Coming Attractions

Coming Attractions Independant Reviews

Feature Film
F-Stops

Review by
Matt Hudson
Dog Pile Malamute.cc

Rating:

9 out of 10 Stars

View Trailer

Here's my question for the month. Why the hell isn't F-Stops playing in theaters or, at the very freaking least, sitting on the shelves of video stores for rent and/or sale?

I can venture a guess that is fueled mostly by my dislike of corporate entertainment, and that would be that all the "suits" in charge of Hollywood are some of the stupidest people to draw a breath. Face it, any group of people who would green-light Glitter need to have their severed heads on public display. But I digress... Just as in the case of Lansdown, F-Stops is a great film that has been pushed aside simply because it didn't have corporate entities involved in any part of it. Of course, as of my last reckoning, Lansdown had a distributor deal all but signed, sealed, and delivered, so there is hope. F-Stops is the story of Gabe, a guy fresh from film school, with a tight script and enough passion to make Don Juan look like a slacker. He is captivated with pioneering a new style of filmmaking. All he needs is funding and the spark to set fire to the creativity of his actors. That spark arrives in the form of Gideon, a career criminal who disrupts Gabe and cast while they are filming a robbery. He shows them the light while robbing them and everyone else in the laundry where they are filming. Gabe adds Gideon to the cast after Gideon's early release from jail. He also spices up his approach to his script of an average guy drawn into a band of stick-up men by deciding to have his cast rush in, rob a store, and after catching it all on film, inform all of the bystanders that they had just been part of a film. Armed with a felon, a cache of real guns, and a cameraman who lives in a world seen only through his viewfinder, Gabe and cast hit the road. To tell any more of the story would be unfair. But it's all in there. Fear. Loyalty. Humor. Madness. Gun fights. Heartbreak. Loss. Paul Michael Glaser. And the required poke at Quentin Tarantino. The script by director Jeffery Bassetti and actor Christopher John Fetherolf, who plays Gabe in the film, is lean and fast and anything but simple. They play both sides of the field by jerking you in and out of the story with Paul Michael Glaser giving a presentation about film to film students countered with constant shots from the viewfinder of the camera filming Gabe's picture. So you are being hit with a talk about filmmaking as you watch one being filmed. But the cameraman for Gabe's film records everything from the required shots to behind-the-scenes conversations and conflicts. All of this keeps making the lines between film and documentary and reality become more vague for the characters and for the viewer. If the whole thing wasn't handled in such a straight-forward manner, it would have easily came off as pretentious bullshit, but it stops short of that so the viewer can enjoy the manipulation but not be manipulated by it. And with all that art film stuff flying around, the script still develops its characters so well that every major character takes on a life. Little scenes like the one which Dale (James Formanek) and Ivan (Nick Freeman) are letting spit dribble out of their mouths and then sucking it back in are warm and funny and you can feel the characters closeness. Just pulling off great and believable character interaction in a movie these days is one hell of a feat. Bolstering the script is a cast that hands out solid performances. Even smaller roles like Cynthia (Tracy Downs), the girlfriend of one of the actors in Gabe's cast, comes off as believable as you watch her worry and stress while the story progresses, and she is only on-camera about five minutes for the whole film. The two roles that carry the bulk of the story are those of Gabe and Gideon, and they are handled frightfully well. Chistopher Fetherlof captures Gabe as a director anxious to prove himself and allows himself to go to almost any length to pull off his film. You can see the slow, then rapid crumbling of his character and you almost want to stay on his side even when his passion overwhelms his common sense. Matt Godecker fits so easily in the skin of the felon Gideon that there doesn't seem to be any hint of artifice in his performance. While the other characters are playing at being criminals, Gideon is the real thing, a piece of evil and violence that touches and changes everyone around him without even trying. I could easily go on and on. The look of the film is great. The soundtrack is layered perfectly with the action. The sound is clear and crisp. The pacing is non-stop. It all comes together so well that after I finished watching it for the first time, I walked around the apartment practically giggling to myself and muttering, "Wow, oh wow!" for at least fifteen minutes. Someone find these people a distribution deal. You won't regret helping this movie see the light of day in theaters and video stores. Just do it now, before someone else gets the credit for helping this movie become the success it is waiting to be.

Matt Hudson truly believes that the popularity of The Matrix is a sure sign of the final stage of The Apocalypse. A fan of horror, fantasy, and exploitation movies, Matt contributes film reviews to The Dog Pile on a regular basis.

I managed to snag a pass to the screening of this independent masterpiece and went out of curiosity. I'm really glad I did. If you're a Cardi Tarkington fan, if you loved Cecil B Demented, if you like doing things guerilla style, if you have a sense of humor, this is the film for you.
I don't know if they've gotten distribution yet, but anyone who passes on this film is out of their mind! I really hope it doesn't get reglated to a cult classic or some such nonsense, because it should be seen by the general public.
Ok, enough gushing. What's the movie about? Well, it's about a struggling film school graduate trying to get his first movie done. He starts out doing it in a sort of half-assed guerilla style, but ends up going way more guerilla than he ever imagined. The lines between fiction and reality blur, and it gets extrememly real and extremely fantastic all at once. It's very cool, very entertaining, and very in your face.
No, I wouldn't take my dad to see this movie. Nor would I take my 3 year old niece. All right, I don't actually have a three year old niece, but if I did, we'd be watching 101 Dalmations instead. But they're not the target audience for this 'zine, so I'm not terribly worried. You, dear reader, the one who is reading an indie 'zine on the 'Net, you need to go see this film if it's showing within 100 miles of your home.

SHOWCASE WINNERS ANNOUNCED
(2004-04-05)
The International Cinematographers Guild has announced 11 winners in its Eighth Annual Film Showcase competition. The winning entries were photographed by Harry Box for "Ask Curtis", Michael Chambliss for "F-Stops", Ken Glassing for "A Life for a Life", Anette Haellmigk for "A Single Rose", Rob Kositchek for "Inconvenience Store", Rachael Levine for "Home", Darin Moran for "Ola's Box of Clovers", Vasco Lucas Nunes for "Recycle", Michael Pescasio for "Mrs. Marshall", Christopher Probst for "Descent", and Mark Schwartzbard for "Psychoanalysis Changed My Life". The Showcase will premiere Sunday, April 25, at 3 p.m. at the Directors Guild of America Theater.

"This Showcase is a preview of the future of the art of filmmaking," says National Guild President George Spiro Dibie, ASC. "It demonstrates a deep reservoir of talent in our Guild, which bodes well for the future. The films selected by our judges are all works of art where the cinematographers played important roles in creating entertaining and interesting stories."