Duck Season is a minimalist shoestring Mexican comedy, which barely scrapes through its ninety minutes running time with some judicious arty shots of MC’s housing projects at the start. The rest of the film stays firmly inside an apartment where two bored kids are just trying to play video-games all day: if it were not for the continual power cuts.
I think it was Kevin Smith that let on that it was probably cheaper these days to film in colour than black and white, or at least black and white film-stock is easiest to get. (You can do post in black and white with less expertise I guess.) Anyway, Duck Season is in b/w which makes it seem all the cheaper, but also transforms one of the key sequences of the film. Our video-gaming kids playing the pizza delivery guy for the right to not pay for the pizza. They play a football game (Manchester United vs Barcelona) and we get to see the glorious visuals full cinema screen: in black and white. It is an odd moment which makes you consider the visual dynamics needed for a game and those for a film. The jerky, predictable movements, the unrealistic turning on a sixpence is necessary for a game, but looks weird in cinema. And watching computer Ryan Giggs celebrating a goal in black and white is one of the most unnerving and funny things I have seen all year.