See the film here
by Brandon Colvin
It is the second collaboration between Spike Jonze and Kanye West.
It is a portrait of the artist as a forlorn failure, a charismatic creep, a self-hating superstar.
It is a feverish, fickle-focused fiction about fantasy, fucked-upness, and frustration.
It is a dreamlike documentary of digital-age debauchery, of a drunken dude in debonair duds desperately clinging to the final shards of his identity.
It is auto-tuned lyrics, cultural convergence, and sweating strangers shrugging off the awkward advances of a semi-suicidal, seppuku-committing icon of media megalomania.
It is NewTube.
It is a performer performing a performance of himself as a performer performing.
It is Kanye’s stilted slurrings and their amateur-professional truth.
It is the dancefloor tears that slyly suggest both autobiography and shameless solipsism.
It is confetti blood.
It is Godard.
It is a seriously shocking ending, for once.
It is the sincerity in such an ending, for once.
It is what I expect from the director of Adaptation.
It is a poem.
It is easily one of the best films of 2009.
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by James Hansen
Winner of Best Mini Doc at the 2009 Big Sky Documentary Festival and showing tomorrow evening as part of PBS's acclaimed POV Series, Jennifer explores director Stewart Copeland's relationship with his mother in both actuality and memory. Using a conversation between his mother's eighth-grade students and astronauts on the international space station, Copeland uses space as a purveyor of indescribable distance – both between the students and the astronauts, the living world and whatever else is out there, and Copeland and his mother. Wonderfully including segments of stop-motion animation of astronauts in space, Copeland shows that, while some things cannot be seen, anyone who is looking closely can still hear, feel, and love some thing, or someone, who may not be physically present. Managing a dialectic between the audio and visual components, Jennifer plays with not only Copeland's relationship to this personal film, but illustrates and challenges the spectator's relationship with Copeland, the rest of the audience, and the film experience itself. Beautifully rendered, quietly elegant, and subtly complex, Jennifer is a wonderful film and announces Copeland as a major talent to watch.
For more on Copeland and Jennifer, come back here tomorrow for an interview with the filmmaker. You can also visit Copeland's website for more information on his past, present, and future work. Jennifer will show with the feature Bronx Princess and another short So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away on September 22nd at 10 PM on PBS.
Jennifer from Stewart Copeland on Vimeo.
Make this the second short film of 2009 (along with Apichatpong Weerasethakul's wonderful Phantoms of Nabua) to premiere online (or, at least, not be released in traditional commercial, art house, or experimental theaters) that totally knocked my socks off. Another case that led to our recent Call For Proposals and the online symposium in August. Cinema, wherever its being seen, is alive and well!
Giving credit where credit is due: thanks to Michael Sicinski for pointing this out. I might do a proper review at some point, but, even if I did, I'm sure I'd advise you to read Michael's review(s) first.
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For all of the Lynch fans who contribute to this site, can you believe this is the first post we have ever had about the man? I was shocked to discover that as I looked through our tags and realized he had never come up. That will all change this week. Lynch turns 62 on Tuesday, so, throughout the week, I'll try and come up with some short post on him and his films. Better late than never, right? For now, enjoy his 1995 Lumiere short. It might be only a minute long, but that doesn't hold it back from some form of greatness.
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Recently selected as Nathan Lee's #1 film (er, video) of 2008, Jean Luc Godard's minute-long festival trailer (entitled Une Catastrophe) for the 2008 Viennalle kicks it old school in terms of dialectical Russian montage, but it is nevertheless a striking and dashingly original short from JLG. I may not go as far as Nathan in terms of its greatness (it feels a little too much like the opening to Godard's vastly underappreciated Notre Musique to be a full fledged, unique masterpiece), but its definitely worth a (quick) watch nonetheless..
And a quick side note: sorry for the delay in posts. I have been away from the internet for about a week, but should be back full swing henceforth. Brandon breaks down (and takes down) early Oscar favorite Slumdog Millionaire, new contributor Chuck Williamson reviews Fear(s) in the Dark, and I tackle Clint Eastwood's 2008 would-be melodrama dyptych of Changeling and Gran Torino. Plenty of other happenings are sure to come along as well. Out 1 is ready to roll into the new year and we hope you all come along with us! Keep spreading the word! Happy holidays to all, and to all a good night!
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A fun early short here directed by JLG and written by Eric Rohmer. Certainly not his best work, but it is characteristic of things to come. Part one is on top followed by part two.
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Per request from the Conner family, the Bruce Conner short films I previously embedded have been removed from the site. In order to respect the wishes of his family, the videos have been removed; this post, however, will remain. Bruce Conner's body of work which one which all experimental film fans should be familiar with, and one of crucial importance. His collection is, most certainly, a set of short films you must see.
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An early short from the director of Kung Fu Panda. I haven't seen Kung Fu Panda yet, but if it is anything like this film then it is enormously worth seeing.
Due to embedding requests, the film cannot be placed within this post, but if you follow the link the entire film is available. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRMfDbm7nFo
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This film was linked to a couple days ago on GreenCine Daily, but with the small amount of views on YouTube I felt like it was a worth addition to our ongoing Short Films You Must See series. Below is the film and here is a link to an article written by Stuart Klawans on the film.
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Before you turn away from Out 1 forever because of this selection, I have to admit that this video was brought to my attention from its appearance on J. Hoberman's Top 10 Films of the 1980s, placing just ahead of Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice. Don't mess...just watch and enjoy this essential, playful, and brilliant video from everyone's favorite decade of music.
***Note: due to the embedding requests, the video cannot be displayed on this page. However, the link is posted below.***
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tqf9PuKi63E
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*The film is in two parts accounting for the two videos...part one is on top, followed by part two. All one short film though!*
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I don't know if this will become a regular series here or not, but it seems to me (and likely everyone else who has ever made them) that short films go wildly under appreciated. This is a feature to highlight some great short films that would certainly be part of the short films canon, if there were one. (Is there? Debate in comments...)
So here is the first selection. We'll let the films speak for themselves.
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