused him to lose the squash scholarship and he was left with over $20,000 in tuition for a semester with only days to pay it. So extreme measures went into play…

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Great stuff, managing an entire 80s college movie in a mere 13 minutes. Director Stian Hafstad also has a terrific time sending up all the “hacker” motifs in Hollywood while doing some very clever plotting.

Takanakuy

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Austin Kolodney’s hilarious rendition of an American family at Christmastime that discovers the Peruvian holiday of “Takanakuy” wherein grievances are settled with fistfights. Imagine The Good, the Bad and the Ugly crossed with National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. With a bit of Enter the Dragon thrown in for good measure.

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San Jose International Short Film Festival – Best of Day 1

Posted on October 22, 2015 | Leave a comment

Day 1 was the red carpet opening along with a revue of past favorites, followed by a round of comedy shorts from recent years.

My favorites so far:

“Fool’s Day” 

Trailer (some spoilers):

Full movie:

Comments: Oh. My. God. This was wonderful, and very dark stuff. Absolutely brilliant comedy filmmaking by Cody Blue Snider. I only wish I could get this on disc to show off to friends.

Status Update: A Facebook Fairy Tale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxWMZdBMi1Q

Hilarious, snarky, and NSFW British movie from Dan Reisinger.

Chronicles Simpkins will Cut Your Ass
image

Brendan Hughes has a hilarious (and evil) take on the mean kids terrorizing the school playground… except this time, it’s elementary school and the gang of toughs is led by a pig-tailed trash-mouth named Chronicle Simpkins. It’s that rare short that starts out funny and gets funnier and funnier.

The Answers

A man dies and gets answers to all his questions about his life. A great premise, strong performances, tight plotting and a compelling emotional arc–everything a short film should be.

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Error Prevention is Way Better than a Cure when it Comes to .Net Error Handling

Posted on October 5, 2015 | Leave a comment

Here’s a fun little .Net speed optimization I found out today:

(In both of these “Reader” is a DataReader which I’m using to loop through a set of database records.)

Code #1:

dim myValue as string

While Reader.Read()
  Try
     myValue = Reader("FieldWhichMayNotExist")
  Catch
     myValue = "This is a default value"
  End Try
end While

And here’s Code #2:

dim myValue as string

dim fieldExists as Boolean = 
FigureOutIfFieldExists(Reader, "FieldWhichMayNotExist")

While Reader.Read()
  if fieldExists then
     myValue = Reader("FieldWhichMayNotExist")
  else
     myValue = "This is a default value"
  end if
End While

So, what’s the big difference? The first one traps for the field not existing and inserts a default value if so; and the second one wastes a bunch of time going through a routine to see if the field exists, then loops through and uses the result of that first scan to use either the field value or the default value accordingly.

You might think that the two would run in similar amounts of time–or maybe even Code #1 would be a little faster, since it didn’t waste a few precious milliseconds scanning to see if the field exists.

But here’s the shocker:  Code sample #2 runs about 20 times faster than code sample #1, since it doesn’t need to deal with the whole .Net exception architecture. In the case of the actual code upon which this was based, it meant the difference between being able to insert 630,000 records in around 100 seconds, vs. more than an hour.

Exception handling: it’s more expensive than you think–particularly inside loops. Prevention in this case was worth 20 times more than a cure.

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