The Pictures Issue 3

Underground Film Zine
By a bunch of people
picturesundergroundfilm.blogspot.com
£2

This is the second of the zines I found after the end of the London Zine Symposium. Was it yours? I'll send it to you.

It's 11:53 in my time zone, and it's so tempting to not do a review today. But I did finish reading this earlier with the express intention of reviewing it earlier. Then I fell asleep.

So I don't think I'm going to get it done "today" (at least in this time zone), but let's see! (If it does get done, this will possibly be the most rushed review ever).

Most of this zine is made up of interviews with, and articles about, various indie/underground filmmakers. I'd never heard of any of them, and for the most part their films (weird art shorts and the like) really don't seem like things I have any interest in seeing. This is not to say that the zine is bad, just that it is aimed at someone with different interests than me, if you like underground film you will probably find some interesting stuff in here.

The whole thing is actually fairly nicely put together. There's lots of images: a colour cover, a colour insert with movie stills, pieces of art (?), and movie stills in black and white. There's also some thought put into the layout, and ads (what?!!!).

It's just too bad the quality of writing isn't that great. There's an editor credited, but I think it needed someone who was willing to rewrite some of the articles. I'm willing to overlook the spelling mistakes, text being repeated, and stuff like that, but there are instances were the question being asked is both longer than the answer given by the film maker, and sort of incomprensible. Not that it's all bad or anything, it's just the bad stuff jumped out at me.

And then there's the "Movie Stars Who Won't Sleep With Me" column, that features Lindsay Lohan. What is this? I can't even bring myself to reread it because I feel I'll be losing braincells. If it's some sort of satire on the vapidness of celebrity, then whatever. I don't care. If it's serious, what the hell is it doing in a supposed "underground" film zine? Isn't "LiLo" some sort of big star? Blah.

It's technically tomorrow as I finish this off, and if I've learnt anything from this it is the danger of reading and reviewing a zine that I found. They could be about anything!