PeriklisBegzos

All the things that could have gone wrong with this film (prequel, re-casting etc) thankfully work out amazingly well. George Miller is a master storyteller, he is like a rock opera orchestrator of motion pictures. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in this film that serves style over substance (ie story). It is an action movie but its language harkens back to master storytellers (Buster Keaton and Kurosawa in particular), who knew that everything within a frame and especially movement, is paet of the visual vocabulary of the film. The themes are epic, timeless and archetypal as well as personal, contemporary and quite often political, all at the same time. But, first and foremost, this is a visual feast, one that comes once in a decade (if we are lucky) with the complexity of a (post) modern graphic novel.

A little over 20 minutes, "Judge Minty" chronicles the retirement of the eponymous Mega City Judge and his survival in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Cursed Earth. Apart from a short prologue it is a really long, visually stunning action sequence, bringing to life the gritty universe of the comic book. Edmund Dehn does a terrific job, bringing the old lawman to life with only a number of lines at his disposal. Budgetary limitations aside, it fleshes out characters and setting with strong performances, top-notch Visual SFX and an exemplary sound design. Watched this on a screening at a local Comics Festival (Comicdom Con - Athens 2013). Definitely a short film that should spread out and be seen...

TPB - AFK is a documentary structured like a political thriller and vice versa. It employs traditional film-making conventions (irony, drama, fact presentation) although the means by which it is produced, shot and distributed, are highly unconventional. It chronicles the persecution of the founding members of The Pirate Bay by members an objectively corrupt force. The film remains open-ended which is not only the right choice (dramatically) but also a realistic choice, as the ghosts of copyright infringement will probably haunt us longer than the war on drugs or terror. So, watch this first and pay later (or don't) if you like it, which is a far better deal than most cultural objects require from their audience nowadays...