GI JOE Stop Motion

I went to the GI JOE Stop Motion animation festival at the BUG Theater last Thursday (It's been a hectic week so posts are behind...). This was the inaugural year for this small film festival. There were quite a few entries from around the country and some from around the world. The criteria for the festival was that the movies had to be stop motion and use GI Joe action figures (either the old school 12" kind, or the newer ones blown up in backyards around the country). Awesome.

There were some pretty funny shorts, it's amazing what people did with some GI Joes, a camera, some computer effects, and a little clay. I was surprised how many shorts had military themes. I would have thought an autobiography of Abraham Lincoln with GI Joe action figures would be pretty funny. The short from Taiwan was some mix of monster movie and an apocalyptic Eastern/Western religious hybrid vision. It was as weird and confusing as it sounds. My favorite of the night was "WAR American Style" which was a comedic view of a lineage of men from a family who fought and died (comedically) in every major American Military Encounter. John F. Kennedy cannibalising the rest of his life-boatmates was the most outrageous and funny clip. I'm looking forward to this next year, maybe I'll even have an entry.

Pena, a local indie instrumental group, played the intermission, they were loud and mathy - which i'm into- I'd see them again.

Food wise (last week) I made homemade hot and sour soup which was ok, the spicing and stock need some tweaking and I need to get better at ribboning eggs, but it was pretty decent. I roasted cauliflower (400 degrees for 45 min.) and made a Hoisin barbeque sauce, it was a good combination, I highly recommend it.