Short Films

What are some of your favorite short films?

I'd say Dreams, and Maya Deren.

Or do you think short films are for poor people with short attention spans?

Right off he top of my head I'd say my favorite short film is The Red Balloon.

Have you seen the Wallace and Gromit movies? I doubt that's what you meant when you started this thread, but they're a hoot.



And no, they aren't just for folks with.....I'm sorry, what were we talking about?

I think that Martin Scorsese's "Life Lessons," his segment from New York Stories (1989), is one of the greatest short films ever made. It's passionate, brilliant and undeniably perfect; a masterful marriage of content and style and very personal filmmaking.

Mind you, I've not really seen many of the short films that are generally considered par for the course [although I'll be seeing Night and Fog and La Jetée, among others, next semester] although some recent shorts that have really done it for me include Two Cars, One Night (d. Taika Cohen, 2003); The Last Uncounted Village (d. Sharam Alidi, 2002); and Passing Hearts (d. Johan Brisinger, 2004).

Not-so-recent but equally amazing is Guy Maddin's magnum opus, The Heart of the World (2000), which crams more into its mere six minutes than the majority of films do in two or more hours.

As I've mentioned numerous times before, my favourite short filmmaker [and one of my favourite filmmakers full-stop] is a guy named Evan Mather [whose shorts can be found ONLINE], who makes films almost exclusively for Internet distribution, and whose masterpieces are Airplane Glue (2001) and Fansom the Lizard (2000). Mather's films, despite being confined [most of the time] to little pixilated QuickTime windows on one's computer monitor, are more vibrant, original and idiosyncratic than the majority of the films that are coming out of anywhere, and are definitely worth checking out.

Oh, and these two HERE and HERE are pretty good as well...

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www.esotericrabbit.com

More, by Mark Osborne. You can watch it here

If you have any p2p program though, do a search for Kenna - Hell Bent. Kenna was given permission to use More for their video and Hell Bent is a much better song for the film than New Order was.

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Horror's Not Dead
Latest Movie Review(s): Too lazy to keep this up to date. New reviews every week.

Nicely done with Film no. 2 btw. Three Card Monte I wasn't a huge fan of, but Film no. 2 is rocking, but any personal narration about the pitfalls of life as a filmmaker cut over footage of desperation is always more than appreciated and I think it is something every filmmaker should do, not necessarily as a last ditch effort of some schmuck. But you are a schmuck anyways

More is the best.

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Seaside Shack

You've got to post a review of Night & Fog, I was gonna buy it, but I'm too poor.
Those films by Evan Mather were pretty good, atleast the ones on the web. Not really sure if I like to cinematography, who's his DP? The lighting and sound were also kind of low quality, but then again it was on the web.
That short animation film, More, was 'ills wit it.' The theme music could have been changed once or twice, but the depth of focus within his shots were 'sick wit it.'

Yeah, check it out as the music video for Hell Bent. The music makes a world of difference.

I prefer Three Card Monte, personally, but maybe that's just me.

Three Card Monte didn't suspend reality for me. Perhaps it was just largely due to me over-analyzing the technical merit of it and the style in which it was edited, the three boxes were too predictable...but as an aspirer such as yourself, I spent the whole time thinking about what you used to edit it as opposed to the content of it. Didn't particularily care for the story or storytellers, just the medium in which it was being told. I'm sure my lack of enjoyment was due to me immediately not taking an objective position to it, just didn't seem real enough. Too staged.

Where as Film no. 2 was reality and thus there was no suspension needed. It was a visual blog entry with a bitting ending. Rock.

dunno if it counts as short film
The Hire Series (bmwfilms.com)

I seem to like Three Card Monte for the very reasons you don't, Peter. I think that the storytellers are wonderful [though not the story, which is intentionally weak], and the comic book nature of the entire thing [the lack of realism, in other words], to me, is very appealing and enjoyable.

Meanwhile, although you mention that Film No. 2 "was reality," it's actually as deceptive as all Hell in that "realism". Firstly, I'm being played by someone other than myself, and the monologue, although it sounds as though it was being delivered as a stream-of-consciousness rant, was actually heavily scripted, and the film's "truth" was greatly exaggerated. To me, Film No. 2 is the perfect lie; more interesting [thematically and formally] than Three Card Monte, but far less enjoyable than the latter of the two.

I like that you liked it.

I really dug Three Card Monte when I first saw it. I think I laughed out loud at one point. It's a cool little short.

"Jack, you legend! You sex-god legend!"

Oh I know full well that it was a lie. I never actually believed it to be your true, personal thoughts. I know that what is said is a huge exagerration from the truth. I'm sure when you wrote it you simply took fragments of reality from your own life and painted them in much broader strokes.

When I watched it, I didn't take the stance that it was your personal entry, more so that it was just an entry in a filmmaker's, any filmmaker's, diary.

Plus the end line rang some familiar bells from one of the greatest documentaries ever, Sherman's March.

Ooh, that's interesting. I've not seen Sherman's March before, and now I really want to...

I highly recommend it. It's sequel, Time Indefinite, is a pretty solid follow up. Plus it has one of the greatest lines never scripted, "Turn off the camera, this isn't art, this is life."

I have always liked More, and yes The Red Balloon is a great piece as well.

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Billy's Ballon rocks. Long Live Don Hertzfeldt!

I thought The long and short of it by Sean Astin was pretty good for a silent short film

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Undercoverlovers 100 REDUX

The Wonderful Life of James Kofka (last name spelling?).

That movies aight' I guess. It's about Kofka trying to write that book about some fool wakes up as a bug, mixed with a little, It's a Wonderful Life. Good stuff, won an Acadamy Award or somethin fierce like that.