This short is featured on the Animation Show Vol. 3 DVD.

Don Hertzfeldt, who helped produce the first three Animation Show theatrical programs in which this film appears, has taken droll sarcasm to a new wonderful level in EVERYTHING WILL BE OK. In the short, Bill is going about his every day, experiencing many of the awkward occurrences that happen to us all. Then he gets ill. Paranoia sets in and he starts to go a little mad. Various people in his life try to help, but what do they know. Life goes on.

Mixing the absurd with the observational, Hertzfeldt crafts an interesting look at illness, exaggerating many of the common feelings and experiences that everyone has. The title alone displays the clichéd niceties that the non-sick try to comfort the ill with. It captures the irony that seeps into the entire production. Hertzfeldt’s stick figure style works so well with the way he makes his films. The delivery of his narration combined with the look and tone fit together like a maddening puzzle that you swear must be missing pieces. Each episode flows one upon each other in the randomness that is life, building to a chaotic conclusion.

Hertzfeldt has made some of the great modern animated shorts including BILLY’S BALLOON and the Oscar-nominated REJECTED. When so many animators never escape their influences, it’s refreshing to see a true auteur in the medium. Hertzfeldt has created a style and world all his own.

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This short is featured on the Animation Show Vol. 3 DVD.

The easiest way to anger the non-adventurous movie watcher is not to show them something shocking, but to show them experimental animation. They become belligerent with what seems to be nonsense and you can watch as the anger consumes them when someone tries to explain the meaning. This could be for many reasons, which I will get to later.

So why do I bring this universal statement up in the discussion of Max Hattler’s experimental short COLLISION? Because the film is a great example of the barrier between those who like experimental film and those who hate it. Hattler’s explosion of bright colors and shapes is timed to a firework-like soundtrack. His use of color and symbols make it fairly easy to read his meaning. They represent the various flags of the world as they mix and meld and explode into a celebration of multiculturalism. The message comes off fairly obvious… at least for me. Someone else might just see a kaleidoscope of pointlessness.

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Recently I caught the new audacious horror comedy TEETH on DVD, so this week’s lineup is dedicated to the age-old combination of giggles and gore. This Weekend’s Film Festival features one of the original horror comedies from the 1930s. There’s a retro-silent horror ballet flick. An originator of the slasher genre, which could be taken as a soap opera satire. A tongue in cheek H.P. Lovecraft adaptation. And let’s not forget a girl power remix of the vagina dentata myth. This isn’t a lineup for the cinematic timid. This is a lineup for those how like blood and could find ironic gory deaths laugh out loud hilarious. It’s a lineup for the twisted or those who want to see another side of cinema that lurks in the shadows and is having a great time there.

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