Musical Moments - Review

---

Music unites us, music saves us.

Musical Moments, short film directed by Erik Dreng Jacobsen is a varied collection of different musicalities and styles. A set of memories collected over time in the most disparate places.

A kaleidoscope of atmospheres that take us on a journey with the director to discover ethnic groups, cultures and sounds that give life to a single large world where notes are the protagonists.

Song publisher and record producer for more than  forty years, Jacobsen explore with great humanity and  devotion all the passion that people can dedicate to Music no matter where they come from.

A film that with simplicity intrigues and excites, but above let understand the importance of music in the life of human beings.

A universal language that does not require words or translation to be understood or convey emotions.

A great little journey to discover the world, people, and their love for Music.

Fasten your seatbelt and let's run away, dive ourselves in a new dimension!

Mission Statement: 

Clear the Mind, Calm the emotions, Inspire the Intellect, Invigorate the imagination....and how the charming and brave Captain Kathryn Janeway would say from the seat of her starsheep Voyager: “Engage!”.

Tunnels, clouds, explosions of light and colors inebriate our eyes in this film where the music of Val Gaina and Eric Palmer transports us to unexplored and distant worlds.  A universe apart where you can get lost,  float or simply exist. 

Universe Beyond Time directed by Joel Barkley give us 15 minutes where  sound and vision take us by the hand, calming us down almost hypnotizing us to take control of our life, our imagination, our right to escape from the cruelty and the heaviness in which we are forced to live.

Created and produced by The Kranky Kitty Alarm Clock Co, this experimental animated film puts us in contact with a virtual, intriguing and infinite space. 

So let's go and discover new Nebulae, mechanical galaxies, and incredible emotions!

Colleen Shannon knows how to make people dream… and with this script she makes it once...and a half!

Yes because in addition to Michelangelo and me she gives us a sort of interlude to a new story called Da Vinci and me.

But let's go in order!

Michelangelo and me is a passionate story based on the novel Heaven's Rogue where everything becomes possible and romance and fantasy reign supreme. 

The protagonist of the story is Honoria Fitzhugh - Honor - a young woman with a lovely and fragile appearance who has just brilliantly graduated in art history; the screenplay revolves around this gorgeous girl and her curiosity to find out if

Michelangelo's David – what she considers the living proof of miracles and the power of dreams – was just a work of art born from the imagination of a great artist, or the celebration of a real man that Michelangelo actually knew.

Curiosity will lead her  to undertake a journey to Florence with the help "from above" of Michelangelo himself, of talking paintings, of talking statues ... and a very talking God who will accompany her in this fairy tale between the 21st and 16th centuries .

During her stay, Honor will find a perfect life-sized replica of David and she will bring it home to study every little detail… but the most incredible detail will be  its human transformation into Dominico (Dom), the charming and charismatic best friend of Michelangelo who from the Italian 1500s will find himself catapulted among the crowded and modern streets of the big apple.

There is everything you can expect from a modern fairy tale: we have the beauty and stubbornness of Honor, the kindness and charm of Dom and the haughty rationality of Perry, the petty anti-hero of the story.

We have love and passion - obviously! - and we have enchantment.

The plot is absolutely intriguing but the real strength of the script is the smooth pace of the story and the well-written dialogues, especially those of the artistic world that comes to life giving us moments of fun and wonder.

Da Vinci and me - based on the second book of  Shannon's Heaven Trilogy called Heaven's Hero - has all it takes to not disappoint expectations given thank to an amazing and exhilarant start: God wants to be a comic and who other than the late and adorable Robin Williams could be the best as a helper?

But Leonardo da Vinci cannot give a title to a story without being part of it... his presence will in fact be important in the relationship between Nick and Isabella and the "enemies" they will encounter on their path.

All we have to do is wait... and hope for a film... or two!

AloneTogether is a  short film directed, produced and choreographed by the talented Cherie Carson who with great delicacy and poetry allows us to retrace the emptiness that we felt during the tragic period of the C-19 Pandemic.

The sense of entrapment and the consequent need to be able to be free again, to be able to breathe, to walk, to fly, and to come back to life.

Helium Valentine – a name that brings us back to lightness and freedom – is the extraordinary dancer protagonist of this film who, aboard a stopped Porsche, expresses all her desire for rebirth and escape; her graceful and at the same time vigorous movements give body and voice to the images that follow one another.

David Worm's music - a great cover of  a classic by The Police - resonates  powerfully while the shots of the desert from above almost let us remember the Virus's aspect.

A solitude shared in black and white with the world, a cry shouted through the dance.

The pandemic has undoubtedly given people - and artists in particular - the opportunity to rediscover their identity, their inspiration, their path.

Flowers grow even in the driest and most endless deserts. And this film, born during an atrocious period, is a splendid proof of this.

The Search is a thriller 5-minute short film written, and directed by Alex Mahutte, who also stars in the film.

A boy is looking for a missing object in the woods and finds instead a menacing man, ready to fight him. 

The film is shot in black and white, which sets a scary mood, especially being shot in a forest. However, the color grading is quite flat. The images are somewhat two-dimensional and don’t show any depth, which is a pity considering the shots of the forest and the overall cinematography are quite nicely done.

The theme is broad and the plot is a bit weak. A man looking for something in a seemingly quiet place who ends up in deep trouble doesn’t seem very inspired. It would have way been better if Mahutte had squared the circle, adding perhaps a real ending, instead of leaving an open end. That way he would have been able to polarise the audience towards a more specific concept and meaning. The overall morale of the film remains unclear.

There are also some technical difficulties in this film. The two actors break the fourth wall a few times, and the camera crosses the line during the only 30-second dialogue present in the film.

It is however commendable for Mahutte to have written, directed, shot, and acted in his film, especially being a young film student. It will be interesting to follow his growth and watch his future projects!

Long Ago and Far Away is a 15-minute short documentary by renowned music producer Erik Jacobsen.

The title Long Ago and Far Away refers to two things: his relationship with his former girlfriend Cindy McCain during the 70s, and their trips together, all of it explored through photos taken all over the world during their relationship.

Jacobsen, who doubles here as a nostalgic and quite monotone narrator, elevates McCain’s gorgeous photography with interesting facts and anecdotes to create a sort of slideshow of a past love, lost in the mountains and rivers of the most remote places in the world.

Afghanistan, Bolivia, and Jamaica are only a few of the countries shown in this poetic short. The beautiful captures of landscapes, traditions, and cultures, the colorful clothing, the foods, and the villages all contribute to creating a moody, evocative film.

The beginning of the film is quite unusual, with the director showing us a glimpse of his personal life before the documentary actually starts. The editing is quite simple, a clean succession of beautiful photos. The music is very well curated, which is exactly what we would have expected from a music connoisseur such as Jacobsen.

A soft, gentle, and poetic short documentary that revisits Jacobsen’s life with his former girlfriend Cindy McCain through their trips around the world.

CANCER/EVOLUTION Episode 1- The Dustbin of History is the first episode of a 5-part docu-series directed by Maggie Jones and Brad Jones, focusing on the metabolic theory of cancer. The theory is told through the life and work of Nobel laureate scientist Otto Warburg.

The idea for this documentary starts from the research of director Maggie Jones about the metabolic theory after having been diagnosed with a 4th stage lung cancer — one of the most aggressive cancers, as well as most difficult to diagnose. Lung cancer is in fact the leading cause of cancer death in the US, with more people dying from lung cancer than colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined.

The theory is not well known, doctors and hospitals are skeptical to share information about it, and since — unlike conventional treatment — his theory is not based on actual pharmaceuticals, the lack of financial support behind it makes it a difficult theory to test and trial.

The first episode of this documentary is very informative, the direction is clear and the editing is fast-paced and rigorous. The information is abundant but never redundant.

Documentaries like these are supposed to challenge the system, to provide an alternative perspective to what is fed to us by the media and big corporations. And CANCER/EVOLUTION achieves that goal brilliantly and effectively.

Anyone who is interested in medical documentaries, as well as those who are actively seeking a complementary route to traditional medicine, will find this series highly resourceful and full of hope.

Maggie and Brad Jones saw a lack of information surrounding this oncological disease and decided they needed to fill that gap. The series succeeds in educating the audience about a possibly effective cure, far from the solutions offered by Big Pharma.

The Eclipse: Recognized by the Sound is a 14-minute film by Elly Yae Li Cho. The first thing that strikes the eye is the screen, split into three mini screens. At the same time, the three mini-screens take up only a third of the entire screen, creating an ultra-wide effect.

The three images, next to each other, force the audience to use their imagination to combine the three shots and create the full picture in their heads.

What do these images represent? Maybe a thought, a memory? Or is it what the character is seeing? Or what they feel? We’re not sure, and that’s the real brilliance of this film! The director shows us that we don't need to know the story in order to understand it.

The cinematography is gorgeous and evocative. The contrast between the beautiful images and the raw sounds makes the scenes look surreal, almost dreamlike.

In fact, there are no dialogues in Cho’s short, only sounds of nature. Sounds of steps, of birds, of water. And the two characters, the young girl and the young boy, look like two animals in their natural habitat.

The underwater scenes are beautifully shot. With this film, Cho proves to have a very strong aesthetic and to work really well with it to create an image, and through it, a story.

An artistic and evocative film that will make the audience’s mind wonder and wander. 

Beginner’s Luck is a black and white thriller short directed by Thomas Peck. 

The film opens with two men receiving a delivery. The two convince the delivery guy to join them for what looks like a casual night between the two friends.

It’s soon clear that the two men are rich and bored, and the only thing able to give them a thrill is betting big bucks. So the three start playing a game that will end in a life-and-death bet with the oblivious delivery guy.

The idea is original. The two guys bet that they can’t convince a random passer-by to kill one of the two by the end of the night. So they set up the unfortunate delivery guy, who will soon fall for their trap and will happily join them in their dangerous game.

The acting is bare and essential and works for the purpose of the film. The editing and the sound design are very good and the direction is sharp.

The choice of shooting in black and white mirrors the duality of life and death. There are no nuances in this film, and like the delivery guy — who lives to pay the bills — and the two hotshots — rich enough to play with other people’s lives — there is only black or white, life or death.

A good work that makes us reflect on the value of life, and on how the underprivileged are often used as commodities to increase the power of the wealthy.

L Section is a 114-page script written by Matthew Forbes that narrates the journey of a sergeant who visits the five soldiers of her former section after their homecoming.

The script starts with sergeant Vivian Kolt, called The Sarge, and her five elite soldiers — who together form the L section — taking a break from climbing a mountain in Afghanistan and sharing their meal packs. The reader can already appreciate two things here: not often is the main character in a war movie a woman, and very rarely do war films open with light scenes of soldiers poking fun at each other.

Through this initial scene we understand that this film won’t be about the war, but rather, about the close relationships between the six characters.

Following a brutal fight scene, where an ambush leaves one soldier, Dud, injured to both his legs, the 6 soldiers are now able to fly back to their respective homes, scattered all around Canada.

Now home and safe, The Sarge is tormented by nightmares and, incited by her sister, she embarks on a road trip to go check on her section. The Sarge's road trip is punctuated with five stops, one for each of her soldiers. Soon enough, the script will reveal that The Sarge’s concerns were, in fact, founded.

Vivian’s character is a tough one, but shows great empathy and vulnerability. There have been many scenes before where male sergeants check on their soldiers, take care of them, but to have a woman is so important: the fact that woman is actually the strongest fighter of them all gives a fresh perspective to what is usually considered a male-dominated organization. This also creates a very protective and nurturing relationship between the six, with The Sarge being like an older sister to the five men, almost maternal, and this adds some beautiful and profound nuances to the story.

What we find out towards the end of the script, is that the reason all 6 characters had troubles recovering from their time in war was actually not related to what happened during the war itself, but rather, the war allowed the traumas from the past to resurface.

This script shows a striking paradox: here the war and the real world swap places, with the real world being the one creating the psychological damages and the war being the one that’s able to fix those damages. All this, thanks to a close camaraderie and a complete and total acceptance of each other.

A beautifully written and engaging script about a powerful healing journey.