Who’s ready for a little recap action? Here we go: deadCENTER, Night Two.

First up, the OKCMOA Party.

OKCMOA Party

I was so glad this was on the rooftop terrace again this year, although I forgot my sunblock and unfortunately, my vampire-pale skin suffered a bit of a burn. Aside from that, this was a good opportunity to sit down with a couple of Stellas, chat with friends, and develop the evening’s plan of attack. Said plan included:

Comedy Shorts at Uptown United

Uptown United

Getting here was truly half the fun. One of the things I love about deadCENTER is the amount of time I spend in buildings I never knew existed. I love having to go through an alley way to get to my destination, and when my destination is a dingy little art space with awesome freaking murals (I loved the creepy Muppet guy) – even better. As for the short films, I particularly had fun with The Spam Job and Miracle Investigators, the latter of which gave me what is sure to be my most-quoted dialogue exchange of the entire festival:

“I gave up ass-kicking for Lent.”
“It’s not Lent.”
“I know.”

We stuck around after the shorts, because up next was:

Yesterday

I was so primed to love this movie. For one thing, I have a deep and abiding passion for the zombie genre. For another, I was absolutely in love with the clever drinking game, which included instructions like, “Take two drinks and shake your fist as though you are cursing Khan” every time there are “dystopian images of newscasters.” Then there was the “Canadians are adorable” category, which required two drinks and a shout of “eh!” every time there was unnecessary apologizing, or if one of the characters said, “eh” himself. (And I say himself, because there were only two minor female characters, who enjoyed about a combined five minutes of screen time in what was a two-hour film.)

Yesterday Drinking Game Rules

So, with Stella in hand and an overwhelming urge to shout, “Innards!” at the first sight of blood, I was super-pumped up for Yesterday. Unfortunately, the drinking game turned out to be better thought-out than the movie. After about 30 minutes, (which was actually some of the most fun I’ve had outside of Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse), the fun wore off and I was left to try and make it through the rest of this thing without disemboweling myself. Besides simply being about 90 minutes too long, Yesterday seemed more like a collection of strung-together scenes than an actual movie. It was as if a group of friends decided that would make a zombie movie, but without any attention to pesky little details like, oh, story structure. The best word I could find for Yesterday was indulgent.

But, Big Ups on the drinking game. Way clever, guys. Oh – and Lloyd Kaufman showed up to watch the film. That was super-cool, too.

Lest I sound like a total bitch about this movie, let me just say that it’s the bad movies that inspire me most. Dwight and I ended up talking  late into the night about how we want to try our hand at filmmaking.

Now, it’s time to rest up a little more before Official Rejection at 2:00.

Check out the deadCenter Live Blog at their site. Check back here and at The Filmcake for additional coverage.