Sorry for the delay, folks — we have been shooting footage for the long-awaited Brainwash Movies-produced TV series the last couple weeks (stay tuned for more info). Add that on top of a day job, and my perfectly honorable intent to call and congratulate the winner simply has not been realized.
So, without further ado or delay, I’m happy to announce that the 2010 Brainwash Drive-in Bike-in Walk-in Movie Festival Audience Choice Award goes to — among several very strong contenders — “Morgue: A Love Story With Guts,” directed by Donald McQuade and written by Anthony Pizzo! Both of them came up from Southern California to see the 21 shorts we showed at the final weekend of the festival. Our congratulations, and thanks to them for submitting their movie and for coming up!
Speaking of which, we were really glad to get a chance to meet and talk to the moviemakers who came to the festival: Mark Poisella, writer and director of the feature “Dynamite Swine”; Jason Rose (director) and Leslie Rose (producer) of “Viola Concerto”; Matthew McKenna, who directed “Signatures”; Josh Self and Orlando Rivera, co-directors and writers of “Goodnight Harvey”; and Karl Schweitzer and Tony Turino, cast and crew of “Horror of Our Love”. (Apologies if I missed anyone I didn’t get a chance to talk to.)
Congratulations again to all of our moviemakers and award winners! See you next year, if not sooner!
Thanks again to all who came to the festival and all of the moviemakers! Here are the first six awards — some time in the next couple days we’ll tally up the totals of the many ballots you submitted and award the Audience Choice Award!
- 1st prize: With Anchovies… Without Mamma by Thomas Justino
- 2nd Grand Prize: Way To Go, Christine! by Mark Thimijian
- 3rd prize: Goodnight, Harvey by Josh Self and Orlando Rivera II (IFYW)
- 4th prize: The Horror of Our Love: A Short Film by Dave Reda (Elftwin Films)
- 5th prize: Signatures by Matthew McKenna
- 6th prize: What Alex Understands by Sebastian Jones
Congratulations!
Hi folks — tonight is the final night of the 16th Annual Brainwash Drive-in Bike-in Walk-in Movie Festival! Hope to see you there for some great movies and our always entertaining awards ceremony!
Posted on
August 14, 2010 at 2:10 pm by Jason Gohlke,
filed under
Brainwash Movies
Opening night is TONIGHT! (Buy your tickets on TicketWeb here — and just for fun, why not RSVP on Facebook?)
We’re screening a full-length feature called “Dynamite Swine” (facebook) by Mark Poisella, a rollicking action movie/buddy flick/poker movie that defies description but just works. This is the second year in a row we’ve opened with a feature film, and you seriously won’t see anything like this anywhere else.
We are preceding it with one of the best shorts I’ve ever seen (and I don’t say that lightly), “With Anchovies… Without Mamma” (facebook, trailer, website) an amazing mockumentary (by Brooklyn’s Thomas Justino) about pizza and revenge.
The moviemakers describe it as “an investigative look at love, loss, pizza and the depth of circumstance.” Whatever that means, it is incredibly tight — the acting and script are terrific, it’s hilariously funny, and it keeps you entertained until the only thing left in the box is a grease stain and that little plastic table. Want mustaches? It’s got mustaches, and people who sound like they’re from Jersey.
Anyway, I’m just babbling now, but you’ll really enjoy opening night TONIGHT, Saturday, August 7th. Don’t forget, it’s the Brainwash *Drive-in Bike-in Walk-in* Movie Festival, so you can come in on two wheels or four — or, just use the very convenient West Oakland BART station (less than a block away).
Buy tickets at TicketWeb and RSVP on Facebook.
We were shooting footage for our trailer and something weird happened:
A few random things as we approach festival time:
If you’ve been to the Brainwash Movie Festival before, you may have experienced some technical difficulties.
As much as our rushing around at 8:59 pm has added to the ambience over the years, I’m glad to confidently say that that part of the Brainwash experience is increasingly getting left behind. Technology is improving, which means so is our festival. There are two big upgrades for 2010 that are exciting (to me, anyway):
- We are borrowing a new projector thanks to an anonymous benefactor: a 3000-lumen (I mistakenly wrote 2200 earlier!), 1024 x 768 pixel Epson that just looks incredibly bright and clear outdoors, even with streetlights on half a block away (which did affect our old projector). It’s very impressive (maybe I’ll post some footage I took from inside a car the night we tested our equipment).
- Even better, we have a brand-new, incredibly powerful FM transmitter! It’s straight out of China and I, uh, assume it’s totally on the up and up with the FCC, yeah. According to the specs (and I am no techie at this level), it has 1 to 1.5 watts of output. What that meant in our little test was that you could drive all over the entire parking lot (it holds hundreds of cars) and have a crystal-clear signal. We acquired this small but powerful unit — and its compact little whip antenna — thanks to another anonymous benefactor named Michael Hawk.
The combination of these two new pieces of equipment means that every spot in the parking lot assures you of having an incredibly great experience and being able to focus on the REAL heart of the festival — the movies.
And for those of you who won’t be in a car, we will also be playing the soundtrack on a couple of nice, loud, full amps, so you’ll get stereo sound even if you don’t have an FM receiver.
Finally, check out our great new sponsors on our homepage, especially the always awesome, non-profit, City CarShare. I’ve been a member since 2004 or so and thus haven’t had to own a car in years. City CarShare members will get a 20% discount at the gate!
Posted on
August 1, 2010 at 3:20 am by Jason Gohlke,
filed under
The Festival
Among this year’s movies, we have a great raft of animation, as in years past. Voltaire’s Demiurge Emesis was also shown at the IndieFest and written up in ASIFA, the Int’l Animation Society newsletter, by Karl Cohen. Demiurge is narrated by Danny Elfman, better known for his fantastic work as the founder of the band Oingo Boingo (in the old days) and on movie soundtracks (including, recently, Milk). Duncan Maddux, our lead in the Brainwash broadcast series, who will MC our shows this year in person, was in Milk and ended up briefly featured on the 2009 Academy Awards.
Other animation to be shown includes:
- Sunset to Sunset by Kent Hayward, about a walk across LA (that’s right – a WALK in LA!)
- and the aforementioned Demiurge, both Friday night, Aug. 13th.
On Saturday, Aug. 14th, even more great animation includes:
- The fantastic The Magnitude of the Continental Divides by Christopher Coleman;
- Phillip the Safety Egg by Mike Owens (looks straight out of Adult Swim);
- The Empress by Lyle Pisio (an Absolute MUST SEE for all animation connoisseurs);
- Billionaire by Antonio Figueroa, about a game cataloging the roots of our economic collapse;
- Frank DanCoolo: Paranormal Drug Dealer by Andrew Jones, not an animated movie per se, but featuring notable CGI while Frank and the world’s best reporter, Holly Malone, hallucinate;
- and finally Goodnight Harvey, with some animation bidding a less than fond farewell to a formerly beloved childhood Muppets — sorry, “Muppos” — icon.
So bring a friend, bring a chair to enjoy the movies and see you there!
Without further ado, here are some images you can use if you’d like to promote the festival. I’d be glad to add something to the press release or to an image for any of our moviemakers, if you’d like.
The show will be August 7th, 13th, and 14th at the Mandela Village Arts Center, 1357 5th St., in Oakland, 9 pm each night, $10 each. Find out more about the festival!
Is it 2010 already? Oh — it’s March? (Really?)
Only 3 1/2 months to the 16th Annual Brainwash Movie Festival, you say? My, how time has flown.
I’m sure you’ve all got your independent short movies and features all lined up to submit to Brainwash. (You can submit your movies at any time using Withoutabox, but if you want to be truly, madly, stubbornly indie, you’ll have to wait until we fix our credit card authorization form — either that or you can scrawl your entry in crayon on the inside of an empty cereal box. On second thought…)
UPDATE! You can now use the secure credit-card-friendly entry form on our site again, if you don’t want to sign up for Withoutabox.
Our enthusiasm is starting to build for this year’s festival, and we hope yours is too!
Stay tuned on Facebook (now with our own URL, thanks to 100 nice people), and join our very low-volume mailing list — you wouldn’t want to miss anything, would you?
How could we have waited so long to finally announce this? My apologies to the moviemakers who have been waiting to point to this very website to prove that they weren’t just making it up.
1st Prize: “MXD MSG” by Jeffrey Durkin
2nd GRAND Prize: “Mister Coffey” by Mark Thimijan
3rd Prize: “EXIT:ALLEY” by Robin Smyth
4th Prize: “The Collection” by Keren Albala
5th Prize: “Gypsy Crepes” by Count Lear Bunda
Brainwash First Feature: “Dr. S Battles the Sex-Crazed Reefer Zombies: The Movie” by Bryan Ortiz
Audience Choice Award: “Stalk Much?” by Bill Baykan
The last was finally tabulated from the thousands and thousands of paper ballots (chads hanging all over the place) so that you, the loyal reader, would finally know the truth about the 2009 Brainwash Movie Festival.
The truth is, it’s all over, so watch this space for our call for entries! Become a fan on Facebook (not that we’ve done much with that in a while) to keep up. Soon we’ll relaunch our email list as well.
Sorry for the delay, folks — we have been shooting footage for the long-awaited Brainwash Movies-produced TV series the last couple weeks (stay tuned for more info). Add that on top of a day job, and my perfectly honorable intent to call and congratulate the winner simply has not been realized.
