REVIEWS
"Oat-Meal"
is a surrealist, live action, eight minute short about a woman who slips poisoned
bug balls into her husband's breakfast cereal. The oatmeal is then consumed (after
it sprouts a face and pleads, "Eaaaaaat meeeeeeee") amid fulsome slurping
and mashing and smacking of lips. Said husband keels over - and that, believe
it or not, is just the beginning. Waked-Out, imaginative and impossible to follow,
don't try too hard. Just enjoy it.
Albany
Film Festival
- October 95
|
Colorful,
goofy and with eye-popping effects, "Oat-Meal" will be a favorite among
film lovers with a fetish for bold images and envelope pushing, shoestring-budget
technical gymnastics. This surreal musical fantasy doesn't have a straight forward
plot, but instead playfully pays homage to an eclectic cross-section of art and
cinema, from the Jean Cocteau surrealist film "Blood of a Poet" to German
Expressionism to "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". Even better, Eckstein
shows she's as good with sound as she is with image in this nearly dialogue-free
film. Funny, memorable and enjoyable.
Metropolitan
Film Festival
- February 96
|
The
festival at Bumbershoot highlights all manner of stylistic interpretations. Perhaps
the weirdest festival offering is Relah Eckstein’s "Oat-Meal", a semi-animated
crazy quilt of Surreal characterization and super stylized symbolism. It's the
kind of film you stumble across and are so weirded out by that you have no choice
but to want to see it again. There's not really a story, exactly, as much as a
collage of strangeness and great colors, wherein a man's oatmeal is poisoned with
hallucinogenic bug balls by his treacherous Chambermaids and fashion conscious
Wife. He stumbles through a Dali-esque house full of living paintings. The film
features stuff like a human face in a bowl that spits food onto a spoon, and a
bizzaro world fashion show with a Tiffany clock hoop skirt. It also features two
Go-Go's (Gina Schock and Jane Wiedlin), as if all the other stuff wasn’t weird
enough.
Bumbershoot
1 Reel
Film Festival
- August 96
|