ShaColby & I were at Videoscope the other day and met a guy, Vijay, who runs a local production company,
Net Effect Media, Inc..
He was there to buy some DVDs (Videoscope has an incredible selection of foreign and cult DVDs for rental and sale)
and had dropped off a DVD of his new movie, Green Card Fever.
The owner of Videoscope, Nona, was very excited, and introduced us, since she knew that I am making short films… she pointed out a DVD they had for rent, “Pink Floyd: The Wall Redux,” which was a short student movie made by one of her friends. Nona supports local filmmakers, and I think that is pretty cool. She has at least ten different local indie directors who rent from her and give her copies of their new movies. Come to think of it, I should make a list of them and post it here.
“Pink Floyd: The Wall Redux” was entirely self-produced and seemingly done mostly on computer… Vijay eyed it with disgust and started dogging on the bad inkjet / color copy that the DVD cover art was printed on, and then mentioned that his was a “real” movie, “on 35 mm and everything,” and not a “home movie” like this one was. I can only imagine what he would think of ours, which was shot on miniDV.
So Shac and I asked Vijay if it was possible to rent
his movie, and he got all flustered… he said that the copy he brought was for watching, not renting, and that if Nona wanted to rent it out he would “cut her a deal.” He seemed interested in our
48 Hour Film Project experience, but apparently only to name-drop some deal he had in the works with Sony to do a similar project. Maybe I misinterpreted somthing, but damn, what an asshole.
His (nonexistent) site is Net Effect Media, Inc., and here’s the movie site:
Green Card Fever. Note the insane usage of Flash… The trailers are a little on the painful side, but maybe it’s just because I’m not into the “corny romance-comedy” genre of Hindi movies.
So I surfed the site a little bit… then my friends surfed the site. And as is their wont, they did a little digging… and a little more digging. Turns out nearly all the reviews for this movie are super bad, but the producers still quoted tiny pieces of them on their site. These guys should work for the Bush Administration. A few examples:
| Reviewer |
Text from their review |
As quoted on the GCF site |
| NYTimes |
“an amiable but highly didactic romantic drama” |
“Anita Gates pronounces … ‘Romantic’.” |
| Village Voice |
“Though it’s high time for a probing drama that illuminates the labyrinth of America’s immigration system, those responsible for Green Card Fever should have their artistic licenses revoked … The film’s problems are too numerous to list, but look for the boom mic at approximately 45m. Racial sensitivity corner: Why make the villainous lawyer a Chinese American (Robert Lin), his corruption supported by like-raced minions?” |
“Ed Park calls it a ‘Probing Drama’.” |
| NY Post |
“Earnest but not terribly original.” |
“V.A. Musetto says ‘Cast & Crew work hard … the result is earnest’.” |
Turns out there is a real show called “EX-treme Dating,” which isn’t exactly the spelling we used, but it still cracks me up… I was worried for a second but it sounds like it’s every bit as bad as our hypothetical show. Although I haven’t heard of the girl having to date a sodomy clown.