FilmMattic

Fighting The Good Fight       A traditional high school film unfurls with less excitement than a trip to the dentist, a dentist, in fact, with credentials best exemplified by this smiling buffoon of Bond lore . Convention elucidates, often blithely, a celebration of Mr. Drab and Mr. Dull, figures whose genetic code reads, in the strictest interpretation: Minutia of mundanity. Boring and banal, let's be honest, are two words deathly undeserving of cinematic treatment. Thankfully, an exhilarated gasp and animated fist pump later, Chris Shimojima's ( Director of Madeleine Zabel, reviewed by yours truly ) newest short, JT vs. the Good Guys , competently circumvents convention, revealing a nontraditional high school film with gusto.

Mad-dy World, Mad-dy World       The world, beginning with the aughts, has been indoctrinated into the far-reaching tentacles of a seismic cultural realignment, byproducts of an impertinent mass consciousness. The ripple effects have decimated doctrines of normalcy, replaced conventions with hysteria, and necessitated an oversaturated media whose lifeblood is celebrity mania. No short film has ever conveyed this sense of, what I'll call, the madness of the media, better than director Chris Shimojima's Madeleine Zabel.