I should say I'm not a Zappa-ista, nor a virulent anti-Zappa-papa, just don't really connect with him. Evidently most people know of Bickford, the director here, via Zappa. Hey I love L. Shankar, so the Zappa connection is neither a plus or minus.
I didn't really see this as all that violent, or all that sexy...or even all that interesting. The title to me implied a more powerful story, but mostly I think this guy has a dedication to his hobby of claymation, especially in having overwhelming scenes with lots of miniature detail, and I feel like he makes his art as much for himself as anyone else.
And that to me is a huge plus, and likely so for any fan of outsider art/music...but regrettably watching this doesn't really open up a vista into his work.
He does like to have things constantly merging and evolving, so you sort of get clay reincarnation, but after awhile without a message connected, it becomes a bit of a gimmicky trick. I watched most of this with my 7-year old boys, and it basically spurned them on to make some really tiny intricate clay sculptures themselves. Again another plus. Art as an engendering creative and contagious force!
If there is a message about man's eternal addiction to sabotaging or struggling against other men, that kind of glossed by for them, and was not revelatory enough for me to dig in. There is also a sort of post-modern insertion of the author/auteur into the art itself as I believe the Promethean hero who dashes across the scenes is Bickford's alter ego.
You can catch enough of this film on YouTube to see if you would like to watch it in its entirety. I hope more people make their own claymation universes and YouTube them out there. It is creative, even if not quite so mythic. I liked the interview on the extras, Bickford seems authentic and authentically eccentric, and seems to have found his place in the universe. I think that bonus interview is part of a larger documentary on him that I would check out if I ran across it.
5/10 again check YouTube to see what you think first...
-Thurston Hunger
