SXSW 2015: CREATIVE CONTROL By: Faiz No comments

David (Benjamin Dickinson) in Creative Control.

I see hipster doom

By Miranda Inganni

Director Benjamin Dickinson’s slickly styled Creative Control is, at its heart, an old fashioned love story set in the near future Brooklyn, New York; but it is also a cautionary tale about our dependence on technology.

Ad exec David (Dickinson) has been given the chance to play around with a new high-tech product, Augmenta. It’s a virtual reality platform that his company is trying to figure out how best to sell to the masses. David must perform! Added to the pressure David is experiencing at work, he is also going through a rough patch with his live-in girlfriend, Juliette (Nora Zehetner). David finds inspiration in the form of Sophie (Alexia Rasmussen), the girlfriend of his best pal, Wim (Dan Gill). As he spends more and more time with “Sophie,” thanks to the technology of the Augmenta glasses, David withdraws from the rest of his life.

Creative Controlis quite impressive to watch. It is beautifully shot by Adam Newport-Berra in black and white, with just a hint of color here and there. The technology depicted in the film is believable and the special effects are never a distraction. And there is an excellent vomit scene.

However, the four lead characters come across as somewhat boring hipsters for whom it is hard to care. David is bored in the bedroom, so he crushes on another woman. Juliette is frustrated with David, so she practices yoga with another man (Paul Manza). Wim is a self-absorbed philanderer, who only decides to commit to Sophie when he thinks he might lose her. Sophie…well, Sophie is just kind of dull. She is very pretty and stylish, but she doesn’t really do anything.

Winner of the Visual Excellence Award at SXSW, Creative Control is a pleasure to watch and a decent story (co-written by Dickinson and Micah Bloomberg). While mine may not be the popular opinion, I find the characters not quite fleshed out enough. This is apt considering David’s retreat to spend time with his virtual reality love toy. When the people around you don’t feel fully formed, perhaps all you can do is create your own special friend.

TRIBECA 2012: FIRST WINTER By: Faiz No comments

A scene from First Winter.

Tragically hip

By Don Simpson

At some point in the past, Paul (Paul Manza) convinced some of his cutest female yoga students to travel with him to his secluded farmhouse. It is an extremely cold winter and the power has gone out, thus transporting the utopian household back to a time before heat and electricity. Their cultish lifestyle becomes an adventure for the presumably privileged class, a time to play “hippie commune circa 1969.”

The Brooklyn hipsters continue with business as usual — participating in a daily regimen of yoga and meditation, filling in the remaining hours of the days with sex and drugs. But the promiscuously enlightened air cannot withstand the stresses of time, frigid weather, and tyrannical rationing of food. The restrictive seclusion of the location does not help matters either. Except for a lone radio, there is no connection with the outside world. Their days are numbered but Paul has lulled his flock of housemates into a sheepish state of submission.

What is writer-director Ben Dickinson telling us? Is he metaphorically predicting the demise of Brooklyn hipsters? Has this tight knit, holier-than-thou subculture cut themselves off from reality to the point of no return? Will their carefree lifestyle of yoga, meditation, slow food, and free love bring about their death?