Topic: Cinema
When I attended Comicon back in 2004 it was for work, and as such I didn't have much time to really look around. Towards the end of my one day there, though, I managed to stick my nose into some of the film screenings and panels going on, and during that I got to see most of a short film called "A Can of Paint". Something made me think of the film earlier this week, and, via Google, I found it on DVD for $4 and shipping. It arrived today so Jim and I watched it at the tail end of our writing session.
The film is a loose adaptation of a 1944 short story of the same name by A.E. Van Vogt, and a fairly clever science fiction concept. In the film, a man named Kilgour recovers an alien artifact that splatters his hand with one drop of what appears to be bright blue paint. To his horror, he finds that not only can't he scrub it off, the stuff grows: getting no thinner, but rapidly spreading up his arm. He has only hours to figure out how to neutralize this seemingly indestructable alien substance before it reaches his nose, mouth and ears and continue spreading into his interior, suffocating him.
The film is well made, if a little dark, photographically. The only characters are Kilgour and the voice of his computer, and while the actor playing Kilgour acquits himself well enough, his heavy accent might make him a little difficult for some Americans to understand. The sets are well done, as are the visual effects used to realize the paint. The exteriors of the spaceships look a little Playstationy and the lack of motion blur hurts some of them, but they aren't the focus.
It's an ambitious little film of the type I'd like to take a crack at. Definitely worth the $4 DVD price.
