Rev it up!

Perth readers, rejoice!  The Revelation Film Festival is almost with us for another ten days of utterly strange, beguiling, and occasionally heart-rending cinema. The Astor Cinema, noble antique movie house in Mount Lawley, will again play host to the one film festival that really counts in my book. A great theatre, and I’m not just saying that because it’s within walking distance of home.

So, let’s have a look at what’s on offer…

Stingray Sam is absolute number one on my list. Cory McAbee’s first film The American Astronaut just blew me away at Rev a few years ago; it screened just a few months after the last (or second-last) Star Wars film. One film was made with money, and the other film was made with ideas, and you can guess which was which, can’t you? TAA didn’t so much thumb its nose and the conventions of the science fiction movie – or indeed, movies generally – as ignore them. It just rolled on as if such conventions didn’t exist.  I mean, when one man says “That’s him” and two other men follow our hero into the bathroom, you know what’s coming next, don’t you?

No. You don’t.

Cory is actually going to be at Rev this year with Stingray Sam. Yay! I’ll get to shake his hand and tell him how much I love his work. Hopefully I won’t gush like the people in that scene from Stardust Memories.

The Animation Showcase has become a regular Rev feature. It’s an unofficial successor to the annual movie length collections that were appearing annually a while back. In these days of computer graphics, it’s good to know that there a few traditionalists prepared to move clay models a sixteenth of an inch at a time.

And while I’m not a great Doors fan, I do have a couple of their albums in my library. But what attracts me to When You’re Strange is that photo of Jim Morrison smiling, almost shyly, for the camera. In every other photo I’ve ever seen of Jim he was surly and sulking. Maybe he had a lighter side too.

And there are more, many more… Metropia, Cropsey, Disco and Atomic War – it’s a banquet, and I’m determined to stuff myself stupid!