Flickers on the Wall

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Flickers on the Wall: The Roots of the Next SF Animated Features

By Matthew M. Foster ⋅ May 1, 2009

Big stars, big talent, and even more important for Hollywood, big money are transforming independent shorts into wham-bam features.  Nothing too surprising there.  Many filmmakers construct their short films as calling calls, pitches for paying gigs, and structure those shorts to be the best bits of bigger works, or small segments of them.  But that’s [...]

Flickers on the Wall: Have Two Minutes for Horror?

By Matthew M. Foster ⋅ April 1, 2009

Ghost House Pictures is one of many small horror production/distribution houses that have sprouted up in recent years; however it easily strides past the bargain basement direct-to-DVD marketers, mainly due to two of its founders: Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert of The Evil Dead fame.  With their horror street cred well established, and a minor [...]

Flickers on the Wall: The New West

By Matthew M. Foster ⋅ March 4, 2009

A very young nation has very young folktales, and in the very young nation of the United State, the medium of film arrived in time to tell those tales.  The genre was the western, and for the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, the film western presented the dreams, fears, and morals of the society, generally with [...]

Flickers on the Wall: 10 for 10 From Sundance

By Matthew M. Foster ⋅ February 1, 2009

The snow and bitter cold signal the time for independent film fanatics to seek out the coldest and bitterest place they can find.  That place is Park City in the mountains of Utah, where each year cineastes bundle up and trudge through glittering snow drifts while avoiding skiers, all in the name of the indie [...]

Flickers on the Wall: I’m Dreaming of a Dread Christmas

By Matthew M. Foster ⋅ January 2, 2009

With the winter holiday season coming to an end, it is time for an indie, fantastical Christmas, short film roundup.  Yes, Christmas.  I’d love to add a Kwanzaa film to the mix but has anyone seen one?  Next year, I want at least one pagan solstice flick.  Are you listening filmmakers?  This year, I’d settle [...]

Flickers on the Wall: Getting Your Film into a Festival, Part 2 – Submitting

By Matthew M. Foster ⋅ December 1, 2008

You’ve got your Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia in your hands, though having thought about what festivals want, it is much shorter.  Now, you just need to get it shown.  Obviously, everyone will recognize your brilliance, if only they can see your work.  So stuff a VCR tape, or maybe a digibeta version, into [...]

Flickers on the Wall: Getting Your Film into a Festival, Part 1 – The Film

By Matthew M. Foster ⋅ October 1, 2008

I’m back here at The Fix from my Dragon*Con-instigated hiatus.  Each year I see more short films than I can count as the director of the Dragon*Con Independent Short Film Festival.  They come in, sometimes in boxes of 60, and I dutifully watch each from beginning to end.  With popcorn and candy in hand and [...]

Flickers on the Wall: The Dark Side of Zombies

By Matthew M. Foster ⋅ July 3, 2008

I try, oh Lord I try, to stay away from zombies. But I fail. Their undead paws are into everything, and that just forces me to write about the state of the zombie union. In May’s column, I jumped straight to Zombie Love, a corpse-filled comedy/romance/musical. It doesn’t get any better. However, sometimes you want [...]

Flickers on the Wall: Cinematic Angels

By Matthew M. Foster ⋅ June 1, 2008

I can’t say that I’ve been feeling particularly holy of late, yet I admit to a fascination with angels, and being who I am, a fascination with angels in short film. Those powerful, inexplicable, often death-dealing, messengers of God have had an odd history in cinema. Biblically, they are awe-inspiring, but in movies [...]

Flickers on the Wall: Needing a Little Zombie Love

By Matthew M. Foster ⋅ May 1, 2008

My Blood again is rushing
I feel I might be blushing
My face is turning red
I have never felt so un-undead
In the world of independent short film, no critter pops up its nasty little head more than the zombie. I’m being too conservative. Forget creature films; my completely unreliable survey (I asked me) shows there [...]

Flickers on the Wall: Masters of Horror – Season 2

By Matthew M. Foster ⋅ April 1, 2008

I just can’t keep away from Masters of Horror (my examination of series one begins here). The first season was the finest collection of genre films in over forty years. It is essential viewing for all horror fans, an encyclopedia of monsters, madmen, and fear as presented on-screen in the past half-century. [...]

Flickers on the Wall: Masters of Horror (Part 3)

By Matthew M. Foster ⋅ March 1, 2008

I return for the final time to season one of Masters of Horror. It’s taken me three columns to cover this momentous project, but there were thirteen films; anything shorter would have been negligent. The series was the creation of writer/producer/director Mick Garris, who may not have an impressive directing résumé, but does [...]

Flickers on the Wall: Masters of Horror (Part 2)

By Matthew M. Foster ⋅ February 15, 2008

Last month, I started an examination of Masters of Horror, a short film horror anthology conceived as a direct-to-video project. Broadcast on Showtime and seen by almost no one, all thirteen movies have now been released on DVD, separately and in a box set. The title, or at least the label of “Master,” was a [...]

Flickers on the Wall: Masters of Horror (Part 1)

By Matthew M. Foster ⋅ February 1, 2008

There’s nothing equivalent to the fantastic fiction magazines of literature for film, nothing you can subscribe to in order to get the most exciting and skillfully conceived short movies (or poor ones that somehow got past the slush viewers) each month. There were no Weird Tales, Astounding Stories, or Worlds of IF to shepherd [...]

Flickers on the Wall: A Dead Month

By Matthew M. Foster ⋅ January 1, 2008

January is a dead month. Outside my window the trees are barren, except for a few Georgia pines, dreaming of better days, and the grass displays nothing but shades of brown. The sky is gray, and the only wildlife is a pair of feral cats who’ve decided my porch provides better protection from the [...]

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