Today I'm stopping by with a look at Artie Saves The Hood and believe it or no...a thank you. I'm saying thank you because for the first time ever I received a screener from someone with indie film aspirations who had sense enough to realize he only had a half an hour worth of material. So Ed Radmanich only made a 33-minute long feature! What a novel idea! I would absolutely love it if this particular trend caught on in indie filmmaking.

What can I say about Artie and his adventures? With a half-hour long feature, I'd hate to give away anything that might detract from anyone's viewing pleasure. So, here are the basics of our hero's tale. Artie lives in a pretty quiet neighborhood and spends time hanging out with the guys he grew up with. His neighbor hates him but I don't think Artie's the type to mind. Everything changes when Artie finds some mysterious soap (yes I said soap) in his wall. Next thing you know Artie's finding doorways to other dimensions and realizes he can teleport! A girl as mysterious as Arties' new found soap shows up speaking a different language and some creepy guys from another dimension are chasing her. They hope to catch her and steal her soap. Artie doesn't know what's going on but he's not waiting to ask any questions. He packs up his amazingly huge arsenal and decides to try and save the hood.

I'm having a hard time making a firm ruling on this one. It really wasn't long enough for me to build up a decent dislike for the movie and yet it wasn't really my cup of tea, either. Here's what I can tell you...the movie looked really sharp. Most of the computer generated effects appeared to have a tremendous amount of time, effort, and artistic talent involved. For an indie film, it looked quite polished and professional.

The story is by no means deep and I wouldn't have expected a character driven drama from a short feature like this, but what I would expect and what there was plenty of was action and it really kept things moving. The fight scenes and action sequences were all well choreographed and fit well within the style of filmmaking on display. The movie was definitely made with a sense of humor and while it wasn't my style of humor per say, it was certainly entertaining. There are also no long drawn out monologues in this movie. In fact, avoiding those long drawn out moments seemed deliberate and I for one appreciated it. There are some special features on the disk that are worth mentioning here, too. There are three Artie Guy & Jay cartoons and an action short film called A.D.D Bad Night.

All in all I'd like to give credit to Ed and his crew. They had an idea, they stuck to it, and you can tell they put a lot of work into making it look the best it could. They obviously had a little bit of a budget and they used it well. It's a film that's definitely worth a look. You can also check out their website www.artiesavesthehood.com .