These are fantastical stories traveling that will make you wonder, think and maybe even have a laugh or two.
88:88 (14 min)
Val Kelly has been anti-social lately and no one knows why; she’s missed appointments, and has been away from friends and family who are concerned. It seems like she’s been working on some kind of contraption in her bedroom but it’s difficult to tell what it is for, based on the individual elements of the contraption. The girl secures herself to her bed and at 3:26am the clock changes to 88:88 and something radical happens that can’t be explained. It seems her contraption has done exactly what it needed to.
Strange noises emanate from a workshop and a security camera is capturing a horrific creature. In this tale of intrigue, the true nature of the creature slowly becomes clear through a series of interviews. Tense and suspenseful throughout, it seems that a pharmaceutical company is at least somewhat responsible. The film becomes mostly silent and reveals more details of the horrific epidemic and the paranoid feels strangely familiar while still strangely alarming. A great little slice of this alternate universe uses an interesting technique to tell the story.
Out of Erasers (15 min)
A sign in a shop window reads “Out of Erasers”. Why would that happen? A young woman is puzzled by this but then sees something strange. An odd phenomenon that couldn’t be ignored, so she touches it – lines emanating and animating wildly – and it begins to grow on her. The desolate city is a backdrop to a chase with a figure completely covered by the aforementioned phenomenon – it’s something that doesn’t seem to make sense and yet, is wholly frightening. It appears that erasers are the only cure but the world has become so scarce of erasers. This film plays off tropes of the zombie series but, with a haunting ending that pays off the built-up suspense.
Codes of Honor (14 min)
There’s something about battle that creates brothers in arms. The main character reminisces about his career in video games – the closest he’s ever been to battle – and his most memorable bouts. The narrator compares his feats in video games to those of great warriors because, in the world of video games, that’s exactly what he is.
Pioneer (16 min)
A man tells his son the gruesome story of how he met his mother. The epic story begins to add elements of the fantastic and the fates of the two characters suddenly become more immediate and understood.
Tumult (13 min)
A group of Vikings travel in tatters after a hard-fought battle when, suddenly, they stumble upon a fantastic ship and the world takes a tone humor – darkly violent humor – but altogether great in execution.
- Douglas
Check out our coverage of the WorldWide Short Film Festival:
- Douglas Does ‘The Laughter Without Borders’ Programme - Next Up ‘Shorts For Shorties: Mission to the Milky Way’ - MovieJay Reviews the ‘Date Night’ Programme - Xavierpop Breaks Down the Popular ‘Scene Not Herd’ Programme - Xavierpop Reviews The ‘Short Dramatic Films” Programme - MovieJay Really Enjoys The ‘Celebrity Shorts’ Programme - Douglas Breaks Down The ‘X-Ray Spex’ Programme - MovieJay Reviews The ‘Stranger In A Strange Land’ Programme - Now Onto The ‘Homeland Security’ Programme - Xavierpop Takes On The ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’ Programme - MovieJay Reviews The “All Tomorrow’s Parties” Programme - Douglas Godhino Reviews The ‘Superfans’ Programme - Xavierpop Takes on The “Creative Control” Programme - MovieJay Reviews the “War, What Is It Good For?” Programme - MovieJay Reviews ‘The Family Compact” Programme - Next Up A Look At the ‘Iron Ladies’ Programme - Xavierpop Covers ‘The Love Hurts’ Official Selection - A Break-Down The ‘Who’s Your Dada?’ Programme - MovieJay Reviews The Opening Night Gala: Winners From Around the World - The @xvrpop Ultimate Worldwide Short Film Fest Preview - The CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival’s Screenplay $50,000 Giveaway is Back!
Shorts For Shorties is a series of 12 mostly short-short to micro-short films, all animated, and carrying themes that are urgent to youngsters of about 8 and under.
The Little Bird and The Leaf (4 min) is a neat little Swiss film that follows an intrepid little bird on his journey to retrieve a leaf that had been sharing his perch up in a tree.
Colosse – A Wood Tale (3 min) is the story of an unlikely friendship between a woodpecker and a robot puppet. Neat stop-motion animation piece this one.
Dreampacker (3 min) follows Catalina, a young girl whose backpack starts overflowing with the amount of precautions she has inside of it for whatever scenario she may find herself in in life.
Moving Forward (1 min) is meant to reassure young ones that trying new things is a healthy part of life, even rollercoasters!
PL.INK! (3 min) follows what appears to be a baby doodle doodling away in his little pen, making designs on the wall that morph into a surreal experience. Trippy.
Ernesto (7 min) is a delightful and musical short that follows a young boy who really wants to lose his front teeth because none of his friends have theirs anymore, but then learns from his singing front teeth that they just aren’t ready to come out yet.
Brad & Gary (4 min) are two crittery varmits who would be waiting for Godot if they weren’t so distracted by picking their noses and whiling the hours away getting involved in one mess or another. A neat story about misfits.
The Lost Years (2 min) is perhaps the best micro-short in this volume, a stop-motion piece that follows Nilla, a turtle, as she takes her first trip out to sea. Wonderful creation, this one.
Gadget Boy (1 min) is a surprisingly droll micro-short that follows G. Boy and his sidekick G-Bot as they help a couple of other animated fellows who find they’ve got a broken wheel.
The main event here is the incredibly ambitious The Itch of the Golden Nit (34 min), from Aardman Animation Studios (Wallace & Gromit). It’s a short that is entirely made by hundreds of UK children in a program sponsored by the Olympics where kids helped to draw images and choose which way the story would go online and then the studio put all of the wonderfully hand-drawn images and dialogue and story together into one big story involving Beanie and an intergalactic mission he takes in order to save the world. Inventive and alive.
- Moviejay
Check out our coverage of the WorldWide Short Film Festival:
- MovieJay Reviews the ‘Date Night’ Programme - Xavierpop Breaks Down the Popular ‘Scene Not Herd’ Programme - Xavierpop Reviews The ‘Short Dramatic Films” Programme - MovieJay Really Enjoys The ‘Celebrity Shorts’ Programme - Douglas Breaks Down The ‘X-Ray Spex’ Programme - MovieJay Reviews The ‘Stranger In A Strange Land’ Programme - Now Onto The ‘Homeland Security’ Programme - Xavierpop Takes On The ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’ Programme - MovieJay Reviews The “All Tomorrow’s Parties” Programme - Douglas Godhino Reviews The ‘Superfans’ Programme - Xavierpop Takes on The “Creative Control” Programme - MovieJay Reviews the “War, What Is It Good For?” Programme - MovieJay Reviews ‘The Family Compact” Programme - Next Up A Look At the ‘Iron Ladies’ Programme - Xavierpop Covers ‘The Love Hurts’ Official Selection - A Break-Down The ‘Who’s Your Dada?’ Programme - MovieJay Reviews The Opening Night Gala: Winners From Around the World - The @xvrpop Ultimate Worldwide Short Film Fest Preview - The CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival’s Screenplay $50,000 Giveaway is Back!
The 7 shorts it the Date Night Programme examine romance in all its quirkiness, from book covers who tell their own stories late at night to what really goes on after the credits of a movie that has just ended “happily ever after”, or so we think.
Lunch Date (11 min) is a charming British dramedy about a young woman waiting for her date to show up at the restaurant when his 14 yr-old brother arrives instead, sent by his older brother to break up with her.
Rhinos (17 min) is an unlikely Irish dramedy that finally wins you over with Thomas, a Dubliner, and Ingrid, a German, meeting cute one afternoon on a park bench and then hanging out the rest of that afternoon barely understanding a word between them.
Co-directors Spike Jonze and Simon Cahn deliver a rather explicitly weird but stylish stop-motion animation piece in To Die By Your Side (6 min), which sees characters from major works of fiction involved in their own bizarre stories once their bookstore owner departs for the evening.
Cafe Regular, Cairo (11 min) considers a young adult couple examining where their relationship is and where it’s going now that they’re approaching their two-year. She wants to have sex and he keeps trying to talk the both of them out of it in this intriguing and intelligent scene that would be interesting as a feature.
We Refuse to Be Cold (8 min) is quite literally a pact a young Montreal couple makes in this experimental short about themes of promises kept and broken.
I Could’ve Been a Hooker (24 min) is the best in this bunch, a dark French dramedy about a 30ish woman, her pair of hedge clippers, and the panic attack she has in public that ends with an overnight stay at a stranger’s house, a 40-something man. In theory, this is a totally preposterous situation, but the writing, direction and acting pull us along and we find ourselves engrossed by the film’s open-ended conclusion. This stuff reminded me of Haneke, but with a wink to the audience.
After the Credits (15 min) is a droll Australian short about a young man who flees his own wedding in order to profess his love to a woman about to board a plane out of town. Everything goes swimmingly until the credits are done rolling and the woman has to try to get her fare back while the man is raking up a huge taxi bill because he told the driver to keep the meter running. And then they’ve got to figure out their happily-ever-after arrangement as the woman had left her job to move somewhere else. But they’ll figure it all out, right?
- Moviejay
Check out our coverage of the WorldWide Short Film Festival:
- Xavierpop Breaks Down the Popular ‘Scene Not Herd’ Programme - Xavierpop Reviews The ‘Short Dramatic Films” Programme - MovieJay Really Enjoys The ‘Celebrity Shorts’ Programme - Douglas Breaks Down The ‘X-Ray Spex’ Programme - MovieJay Reviews The ‘Stranger In A Strange Land’ Programme - Now Onto The ‘Homeland Security’ Programme - Xavierpop Takes On The ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’ Programme - MovieJay Reviews The “All Tomorrow’s Parties” Programme - Douglas Godhino Reviews The ‘Superfans’ Programme - Xavierpop Takes on The “Creative Control” Programme - MovieJay Reviews the “War, What Is It Good For?” Programme - MovieJay Reviews ‘The Family Compact” Programme - Next Up A Look At the ‘Iron Ladies’ Programme - Xavierpop Covers ‘The Love Hurts’ Official Selection - A Break-Down The ‘Who’s Your Dada?’ Programme - MovieJay Reviews The Opening Night Gala: Winners From Around the World - The @xvrpop Ultimate Worldwide Short Film Fest Preview - The CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival’s Screenplay $50,000 Giveaway is Back!
