Wow, that was a pretty busy week. I’d like to thank everyone who showed up for my New York theatrical showings at Two Boots Pioneer; there was a lot of love/hate/confusion coming out of that theater as the film ended each night, but I’d just like to thank Ray and everyone at the Pioneer for taking a big chance on a tiny film. Along with these NYC screenings came a number of really good pull-quotes from NY Press –
“Visually it’s a perfect 10 . . . something beautiful . . . a handmade object that looks ravishing . . . the overall effect is like watching some kind of lost exploitation film from the 1970s cobbled together by a deranged grindhouse projectionist out of damaged film.”
– Grady Hendrix, NY SUN
“A 1970’s-style horror oddity that could pass for a perverse experiment masterminded by a mad scientist.”
– Laura Kern, NY TIMES
“Mystifying –
– V.A. Musetto, NY POST
“John R. Hand might just be America’s answer to Shinya Tsukamoto. Layered with a surreal theatricality, raw experimentation, a fixation on the intersection of humanity and technology, disturbing sexual overtones, a firm genre sensibility and a driving soundtrack.”
– Twitchfilm.net
I guess the Slant Magazine and NY Post reviews were the most positive while the most vehemently negative one came courtesy of Variety (you can find a link to it on the official FBN website), but I was really happy with all of it. Obviously this is a film which really polarizes people in a very strange way and frankly for me, trying to figure out the audience reaction has been akin to trying to figure out the motivation of the sentient ocean planet Solaris. I’m not an expert in Solaristics and/or audience reaction. I just know I wanted people to feel something and I suppose they did.
Within the last week it also seems as if my IMDB page has settled down and is now nearly complete, with a few omissions in cast (including myself) which should show up within the next few days.
I still have little more review-gathering work to do in addition to slightly updating and re-designing the website to be little more user-friendly.