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Loner freak out classic Taxi Driver gets the trailer remix action so popular nowadays. It talks right to our hearts... or at least it mans up to do so while glaring at itself in the mirror. Can you wait until someone gives us the inevitable Mel Gibson's Triumph Of The Will? We can't.
Taxi Driver [iFilm]
Team Tiger Awesome shove their tongue down the parted lips of the 80s with this episode of their show. Bob Uecker is still upsetting. We ourselves await the Boy Meets World references from the 90s loving individuals who will one day follow in their stead.
Check out this stop motion short in which a few magic cupcakes get together. Sort of like when the elves would build shoes for the elderly shopkeeper who was kind to them when they were in bird form, but more like ants at Chong's house. With thanks to Ben.
Baked Goods [milkfat]
Directed by Casimir Nozkowski (of Time Mistake) and written by Will Carlough (of Robin's Big Date) Blood Brothers is the tale of two less than motivated vampires who have to figure out what to do after their jobs at the blood bank, well, dry up.
Team Tiger Awesome, of 28 Days Slater fame, present the time travel/beach volleyball opus Professor Hoofnagle's Buried In Time:
Probably just as well that these two can't biologically have kids... they'd be like Truman Capote reading The Dude's lines from The Big Lebowski, and they'd almost certainly sit next to us on a long bus ride. They'd probably also have colds.
Randy & Steve [American Films]
Via Joel Samuel, who explains:
"The late James R Buick and his wife Sheila and Joel Produced this campy video feature that never saw the light of day until now. Zombies come alive and evil forces are subdued in Phoenix by bikers and metal heads."
We know what you're thinking, but if you pulled the security tape at the local 7-11 and saw this on it, you'd frickin' flip out, man.
We seem to have a thing for the recently canceled over at Channel 101, particularly when they've got names like "Blood Oath Of Three Men And A Baby."
Say, we don't know actor Eliot Hochberg personally, so we can't really gauge his own level of amusement, but we have to imagine telling any family members when they ask what you're up to that you're "the dead felon in Blood Oath Of Three Men And A Baby no.2" has to feel pretty fucking neato.
Invisible Engine's short which introduces you to some of the tubes of which the internet is evidently made. Jack Frenetics wants to be your friend.
Short filmmaker Russell Arch (he's darkened our site a few times... and he's not particularly short as far as we can tell, only his films are) created this on spec ostensibly for Fox, who were too busy tying a flaming dwarf to a wagon wheel on the end of a trebuchet to see how far he'd allow himself to be flung for $40 or something (no one steal that, that's our reality television proposal goddamn you) to put Russell's short to use. So, Russell has done what many have short filmmakers done: posted Prison Break-Tattoo on YouTube, That Which Loves All.
Awkward Pictures' fun short which asks a few questions about the universe(s) we live in:
"Do parallel universes exist? If so, would we exist there as well? What if two universes became one? Could we come in contact with our parallel self?"
Yes, sorta, never, and not really.
Hey, we happen to know. Go ahead and ask us something else.
Parallel/Parallel [undergroundfilm]
Flatlife: 21 year old animation student Jonas Geirnaert's graduation project which he entered into the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, where it took Best Short Film.
Pretty little short Film from Slumlord productions. Directed by Courtney Fathom Sell and featuring John Haverty and Gray Hurlburt.
Blue Ribbon Panel presents the fifth in their Classroom series. Principal Brockway does a no-no.
Classroom Episode 5 [underground film]
Henry T. Weiss and Frederick Liddle discuss their inspirations, hardships and more in an exclusive tell-all documentary.
From Zebro.
A man's conscience comes to crash on the couch for a while. From Emphaticemphatic.com
Interesting short film from Steven Soderbergh:
Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan's Channel 101 tweaking short in which one of the lesser Sith gets out and about.
Chad Vader [channel 101]
A "devastating character piece" peek into the life of pop superstar Michael McDonald from the creators of The Happy Foster Show.
Paul Matusheski's short film in which the hero goes out to a resutrant every night and purposely chokes on his food "to make a hero out of some lucky restaurant patron." A cool idea well filmed.
Based on the Chuck Palahniuk novel Choke (thanks to Bidwell in the comments).
"If a person were to disappear we could still tell a lot about them from objects they left behind. These artifacts become a physical representation of memories and identity, both person and social. We may not directly share the same memories but we can share the same artifacts. These artifacts are not only such personal belongings as photographs and letters, but also the commercial objects we accumulate and become attached to. Shared artifacts connect us."
Deb Prado's atmospheric bit of stop-motion animation sifts over the ashes of someone who isn't there anymore. Made entirely of still pictures from a DSLR camera, with no video used.
Janela [Undergroundfilm]
The world's first time traveler makes a grand miscalculation in the new short film directed by Casimir Nozkowski.
Brian Springer's 1995 documentary Spin, a clever bit of film in which a lot of the back channel news feeds not meant for public viewing reveal the machinations of image mongers during the 1992 primaries, presidential election, Operation Rescue abortion protests, and the LA riots.
Jeffrey Hopkins' funny short Draw the Pirate takes on artistic frustration at its most, well, pathetic: "A man takes an art school entry exam placed on a matchbook. After multiple rejections, he attempts revenge."
Draw the Pirate [undergroundfilm]
Daniel Lee offers up a three minute short described as:
"When a guy returns from his trip to Spain, it takes him less than 30 seconds to annoy the hell out of his friend. If you've ever known someone who returned from a foreign country and pretended to be an instant authority on all things international, then this is the short for you."
We've both done this and been seriously annoyed by this behavior enough to feel like an even bigger douche when we remember our doing this.
Las Ramblas [atom Films]
One-upsmanship among a pair of brothers gets a little out of hand in this short film. Evidently Daniel Elkayam and Jerome Schwartz's Up the Ladder was written, produced, scored, and edited all within 48 hours. We're guessing there's a dead hitchhiker or two invovled in there somewhere.
Up The Ladder [atom Films]
Being hideously wounded by pseudo feudal-era Japan truck stop novelties doesn't necessarily mean the fun bits of your life are over. Also we think we went to school with this guy, and we're sorry.
The Mighty Heroes was a fairly wacky `60s animated series created by the boundary-pushing animator Ralph Bakshi for Terrytoons, otherwise probably best known for Mighty Mouse. The Mighty Heroes featured the bumbling crime fighting stylings of Rope Man, Strong Man, Diaper Man, Tornado Man and, uh, Cuckoo Man. We personally think Cuckoo Man got the shaft pretty hard with regards to super identities.
The Mighty Heroes "The Monsterizer"
"The Junker"
"The Frog"
Interesting bit of trivia: evidently in an episode of Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, the Mighty Heroes retired from fighting crime badly and became bad lawyers with a firm called Man, Man, Man, Man & Man. (Via wikipedia)
Via metafilter
Ben Hibon's spiffy 9 minute animated short for MTV Asia, which seems to be blossoming much like Aeon Flux did before it from a short bit of eyecandy into its own thing entirely.
Kids, find that you're a little logy in the mornings? Enjoy a hearty helping of.. well, kids, with tasty Embry-Os, but one of many animated shorts available at Sam Liberto and Carolyn Main's Cartoon Dance Party site, including Cartoon Dance Party 2003, which is currently featured at atom films.
A clip from newly - picked - back - the - hell - up - by - MTV2 - for - another - season - thank - you - very - much Wonder Shozen: Global Politics in 30 seconds. You know Wonder Shozen, The Enemy watches this on the internets, and becomes stronger through it like Freddy Kruger does with the souls of children. You work for that enemy combatant Helen Thomas, don't you Wonder Shozen. We thought so.
Super Mario, Communist? Squat athletic plumber of the proletariat getting us over capitalism one cutely-scored leap at a time?
Flash artist Lerferz makes the case.
Super Mario Communist [albino blacksheep]
If everybody downloads this, the FBI will have just that much more trouble tracking down who did what once Miss. Portman goes missing.
Bryan D'Alessandro's short film which deals with the hell that is the rodent problem we've all had to deal with at one time or the other in the big city: under-amused doormen.
Mike Dennert's credit card advance-funded 1997 short based on a true story about a man in Kansas who fell into an outhouse while trying to retrieve his money. According to the blurb attached to this YouTube upload, William S. Burroughs said of this film before he died: "first you laugh. Then you gag on your laughter. All of a sudden, it's not funny at all. It's horrible. Horrible and sad. It's Fate." Then evidently Hunter S. Thompson went on to say: "This is a good film. Too good, actually: Extremely Disturbing." That sure is a lot of review.
"Rob Fosse (brother of Bob Fosse) realizes his lifelong dream of assembling a bottomless male dance company. They may not be dancers... but they do dance!"
Who's Out There?-- A 1975 film which "explores the new view of extraterrestrial life now emerging from the results of probes to the planets." Yeah yeah, aliens -- basically, we're tuning in to see Orson Welles do his grumbly magic.
Also, We've gotten some emails that The Critic clip with the frozen peas joke in our earlier Orson post is actually a direct reference to this. We lumped it in with the other goofs. We are thus embiggened with learning. (Thanks to Ryan and Jim.)
Who's Out There? [google/National Archives and Records Administration]
This weekend we were so occupied by masturbating furiously to Queen Latifah's nakedly exposed rubenesque arm cleavage that we missed two of the more popular things to hit the internet; the first being the live action Simpson's opening created for European satellite network Sky One. The other is Natalie Portman's rap thing which will allow SNL to drive the briefly charming cutesy white rap meme thing into the ground like a fucking lawn dart thrown by a cocaine-fueled Chuck Norris.
Simpson's opening:
Natalie Portman SNL Digital Short
Ola Simonsson, Johannes Stjarne Nilsson's short with the tagline "ever wonder what it would be like if the cast of Stomp lived in your apartment? This short will give you some idea." Most city dwellers probably understand this just fine, but its still a fine short.
Also "Sweden" is now more than where disposable furniture and cleaver wielding Muppets hail from, it's now also a post tag, as it seems to have its own vibe in the funny shit dept.
Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers [atomfilms]
Quickly descried at IMDB as "A glimpse of four brothers' daily obsessions with chickens, rap music, and aliens", James Clauer's cool, slightly bleak 13 minute short The Aluminum Fowl has co-producer Harmony Korine's weird-assed feel all over it. (Warning contains graphic cockfighting of the not Brokeback Mountain variety.)
Upload by handkerchief
Also rich with the Korine is the new(-ish) Cat Power video Living Proof, brought to our attention by Susannah Breslin.
Slightly ahead of its time Canadian media outlet Zed TV presents Sean Ellis' Academy Award-nominated short film Cashback . The short won the "Best Narrative Short" award at New York's Tribeca Film Festival, and is a little NSFW, so watch it under your covers with a flashlight when your parents are watching a movie on TV.
Cashback [zed.cbc]
Thanks to Stan
The previously mentioned Project 15 comes to fruition. Here's a trailer for the resultant movie. We could watch this all day.
Here's an amusing web series following the exploits of Pittsburgh radio station WANT FM. Sorta feels like a mashup of WKRP and The Office, but not nearly as sucky as that unfortunate description which we just pulled out of our asses actually makes us picture. Ongoing since the summer of 2003, it's currently in the last half of its third season. If it's new to you, there are pretty well stocked archives you can go back through to catch up.
Here's a nugget of solid joy that will make the afternoon for more than a few of you-- Si Quieres Puedes: Alex Montoya + Raul Navarro's "short film that explores the limits of human will." Is that the preferred euphemism these days?
Thanks to Susannah.
Si Quieres Puedes (aka If There's a Will there's a Way) upload by polpope
Andy King's 2004 sex ed ad for Canada's Planned Parenthood Federation.
We feel compelled to note that Deejay Rapper is the man behind the feel-good zombie ninja video of the year. Yes.
Thanks to feeble
Highly amusing short featuring man's man-- fuck that, Ted Nugent's man endurance predator Willy, who hunts his game in the wild mano-y-whatever style, forgoing guns for pinching his prey on the neck like Spock. From the creator(s) of that Bobby Dukes paintball improv flick from last year. Wouldn't shock us if this turned out to be a viral for underarm stuff, but that could just be ad-induced paranoia.
By the way, how long is the media going to give a shit about this stupid Cheney hunting thing? Of all the wonderful achievements our little draft-avoiding Patton has done for us in recent years, shooting a republican lawyer hardly seems like the one to get upset over.
"In this short clip, John Waters announces that 'no smoking is allowed in this theatre' and goes on to encourage people to smoke anyway, as it keeps the ushers busy."
Via the YouTube user who brought us Please Kill Mr. Kinski yesterday
PGA Tour golf player / sports mouth Bryant Gumbel gassed on about having to cover the tedious Winter Games on his video essay bit of HBO's Real Sports recently, claiming the nearly all Caucasian pack of athletes was like watching a "GOP convention." Fair enough, but this bit of wit coming out of Gumbel is amusing because Gumbel is probably best known for going on about the rampant racism in sports whenever the soapbox presents itself. A few of the more humorless villagers are grabbing torches over the comment. Anyway, here's Robert Smigel's TV Funhouse version of Gumbel enjoying an erection over Survivor when he was a part of CBS's Early show a few years ago:
Karl Pilkington, the drug trip of a producer for the Ricky Gervais Xfm radio show seems to be making the rounds just now, mostly because of the Guardian Podcast. Here are three short bits from YouTube feauting the magic that is Karl:
Meet Karl Pilkington:
Ricky Gervais & Karl Pilkington - Nature Of Infinity:
The Ricky Gervais Show - Behind the Scenes:
The Nut-Punch: territorial pissing to some, foreplay to others, the humble nut-punch can solve many a problem. Well one kind of problem-- excessive ball comfort. Anyway, here's a convenient way to let others know your care about them, or at least how their balls are, or that you're sick of this "sharing" your Pop-Tarts shit that's going on back at the house.
Nut-Punch [takethatproductions.com]
Thanks to John
Here's a highly amusing late 90s short film by David Schmoeller, the poor bastard who tired one time to direct the subtle blend of Heinrich Himmler and Iggy Pop-on-trucker-speed that is actor Klaus Kinski in his Hitler Youth horror flick Crawlspace. Kinski's temper and quirks are legend, his antic on this particular set were so out of hand that apparently the film's investors began plotting to kill Kinski for the insurance money. Hence the title. Read a pretty tight thumbnail of Klaus' funtime hellride express at Wikipedia.
Via WFMU's Beware Of The Blog and YouTuber doradogold
Roommates -- can't live with `em, can't indulge in homosexual fantasies about them easily. A new one from The Post Show.
Wet Dream [The Post Show]
We don't have to break down what's going to happen in this one for you, do we? Of course not. You know, and you're still going to watch, just like we did. We're simple people, amused by simple things. Wanna get a beer later? We'll bring some car keys to dangle under the bar lights, it'll be awesome. Until then lets watch this guy incinerate some used carbs.
http://dbureau1.securesites.net/site/dev/core/_media/archive_detail.php?id=13&path=other/Lucky_-_Short_Film.mov
A stunt performer himself, Nash Edgerton's short film Lucky reminds us of the chase sequence in Raider Of the Lost Ark-- not as grandiose, but it's got that "from fucked, to on top, to fucked again" thing going on, and some fairly nifty camera work as well.
From the "we dare you to link to anything on our site in support of your fucking write-up, you blogging pansy" website that is The Directors Bureau. Click "directors", then click "Nash Edgerton" to learn more. Or don't, we're not your mother.
Lucky [The Directors Bureau]
Howard Dean's run at the presidency killed a lot of things very dead. Our faith in the average American voter and his ability to see past the opposition's calculated hype-up of a frickin' yell for instance, but this is not a political short we're linking to here. This is a particularly well directed short film all about love, and how hap was restored to the hapless at a Dean rally in 2004.
Hello Dean [Huffington Post]
Here's a video described by creator Andrew Rosenblum as " The first of (hopefully) many episodes of a gaming review show inspired by Judgement Day on G4TV." Also described by tip-dropper Totee as "not so much a video as it is a contest with yourself to see how long you can watch without eating your own face."
We link here not out of schadenfreude, but out of familiarity -- we dare any video camera owner out there not to have exactly this footage lurking in their sock drawer. Right next to that big knobby sex toy which totally doesn't make you gay, and that hash you paid $800 for which is in fact mostly used chewing tobacco. We'd pay to watch this. Fuck Judgement Day.
Great Mystery Science Theater 3000 pre-show short hors d'oeuvre. From their coverage of Ed Wood's The Sinister Urge.
Thanks to Flaggboy42
Here's a neat little stop-motion animation centered around the Tom Waits tune Tabletop Joe from filmmaker Katrina Whalen. A college final, it's got a good feel to it that suits the music.
Tabletop Joe [corduroyroads.com]
A few other short bits with that same early morning mood are to be found at the Corduroy Roads site as well.
An ostrich, one which is down. It wraps its beak around the speak. It squawks to the flock. The bird with the word.
This filled us with a level of glee which is probably illegal in Utah.
Awwwstrich [Huffingtonpost.com]
Thanks to Jake
Are You The Favorite Person of Anybody?, Miranda July's contribution to previously mentioned McSweeney's DVD shorts compilation "magazine" Wolphin.
Are You The Favorite Person of Anybody? [Salon's Dog]
BTW, if you get the chance, see Miranda July's really excellent You And me And Everyone We Know, from which we get the image above. Occasionally you'll run into a review depicting it as pseudo-artsy self-indulgent wankery, but if it were like that, someone named "dong resin" probably wouldn't be reocmening it to you, now would he. For example, it's got infinite pooping in it. Try to picture that in your mind.
Infinite.
Pooping.
"True Love is but a +2 Broadsword away. "
For weeks we've been waving off tips for this short film like complete morons because we mistakenly thought we'd seen it already. We're not sure what we thought it was, but Fear of Girls is Ryan Wood's goof documentary on the Role-Playing game culture. Did quite well at various small film festivals, we hear.
Fear of Girls [YNG Turk Films ]
Thanks to Mr. Nate
A self-contained short meant to air on the episode of SNL with Scarlett Johansson as hostess and cut for time, Fred Armisen stars as a man stuck on his own (com)plane of existence and misses out on a pretty spectacular evening.
SNL classic short in which Eddie Murphy slathers on a little peach #5 to visit "the other America." A goof on John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me.
While we're SNL-ing it, Prince was pretty tasty this weekend:
First, here's an arty little number entitled "Maggot Leaps From Donut"
It speaks to the human condition straight on, in a way we can all understand easily. Like we pointed out a post or so ago, maggots are the new black. Part of the Huffington Post Contagious Fest.
Then, Hello? Not the Lionel Ritchie video with the creepy head sculpture-- much worse.
To round things out, reasonably adorable Ayumi Hamasaki in an ad for donuts, because she's nothing like maggots or midgets.
The Post Show offers a peek at the do'ns behind the nylon curtain at the blue collar comedy festival. This fails completely by actually being funny and so reveals itself as a fraud almost immediately.
Get It Done [The Post Show]
A 4 minute "mini-sitcom" centered around goofing off at work. If this amuses you and use it to shirk your own job and goof off, the snake head then bites the tail, and the Ouroboros of fucking off becomes complete, thus facilitating the utter takeover of the west by China.
The latest episode goes all Star Trek. Enjoy.
"Ninja and Zombie is a short film and internet serial about the daily lives of a ninja and his roommate, a zombie."
If you're still reading this it means the preceding sentence wasn't enough to motivate you to click the link. We'll repeat it for you stragglers who needed a moment for that to sink in:
"Ninja and Zombie is a short film and internet serial about the daily lives of a ninja and his roommate, a zombie ."
New chapters to be posted weekly.
Ninja and Zombie [Daragh Sankey]
By then dead for five years Lenny Bruce gets (re)-animated thanks to the efforts of San Francisco filmmaker John Magnuson in this 1971 goof on The Lone Ranger. All of the vocal characterizations in this are from a live performance in which Lenny wonders about the realities of being a do-godder in ye olde west.
http://www.youtube.com/w/Thank-You-Mask-Man?v=NE6JWEogq_k&search=Lenny%20Bruce
The tranny with the jammie, the hostess with the mostess, Divine with her 80s rock extravaganza Hard Magic:
Which could only be followed up by Ed Wood's bendy classic Glen or Glenda in its entirety.
Why so much video for one post? Both of these vids come from YouTuber extrodinare Euterpe Jones, who seems suddenly popular everywhere for her taste in uploads to the site. She only wants to be the President of Freedonia.
Via PCL Linkdump and Hip Hop Music, respectively.
David Firth crawls just that much deeper into the K Hole of David Firth with the 3rd Sock toon, Different Types of Soup. On its best day, it would take the most challenging episode of Lost to reach the level of strange of these shorts put out about eleventy billion years, or as they call it in the physics community "one DMV."
Current SNL cast member Bill Hader stars in Nicholas Jasenovec's 2004 short Sounds Good to Me: Remastering the Sting, as Sound Designer Barnaby G. Price, the man charged with recreating the audio for the 30th anniversary of The Sting . A goof on DVD extras.
Thanks to Nicholas
Seth Peterson's Tom Clancy-esque comedy short in which rouge special ops type groups face off over the launch of a black market Soviet missile. Things go badly.
High Speed connection
Low Speed connection
[Underground Film]
Pretty great short created in three days for the 2006 Focus Film Festival. We've been letting refreshments call the shots for years, we can relate to this.
Raido station lackey Dead Air Dave's time as the one paid to man the much over-used Dump Button during Howard Stern's last days at K-Rock is the subject of Sam Baharvar's funny documentary Irritation: A Radio Saga. A paycheck hard earned for Dave, a fan of the show he had to butcher into incomprehensibility on a daily basis.
Via Dead Air Dave.net
Tom Kuntz and Mike Maguire's 2001 goof which seems to be floating around again. The joke here is a potty mouthed but chipper Japanese family calling each other nigger a lot, as we imagine Martha Stewart does with Alexis every morning. Careful eyes will spot Gaikokujin goofs all over this thing, like the Chinese news channel and the lack of cameras on everybody, even though they're fully dressed and meant to be Japanese! Are we right? Haha! Weee.
Tokyo Breakfast [devilducky]
Clone High, a painful example of a great animated show delivered with the loving hamfists of MTV into oblivion after having aired for about a week. Here's a clip from Episode 1 Escape To Beer Mountain.
Simply captioned " embarrassing video from several years ago", Mfer captures something. We don't know what the fuck what that something might be exactly, but when you see a caterpillar inching its way across the concrete to someone wailing "muuuuuther-fucker" you can't help but see a little of yourself in that. Maybe that's us. Maybe Thunderbird wine is not on the food pyramid for a reason.
Thanks to LB
Steven Hore's 2004 short in which we get a little reminder of our first big move in life and also why those inkblot test things make us wet ourselves a little.
Push [supershorts.org]
Gal next door Cranberry DeLite clicks a speculum and gives us a candid peek inside her life. "Cranberry DeLite scares the high screaming fuck out of Dong Resin" was probably too specific a title. A trailer of sorts for ELMAfilms' iPimp.
Let Bradley Cummings straighten out your MySpace profile. It worked for Emo unit Screaming Teardrop.
Our Space [the post show]
Watch 23 shorts from the Sundance film festival. Includes a few which have darkened our door, notably James Duffy's Robin's Big Date, which still makes us laugh like mental patients.
List of films here, annoying bloated Flash piece of shit interface with the films in it here [sundance.org]
ShitMovies.net: to borrow a fairly turgid tagline from some cleaning product which we think applies pretty well here: "it is what it does, it does what it says."
No, not actual scat style shit movies, that's Miramax, just wholesome shit movies of the sort which make you feel momentarily better when something crash lands because for an instant you wonder if perhaps one of these people might have been in the explosion.
Hilton Tennant’s odd animated entry for Panasonic's Capture the Motion II shorts fest.
The Little Battle [panasonic] [mpg]
Via Tween
The 1953 short in which Bugs discovers Yosemite Sam blown to smithereens by his own ill-tended to meth lab. Well, you explain Yosemite Sam without bathtub crank. Actually Friz Freleng's Southern Fried Rabbit is now aired only edited for fear that it might warp the tender children of today because Bugs disguises himself as both Jim Crow and Uncle Tom to mess with Yosemite Sam's head. That the Loony Toons gang were goofing on shitty racial stereotypes instead of perpetuating them is evidently something Warner Brothers is afraid the kids of today are too dim to catch.
Read about Southern Fried Rabbit at Wikipedia
"A fake movie trailer, made on a boring day in Glasgow, Scotland. Neither of the makers of the film are homosexual, nor are they well versed in biblical stories of Sodom and Gomorrah, but they pledge to remain open minded to either."
A crab teaches us the way of the claw.
A funny musical short from up-and-comer Javier Prato, but one of many video available at the director/screenwriter's site.
Spam Free Or Die Squad
We haven't the slightest what the high holy fuck is going on in New York-based directing/design/animation duo Tronic's demo reel thing Eternal Double Happiness, but we feel like better people for having watched it. Like we've been to the opera and we didn't nod off and now we might be able to get sex from the person who took us to it. You know, like that.
Eternal Double Happiness [Tronic Studio]
A new short form GoodiebagTV. We were not in on the creation process of this short, but we wouldn't be surprised if it sprang up from someone asking the oft-repeated question of "hey, why the fuck do them ATMs have that Braille on them like that?"
Subtitled "one man's obsession with William Shatner", Auto Destruct is an amusing short in Trekkies vein in which we are welcomed to marvel at lives shapped by the horror of not gettin' any. Ever.
Thanks to Janet
Sometimes love don't feel like it should. Kevin Anderton's award-winning short.
Latex - The Movie [Underground Film]
Seeing as it is Channel 101's "Top Failed Pilot" we're guessing few people find Rob Schrab's goof on the local horror theatre shows as funny as we do, but that aside, you've got to respect a man doing a half-assed Scarlett O'Hara among a flurry of wind-up bats.
Travis And Jonathan's Red State Update movie review show for the rest of us, the rest of us being people put off by the high-toned smug self-satisfaction of citydwellers like light beer drinker Ebert or sushi nibbling Roper. Here they review Brokeback Mountain, and much is learned.
Red State Update review of Brokeback Mountain
Other Travis and Jonathan
...well, short film. What stated out, we think, as a goofy meme-ish joke that spawned Flash toons has been made into an actual short film goof on Romeo and Juliet with real live people in it. This is why we sadly foresee doom for Snakes On A Plane... by the time it gets here, it'll be obsolete.
Micah Moore's Ninjas Versus Pirates (in four parts)
Another sensitive reworking of a Peanuts cartoon to help bring all the races together, this time for Martin Luther King's birthday, which is on the 15th, but will be celibrated on Monday, January 16.
See? We know some Black stuff.
It's Martin Luther King Day Charlie Brown! [Offensivevideo]
(NSFW due to language, and, y'know, an unbelievable level of stereotyping)
See also:
A Charlie Brown Kwanzaa
Bring Me the head of Charlie Brown
Found on the video bit of much loved electronic music provider Dan Deacon's site, Jimmy Roche's short film Mars is good little mind hump: "This film was made in 2002 by wonderful film maker/video artist Jimmy Roche. Jimmy showed me a rough cut and I scored to the video and then Jimmy recut the film to better fit the score. The piece is a westen/romance film about a triipy scientist that discovers a blackhole leading into Mars and his adventures into his own mind"
Mars [dandeacon.com]
See also: Dean Deacon on the moving picture box
The new one from Neill Blomkamp, he of the Citroen "Transformer" ad, and Alive in Joburg, Tempbot is "an experimental robot, designed to perform ordinary office jobs (but with an efficiency inaccessible for men) and to act as well as a normal human beings, including the way he relates with the opposite sex. Obviously, things will go very bad..."
Tempbot [Spy Films and W+K Entertainment]
Via No fat clips!!!
Patchwork protagonist Jerry gets another knee in the groin from life and does a little time in the cooler in this, the third It's Jerry Time animated short. Now in mini-HD, evidently. You know what that means... that's right, a giant large important thing that means. Actually we don't know what mini-HD means. Well, we know what it means in BSDM rooms, but not here. Looks good, at any rate.
Jailtime For Jerry [It's Jerry Time]
It's Jerry Time
Previously: It’s Jerry Time and Jerry and the Landlord
GoodieBag TV serves up the first episode of Wonder Showzen
GoodieBag TV is having a Wonder Showzen blow-out:
"Since my server was down for a week this billing month, I have lots of bandwidth still available. So for a very limited time I'm giving away the first episode of MTV2's Wonder Showzen"
Wonder Showzen, if you're not hip to it, is MTV2's goof on puppet-laden kid shows. We link here to a fansite which is far less irritating than the real site.
Bandwidth blow-out [GoodieBag TV]
Hotdogs give us the the strength to fight off daddy.
Culty Italian director Enzo Capua's method of visual storytelling makes the 1993 short Odio, in which an attention-starved housewife refuses to be taken for granted, an interesting experience. Slight nudity, watch out at work.
Enzo Capua's Odio [Underground Film]
The Brothers McLeod present us with Fuggy Fuggy, a great animated peek into the lives of ninjas. Safe for work, but you might keep it low all the same, "fuggy fuggy" as pronounced in the short sounds NSFW.
Fuggy Fuggy [Brothers McLeod ]
The Thach Brothers offer up the shocking tale of a hard dusty love that middle America is not yet ready to accept -- Bareback Mountain, an "unflinching look at the love between a man and a horse. As poignant and shocking today as it was the day before yesterday."
Bareback Mountain [Google Video]
If Google Video is denied you, watch it at the Psychic Bunny site.
Kevin Colligan's five-minute student film which tells the story of the game show contestant who plays by his own rules, motherf(bleeep)ker.
Mr. Game Show
Thanks to Joseph
Closerlook provides us with a rare peek into the Sysiphean hell that is corporate holiday video creation:
"Satna has a lightsaber and a Trans-Am....eh..."
"Not necessarily Santa."
"Let's bring it down. Let's think small."
"Ewoks are small."
It degrades from there.
Holiday Production [Closerlook]
Thanks to Michael
Total loss of sanity strikes at an inconvenient time in Danny Capozzi's Greenwater -- a cool little animated bumper for the BBC, which reminds us of the bumpers MTV used to use in its non sequitur-ness and creativity. But one droplet in an ocean of fantastic bits of video lurking at the Bermuda Shorts site.
Greenwater [Bermuda Shorts]
Shame that the war seems to be on Christmas- there are so many cultures in our rich cultural cornucopia which could be under attack this holiday season. The seasonal slab of comedy from The Variety Shac.
Ganesha [The Variety Shac]
More Shac:
The Slumber Party
Bakesale
Thirty-Four Fourteen
Russell Arch uses the fake news format to envision the War On Christmas with a little more gusto than flabby fatbodies like other fake news individuals like Bill O'Reilly can muster. Features Lisa Kushell, who anyone with the appropriate sex drive will fondly remember as Fiona Apple on from MAD TV's parody of that video where she writhes around in her undies.
War On Christmas [russellarch.com]
See also:
Harsh Reality - Monkeytown U.S.A
and
Stupid Questions
Matt Hulse's odd slightly creepy classroom short which conjures up all sorts of bad memories.
"Between the scowls of a stone-faced teacher and the hauntings of a classroom in motion, the detention bound tots find themselves unable to control their behavior (or certain bodily functions). With the old school house aesthetics, Wee Three presents a sometimes funny, sometimes eerie setting for these mischievous children."
Wee Three
Via the now unfortunelty done Urban Desires
Ross M. Bollinger's likable quick bits of animation in which the Einsturzende Neubauten logo is made to suffer much like Daffy Duck in Duck Amuck.
Jesus endures yet another body blow from godless heathens as The War On Christmas rages on: The Post Show offer up their final short of their season, a yarn in which a young boy learns about Christmas cheer, and Santa learns the hard way about the dirty love.
Sean Nordell's short film Catfucker, which a complex and nuanced four-hour examination of the tense political intrigue between Cuba and the Kennedy white house which nearly lead to a nuclear-
Har! - it's about a guy who wants to fuck cats. A Canadian who wants to fuck cars, no less.
"Simon discovers his roommate's sexual preferences and the fur begins to fly. Literally"
Catfucker [Undergroundfilm]
Comedy short site The Post Show ponders the possibilities of the recent face transplant operation in a more pedestrian relationship. One with blackheads. on pimples. Betwixt backhair.
The Facial [The Post Show]
The second in Ryan Ridley and Drew Hancock's Channel 101 popular series The Wastelander, a sort of group effort featuring various Channel 101 luminaries, in which sidekick Bruce is seen haunted by The Wastelander's unknown past. With good reason. Maybe.
The Wastelander series page [Channel 101]
Terri Timely takes you on the inside of a Zoetrope, sideways. We think.
A Persistent Vision [Terri Timely]
While enjoying Terri Timely's wares, check out The Exit.
A grad project from three young Grafisch Lyceum students (seems all the impressive GC shorts these days are grad projects from overseas animation students) Inflate Escape tells the story the lonely last balloon on a vending cart who seeks freedom. Kind of like The Red Balloon meets Amistad. Well, not really. That would make a good film, though.
Inflate Escape [microcan]
Ray Tintori's short film from the Slamdance Festival 2003 which tells the age-old story of a man addicted to faking his own death, his abandoned boxer son who thinks he is from the future, and his half-sister, the world’s greatest swordfighter, who he has fallen in love with.
Jettison Your Loved Ones [Anarchy]
With thanks to John One, but not John Two. It's very important to John One that John Two get no thanks at all for this tip, and we aim to please.
Somewhere between the Make-a-Wish Foundation, the mob, and those twits in the Mountain Dew ads is the Take A Wish group of two. They have a simple mission: to make sure the dying don't lame it out before they flame out. Oh the humanity. Yet another episode of The Post Show.
Take A Wish [The Post Show]
Animator/ illustrator Belle Mellor gives flight to oddly serene Rube Goldberg-esque sealife in this animated short. A good clip for when the coffee starts to wear thin.
Smooth and funny CG toon in which two young vampires play a treacherous game of tag in their haunted lair. Created by the students of Ecole Européenne Supérieure d'Animation.
Not unlike the currently hot SupaMonks.
Sometimes you see something in our civilized world that makes you wonder how such a thing of the wild came to be part of our urban landscape, and what short of man brought that kind of creature down. That bear frozen in the shop window, that owl stuffed in mid-screech in the corner of that bar, that Indian outside the cigar store. This short film is the answer to one of those questions. A bit of a long load, but worth the wait. Kinda NSFW, but not overly so.
Rare Exports, Inc
Seen @ ask metafilter
For some people, life is a fragile bubble all too easily popped by the hard jagged shards of fate and one person's disenchantment with the genitals of the other. Watch as one man tries to pull his life back together after it has been torn to shreds by newlyweds.
The Breakup [The Post Show]
Cute CG toon flying out of the European School Higher of Animation in which a monastery staffed with Monks who all sort of look like Marzipan from Homestar Runner get attacked by unruly hoards, that is until one monk rises up to do much bloodletting upon them. The smooth animation style is fun to watch.
What goes around comes around. Then it gets violently dead and comes around again. And again. An interesting shoestring budgeted bit of splatter fun in the Sam Rami vein from Dirty D Productions.
An Epic Classic [SuperAwesomeWow.com]
In 1978 French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a sort of steadycam on the front of Ferrari, had a professional Formula 1 racer race through Paris and created a cult sensation that got him arrested the first time it was shown publicly. It makes for fun viewing, to say the least.
Ferrari en Paris [Tyromaniac]
Update: Reader Johnathan gives us a heads up to a Wikipedia article on the film.
Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Ali G aka Borat's response video to the Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry, who plan to sue the Jew responsible for the outrage of Borat's appearance at Europe's MTV VMAs. Seriously, this Borat thing is by now years old, and we should be bored of it, but Sacha is just too funny.
A goof on the mid-90s film version of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting in which small cuddly things swear, dive face first into shit and shoot junk; sort of how we like to imagine the Olsen Twins when we're alone with ourselves. Not worksafe for language, and kind of stupid unless you're into Trainspotting, honestly.
Toyspotting [kjimn]
Alton Clinton's short which tells the story of Pete, and Pete's Bad Hair Day, and why most hair salons play beatless muzak. To quote John Cougar Mellencamp: "sometimes love don't feel like it should."
Sucka 4 Luv [UndergroundFilm]
Neill Blomkamp, the director of the Citroen Transformer ad, envisions a special effects laden alien appearance in Johannesburg, South Africa, evidently a comment on Apartheid.
Alive in Joburg
Via Drawn
Reminds us of the dancing Citroen spoof
Twitch points us to two fantastic Spanish shorts from director Velasco Broca with help from Nacho Vigalond: first Batan Bruits's Kinky Hoodoo Voodoo, a dreamy sort of a thing in which Fellini-esque aliens overtake a children's summer camp. Then Twitch goes further and point us to a trailer for the odd and funny tv show Las aventuras galácticas de Jaime de Funes y Arancha, more strange graininess from south of the border.
Kinky Hoodoo Voodoo Y Las aventuras galácticas de Jaime de Funes y Arancha [Twitch]
With much thanks to maledei
Attack of the Note Sheep - Jess Scott 's short animation in which math drives the mind to wander off to a place of justifiable sheep homicide. Featured in the SIGGRAPH 2004 Electronic Theater and in the Nicktoons Film Festival.
Attack of the Note Sheep [williams.edu]
A "genius unleashed by angst, driven by caffeine, and destroyed by his mother," Gerrard is director Rob Thomas' pretty hilarious goof on the creative end of the advertising set.
Gerrard [Underground Film]
Star Trek fan film/parody Star Wreck has been floating around p2p sites for a while in its various short film infant stages, it has now become a feature length and fairly well polished CGI-enhanced affair called In the Pirkinning. Star Wreck may be a fan film, but it could well be the Citizen Kane of fan films... well, if Orson Wells was funny, and from Finland. Perhaps Star Wreck is the Mallrats of fan films. Either way it is a free download, and pretty impressive. Check out the trailer for convincing.
In what was considered a rare and controversial decision, the Roman Catholic church officially recognized the demonic possession on a 19-year-old college student by Bill Cosby. This is his story.
The Exorcism of Evan Rose [Superawesomewow]
Thanks to Phil
Horror Clown and Agent Spitz - two fun little shorts from the ever-creative Mr and Mrs Wheatley.
See also MECHANICAL DEATH SPIDER and Tony Blair versus The Sex Pistols.
Rush week brings the Post Show to Alpha Kappa Qaeda: Allah beer you can drink, 72 virgins, and pledging is a blast - no gay shit!
Bonus points for the sadly accurate Dave Matthews detail.
Alpha Kappa Qaeda [The Post Show]
Hard drama unfolds as Robot Bastard/Scud the Disposable Assassin creator Rob Schrab takes a peek into the joys of domestic bliss, and homicidal trigger words.
A Stitch in Time [Channel 101]
See also:
· Rob Schrab’s Batman
· Robot Bastard
"Follow the adventures of the Super Nip as filmmaker, Jeff Stearns, explores his cultural backgrounds growing up a mix of Japanese and Caucasian in a small white-bred Canadian city."
Nicely animated short, features sort of a watercolor look.
What Are You Anyways? [Zed TV]
"A shave so close that girls just slip right off your face."
We're not in all honesty too clear on what is, we're guessing it's either a goof short done as a fake ad, or the funniest spec viral for shaving stuff we've seen. NSFW.
Barber Shop Sexy [Kontraband]
"BMX'ers got two wheels...skateboarders got four...We've got eight wheels! Do the math, asshole!"
Sweatervest's fine goof on EXTREME sports in which rollerbladers rock the suburbs like a pack of reuses monkeys covered in peanut butter and leather pants set loose on the international space station with razor blades and cassette singles from Stryper. Don't what we mean by that exactly, but it fits. EXTREME!
Bladin' The Edge!
Thanks to Monkeys For Helping for the tip
Self-made bajillionaire Don Lepre has a fabulous plan for wealth. It is not a scam. He has a fountain. And a rocket ship.
It even works for Black guys! From Comedy short abattoir The B Squad.
Don Lepre's Ultimate Road to Success [The B Squad]
Painter / actor Jeff Parise performs Eric Bogosian's short comedy piece in which an insurance salesman puts the lean on the mark. Features music by Four Tet.
Uncle Freddy [You Tube]
More stuff on Eric Bogosian's home page
Alex Proyas' (The Crow, Dark City, a bajillon music videos) cute lil' noir bumper for MTV from when MTV did that sort of thing.
The Eyeball [MysteryClock]
The Post Show take us to dinner with the new neighbors, and the new neighbors are the proud parents of a girl with, as the dad puts it, "a great pussy."
Awkward.
Bit awkward.
Your Friends and Neighbors [The Post Show]
How those shoes you sometimes find left out around in the street get that way. Involves more intrigue than we would have guessed. A short movie directed by the never dull Spike Jonze.
How They Get There [whoomp.com]
Cerealized , A new series from Rocket Ace Moving Pictures, the people behind previously mentioned Dead End Days, allows you to take a peek at the habitrail in which 20-something roommates Charlotte, Lincoln and Cory hash out the dramas of their lives with only occasional homicidal feelings. The show is six episodes in, open-ended, and it updates every Monday at 3 am.
Cerealized [Rocket Ace Moving Pictures]
Ryan Karels' new show at short film hub Channel 102 which makes sense only in the "you didn't open a window before spray painting that, did you, professor" sort of a way. They said that guy who tried to live in the wild with badgers was nuts too when they found him. Well, when they found his boots. Whichever.
The Outer Limit - #1 [Channel102]
We're not psychologists. In fact, we had to Google that word to be certain we didn't mean "psychiatrists", and this took half an hour because we didn't spell it close enough for Google to know what we meant, but all that aside we're fairly certain that when Quentin Tarantino gets engorged in his Blacksploitation area and needs release, the inside of his head looks a lot like Allen Gunnison's short film Good Morning Little School Girl.
Good Morning Little School Girl [Underground Film]
Philip Pelletier's short New Testament is "a gleeful nightmare of a TV commercial that involves a dancing Jesus Christ, twelve lascivious Apostles, and a very sexy Mary Magdalene singing the praises of a curiously red wine-cooler called New Testament, 'the favorite brew of the King of Jews!'"
New Testament [undergroundfilm]
Adorable Cupco characters get the grim fates they deserve in this Flash toon short.
The Trip [Cupco]
The Cupco site
Via Art Dorks
New copywriter Steve discovers the hellishly laid-back realities of his chosen profession at Coudal Partners. Coudal Partners should not be taken while operating heavy machinery. Coudal Partners may cause light contortions of the face.
Copy Goes Here [Coudal Partners]
Sketch group The B Squad tackle the minefield that is sensitivity in intersex office relations. Also they robot a little. Also, Brad is a fucking idiot.
Good Morning Janet [The B Squad]
The death by a million nibbles style hell that is office life gets a weary eyeball from comedy zenana The Variety Shac in Thirty-Four Fourteen. Dig the 80s porn style office garb.
Thirty-Four Fourteen [The Variety Shac]
Past Variety Shac:
The Slumber Party
Bakesale
Also, via Chelsea of the Shac - KickPop Mike. Some people try way too hard to please.
Paul Daley's oddly touching bit of 3D animation which serveed as his graduation film at the National Film & Television School.
The Trinket Maker [Atom films]
Two movies later, the fairly simple Shutterbugs joke should be stale, but it's not. We defy anyone who has dealt even briefly with "The Industry", (whichever industry that is to you), to not laugh their asses off at these shorts.
· Shutterbugs #3
· The Shutterbugs page at Channel 102
Yuval Markovich and Noam Abta's red hot little paranoia short which plays nice with our candy corn hangover. We already know we've been poisoned, and we blame the clearance isle at the megamart.
Smile [Lionin Zion via you tube]
Thanks to Allen
The Lionin Zion site
"MA MA'S REVENGE is Chapter 4 of a five chapter series based on the Tazer Girl comic book written by Eric J. Rech. As a short, chapter 4 follows the life of Cassy Johnson, a social worker and champion of the homeless who pursues Hal, a mentally and physically abused child that becomes a serial killer as an adult."
Looks like a cute lil' prodction outa Minneapolis, Minnesota. We could only find this one chapter, if the other four chapters exist, they're very well hidden, but this is Halloween enough to merit a linking.
Eric J. Rech - MA MA's Revenge [google video]
Update: Being in the US ourselves and having stopped paying attention to the whole Google Video thing once we gave it a cursory glance back in its inception, we lost track of the fact that outside of the US, they require you to install AOL to watch videos on it(!)
We're not sure what assheaded market control crap is at work here, but we're not interested in being part of the experiment, so here's an alternate link for the MA MA'S REVENGE video. We apologize to any non-US residents who were annoyed with this behavior, and thanks to those of you who mailed in.
A hilarious spoof/cross breed of Crispin Porter + Bogusky's "Wake up With the King " and Captain Morgan advertisements by two ad guys who rightly point out on their still uncomplete website "imagine what we could do with a budget."
Don't Sleep [dont-sleep.com]
Via TheSpunker
Tetsuya Nakashima's brilliant Power Rangers parody. Hey, some mornings you wake up to find that you've got a zit, and some mornings you wake up to find that you've got the Technicolor spandex squad on your ass.
Shingo [Google video]
Also:
· The Fighting Perverts
· The Inframan trailer
Army SA! - a fun short from production group Catman and Mary which features grade-A gibberish as a solution for the crushing banalities of life. Or, as Scott McClellan calls it, "I already answered that."
Army SA! [Catman and Mary]
Also, hacking lite with Office Poltergeist.
"Please use Office Poltergeist responsibly."
Uh-huh.
Finally, Flapart- fake bookcovers with which to upset complete strangers. Somewhere between a "fukt" teeshirt and cutting on the "my parents didn't really want kids" scale.
"50 years ago it was rumored that Robert Gallow murdered his young wife, Mary. The following year he was found gutted and hanging in the trees... they left behind a baby girl. This morning the bodies of seven campers were found. They were gutted and hanging in the trees."
A thin slice of Halloween for ya.
Gallows Hollow [undergroundfilm]
"A ten minute film about amusement arcades made for the BBC, filmed and directed by Tracy Williams. First shown in the UK in January 2004 and now online here."
Cartoonist/engineer Tracy Williams (of the Under The Pier Show) gets to the bottom of how arcade machines work. Pretty neat, but presented in Real format.
For Amusement Only [timhunkin.com]
Here's a pretty great short from Kevin Anderton which ponders "the truth behind how our government hides federal witnesses and remains under budget in these fiscally difficult times."
Seriously, we've always sort of wondered if it really works like this. Probably too efficient to be real.
Witness Protection Program [Undergroundfilm.org]
A short film from comedy sect The Variety Shac in which they turn roiling inner dramas into rich comedy thumbtacks as they gear up for the Bakesale. "Rich comedy thumbtacks"... we don't know what that means in the literal sense exactly, but it feels right, and we're going with it. Enjoy the rich comedy thumbtacks of Bakesale. Damn that is cakey.
The Variety Shac - Bakesale
See also:
· The Slumber Party
· The Headshot
Contract is Tim Simmons' very well acted short film which sort of feels like the pivotal moment in an Alfred Hitchcock film. Stuff this good always makes us eager for the realization of the long sung idea of smaller productions overtaking the big studios, a promise the existence of sites like Undergroundfilm.org hint at.
Contract [Undergroundfilm.org]
Tales Of Mere Existence
"Stuff you think but don't talk about" - very funny in a low key way comics and simple animations that describe little bits of everyday contemplations common to us all. Some of the animations are now being used as pre-film fodder at Lowes theaters.
Tales Of Mere Existence [Ingredient X]
The site also presents earlier animations from creator Lev
Via Waxy
Watch 22 short films created by 17 filmmakers from the Moving Image Arts Department at the College of Santa Fe, a festival / collection known as deRanged. Some pretty neat stuff on a variety of subjects in a mixture of styles lurk within.
deRanged
With thanks to Jeremy Osgood
Monkeytown U.S.A is a bit from a never-aired comedy pilot for F/X called Harsh Reality, a fake news show in which we learn the value of monkey confinement. Features Jerry Lambert in the Stone Philips role, a coinkydink seeing as Jerry is also in the Cheese Nips ad we linked to earlier today. Harsh Reality comes to us from Russell Arch, who we've mentioned before.
This is new - a goof on a DVD featurette from a TV series boxset. Mosquito: Behind the Scenes Preview is based on the Firefly DVD featurette "Here's How it Was," in which the Firefly cast spoke somewhat wistfully of their loved and augured into the dirt by Fox series. Mosquito: Behind the Scenes Preview offers up "clips and interviews with the cast and crew accentuate this humorous sneak peak at another up and coming, yet doomed to failure, science fiction/western series. " Ow.
Negadon is a full CG retro-styled short (not unlike the six minute short Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow which became the basis for the film), only instead of looking back to late 30s serials, Negadon looks back to both the Sci-Fi and the Godzilla monster style films of the 50s. Negadon is scheduled to be screened at the Tokyo International Fantastic Film Festival 2005 on October 16th.
The non-Dakota Fanning 1953 version of The War of the Worlds gets the bunnies treatment from Angry Alien.The story still doesn't make much sense, but now that fact only upsets us for about as long as it takes our president to pick a new supreme court justice.
The War of the Worlds in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies [Angry Alien]
More bunnies:
· Highlander
· The Big Chill
· Pulp Fiction
· It's a Wonderful Life
· Bad hare days
Creative group Cinemabeyond's entry into the 2002 5X8 Film Festival in Chicago, Rabies... The Musical! features a fake arts program checking out a fake musical not in production. Personally irritating for us because our long work on our own Foam! is now rendered to be an also-ran at best. We do have a fabulous tape of Nathan Lane singing through a mouthful of shaving cream that we'll always treasure, however.
Rabies... The Musical! [Cinemabeyond]
Via the actually for real rabies infected Michelle Collins
May goofing on Guantanamo Bay never go out of style fully - here's a handy guide on how interrogations should be performed broken down to level which the average general or Secretary of Defense can understand, with the help of the ye olde British children's characters the Mr. Men gang.
So You Want To Be A Guantanamo Bay Prison Interrogator [Liebography]
Also : make a Mr. Men, er, man. Here's our own little friend.
Here the geniuses behind the recently popular Shining remix go the other way and make a 28 Days later sort of horror trailer out of Westside Story. We frankly like this one much better as we find the transition even more of a hairpin 180. Westside Story? Westdie Story.
Westside Story as a horror film [p.s.260]
NY Times story on Robert Ryang and p.s.260
via Waxy
Daniel Zeff's short romantic comedy film in which the break up dinner is mistaken for the engagement dinner. How such a concept is filed at Atom films under "Romantic Comedy" and not "Gut Churning, Seppuku-Inducing Horror" seems unclear to us, but it does feature Kate Ashfield from Shaun Of the Dead and the current Doctor Who.
Sweetnightgoodheart [atom films]
Ed Boases' unnerving short film in which a woman wakes up and discovers she's been paid a very small amount of money to trade in any hope of anonymity and peace in life to appear on a shitty MTV reality show where people will forever pick up on how she got drunk that one time and shit herself in a McDonalds at 1 am, and even her parents will now refer to her as "that stanky mudbutt ho."
In fact Home Video is nothing like that, and pretty good at being chilling, but we still like our version better.
Home Video [atom films]
Think you're having a bad day?
"Every thirty seconds a man is hit by a drunk driver. This is that man."
A live action short from the creator of Cobra Island Rave.
Every Thirty Seconds [ifilm]
Director / animator / motion graphics designer David Foote's short unsettling bit of strangeness that feels like Marilyn Manson's Thanksgiving dinner if he were having it in a George Orwell novel.
DINING HALL 838 [agrobaby]
Daniel Baxter's animated shorts suggest some better endings to popular movies like Saving Private Ryan and The Matrix Revolutions.
The Internet Archive has the old 'Crash' Corrigan Undersea Kingdom series up, a serial from the 30s.
"Ray 'Crash' Corrigan, a recent graduate of Annapolis, travels with Professor Norton, his Son Billy, and plucky reporter Diana Compton to the Undersea Kingdom of Atlantis to locate the cause of series of earthquakes. When they arrive Crash and his friends become embroiled in battle between warring Atlanteans."
We've been a sucker for these 30s/40s sci-fi serials since we bought one of those Flash Gordon DVDs they sell at the dollar store; you can't help but see the bones of Star Wars and the X-files and other modern hits under all the cheese.
· Undersea Kingdom: Chapter 1 - Beneath the Ocean Floor (1936)
· The rest of the Undersea Kingdom series [Internet Archive]
via ffwd linklog
Il Ciclo is Victor Garcia's 2003 claustrophobic and tense peek into his version of the circle of life. Cool nine minute short from a likely cult director.
Il Ciclo [atom films]
Describing the short films found on burgeoning arty site Neomuet is best done with the guidelines offered for filmmakers with a potential submission:
1 The movie shall be a short film
2 It shall be a fiction, or a fiction with experimental influences
3 the movie shall be shot in super 8, 16mm, or 35 mm, and it shall be in black and white.
Most of the seven films feel like Ed Wood after a few drinks, but we mean that in a good way.
18 short videos of live improvisational comedy from collective The AV Club. The AV Club get the name from the group's desire to wring comedy from consumer-level video editing tools, which they manage to do pretty well.
David Earle's eerie Dining Room is a short with an odd concept:
"This short film flips back on itself. At exactly the midway point, the film begins to run backwards, and the sound repeats itself backwards with it. The character (Lea Porsager), speaks the three words backwards as the film goes forwards, so that they can be deciphered at the end of the film when they are played backwards."
Sort of like if the inhabitants of The Black Lodge were allowed to run the whole movie.
Dining Room or "There is Nothing" [davidbearle.com]
12 "bootleg" shorts from absurdist sketch group Stella. We're not sure about the true nature of the bootlegging going on, but we don't think any of these were in the on-air Comedy Central version of the show.
Stella Bootlegs [heavy]
via Gorillamask
Update: evidently those Stella "bootlegs" are from DVDs they sell at their live shows.
Info from Matt of bomarr blog.
Reader Anthony points out that there is a torrent of the whole Stella DVD available at My Spleen.
Cooking with Bigfoot: G.Beato's Flash-animated series in which the Sasquatch learns very little about cooking with the help of a few celebrities. Four years old by now, probably a nostalgic trip back for some of you. Also worth seeing is this Flash peek at artist Todd Gallina's animating of the character.
While we're cooking, Breakfast: Fortified With Iron.
Michel Gagné's early 90s cult animated short Prelude to Eden, a still impressive blast of animated action, or as Michel himself calls it "total artistic masturbation", has been loving released with several versions specifically for the web. Download the short, and read about its creation, it's a gooder.
Somehow, we've managed to go all of this time without linking the short films of Hotdogboy.
Also: the Robot Joke Routine Flash toon. Safe for work, but you should probably just leave it on the computer of that disliked coworker.
Excessively talented director Jason Reitman's goof on playing it a little too carefully in life.
"Before having sex, always make sure you have protection. Legal protection. Sign here for the lawyer-laden world of modern intimacy and give your Consent."
Consent [atom films]
See also:
In God We Trust
Explaining this interesting short would only slow down your clicking on the link, so we'll keep it brief: a nifty animation/real video hybrid in which five quirky folks encounter "an island filled with bizarre vegetation and deadly creatures", and ultimately the SCREE. One of the more entertaining things we've seen for quite a bit.
The Scree [ZeD TV]
The latest short from Goodie Bag cuts right to the chase and gets to business with DVD copy protection: your own free FBI agent with every movie purchase.
Agent Rod Brickman: Copy Protection [goodiebag.tv]
A fine PSA for a fine product for the City Of angels, one that if it were real would make our lives considerably easier every time we get visits from census takers.
Purple Bins [FuFu Films ]
Saiman Chow's odd little stop-motion clip in which a Gumby-like creature goes to the arcade and meets demon Hello Kitty. Feels like the sort of thing that wild have ruled MTVs Liquid Television way back when.
Katch! [Rokkit]
Sort of a shameless crowd pleaser to the CG animation crowd with both broad humor and insidery jokes about animation software, Ming-Yuan Chuan's funny CG short Cubic Tragedy was a big winner at the Siggraph 2005 Computer Animation Festival . Watch it in multiple formats.
· Cubic Tragedy [siggraph2005]
· Ming-Yuan Chuan's site
We were knee deep in collating the list of participants for the 2005 Resfest when we found that video site Antville already had one together, so we're going to link to theirs. Resfest, if you're not hip, is a yearly festival showcasing what are arguably the best of the short film/video offerings of that year. Most of this year's output we've linked to here already, so to avoid repeating ourselves, we'll link to Virgil Widrich's extremely impressive and previous Resfest big deal short film Copy Shop.
Resfest 2005 Lineup Announced [antville]
Copyshop [channel4]
What was the spark on the dry tinders that set Rome ablaze? Corruption? Indulgence? Largesse? Fear?
Possibly, but we're willing to guess that it was four chicks having a slumber party.
The Slumber Party [The Variety Shac]
Shonali Bhowmik, Heather Lawless, Andrea Rosen, and Chelsea Peretti form the mighty comedy Voltron that is The Variety Shac. Check out more shorts here, see them live Sept. 6 with guests John Mulaney and Kristen & Kurt -details here.
See also:
The Headshot
Animalada's GC animated clip for Syndicate Music's LOCO LOCO Mosquito song. an understated little number, not at all spastic or hyper. Warning: serious earworm, listen to this once, the inside of your head will sound like a Chuck E. Cheese for the rest of the weekend.
LOCO LOCO Mosquito [Animalada]
Siempre Vuelta is Yelena Ilkanayev's nicely done bit of Brick In The Wall - toned animation from 2001 which uses revolutionary imagery rendered in neon colors to draw a parallel between consumerism and imperialism. Not a new new idea, but sweet eyecandy that speeds along smoothly.
Siempre Vuelta [ifilm]
See also:
Free*land - We Want Your Soul
Scratch is Jamin Winans' short film in which DJ Scratch (played by real life wheel peeler Hayze II) drops from the sky, finds the people in downtown Denver screwing up their lives in the usual human ways, and turntables the universe back into shape like Superman did with his backwards earthspin. Scratch has to take a few whacks at it, and medium level hilarity ensues.
Scratch [Double Edge Films]
Dane webster's animated silent film short in which an addlebrained Shakespearean actor gets all the help with his lines that he'll ever get.
Oddly satisfying if you've ever been forced to witness one of Kenneth Branagh's hours-long film versions of the Bard against your will.
Tragedy [ksu.edu]
"Video band" Terri Timely's short film in which a young man tries hard to hold on to absolutely everything. That just sounds like it's going to go well, doesn't it?
Terri is talented and prolific, their site is full of music videos and short films to check out, all worth your time.
Turnpike films' famous 2003 fake ad for Nutri-grain bars. If the Nutri-grain people really made their commercials this funny, well, they'd still taste like little slabs of horse vomit.
Nutri-grain Ad - Feel Great [ebaum's world]
Chinese Baby.com:
Angelina Jolie as business model. Comedy unit The B-Squad comes up with a short which is truly one of the funniest things we've seen in a very long time
Chinese Baby.com [The B-Squad]
Just like the title which is Latin for "Let There Be Light", short film Fiat Lux feels unfortunately timely these days. A complex vision of the church's attack on Galileo for his dare to question the official version of how the universe is organized, it features a simply amazing CG reconstruction of St. Peter's Basilica.
Scotch and Soda - Eugene Mirman's hilarious short film, in which a bitter, dried-up druggie lays down some simple truths to the next generation over a couple of fine beverages.
Scotch and Soda [eugenemirman.com]
So, National Lampoon did a lame tone deaf parody of those text bumpers stuffed between the toons on Adult Swim. Sunday night, Adult Swim slapped the ball back to the Poon with massive backspin, out snarking their feeble attempts by a factor of 9 billion. it is a thing to see.
G4's Attack of the Show wasn't impressed by the Lampoon bits either, and posted saying so at their site Lampoon editor Jay cruised into the comments section to try to fly the Lampoon flag and stick up for John Saleeby's bit, but to not much effect.
See the original Lampoon Flash here, then
read the Attack of The Show forums here,
-and finally watch the Swim Flash response here.
Via Metafilter
Workin' Progress: a pretty fantastic CG toon inspired by the WWII era "Golden Age" of Hollywood musicals. Great physical comedy and sight gags which mange to blend Looney Tunes style slapstick to a slightly reworked Glenn Miller tune. You don't see `em this well planed out too often.
Workin' Progress [Milk and Cookies]
Sick Animation.com's perverse shorts can usually be counted on to come up with a memorable catch line or two, current animated short The Red Diamond Dragon Club is no exception. We'll be saying the line from this one under our breath in every elevator we ride in for the next week or so. Not safe for work, unless you paint space shuttles for a living... you guys can pretty much do whatever you want by now.
The Red Diamond Dragon Club [Sick Animation.com']
Sketch group Elephant Larry enjoy a play on words in their new clip International Data Line.
Someone, possibly the lot of them, were stoned when they indulged in the speculation that lead to this. We can spot stoner logic like that, and these boys were clearly wrestling with a nasty case of glaucoma when this short was conceived.
International Data Line [Elephant Larry ]
See also: Baby! Fix that fuse box!
The second episode in what has proven to be a hit for creators Ryznar and Stair, Yacht Rock #2 : Keep The Fire sees "Hall and Oates go toe to toe with McDonald and Loggins in a back alley contest, with tragic results."
Yacht Rock #2 : Keep The Fire [Channel 101]
See also:
Yacht Rock
Dallas Campbell's comedy short in which a desperate woman holds up a sperm bank, but is disarmed by a sympathetic and conveniently lonely security guard. Almost more amusing than the film is the fact that the first-time producers raised the funds for this short by asking every man they met to donate their sperm and give the proceeds to the film. As Malcolm McLaren once sang, you need hands, eh?
No Deposit, No Return [BBC film network]
Professor know it all finds himself flummoxed by the ponderances of life and adrift in questioning during a lecture on how to focus on the big picture in Kareem Thompson's animated short The Big Picture. Art style is very 50s, complete with Saul Bass style opening titles.
The Big Picture [putfile]
Via Drawn
An obsession blooms over a little money making side project in the current winner at amateur director competition site Film Fight, Mona Lisa Toast.
Mona Lisa Toast [Film Fights]
No relation to this more famous Mona Lisa Toast
Watching this short spot for environmental activist group Greenpeace, we not only laughed our asses off, but we had a Spinal Tap "Shit Sandwich" moment, in which we exclaimed, aloud, to an otherwise empty room:
"Can they do this? They can't do this. Can they do this?"
They did that. Possibly not safe for work, but you'd really have to work either for Fox or Sesame street.
Greenpeace - Mr. & Mrs. Smith [boards]
Maya Churi's Forest Grove is one of the more interesting things we've seen: a Flash animation composed of photographs of models, presented like a slide show-- except when it breaks those rules to be something else for the sake of storytelling. Accompanied by a serene audio track of narration and a sparse sound bed, the end result feels like watching old home movies while in a spaceship that is in hyperspace or something equally physics-defying.
· Forest Grove
· Matthew Ross' cul-de-sac, a filmmaker Magazine article which describes Forest Grove.
With thanks to Matthew
Greg Pak's infomercial spoof in which playwright David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly, FOB) promotes a porn more friendly to the image of Asian peoples. Tentacles are not addressed. Possibly stars that one girl from that other movie, but who can tell since they all look the same, are we right fellas? Not work unsafe, but it features porny noises.
Asian Pride Porn [atom films]
Newsbreakers is a group of people who spoof news media on location, guerilla - style. Newsbreakers founder Buck "Lucky" Owens is actually employed by the news media, so his actions could be taken as a sign that the broadcast news media has started to eat itself, the first flames licking the walls of the media Rome... or something. In truth it appears to be smug people in masks hassling local news dimwits in a manner slightly less sophisticated than the ones pioneered by the more creative Howard Stern fan, but they do manage get it all on tape, which is fun to watch... unless you're paying one, as Buck's boss was, right up until the first day after the very first Newsbreakers prank. "Fired Up" is the short video of Buck's return to his former workplace building, mostly to retrieve a can of soup. Wedding soup.
· Fired Up
· Mood (the first Newsbreakers stunt, which caused the firing)
Health Hazard is Ottawa based indie filmmaker Pascal Trottier's horror comedy short in which a mutating blob of evil goo spurts up through the drain of a less than considerate chain-smoker, and gives him a new, more revealing look.
Health Hazard [ZED TV]
Dwarf Stand Tall is an odd and darkly hopeful promotional clip for multimedia collective Hobo Logistics.
"Experience the science of the Hobotix System by following the chronicles of an unpopular dwarf in the hours before he undergoes the controversial limb-lengthening operation:"
Channel 187 proclaims itself "the largest on demand library of indie horror." As most guys who keep their shorts on in the shower at the gym will tell you, it's not the size, but what you do with it. Fortunately Channel 187 seems to be shaking their money maker with a plethora of indie shorts and clips of the macabre variety, such as Julien Vanhoenacker's CGI toon Anthem.
Snow-Bo, Jenn Kluska and Vera Brosgol's classically styled animated film from their days at Sheridan College. The way simple drawings smoothly envoke emotion reminds us of both Chuck Jones and Charles Shultz in their respective heydays, after seeing it we understand illustrator website Drawn!'s gushing praise.
· Snow-Bo [verabee.com]
·The Vera Bee site
We missed this the first time around, we're happy to get to it now: of the thousands of Carson Daly masturbation tribute songs that clutter the mediascape, Andy Stuckey and Jon Murray's classic is by far the first.
Andy Stuckey and Jon Murray's ode to Carson Daly [stuckeyandmurray.com]
The harsh underbelly of the life of some street fightin' men are revealed in this short. Cross The Patriarch and you'll have to write home to your mama with your feet, silkyboy.
The World Championship of Illegal Pencil Fighting [David Paul Meyer]
One Good Move has clips of The Daily Show segment where the press questions White House Press Secretary Scott Mcclellan for details on Karl Rove leaking Valerie Plame's name. One thing is certain: Scott absolutely appreciates being asked things that he won't answer. Nice to see the Daily Show audience cheer when they notice the press core doing what they're meant to for the first time in half a decade or so. This follows another Daily Show clip Lies and the Lying Liars in which Karl Rove is examined. Fine viewing all around
An Ongoing Investigation [onegoodmove]
Lies and the Lying Liars [onegoodmove]
Giant (by bee standards) hornets raid a hive of bees in this skillfully shot clip from some nature show. Comes complete with blood-curdling, Charlie Martin Sheen going down the river in Apocalypse Now "never get out of the boat!" narration from a guy who sounds just a little too into it all.
Beefight [nearlygood]
Thanks to John for the re-Sheening.
That one thing you hope to see every time some overly confident individual hassles with a giant wild animal in that way which you kind of know deep down inside that they really shouldn't? It happens in this short video clip. The serious bit is very quick, but not for the squeamish.
Crocs [putfile]
via Monkeyfilter
A classic joke gets the short film treatment by Alex Jovy, with the mighty mighty (in the brick house sense of the term) Georgia Zaris providing the aforementioned white bits.
White Bits [atom films]
Director Alex Jovy has two other comedic shorts up at atom:
· Two's Company
· Holiday Romance.
Azizs Ansari and Rob Huebel's (aka: Inconsiderate Cell
Phone Guy) new short film made us laugh. Hard.
Shutterbugs (episode one) [Azizs is Bored]
Also available at Channel 102
Watch the five short films which are now finalists in this year's SXSWclick festival, and vote for your favorite. People's Choice and Jury winners will be announced on July 29th, and the winners will receive automatic entry into the 2006 SXSW Film Festival.
A short video featuring Ballet where you least expect it: between a man and his heavy digger.
JBC Ballet[Lucky Kazoo]
With thanks to Jane
See also:
· Expressionless Girl
· Modern Toss on TV
Crooner Sy Adamowsky is ten years old, and his favorite singer is Barry Manilow.
Here's a video of Sy center court at the Garden. We link to this short video because we want you feel as good as we do, all day long.
Knicks [Sy Adamowsky.com]
Sy Adamowsky's website
via Chelsea Peretti
A classic short featuring animated driving advice from the Methodist Church of the late 50s, in which Martian Rusty pays a visit to Earth and struggles to come to grips with the human propensity for driving like a flaming arsehole.
Stop Driving Us Crazy! [Internet Archive]
Seen @ Cartoon Brew
Check out five bitchn' videos of Skateboarder/ World Record holder/superior lifeform Danny Way jumping the Great Wall of China like it's a groupie and he's Van Halen in 1983.
· Danny Does China
· ABC news story on the event.
A similar feat was attempted in 2002 by biker Wang Jiaxiong, with less happy results.
A Goodie Bag short in which finally, at long last Vegans can get down and embrace morbid obesity as previously only the carnivores of the world could.
The Triple Tofu Tower [Goodie Bag TV]
Neil Pert's drumergasam, from Rush's love song to coming back home to Toronto YYZ, given the GCI treatment by animator Bobby Brane.
YYZ [bobbysbrane]
Apologies for the Page 6-ish post title, always wanted to do that. After a little threatening tree pulp passed the transom of Channel 101 for Justin Roiland's House Of Cosbys Flash toon series, Channel 101stopped hosting them, and episode five was banished to the phantom zone of Not Being Hosted Anywhere We Could Find it Easily. Channel 101 has decided to host the original four episodes again, none of which feature an attorney fellating anything, but you can sort of feel it underneath.
House Of Cosbys [channel101]
Sweet little QuickTime vids of every Live 8 Performance: Green Day does Queen! Annie Lennox is still perversely shagable kinda! Paul McCartney is now officially Angela Lansbury! Brad Pitt does an Interstitial!
Every Live 8 Performance [Sonican]
Via Setrogum
We're not going to disgrace director Michael Mohan's bit of complete fucking genius by attempting to attach some feeble description to it, just know that it's one of the most original and enjoyable short films we've seen here.
La Dentista! [atom films]
With thanks to mr. topps
What it sounds like: former pop star now reality television trainwreck Bobby Brown matches wits with a hotel mini bar, and, as expected, is trounced soundly.
Bobby Brown vs. The Hotel Mini Bar [iFilm]
See also:
“…why does your face smell like Whitney Houston’s finger?”
Website Bedazzled offers up a trove of classic horror movie trailers from the "Monsterfest" thing that the AMC channel does on Halloween. At the site Bedazzled commenter Sam speaks for us as well with: "I will not watch AMC until they pull every commercial they run and never play Predator 2 ever again."
The trailers, being commercials, may be viewed uninterrupted. For now.
AMC TV Monsterfest Classic Horror Trailers [Bedazzled ]
via we make money not art
Here's a short video of some twit trying to get a ride on the hood of a car stopped at a red light, while his friend films it. There's a lot right with this clip, the best bit being the appearance of a real live grown up at the end who says what probably most needs to be said at the end of these things.
Hoodride Gone Wrong [Fazed]
Oblong Pictures, an "imaginary film company which specializes in making short stop-motion films using LEGO." Many fine short brick films abound here, not to be missed is Twisted, in which they'd like to know what that is on your uniform, and what would like to do with your life?
"House over run with cannibals and don't know what to do? Call upon Burt and Diana who will solve your problem once and for all. With a little help from Magret Thatcher."
A five minute short which we feel safe in guessing was shot with cameras actually woven right from pot.
Cannibal Countdown [iFilm]
A nice chunk of Chris Cunningham's excellently upsetting Rubber Johnny for ya. Get it while ya can.
Rubber Johnny [putfile]
We're not sure of the title for this short clip, so we're going to go with "Why At The Age Of 29 Natasha Still Weeps Openly When People Ask Her If She'd Like To Go See A Parade."
Golub [Fishki.net]
The Idiot Box kindly allow us a short glimpse into the lives of some very special people with their short Snake God People. If you're out there reading this, and you happen to be one of Katie Holmes' parents, we think knowing that it could just as easily have gone this way should prove some amount of... well, whatever.
Snake God People [The Idiot Box]
Anzovin Studio's amazingly smooth swashbuckling CG short which oozes character in pretty much every scene. One of the best, if not the best, action animations we've seen.
Duel [AM Films] With thanks to Ken
Allow Hollywood Steve Huey to take you on a magical journey back to the period of Yacht Rock.. the smoothest period of rock, so that you may learn the story of the creation of The Doobie Brothers' What A Fool Believes.
Seriously, if Hall & Oats in this thing doesn't make you laugh, you may as well just go kill yourself, as you've no more ability to feel than a common Baldwin.
Yacht Rock [channel 101] With thanks to RJ
A few minutes of the Indian Superman movie, which makes Kiss Meets The Phantom of the Park look like Revenge Of The Sith. We didn't watch very closely, but evidently Superman must save an airliner taken out by an embarrassed man's incredible in-flight diarrhea. That's right, diarrhea. You've been served, Singer.
· Indian Superman
· What's going on with that other Superman movie.
Prolific filmmakers the Neistat brothers bid a fond farewell to the rock video Ford F-250 that tried to melt their faces off.
Previous Neistat brothers:
· Bike Thief
· Jesusfish
John Bryant's bloody short film which dreams up the worst day ever, is now up at atom films. This Film Threat review sums it all up nicely:
"In the end, it’s all about the well-being of innocent retarded Texans. Somebody has to look out for those guys and filmmaker John Bryant is on point."
Oh My God [atom films]
A bouncy video run through the making of the fantastic animated short Le Building.
·The making of Le Building [staphylas.com]
·Le Building
We thought we'd linked to this video of Patches the wonder horse the first time he'd made the rounds, but now that we think about it that predates our site by almost a year. We've had a few tips to him recently, so we guess he's still new to some of you. Thanks to Spencer for the reminder.
Patches The Horse [G Prime]
The depression is for losers! Comedian Nick Kroll introduces us to a ghastly Gatsby-eqsue Cavalcade of Personalities in this short film, a clip which makes us want to punch out fictional people who would be dead by now anyway. No mean feat, that.
Cavalcade of Personalities [nickkroll.com]
Also with Nick:
I Love The 30s
An absolutely amazing animated short which illustrates the butterfly effect chain of consequences, but with tenant rage instead of a wing flap setting the chaos in action. Combines the abilities of Marco Nguyen, Pierre Perifel, Xavier Ramonede, Olivier Staphylas, and Remi Zaarour.
Le Building
Seen @ Drawn
Fans of the prequel Star Wars movies might have noticed that Junk Dealer/Yasser Arafat DNA mooch Watto fell on hard times after betting against Anakin in the Pod Race. Website No Sheep! has a short video suggestion as to what happened after that, nicely illustrated with what is sure to be Burger King's next lawsuit.
Watto Pr0n [No Sheep!] with thanks to Zachary
The Flying Wallabies
"Lemme ask you this : why jump roping?"
"Why rope-jumping? I call it 'rope-jumping' because I jump the rope, the rope doesn't jump me."
The Flying Wallabies [Please Rock] with thanks to Jeff
Odd comedic genius Emo Philips' 1992 silent short "comedy tribute
to that unsung hero of the urban ecosystem."
Directed by Greg Glienna, who soon after this did the original Meet the Parents, which seems a hell of a lot better than the one with Ben Stiller... if you can possibly imagine something being better than a Ben Stiller movie.
See a potato shot through a wall with a cannon! Why? So when you're in the hospital about to snuff it you can look your family in their glistening eyes and tell them honestly that you haven't wasted your whole life. Are you still reading this? Go watch some dude shoot a potato through a wall with a cannon!
Potato Cannon Blast Through Wall [Mondo Park]
See an Aibo named Olivia Newton John rocking out to electro unit Daft Punk as the winner in Sony's contest... that, uh, contest to see which Aibo can best rock out to Daft Punk, apparently. No vaginas are bitten, at least not on camera, but it manages to be pretty entertaining, as the robot dog synchs up to this kind of music pretty tightly.
Aibo Does Daft Punk [Sony]
Seen @ mfisn
Can't get enough? More of this sort of thing can always be found at Abio Hack.
Ha ha! small dogs and the people who own them are a delight. A delight. "Showdog Moms & Dads", a Bravo channel oddity, spawned a wee meme last May with a random nutty woman, and it's still going strong.
The College Humor page this short video is embedded in, and a direct link to the Windows media file, if their banners are too much for your workplace.
Single? Ready to mingle? Having troubles? Plagued by dates with Asperger's Syndrome? Let Cyber Lovah numba one Herb Zipper show you the true path to gettin' some. It ain't all just about because he's so pretty, yo.
How to be a Cyber Lovah [eBaulm's world]
The kid in this short has to be at least 6 months old, and he's had it far too good for far too long; time for some reality, punk.
Ala the Skit comedy group The Whitest Kids U Know, (who on their way to the Sundance Channel, evidently).
· The Whitest Kids U Know - Scarin' Babies
· One of the Whitest Kids' many short videos available on the intarweb.
· Via The Apiary
"Watch in horror as a surfer in South Africa gets attacked by not one, but TWO Great Whites!"
Horror, schadenfreude, whichever. One shark? Fair enough, it's the ocean. Two at once? Sharks aren't pack animals, this dude was surfing with pockets full of gravy or kittens or something.
Great White Shark Attack [surfermag]
Seen @ Linkfilter
Watch many fine small animated features at he mighty Augenblick Studios Inc., they of Shorties Watchin' Shorties fame.
· Augenblick Studios Inc.
· Shorties Watchin' Shorties segments
Via Drawn.
bLoNd cHiLi productions' collaboration with the mighty fine Citizens Against Safety Goggles, short film Ebony tells the tale in which "a jogger and a donut go head-to-head and end up learning about each other in the process." Mortal enemies coming together for a better tomorrow.
Ebony [blondchili.com]
An animated short "tragic romantic comedy horror cartoon epic in a 12-piece bucket value meal." The Rooster Project features some pretty great animation, and an interesting set of influences for what seems like a simple spastic comedy.
The Rooster Project [Citizens Against Safety Goggles]
The Magic Portal : a student created stop-motion sci-fi short using Lego.
"The story concerns the strange fate of a Lego astronaut called L, who discovers the Magic Portal on board his giant spaceship. The Portal takes him to a strange and surreal Lego world where he has a close encounter with a Monster and barely escapes with his life. His report to Captain Paranoia only gets him to trouble and his friend and shipmate P, doesn't believe him. However, the Portal has a mind of its own, and reappears to upset the cosy world of the giant spaceship and its crew to reveal weirder worlds more peculiar than the last..."
Download the film and check out the creation process at the site, as well as the interesting history of what is possibly the first of the "brick films."
The Magic Portal
A quick clip of a high school Lacrosse game that goes bad.
"As the oldest team sport in North America, Lacrosse has always been held up as the most dignified of the contact sports. But that doesn't mean it can't devolve into stick-wielding mayhem once in awhile."
We bet there were some terse exchanges on the ride home in a dozen SUVs on that night... with many horrible groundings and loss of XBox privileges.
Lacrosse Fight [iFilm]
With the Batman Begins movie hype in full Xenu... effect, we mean... in full effect, we thought we'd reminisce of the Batman movie that should have been: Rob Schrab's Batman.
Rob Schrab's Batman Forever... and ever [Channel 101]
· Also with Rob Schrab: Robot Bastard
· And: Robin's Big Date
Ben Ib's ode to the glorious porn of the 70s, complete with washed out colors and sexed up office babes all receiving a little Three's Company style misinterpretation from a lonely watchman.
Peeping Tommy (Director's Cut) [Colonel Blimp]
If you've seen Virgil Widrich's amazing 2001 Oscar-nominated short Copy Shop (if not, watch it now), Fast Film will seem like the logical follow-up:
"On the surface, Fast Film tells a simple story. A woman is kidnapped and a man sets off to save her, embarking on a dramatic rescue mission full of wild chase scenes. What makes Fast Film unique is that all its scenes were taken from 300 different feature films. Director Virgil Widrich captured stills from the 300 movies, and made over 65,000 photocopies of these, then folded them into a variety of shapes and animated them. The result is a completely fresh look at Hollywood - a tour of movie history at breakneck speed."
Virgil Widrich's Fast Film [Channel4]
Mamas, don't let your daughters grow up to marry Star Wars nerds.
Darth Vader [Postcrap] With thanks to Xiu
One of the many slightly creepy doll-based animated creations to be found at the Van Sowerwine website. While there, check out Clara, their stop-motion short which got a nod at Cannes this year.
"From what I understand this is a group of American Idol rejects singing at half time of some sporting event. This is hilarious. Check out how many times the dude in the white shirt does his spin move"
Hilarious, unfortunately funnier if you have the speakers up to hear it, which is like reaching into a hornet's nest for a stick of gum, but what can you do.
Simply The Best [Bog Boys]
Let Nick Shaefer show you the path to instant wealth. Because Money Is Awesome.
Funny, and pretty slick overall, considering it's a project for a film class.
· Nick Shaefer Teaches How To Rob A Convenience Store [archive.org]
· The Team Zakk Blog
You know how it is: in life what you really want is to dance, but you also want to carry weapons. So you join a dance troupe, but you keep a .45 in your pants. You do a split and accidentally blow a colleague's nard off.* Shunned from the dancing world, you become a cop... the dancingiest cop ever to blow pure sunshine into a conevience store in the middle of the night!
Who's Bad?! [putfile.com] Seen @ Vh1's Best Week Ever.
*Uninformed speculation.
A new Goodie Bag short which explores modern relationships. Well, one modern relationship, with lots of people. Has not safe for work sounds, unless you work at Abu Gharib.
Polly Wally [goodiebag.tv]
Animator Roque Ballesteros has seven shorts up at fantastic animation site Ghostbot, all of which feature his lightly retro style and spastic sense of humor. Our favorite is “Twin Induction PSA”, but he makes it hard to pick.
The other two artists featured at Ghostbot, Alan Lau and Brad Rau, are no slouches themselves, and many fine short examples of their styles and upcoming projects are on display.
One of the better parodies from the MTV Movie Awards, this one staring William Shatner(s), in which he acts out the end bit of Seven, goofing not only on that movie but on his TV roles. What others say with snark we say with sincerity: the motherstuffer can act.
Shatner Does Seven [Milk And Cookies]
Catch and Release : a fake ad for a product we wish we could give to every interviewer who has to listen to Katie Homes Teddy Ruxpin on and on about how happy she is being lightly molested by a closeted Scientologist. Alegedly.
Catch and Release [K Humpty]
Andrew Volk's montage of entries made to Frank Warren's previously mentioned confession site Post Secret.
Post Secret [Internet Archive]
Gints Apsits' amazing animated film, which would appear to be taking a peek into Jesus' martyrdom, but also seems open to interpretation. Cool electronic beats going on behind the gothic/messianic imagery as well.
Ministry Messiah [Gints Apsits]
Liquid Generation's latest Flash goof, in which Tom Cruise sings 50 Cent's Candy shop, with Katie Holmes filling in for Olivia. We hear a wild rumor that both Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have major motion pictures due this summer.
Candy Shop [Liquid Generation]
A Flash site that throws up a new short every week. Fair enough. Then, they get kind of silly about it :
"Our intention is to cause you to question ... 'is what you are doing and how you are being a true reflection of who you really are?" ... are you really alive or simply existing?'"
Very Socratic. So far Monday 9am seems to think we're a music video that looks like an interstitial from the closed circuit music channel you find in the better state colleges. We didn't know this about us. Still, there is always next week. Check `em out.
Footage frome inside a tornado.
"It's a technological first. A well-placed probe fitted with 7 video cameras-6 with a 60-degree field-of-view designed to achieve a full 360-degree field-of-view (one failed during deployment, resulting in a 300-degree field-of-view) and one pointing upward-captures footage inside a tornado."
Big deal. We saw Bill Paxton do this like 10 years ago, and that guy seems like an idiot.
·Catching A Tornado [National Geographic]
·Also, catch storm chaser Tim Samaras gas on about how he'll get more girls than you could ever possibly hope to, even if you wear a suit woven from crisp $100 bills. [National Geographic]
Simon Reeves' stop-motion CG animated short in which a lost traveler tries to find his way out of the wasteland.
Hitchhiker [Neural Interface]
Found the short film Ukulele Freaks while googling around for details on The Midnight Ukulele Disco post. They say it's the World's First Ukulele Musical, and we believe them. Stars Sonic Uke, the Yngwie Malmsteen of the uke set.
Manhattan Neighborhood Network's Ukulele TV, on the web. Want that in ukulele? The Midnight Ukulele Disco can do that for you, no sweat. From the requisite Tiny Bubbles, to Bull In The Heather to I've Got A Booger In My Nose, the site is packed with videos of uke performances.
Bonus points for smooth, simple webpage design; we found ourselves checking out clips left and right because the interface begs it. Talked us into the whole ukulele thing. Wish this approach would catch on.
A video of King Kong Director Peter Jackson's house band, an assortment of live instruments automated to play MIDI files, player piano style. Supposedly $100,000 worth of equipment going on here... which we believe is roughly a hundred times the expense of just having Wilco show up and sound like that for real. If we had Lord Of The Rings money we'd stop kidding around and just buy slaves outright.
Peter Jackson's setup [Ragtimewest]
Seen @ boing boing
"I was bored after my finals and decided to do something fun. I had a Logitech Quickcam Express webcam for 3 years which sucked all the time. It had a very poor video quality and didn’t work well in my dimmed room. So I decided to mount it in front of my car."
Three videos (so far) ensue. If more people did this, we'd have more videos like this... which will be fun for that brief period before putting a camera in your car becomes the latest way to help out The Terrorists.
Car Cam Project [erinch.com]
1972- an astronaut gets left behind on the moon; lots of cursing at mission control ensues. A seven episode series of Flash cartoons from Twisted Mojo, currently being shown at iFilm.
The Lonely Astronaut [iFilm]
Even if the name "Un Chien andalou" sounds to you like some sort of French dish with garlic buttered Yak testicles or whatever it is that they eat, you most likely know the images from Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's now 76 (!) year old surrealist shock piece. A serene woman is positioned into frame as a straight razor slices open her eyeball, ants escape from a wound, ....a nun trucks down the road on bicycle, badly. Desire, sex, death, and nuns on bicycles, all in one espresso shot of a film. Definitely check it out if the name is new to you, reacquaint with a pure moment of mind-twisting goodness if you're a fan.
· Un Chien andalou [UbuWeb]
An unintentionally hilarious educational short about sleep disorders, featuring the help of a dachshund named Rusty.
Rusty the Narcoleptic Dog [Milk And Cookies]
With thanks to the best street knife fighter we know, Vidiot.
The Daily Show show segment on the recent revelation of the identity of the Watergate informant.
Jeff Scheertz's short featuring some pretty slick CG. "Think of it as Gremlins gone evil. Three genetically-engineered creatures discover their creator murdered. Together they confront the killer and his evil minions in an intense battle to the death."
Specidemons [atom Films]
ZeD TV has Hidekazu Tanabe's short film listed under "Experimental Animation", which pretty much captures the sprit better than any description we have on hand. A sort of meditation on the afterlife, with fairly bitchin', stark visuals.
Butterflies [ZeD TV]
From the Jib Jabbed site :
"The Blogging Community is outraged by Jib Jab's Budweiser piece! Jib Jab, which became a popular site during the past presidential election has now received a corporate sponsorship from Budweiser. The blogsphere is upset that they owners of Jib Jab, who clearly stated they would never "sell out" are now working for Bud. Bloggers lash back with the following anti-Jib Jab clip and a slew of online chatter:"
We personally lack a sense of outrage over creative types trying to not starve to death, but this clip is damn funny and a fine, well, jab.
"*Self-proclaimed; **coy-o-te : n. One who smuggles Mexican nationals illegally into Texas."
A short film featuring 25 minutes of border-jumping wacky, which made us laugh out loud like a bitter, drunken, funky-smelling weblogger several times. Exactly like one, in fact.
·Rio Peligroso: A Day In The Life Of A Legendary Coyote
·Via the short films bit of Kevin Smith's Movies Askew site.
Sock : a surreal new Flash cartoon from David Firth. We're not sure what Mr. Firth's psychological problem is, but we're guessing it's expensive.
More David Firth:
·The Child That Smelt Funny
We're linking to this rightly once-rejected now embraced Channel 101 show for its sheer toss off-edness. As an entity, this short gives less of a fuck than a neutered bishop, yet somehow manages to make us laugh. Likely better than the Fantastic Four movie, we note.
The Most Extraordinary Space Investigations [Channel 101]
Remember that Groundhog Day movie? Right, well, that dude had it easy. The Clones is the third short film we've linked to from The Red-Headed League, and the clever ideas and better than your average bear comedic acting over there keep them as one of our favorites.
The Clones [Red-Headed League]
Also:
· The Red-Headed League presents The Bat-man! in Robin’s Big Date!
Wild doings afoot at Disney... a Web Exclusive! bit of amusing nonsense over at Radar Magazine. See people in Disney outfits and costumes doing things you'd never imagine going on at Disney. No, not make a watchable animated feature without Pixar. Let's not get nuts. Simple stuff, like capturing park characters out in the wild.
·Wild Kingdom 7 [Radar Magazine]
·Mouse Party [Radar Magazine]
A fabulous short documentary about Robert Landsbury, a war veteran with a slight case of paranoia, who believes a secret government program is up to invisible and constant mass mind control, sort of like the aliens were up to in "They Live." Richard Pell's documentary is great because he manages to make Robert Landsbury absolutely acceptable, and so their journey together is more amusing than simply tragic.
Clone Trooper Orchestra: A CG toon that blends all the cool of playing with toys you're too old for, with a movie aimed at 12 year olds, combined with all the style of band camp. You're through the looking nerd on this one, junior.
Part of the Revenge Of The Brick Lego/Star Wars marketing extravaganza going on at Cartoon Network.
·Clone Trooper Orchestra [Treehouse] via Howard
·The Revenge Of The Brick movie [Lego]
Three amusing short clips of "exclusive webcam footage" featuring Ricky Gervais (The Office), Stephen Merchant (also the Office) and Karl Pilkington (fuck if we know) goofing around in the studio to promote their Xfm radio show.
Y-Front, Mittens, and Foreigners - Exclusive Webcam Footage [Xfm]
*Karl Pilkington is the producer of Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant's XFM radio show. he is oft referred to as a 'bald mank twat' by the two, owing to the fact that karl is from manchester. Karl is a semi-celebrity in his own right.
Via "KarenGeierCA" on IM.
Great promotional idea from band The Pernice Brothers - goof on MTV's Cribs with a slightly less than bling version.
"It came to me as if in a dream, but I was wide awake, coveting a mesh onion bag full of suet hanging from a bird feeder: There ought to be a show like MTV Cribs for indie musicians/actors. Maybe MTV2 could do it (if they haven't already) and call it MTV2 Cribs. Think about it. In a way it's sad that it has come to this. Would that the pimped-out Hummers and drive-in sized plasma screens could lock me to my own TV the way they once could, long ago, in say, March of this year. The thirst is no less strong, but oh, satisfaction, you capricious little tart, where do you go? Where do you go when glimpses inside Usher's great room no longer titillate?"
A video clip of the Star Wars Kid thing again, only this time with a middle aged individual, half naked, man-tits a flying, and in the woods.
And hey, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, right? When we saw "Searching for Bobby Fisher" we'd find chess playing 8 year olds in the park and angrily sweep all of the pieces off the board to shock the kid into a mental visualization of the game like Ben Kingsley did to the kid in that movie, and yes, we were half-naked when we did this, but we didn't tape it. That's what gets us: not the geekery, but that there is visual record of it. Where was this thing going but the internet?
Anyway, enjoy the clip. You'll never eat a Twinkie again.
"Jedi Retard" [m90.org]
A kid with a mission. Baby! Fix that fuse box! A short from NYC-based sketch comedy group Elephant Larry.
Involes tossed babies.
Baby! Fix that fuse box! [Elephant Larry]
The Progressive insurance company has a fine and well indexed collection of crash test videos on their site. If you're anything like us, with years of driving among half-alert soccer moms who value yelling at the kids in the back seat in their ginormous family glacier over, say, not killing us, then you really can't have a better five minutes watching a bunch of dummies in an SUV smack into concrete, leaving red splotches at the impact points.
The Cat With Hands is a particularly creepy short animation/live footage blend in which creatures perversely trade body parts.
The Cat With Hands [ZeD]
