Posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2012 by Angie Han
On the face of it, the documentary short The Politics of Competitive Board Gaming Amongst Friends doesn’t sound like such serious business: A group of friends get together to play Settlers of Catan, and occasionally get on each other’s nerves. Really, it’s difficult to think of anything more frivolous. But as anyone who’s ever gotten competitive against a loved one can attest, these things have a way of just blowing way the hell out of proportion.
Directed by Jay Cheel (Beauty Day, How to Build a Time Machine), The Politics of Competitive Board Gaming Amongst Friends is a half-dramatic, half-comedic look at the high-stakes emotions that can spill out during a low-stakes game. Fans of Cheel’s work on the Film Junk podcast will additionally be amused to see that the short prominently features recurring Film Junk guest Reed Farrington, a.k.a. Gerry Eng. Watch the ten-minute video after the jump.
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Ryan Palmieri directed a short documentary film titled The Hands of Hollywood, “the true story of the meteoric rise and fall of Steve Hershon, Hollywood’s go to hand insert model.” Hershon’s hands have been seen in many famous television shows and films. I’ve always been fascinated by the life of professional extras — the documentary Strictly Background is on Netflix Instant if you wanna see more on the subject. Watch The Hands of Hollywood right now embedded after the jump.
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These days it’s much easier to find a great video game than a great video game movie. Great video games are released almost every month but great video game movies are few and far between. For every Mortal Kombat or Tomb Raider there’s Street Fighter or Double Dragon (Or Doom. Or Max Payne. Or Hitman. You get the idea).
Then there are properties out there we’ll likely never see on the big screen. Super Mario Bros., for example, all but killed the chance of Nintendo ever letting anyone make movies out of their characters. Microsoft has been trying to push Halo for nearly a decade. These days we’re left with Resident Evil movies that are tangentially related to the games at best. What’s a fan to do if they want to see their favorite video game character outside of their XBox?
The answer is YouTube and the world of fan films. We’ve already seen a Portal fan film explode across the Internet, a solid series of Mortal Kombat films and now another popular character has got his due. Olan Rogers has mad a $700 fan film called Mega Man X that pushes its meager budget to its limits with a fun recreation of a game series many of us grew up with and loved. Check it out below.
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Jim Henson‘s short film Robot was recently discovered in the AT&T Archives. In 1963, a then-27-year-old Henson was commissioned to create the film for a Bell System seminar for business owners on the then-brand-new topic of Data Communications. According to AT&T:
The seminar itself involved a lot of films and multimedia presentations, and took place in Chicago. … The organizers of the seminar, Inpro, actually set the tone for the film in a three-page memo from one of Inpro’s principals, Ted Mills to Henson. Mills outlined the nascent, but growing relationship between man and machine: a relationship not without tension and resentment: “He [the robot] is sure that All Men Basically Want to Play Golf, and not run businesses — if he can do it better.” (Mills also later designed the ride for the Bell System at the 1964 World’s Fair.) Henson’s execution is not only true to Mills’ vision, but he also puts his own unique, irreverent spin on the material. The robot narrator used in this film had previously starred in a skit for a food fair in Germany, in 1961. It also may be the same robot that appeared on the Mike Douglas Show in 1966. Henson created a different — but similar — robot for the SKF Industries pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair.
Watch it now embedded after the jump.
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Yep, that’s an image of a slacker Val Kilmer on a BMX bike. In a new short from Harmony Korine, Kilmer plays a motivational speaker named Val Kilmer, and we see him do his thing at a roller rink. The short is part of an omnibus feature called The Fourth Dimension that will play soon at the Tribeca Film Festival. As you might guess just based on that image and the short description I just provided, this looks like signature Korine craziness. Check out a trailer below. Read More »
Ruin is an animated action short film set “way in the future” in a green post-apocalyptic universe. Directed by Wes Ball, who has been working in Hollywood for 8 years doing graphic work for HBO and DVD/Blu-ray featureetes. A graduate of Florida State University, Tallahasse, his 2003 short film A Work in Progress won the Bronze Metal at the Student Adacemy Awards (I have also included that film after the jump). Described as his “passion project”, Ball has been working on Ruin off and on for the last two years. Watch the short film now, embedded after the jump.
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When a Pixar film is nominated for an Oscar, chances are it’s going to win. For proof, look at the Best Animated Feature category. In the 11 years since the Academy started handing out the award, a Pixar film has been nominated eight times. And out of those eight, it’s only lost twice.
In fact, this is the first year Pixar’s feature film, Cars 2, didn’t get nominated. They were, however, represented in the Best Animated Short category for the film La Luna. That’s a category Pixar has also won numerous times, but loses more often than not and such was the case this year. La Luna lost to a film called The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore directed by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg.
Is the film better than something from Pixar? Judge for youself. You can watch the short after the break. Read More »
Most of the information we have here is right in the headline, but just in case you’ve been wondering whether the live-action John Carter means that director Andrew Stanton has left Pixar for good, the answer is no.
The director is still doing some work at the storied animation house. While there isn’t a new feature development on the horizon, Stanton is working on a new short with another big Pixar talent. Read More »
