Sinister: Storytelling

[robin stout]

I saw Storytelling last night. Would you like to hear about it? I'm not much 
of a film reviewer, so don't pay too much attention to my opinions. Go see 
it yourself.

For those of you who don’t know yet, Storytelling is actually two films 
called Fiction and Non-Fiction, which are directed by Todd Solondz, and are 
only related by their common theme of being about storytellers and 
storytelling. A large part of the film is supposed to have been cut, 
exorcised by the studio for being a little too shocking, and amongst the 
dead celluloid must have been a few Belle and Sebastian songs, because only 
four are left in the final cut.

The film wasn't amazing but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The 
first was a neater, better reasoned film than the second, but suffered from 
the short film's curse of being a film with a punchline. The second was more 
muddled and tried to make similar points to the first but in a more ungainly 
way. It does contain a few very funny parts, though, especially those 
involving Scooby or his little evil brother who always says exactly what he 
shouldn't. The Belle and Sebastian songs were in the second film too, and to 
me (I might be a little biased of course) sounded better than the film. So 
it's a shame the songs and the film are so closely linked.

The songs are;

The State I Am In
I Don't Want To Play Football
Scooby driver
Storytelling

They all sounded good - I liked Scooby Driver a lot. The lyrics and the 
titles sound like they're closely related to the film. This means it could 
be difficult to put those songs (or the cut ones) on another album than the 
Storytelling one. That's not such a bad thing, but it might be hard to 
listen to these songs without thinking of the film, and in my opinion 
Murdoch's a far better storyteller than Solondz anyway, so I'd rather hear 
his version of a story than watch anyone else's.

It sounds like Stuart's a little annoyed with Solondz about the way their 
songs were treated too. But now the film's been made it's difficult to 
escape this. I hope the songs work as well by themselves and some good songs 
aren't blurred by an average film.

That's all. Very factual today. More of the old nonsense next time I'm sure.

Hey, Robs and Robyns - do we have a mix tape team or not?

Robin (with an i)

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