Plump Fiction (1997)

US / 79 minutes / color and some bw / Plump Fiction, Rhino, Leslie Alexander, Legacy Dir & Scr: Bob Koherr Pr: Gary Binkow Cine: Rex Nicholson Cast: Tommy Davidson, Julie Brown, Paul Dinello, Philippe Bergeron, Sandra Bernhard, Dan Castellaneta, Robert Castanzo, Lezlie Deane, Matthew Glave, Pamela Segall, Tim Kazurinsky, Colleen Camp, Kevin Meaney, Paul Provenza, Jennifer Rubin, Jennifer Coolidge, Simbi Khali, Karla Tamburrelli, Nada Despotovich, Judy Tenuta.

As is obvious from the title, this is a parody of Quentin Tarantino’s PULP FICTION (1994); it also parodies other movies, primarily Tarantino’s RESERVOIR DOGS (1992) and Oliver Stone’s NATURAL BORN KILLERS (1994). It adopts the technique of using intertitles and nonlinear telling straight from Pulp Fiction; a running joke is that the nonlinear telling has come about because an inept character called Bumpkin (Castellaneta), charged with delivering a script to an anxious movie director, has several times dropped the pages and thereby got everything scrambled.

Bumpkin is given that task in the opening scene, set in a

Noirhouse (2013)

Australia / 18 minutes (total) / bw / Sky Machine Dir: Shaun Wilson Pr: Nathan Spencer, Shaun Wilson Scr: Tim Logan Cine: Simon Gray Cast: Nathan Spencer, Melanie Irons, Mick Davies, Sarah Wadsley, Matt Burton, Robert Manion, Rose Kokkoris, Mick Lowenstein.

An entertaining three-episode miniseries of comedy noir shorts published online as streaming videos.

“She’s dead!”

Three misfits share a house: a hardboiled ex-cop PI (Spencer), complete with the omnipresent hat and coat, a beautiful femme fatale, Nadia (Irons), and a hulking Russian (Davies), who may or may not be a communist. For reasons not stated, The Detective wants to kick Nadia out of the house, so, to her great disdain, he and The Russian start interviewing prospective candidates in a sequence reminiscent of its equivalent in SINGLE WHITE FEMALE (1992). One of the candidates, the young woman Alice (Wadsley), insists on