Monday 12 April 2010

Nice Shorts

Apologies if, like me, you spend vast tracts of your life hoovering up every filmic titbit that squeaks onto the interwebs, because you'll probably already be familiar with the contents of today's post. If, however, you're my Mum, this will be an introduction to some very cool things that you haven't seen yet because you were too busy making my Dad's dinner.

Originally this post was going to be all about Parallel Lines, a project sponsored by Philips in order to shift a load of their new super-wide widescreen tellies, but which more interestingly showcases five short films by different directors given the same lines of dialogue but free reign to make whatever kind of film they liked.


The results weren't as exciting as I'd hoped; three of the films were so-so and one was an interesting experiment, but the other was so good it fully deserves inclusion on The Incredible Suit. You can see them all at the official website, but here's the tiptopular The Gift, directed by Carl Rinsch. Try and ignore the irritating TV-display gimmick, the only way Philips could shoehorn their product in:



I was all ready to bang on about how I predict this would be snapped up by a major studio and extended into a full feature in the style of District 9, but it turns out that's already happened. Rinsch's Small is intended as a direct follow-on from The Gift and might just be the best thing since sliced Christopher Johnson. Keep your peepers peeled.

The reason this post isn't all about the Parallel Lines project is because a few days after we were presented with The Gift, another, unrelated short hit the internets which was even better. It's called Pixels, it's directed by Patrick Jean and it's brilliant. Treat yourselves to some brightly-coloured, obscenely fruity eye-crack:


PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. - Arts and animation videos.

And don't say I never give you anything you haven't already seen (except you Mum).

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4 comments :

  1. Planet Earth attacked by 8 bit PIXELS. Brilliant. So much easier to believe than global warming which is a fable. The extra sunlight is making dissolved CO2 come out of solution in the oceans in the same way that a Coca-Cola fizzes if warm. This then adds to the atmospheric CO2. Thus warming causes CO2 increase not the other way round. Next we will be told that wind is caused by trees moving their branches. Proof? The faster they wave the branches the stronger the wind.

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  2. I can't help but feel you've strayed off the point a bit there Tony. Still, The Incredible Suit is happy to provide space for you to air your views ;-)

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  3. No matter how mad and scientificaly unproven.....

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  4. What is unproven is that anything we do will make any difference in the long run. How does buying a few energy saving lightbulbs compensate for all those forest fires beyond our control?

    To get back to PIXELS I was hoping Earth would turn into the 2001 obelisk rather than a cube. It was great to see Space Invaders, Pacman, Frogger, Pong, Donkey Kong and Tetris used in such a clever way. Memories of Sinclair ZX81 and ATARI 800 come flooding back. Star Raiders was what I liked best.

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