Funny Brian should mention puppet practice in his hiking blog entry. On Saturday I caught two programs at the Newport Beach Film Fest, both involving puppets. First was “Handmade Puppet Dreams,” 12 puppet shorts handpicked and promoted by Heather Henson, daughter of Jim Henson. I thought three was excellent, and the rest were good to boring. All were remarkably creative, and the sweet thing is, they’re all on YouTube.

Here are my faves:
“Manetti” by Scott Land.

“The Tale of Mr. Fox” by Richard Mansfield

“Tyger” by Guilherme Marcondes

This series of “Handmade Puppet Dreams” is the third volume that Heather Henson has put together. It’s not screening again at the film festival. But the first two volumes of “Handmade Puppet Dreams” are showing on continuous loop for free through May 20 at Grand Central Art Center. My favorite short, “Harker,” is unfortunately not on YouTube.

The second puppet program I caught was “Dante’s Inferno” by Sandow Birk, Elyse Pignolet, Paul Zaloom and Sean Meredith, a re-imagining of Dante’s 700-year-old classic with a backdrop that looks remarkably like Los Angeles. Dermot Mulroney voices the main character. The movie defies categorization, and I mean that in a good way.

Dante’s original text was full of references to contemporary Italian politics. The puppet team used the opportunity to update the story with references Americans are more used to. E.g. JFK and Fatty Arbuckle are condemned an eternity of fornication for their lustful actions on earth; Marilyn Monroe’s soul is trapped in a tree because she abandoned her body in suicide; Dick Cheney is so evil he is in hell even before his body has died.

Not only is “Dante’s Inferno” a witty commentary on contemporary politics, it’s also a critique of Dante’s now-outmoded religious opinions. In the original text, homosexuals are in a deeper level of hell than thieves and many other criminals — a point that many gay people who had helped with the movie were uncomfortable with, Sandow said at a post-screening Q&A. But the primary filmmakers decided to not to deviate from the text. Sandow said they wanted the story to stay “Dante’s Inferno,” not become “Sandow’s Inferno,” or “Paul’s Inferno.”

By the way, the entire project began when Sandow (a kickass Long Beach artist who has received a National Endowment for the Arts scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and other honors) picked up a used copy of “The Divine Comedy” in Long Beach’s Acres of Books and decided to illustrate the story in large paintings. He worked with a surfing friend, Marcus Sanders, to re-work the text to casual, surf-inflected English. Then came the puppet movie project. (Read my interview with Sandow published last year when his paintings were on view at Grand Central Art Center.)

“Dante’s Inferno” premiered in Slamdance in January and is touring film festivals around the world. As of Sunday, it had been screened 16 times in 16 weeks. Read more at dantefilm.com and see the trailer here.

Posted in: Movies/Art/Theater/Dance |

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