Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

If I lived in Hawaii, I wouldn’t even know what a movie theater looked like. It takes a dedicated film geek to keep her head in the game in the middle of paradise, and that’s where Moon Yun comes in:

Aloha, Moon Yun signing in from Hawaii to tell you about a promising young filmmaker and the debut of his first feature length film, THE HIDDEN BATTLE. I also just watched a cool indie movie called MAGDALENA’S BRAIN -- a very smart flick!

Meet Jeff Katts. He’s tall, good-looking and dresses in black. He also runs the Ohina Short Film Festival in Hawaii. Katz seems to like exploring the dark side of life. I noticed that from his shorts and now with HIDDEN BATTLE.

On February 20, he unveiled THE HIDDEN BATTLE to a packed house at Honolulu’s Regal Theater. It’s about a pair of demons (Felucia played by Kyra Poppler and Trammel played by Gretchen Nilsen) battling it out with a pair of angels (Akriel played by Tanner Henderson and Baglis played by Chad Burch) for the soul of a very troubled girl, Sarah, played by Julia Gainey. The angels have thwarted the demons before but this time the stakes are high as the pair that loses goes home.

For a first time feature, HB was very good. Katts wrote the original story and co-wrote the screenplay with Eric Miyamoto. Granted they had technical problems like with the lighting – certain scenes looked very dark – but that’s technical stuff they’ll fix before their next feature. The story was well constructed and the dialogue lively. The acting was adequate but it wasn't a very spirited performance. The make-up/special effects, with the glowing dark eyes and fangs, looked spooky. It was amazing they could get such good quality effect for little or no money. It’s all in the imagination.

All in all it was a satisfying evening at the movies. The only thing that bothered me was when I woke up the next morning I completely forgot what I had watched and I couldn’t recall any memorable scenes from the movie. I’m hoping the next one really attacks the psyche. Also what he really needed but was glaringly missing was score and music. PSYCHO’s shower scene would have been nothing without the “eeee, eeee, eeee” noise.

“My inspiration were watching "The Matrix" and "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy because of the religious under tones those films had,” said Katts. The name of the sequel is "The Fatal Journey."

For those of you who’d like to see HB and are not in Hawaii, you’ll have to wait. Katts is working on DVD distribution of the film but he doesn’t know when that’ll be. I’ll keep you posted.

MAGDALENA’S BRAIN
Directed by Warren Amerman, Written by Marty Lanford and Warren Amerman

If you’re tired of all the crap out there in cinema and TV, then you’ve got to check out MAGDALENA’S BRAIN. It’s a truly independent film shot over 14 days and in High definition – a movie with what else BRAINS. MB is about a beautiful scientist/neurosurgeon, Magdalena Welling (Amy Shelton-White) who once had an idyllic life as a surgeon and as a devoted wife to a brilliant doctor, Arthur (Sanjiban). But all that is gone now. She spends her life as a recluse in an abandoned warehouse working on scientific experiments that will cure her husband. He has become a quadriplegic. There’s also a squatter in the building and that is her former patient we saw in the beginning of the movie. He has a striking resemblance to Prince.

What was the most striking thing about the movie was the cinematography. Usually indie or amateur films look bad but this guy – Mark Devin – has got it going on. The shots are clear, crisp, and poetic. The filmmakers searched high and low for the lead actress and they definitely found someone, Shelton-White, who’s strong enough to hold up the movie from beginning to end. She’s in almost every shot in movie. Nope, there was no amateur acting too. Sanjiban as the quadriplegic husband is as equally creepy.

I must warn you that the beginning is slow. It hits a half/third way mark and the pace picks up. It picks up so much that you don’t know exactly what’s going on. Suddenly, Welling, this stoic, self-sacrificing doctor goes off the deep end. She attempts to perform the operation on Andrew without proper anesthetic and drill a hole in his head despite his protest. She chases him in the warehouse with her brother and smashes his head in with a flashlight. The very last scenes are of Magdalena in a mental ward dreaming of having lunch with Arthur in a café. In fact, the ending is so ambiguous it’s left up to anyone’s imagination.

The DVD is available on amazon.com.

Moon Yun signing out…