Film: Once Upon a Midnight Dreary

"Art flick" culture has long been in the hands of Hollywood, and the trendy "art" movies often showcase big stars and large budgets.

Enter The B-movie- untouched by the hand (and money) of Hollywood.

The art of the B-movie lies in the minimalist techniques: donated film, dubbed sound, very un-professional acting. However, the true wonder comes from the ingenuity of such techniques. The expensive luxury of sound (no joke) is often side-stepped for a reliance upon the true soul of film: visualization. The simple camera shots are largely unaltered, remaining true to their subject and oftentimes providing a deep realism that showcases the true protoplasmic ticking of the characters.

Welcome to the Carolina Theatre's fourth annual Nevermore Horror, Gothic and Science-Fiction film festival - dedicated to bringing you the weird, the off-color and the never-before-shown-in-North Carolina flicks of the most vibrant, avant-garde obscurity.

This cross-section of the underground highlights the sadistic gleam of the gothic and horror directors and the cleverness of the thrifty science-fiction buff.

If you remain open-minded, you can immerse yourself in the "roots" of film-making and enjoy the gems of these forgotten genres.

I have to spend my entire weekend watching hours of this crap?

Here's my recap of the festival, and in case you're interested, most of these films can be rented at the local Blockbuster:

Did I really watch this? Yeah, and the whole audience, including me, is going to hell.

May

I had been reading about this film on Internet "top ten lists" for the last six months - and I didn't even know what it was.

Unless people don't enjoy plots set within the special effects of good cheap horror, this film should be getting national attention. Angela Bettis is a name to remember - her performace is remarkable and utterly Oscar-worthy.

The Happiness of the Katakuris

Considered to be one of the most avant-garde filmmakers in the world, Japan's Takashi Miike has a laundry list of the most bizarre concoctions of film that have been showcased across the globe.

It's the story of a dysfunctional Japanese family that runs an unsuccessful guest-house, as their guests commit suicide, die while having sex, etc.

What I did not know was that Miike's film tries to transcend the unbreakable boundary between claymation and real camera shots. I don't know if this is the result of some peyote-induced binge, but the site of the characters' heads occasionally superimposed on that of claymation bodies made me woozy. Oh yeah, and it's a musical too (song, dance, and tap) - a diarrhea of nonsense and cross-cultural misunderstandings. Miike is an experience.

Soft for Digging

Soft for Digging defines the message and purpose of the Nevermore festival. Shot by J.T. Petty - a New York University film student - using donated film and a budget of $6,000, this semi-silent film is truly scary and disturbing: something Hollywood directors have been unable to do.

Donnie Darko

Most of us missed this film when it premiered two years ago.

However, a theater filled to the brim during the Super Bowl can attest to the power of Donnie Darko - that it is becoming one of the greatest cult films of the last decade.

Resurrecting the brilliant world of Hitchcock and The Twilight Zone, Darko offers the story of a misunderstood suburban teenager with visions of the apocalypse. At the hands of first-time director Richard Kelly, Jake Gyllenhaal (Darko) is simply amazing. He allows you to look into the soul of his character, and amongst the impossible, I saw something so real, so moving, so incredibly weird and original - it can't be put into words.

I had never left a movie feeling quite the way I did that day.