Dave and Jim's B-Movie Reviews

From: David Gauer
To: Joey Corpora
Sent: Saturday, March 9, 2013 11:32 AM
Subject: Re: Sins

Hi Joey,

The whole family sat down and watched Sins of the Dragon this morning.

Let me get this out of the way right away: on your next film (and I trust there will be a next), try taking a more jovial tone with your main characters. I genuinely believe the angsty teen thing is a mistake. If I heard the exact same dialog come out of a pair of main characters with wry smiles on their faces and an obvious genuine love for each other, it would have made them much more appealing.

Having said that, putting something together like this on a budget is a real achievement - certainly more than I've ever accomplished with video.

The comedy worked - it's very subjective stuff, so not all of it hit me just right, but some of it really did - and I've seen a hell of a lot of big-budget Hollywood scripts with absolutely NO comedy that works (everything National Lampoon has done in the last decade, for example). Definitely continue to hone this in your next film (which you must make).

I also heartily approve of the blood effects. In your next film (which I command you to begin working upon), I suggest that you take these to the next level. Why spill a cup of blood when a gallon could be there instead? Did you know blood can spray out of someone's fingertips if you slap them hard enough in the face? It's totally true. Did you know that someone can be killed with someone else's eyeballs? I'm not sure how that works, but I bet it would be awesome to see.

My 24 month old daughter also said, "Grrrrr!" at one point. I think she thought she saw a bear, but she was totally wrong. I was watching closely and did not see a bear. Maybe she just saw one of her stuffed bears in the living room. Or maybe she was just thinking about bears. Hard to tell. I thought I should mention that as something to watch for in your next film (which you will surely be starting soon) - you don't want to have things that look like bears but aren't because that confuses the audience.

The half-hour went by quickly, which is the sign of a well-edited movie. It must have been a ton of work to edit all of that action together. Great job on that.

Again, my heartiest congratulations for completing this. Seeing this stirred up desires to make my own movie.

Best of luck to you and the other platypuses!

-Dave

From: David Gauer
To: Joey Corpora
Sent: Saturday, March 9, 2013 11:21 AM
Subject: Re: Sins

Dear Joey,

In a spastic fit of excitement, I hit a '2' instead of a '1'. My daughter is 14 months old, not 24. You were probably thinking, "Damn, that two year old kid is really bad at identifying bears." But I'm sure you'll agree that it's an easy mistake to make when you're 14 months old.

Generally speaking, she's really good at identifying animals.

Sometimes we'll be strolling around and she'll say, "Roar". And I'll look around and just see trees and grasses and stuff and I'll say, "Sorry, honey, Daddy doesn't see any lions." But then a few minutes later, we'll run across the partially-eaten carcass of a gazelle or boar or whatever. And then I'll be all like, "There was totally a lion here! And it could have killed us all! I will trust you in the future."

But I'm not really sure what I could do to protect us from lions even if I knew about them. I usually just carry a pocketknife, and that's not much use against 400lb of muscle and claws and fangs. But I'd rather know about it than not. Maybe we could climb up a tree.

Sincerely,

Dave