Hellraiser Prophecy
Holy crap this was bad. I’ve avoided fan films for this long, so why did I watch this one? Oh yeah – I’ll watch anything in the Hellraiser series. I’m sure this guy was proud of his fan script, trying to tie the Leviathan thing from Hellraiser 2 together with the lead character who I don’t remember from Hellraiser 4 and introducing Lucifer himself into the Hellraiser world for a collision of different hells. That’s all fine and good – the mistake was to actually shoot the thing, with dismal actors who stumble over their lines and no sense of skill or vision behind the camera, just some series-aping tribute bits with the chains and some good makeup and costumes on the cenobites. Guess I’m not sorry I watched it (only 20 minutes long) but I won’t be checking out the hour of DVD bonus features.

Flowers and Trees
First technicolor cartoon AND first oscar-winner for best animated short (probably no coincidence) is a disney “silly symphonies” musical. Two trees (a nasty gnarled one and a strong young one) compete for a beautiful girl tree, and there’s a forest fire and singing and stuff. Like a popeye episode, but with plants.

Super Mario Movie
Clever: guy hacks a super mario bros. cartridge and turns it into a “movie” installation piece. It’s over-long at 15 minutes, but cute. The “plot” is that Mario is trapped inside an old game cart in a closet somewhere while the code is starting to break down. Like Rejected, but in 8-bit.

Hyas and Stenorhynchus & Love Life of the Octopus by Jean Painlevé
These are a lot cooler looking than I thought they’d be. The Yo La Tengo music works fine – I was going to try synching up the live versions, but I don’t suppose exact timing matters much in this case. Katy is grossed out by the idea of octopus sex.