Twisted

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Fifty Percent Grey

Thursday, July 24th, 2008

dir: Ruairi Robinson, 3min—Now is a good time to catch up on some of the greats that we may have missed. For example, the Oscar-nominated animation, Fifty Percent Grey. This dark comedy explores the age-old question of what happens after death. A recently deceased soldier finds himself in a serene grey paradise with nothing but […]

I Am Stamos

Sunday, July 6th, 2008

dir: Rob Meltzer, 18 min—
“John Stamos is here, and he’s pissed!”
“He’s in the vents!”
“Ahhhhhhh!”
The pinnacle of postmodern feature cinema (among well-known films) is 1999’s Being John Malkovich. Its plot twists seven ways and is always happy to take a side road to nowhere before continuing on its merry way. During its convoluted trip, it sweeps […]

Geraldine

Monday, June 30th, 2008

Arthur De Pins, 9min—When viewing the work of Arthur De Pins one is in familiar territory of the born cartoonist. He is a natural artist able to turn out comic caricatures seemingly at will. I could have selected any of three films to feature though his 2001 Géraldine was his first film and launched him […]

Muto

Sunday, June 1st, 2008

by Blu, 7min—Often an old story makes a splash when it’s told in a new way, given new context, or played out on a larger scale. Muto does all of these. Here, the familiar morph animation takes on a new face where characters animate across the real-life streets and buildings of Buenos Aires.

Blu, a street […]

I Love Sarah Jane

Monday, May 12th, 2008

dir: Spencer Susser, 14:20—While I’m always open-minded when it comes to the hunt for new films to get excited about, I have to admit there are certain elements that just push my buttons, and Spencer Susser’s I Love Sarah Jane hits through them with military precision:
Post apocalyptical world - check
An underdog to route for […]

Tales of Mere Existence: How To Break Up

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

Lev Yilmaz, 2:57—With his sharp, dry humor, Lev’s Tales of Mere Existence, cuts deep into life’s small yet painful truths.
Birthed from the real-life situations and obsessions of Lev himself, Tales captures Lev’s strange series of encounters including A Typical Conversation With My Mom, Procrastination, and I’m Not Going to Think About Her. As an introduction […]

Out There

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

John Coven, 7:35—Originality is one of the greatest virtues a film can have. But few films are original, not in any grand way. Rather, they tell stories we’ve seen and heard and read hundreds of times before. The better ones present it a little differently, but the basics are old friends. […]

The Pearce Sisters

Sunday, March 2nd, 2008

dir: Luis Cook, 9:15—In the words of its makers, The Pearce Sisters—a short film based on the story by Mick Jackson and produced by Aardman Animations—is “a bleak hearted tale of love, loneliness, guts, gore, nudity, violence, smoking and cups of tea.” And you know how well tea parties and loneliness mix. Enter the sisters, […]

Pin Point

Sunday, February 24th, 2008

James Kim, 3:43—Created during his stint in the Character Animation program at CalArts School of Film & Video, James Kim’s Pin Point is a beautifully sketched short in which a young girl is snatched away from her father’s funeral by a kind-looking orphanage caregiver who ends up being anything but caring or giving.
A finalist for […]

Genesis Antipode

Sunday, February 17th, 2008

dir: J.R. Robinson, 15:00—The post apocalyptic sub-genre is a particularly fitting one for short film. Figure: With almost everyone dead, there’s not a whole lot going on. Most of the features taking place in these dim tomorrows could have their plots reduced to ten minutes. A majority of the run times are used up […]