Posts tagged: electricity

I’ve written about writer/director/producer Sean Abley’s Socket movie here before, when it first hit the festival circuit. Now the movie is out on DVD and available from TLA Video. TLA Releasing put out Socket and the TLA media empire is descended from the Theatre of the Living Arts experimental theatre group in 60’s Philadelphia.

A couple of days ago, Sean Abley and a couple hundred of his closest friends got together at MJ’s Bar in Silverlake to celebrate the release of Socket on DVD. The event was hosted by promoter Jovy Janolo and producers John Carrozza, Doug Prinzivalli, Matt Mishkoff, and of course Sean himself. The VIP goodie bags included an interesting-looking DVD of a spooky movie called Amnesia, a coupon for a discount on TLA releases, and a pass for thirty free minutes of VOD which promise to “put the HARD back in hardcore DVD.” Blue Blood’s Forrest Black had the honor of receiving the final goodie bag of the night. The doorman apologized to me and told me he guessed I’d be re-gifting because the stuff in there was for, you know, jacking off. I was expecting the DVD and such to be more like what I would get at a regular business convention for web professionals, but TLA in general and Socket and Amnesia in specific appear to be for the purposes of movie movies and not jack off vids. Then again, I couldn’t get the VOD site to load, so maybe my tender sensibilities would have been scalded. Oh, and I’m a chick, so I guess I’m expected to care whether fictional characters romance and fuck exactly who I would personally want and be able to romance and fuck. …

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Writer/director/producer Sean Abley’s dark science fiction flick Socket is hitting the film festival circuit now. The world premiere was at the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Fest. It is screening tonight at the Outfest 07 Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.

Although Socket will probably eventually appear under the Gay & Lesbian heading in my Netflix account, it is a straight up genre flick and the genre is psychological horror/dark SF. The basic storyline is surgeon gets hit by lightening. Cute intern in the hospital he is treated at hooks him up with a support group for people who develop cravings for electricity, after events like being struck by lightening. They start a romantic relationship and, of course, it being a spooky movie, everything goes horribly awry.

The surgeon’s cravings for electricity require a more and more powerful jolt for him to get his fix. He figures out how to implant sockets in his and his lover’s wrists. This leads to both a nifty vampire subtext and entertainingly blatant metaphors for things like meth and cocaine-fueled bathroom sex, which are the sorts of topics most amusingly approached in metaphor. The movie is partly a meditation on the nature of addiction, albeit perhaps a tongue-in-cheek meditation.

The best part of the film is indubitably Sean Abley’s masterful ear for simultaneously believable and humorous dialogue. The characters banter with one another in a lighthearted way which puts a smile on the viewer’s face and feels tremendously real, like they are actual sympathetic people you could know in real life. It is pretty rare that I see a movie where the …

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