Transylmania

Transylmania

  • I've already seen it, and loved it. Can't wait to see it again.

    Votes: 1 16.7%

  • I have my tickets in hand. So excited I may wet myself.

    Votes: 4 66.7%

  • I'm standing in line to buy my tickets.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Making plans to see it a second time.

    Votes: 1 16.7%
  • Total voters
    6
I'd have to say the "T-Mania" viewing experience sits somewhere between the Catherine Wheel and the Crocodile Shears, in terms of pain and suffering.

Waterboarding is child's play.
 
And another note to add…

When I watch a movie like this, I'm not judging it against "Citizen Kane" or "Battleship Potemkin" or using some film-school textbook. No, I simply judge based on what I feel the filmmaker's collective intent was in making the film. What were they trying to do, and did they actually do it?

Take, for example, "Paranormal Activity." You can strip away all the low-budget nonsense and marketing hype. The movie's intent was to scare and to provide a few goosebumps. It did that (at least once for me). So, the movie succeeded in it's intent, but not to the extent that would make it a good or great movie.

Conversely, take a film like "The Hurt Locker." It's intent was to put us in the position of the IED squad in Iraq, to feel what they feel. Mission most certainly accomplished, to the point that it stands as the best film I've seen all year.

The intent of "Transylmania" is to make us laugh. And it does not.

Any film that, fifteen minutes into it, has me calculating just how much money they spent on celluloid for both shooting and printing, is a failure of epic, no, monumental proportions.
 
The DVXUser Bump!

The DVXUser Bump!

Okay, so as promised, I went to www.boxofficemojo.com to check the daily numbers for "Transylmania" and what do I find for Thursday?


Daily Gross: $1,708
Change: +10.4% (over Wednesday)
Per Theater Average: $14 (on 118 screens)


Now, this may not seem like anything to get too excited about, after all, variety.com says "Avatar" landed $3.5 million in just its midnight showings. But you can't compare the two films, as one was clearly blowing minds with 3-D technologies and a $400 million budget, while the other was…well…just blowing.

Look a little deeper and you'll see The Truth.

All of the above numbers are an improvement over the day before! While other comedies like "The Hangover," "The Invention of Lying" and "The Blind Side" were posting declines, "Transylmania" was moving up. In fact, it swapped places with "Whiteout" in the daily box office standings.

What does this mean?

It means that, clearly the $40 spent for four of us to see this movie made a difference, perhaps THE difference. In what will certainly be the last night this film spends in domestic theaters, we sent it out in style.

Call it "The DVXUser Bump."

The question now is…which movie will we "bump" next?
 
You're like a cop trying to get a statement.
I'm trying to get over the trauma... and you're forcing me to relive every detail.


Not cool.
(I'll work on it tonight)
 
stephenmick said:
Waiting patiently for reviews from Ott and the Wookie.

Well………?
Click to expand...

My write up is coming along well and will hopefully be up later today.
I had no idea I had so much to say about this movie.

Not sure anyone wants to read it - but I think I can safely say that a more serious examination of 'Transylmania' will probably never be written.
 
TRANSYLMANIA: An examination of the work of Scott & David Hillenbrand
(part 1 of 2)

"I've never walked out of a movie in my life, and I don't plan to start now"

An hour before the movie started we were already discussing a possible exit strategy. To say we didn't expect much from the movie is an understatement, given the reviews that had come before us. But regardless of how it played out, I meant what I said. I was determined to give this film my attention for the full running time, beginning to end. And, to be honest, as much as we may have joked during dinner as to how poor the reviews have been and how low the box office returns were, I secretly thought to myself that we may be surprised to find it wasn't that bad at all. Surely no movie could be as bad as this had been built up to be. It had just become hip to hate on it, that had to be it. And with that naive thought fresh in my head we headed off to the theater for what would most definitely be the final theatrical screening of 'Transylmania.'

At this point I could spend some time detailing the reaction from the staff when Mick purchased the tickets, or our joy at finding we had the theater entirely to ourselves. I could even go on to talk about the projectionist talking on a radio to whom I assume was a manager, probably surprised that they actually had to run the film. But I won't go into those things. Instead, let's get straight to the film itself.

I've struggled to find the words to describe this film. It would be quite easy to sit here and throw jabs at the Hillenbrands, in the same way it's easy for grade school bullies to make fun of the fat kid in class. But I don't want to do that. I don't want to be a bully. Besides, who am I to throw punches? I'm not the one with a film in the theaters...right? I'm more interested in trying to figure out how the kid got obese in the first place. Or, in this case, what series of events led to the creation of something like 'Transylmania'? Just think about this for a second. We have, at this very moment, the greatest technology and most vast knowledge the human race has ever had access to. It seems that our potential as a people is limited only by our imaginations. Unfortunately, in the case of 'Transylmania' the 'imagination' at work seemed to be quite the bottleneck. So I'm left wondering - why? Why does this film exist?

I have to give the Hillenbrand's credit for one thing - they definitely know how to set the tone of a film. Within the first minute of 'Transylmania' you have a very solid idea of what you're in for. No middle ground, no question. Nothing sets the mood like a pantless man shaking his wang for a webcam girlfriend, while his buddies take turns shoving weed stuffed condoms into their asses. Hats off to them for coming out swinging. Cap it all off with a laptop slammed shut on said wang, and you've got a solid tone setter.

"We're not going to make it all the way through this movie, are we?" came the voice of Mick from the row behind me.

The opening credits hadn't even rolled yet.

The film tells the story of a group of friends studying abroad for a semester in Romania. They stay in an old castle which also happens to be home to an old vampire who also happens to look identical to one of the college kids. And, as you can imagine, hijinks ensue. These "hijinks" are essentially the bulk of the film. The movie plays as one gag after another, a series of sometimes seemingly random events, as though someone simply filmed a brainstorming session of all the things one could possibly put into a movie like this, without regard to character, consistency, or plot. In fact, I believe the lead actress, Jennifer Lyons, said it best in a recent interview:

"I think TRANSYLMANIA is this collage of all the funny, kind of horror-comedy-action films from our childhood. There are so many things where “that reminds me of that.” It turns you into a kid. You get pulled back into your childhood. A lot of it reminded me of older Steve Martin comedies and Mel Brooks movies."
Click to expand...

And she's right, it feels like a collage of references.
It makes you feel like a child again - helpless and confused.
And it also makes you think of other films you'd rather be watching.

The problem with collage is that the whole needs to create something new. Taking a step back and looking at a collage it should add something to the landscape which it's pulling its material from. Otherwise, what's the difference between a collage and pile of disorganized and random clippings? And that brings us to what I would consider to be the biggest problem with Transylmania - it simply doesn't ring true. There is zero authenticity to it.

Yeah, I know, I'm starting to sound a bit didactic here. "Hey, isn't the the same movie you said had guys shoving weed in their asses?" Yes, it is. But that is still no excuse (and let me clarify that this is being written by a guy who, in the words of Homer Simpson, still can't say the word 'Titmouse' without giggling like a school girl).

Simply because a film's comedy aims low does not mean we should expect (or accept) any less from it's execution. Low brow comedy is not the problem, it's the craftsmanship behind it that is the problem. Look at 'Something About Mary,' for example. It's difficult to find a film with more low brow moments than a woman using ... you know what... as hair gel, or a man getting his 'franks and beans' stuck in his zipper on prom night. These are moments that, when described on the page without context could have easily found a home in something like 'Transylmania.' But in one case they work, and in the other they simply do not. In one film you are willing to suspend disbelief, and the other you simply can not.

The reason for this disparity to me seems clear (though the solution may not be). In the case where low brow comedy works it's because we actually care about the characters involved. A guy getting his junk caught in a zipper works in one film because we care about Ted (Ben Stiller), we've come to be invested in his struggle. We identify with him, and we so we can laugh at ourselves when he is put into these horribly awkward situations. We want to see him succeed. Even going back to the roots of slapstick comedy you see the same thing. There is a reason Harold Lloyd isn't as lauded as Chaplin and Keaton today. Sure, Chaplin and Keaton were incredibly talented at falling down - but first and foremost they were able to make us care about their characters. In the case of 'Transylmania' the characters seem like vacant vessels, barely sketched out past their sitcom-like quirky details that are just enough to keep us from forgetting who is who (oh, I get it, that's the jock, that's the ladies man, that's the guy who wears sunglasses... etc). A guy who wears sunglasses is not a character... he's just a guy with sunglasses on.
 
TRANSYLMANIA: An examination of the work of Scott & David Hillenbrand
(part 2 of 2)

And that brings us to the dialogue in the movie (which is plentiful). The dialogue does nothing but hurt the believability of the characters and the situations they are in. David Mamet once wrote, 'no one opens their mouth without a reason,' meaning that if a character speaks it's because he wants something. Following that line of logic the only conclusion I can draw is that the characters in 'Transylmania' want nothing more than to hear themselves talk. Motivations are paper thin, if existent at all. Often times throughout the film the dialogue plays out more like visual description for the blind than actual conversation. The old adage "show don't tell" is definitely not at play here. Every action is narrated, every joke is explained, every thought is said aloud. Honestly, I don't recall ever having seen another film where so many people talked to themselves. In essence the delivery of exposition is simply lazy. Worse than that, it is often redundant, telling us information we have already seen or are currently seeing on screen. But why take the time to get information across via a juxtaposition of otherwise uninflected images when you can simply tell the audience what they need to know? That's why we have sound, right?

But the dialogue problems don't end there. Not only is the dialogue plentiful in 'Transylmania,' it is also all of the same flavor. Were it not for the different (unbelievable) accents in the film there would be little way to tell which character was speaking. Everyone sounds the same. The dialogue serves only to deliver either information or jokes. It does not serve, as it should, to help define and shape the characters as individuals. If you think I'm asking too much of a movie in this genre, take a look at American Pie or, again, Something about Mary, or to a lesser extent something like Blazing Saddles. All of these films rely on low brow comedy for their laughs, but they still manage to shape a unique voice for their characters which helps to make the world they inhabit believable to the audience. I once read a quote from Neil Simon who said that when he's finished writing a draft of a play he goes through his dialogue and checks to see if any line could be easily transposed to another character. If he finds one that can he'll either rewrite it or cut it. Were that same technique taken to 'Transylmania' we would have been left with nothing more than a blank page.

And this, to me, is the core issue with 'Transylmania.' It is a film which exists only to deliver the "comedic" moments. Behind the drug smuggling humor, the hump backed girl, the sadistic little person, the horse farts, the dick jokes, the sheep & goat ball eating, the purposely overdone blood squirts... there is nothing. Not once are we given a reason to care about any of these characters, and as a result we don't care what happens to them. And, by extension, we don't care about the film. The entire film plays out like one of those films you might see a clip of in other films - like a clip of a sitcom on a sitcom. It is the idea of an idea... a parody of something that doesn't really exist. This is the kind of film that people think "other people" want to see. The problem is, as the box office has shown, that simply doesn't work.

And that brings me to my original question - why does 'Transylmania' exist? And how on earth did it wind up on over one thousand screens? Before seeing the movie I didn't know much about the Hillenbrand's other than the fact that I had them to thank for 'King Cobra,' which I had seen on the SciFi channel a year earlier. And, I have to admit here, that from watching both 'King Cobra' and 'Transylmania' I jumped to conclusions as to what they must be like. Given their body of work I had assumed that they would be a couple of brothers who went to film school, possibly had some industry connections, and simply wanted to have some fun making movies. I had assumed they probably did not take themselves or the craft of filmmaking very seriously. And, if I'm being perfectly honest, I had kind of assumed that they were probably not very well educated or intelligent. But having now read quite a few interviews with them I can say that I was dead wrong on just about all of those assumptions. I was pleasantly surprised, yet puzzled, to find them to be very well read, intelligent, articulate, and knowledgable filmmakers. They don't shy away from making references to various Shakespeare works, referencing well known (and not so well known) films from the past, and discussing dramatic structure. They seem to be well read and well versed in film history as well as theater. So that leaves me wondering, how did these two men wind up making the film I just finished seeing? It doesn't seem to add up.

There are a couple of things here that I think come into play. I have a hard time believing that the Hillenbrand's honestly find the gags in 'Transylmania' to be funny. I also have a hard time believing that they themselves care about the characters they took the time to put on screen. My best guess is that they are making films for some perceived audience segment they believe is out there, an audience that they themselves are not a part of. I've worked on films like that before, and I used to think there was some truth to the idea of making something that people 'want to see.' I have had a producer tell me before "We're not making the movie we want to see, we're making what the audience wants to see." The result of that line of thinking is a sense of superiority over the characters which leads to something that is condescending to the audience. In the end, you wind up with a film that is both not believable and insulting. As an audience it leave us thinking, "If this is what they think we want to see, what must they think of us?"

What audiences want, above all else, is authenticity. As Mamet said, 'the audience is smarter than you.' This seems to be something that the Hillenbrand's have not yet taken to heart. And until they do I fear they'll continue to make films for the audience they imagine in their heads...which clearly does not exist in the real world theaters in which 'Transylmania' screened.

So that brings us to the second question - how did this film wind up on over one thousand screens? And this is the harsh reality that many aspiring filmmakers either struggle with or simply do not want to face. The truth is, the skills required to raise funds, market, and distribute a film are very different from those required to make the actual film itself. If success in the film industry were based soley on filmmaking ability then we would never have seen 'White Chicks' sit at the top of the box office for weeks, we never would have seen another Uwe Boll film, nor would we be discussing 'Transylmania' today. You could very well be the next Kubrick, but if you don't have the business chops to get your work made and out there (or don't partner with someone who does) then you may as well just stop now. And this is where the Hillenbrand's strengths lie. They make getting a film funded and distributed look as easy as Trey Parker and Matt Stone make satire look. They took a chance on their first feature - a huge chance - by maxing out various credit cards to the tune of nearly $250K. Most people would have gotten out of that with only a quarter of a million worth of debt, but they came out of it with a finished 35mm film which they were able to sell straight to DVD to foreign markets for enough to at least pay off their costs. And with that film under their belt, they were able to get the deal together to make 'King Cobra.' They have built up their careers slowly, and done it mostly on their own from what I can tell. And for that I sincerely commend them. At this point they have 7 feature films under their belt, they have formed their own production company and distribution company. They are now discussing the possibility of venturing into the distribution of other filmmaker's content. They aren't just making movies, they are building a business - and they seem to be pretty damn adept at it (unfortunately they simply aren't adept at making the actual films).

I wish the Hillenbrand's nothing but success in their future endeavors, but I feel that for them to truly move into the next stage of their filmmaking careers they are going to have to take a step back and think long and hard about what truly inspires them. I don't want to see the movie they think people want to see, I want to see the film they want to make. And that is the problem with making movies for a perceived audience - eventually it catches up with you. The Hillendbrand's business prowess is what got them to the point they are at today - getting 'Transylmania' released on over one thousand screens theatrically. But it's their filmmaking craftsmanship that has made that same film the record holder for the lowest box office opening ever. Their business skills have surpassed their filmmaking skills at this point - and like the yin/yang, they will need to be in balance to push themselves to the next stage. I for one am looking forward to seeing where they go from here. I will be paying attention to both how they build their business up, how they respond to the reaction to 'Transylmania,' and what they decide to make next. I wish them nothing but the best of luck - because if nothing else, they're doing what so many of us wish we were doing for a living. At least for now.
 
Yes, while people are vehemently arguing whether "Avatar" qualifies as art or not, you and I are taking the world's only critical views of Hillenbrand greatness.

And imagine the irony, that on a night when theaters overflowed with "Avatar" fans, ours was empty, save the four brave souls who suffered so that this site could be enriched.

Ott! Where's your f'ing review!?!
 
By the way, I believe Caffesse's review should be required reading for all DVXUsers. (And the Hillenbrands, of course.)
 
stephenmick said:
By the way, I believe Caffesse's review should be required reading for all DVXUsers. (And the Hillenbrands, of course.)
Click to expand...

Thanks
:thumbsup:

By the way - made a quick edit on it, I mistakenly said they had 5 features under their belt ... they actually have 7.
So, even more impressive.

(I had forgotten about Game Box 1.0 & Demon Island)
 
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