Park City’s been overcast and gray since Day 1, but this morning a brilliant platinum light tore a hole in the endless cloud cover and ignited the overlooking Wasatch peaks, back-lighting a sparkly veil of glassy no-see-ums, tiny ice crystals too delicate to form flakes, that danced on wafts of air until they melted in my face.

Yes, I admit the night before I’d seen Academy-award nominee (Taxi to the Dark Side) Alex Gibney’s latest masterwork, Gonzo, the Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, but I deny any pharmaceutical inspiration, at least this early in the morning, as I stop before the Yarrow Hotel to marvel at this floaty, twinkly, sun-lit scrim. Inside the Yarrow a press screening of Morgan Spurlock’s latest saga-in-cheek, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, is almost underway, and I race into the theater to find a seat just as the lights fall.

Both docus, I’m happy to report, are polished to high theatrical sheen with eye-catching graphics, animated illustrations (the great Ralph Steadman in Gonzo), and well-crafted high-definition cinematography (D.P. Maryse Alberti in Gonzo). Both acquaint audiences with past and present avatars of U.S. politics: the tragic George McGovern, smarmy Richard Nixon, idealistic Jimmy Carter (Gonzo); the hubristic tag team of W. and Osama (Where in the World…). Both deserve and will likely obtain limited theatrical runs (though Sundance 2008 has been notably short of acquisitions so far). more

“Four score and seven years ago, to thine own self be true. I believe in rock n’ roll. I believe in getting high.”
- Cowman Kennedy’s infamous Gettysburg address

The Kansas City, Mo., art collective known as MK12 has been on quite a roll lately. The ingenious graphics that highlighted Will Ferrell’s routine life in Stranger Than Fiction were theirs, and Director Marc Forster utilized their animation talents again for the opening credits of his newest film, The Kite Runner. This year, Sundance spotlights their subversively fun short The History of America, which was one of 16 works chosen by New York magazine as the best online content of 2007.

A visually dynamic mix of rotoscoped live action shot against a greenscreen and the latest computer animation techniques, The History of America is not the typical sly condemnation of U.S. culture that its title might suggest, but more a hilarious celebration of distinctly American iconography. Were it not for the epic war between the cowboys (who reside in Las Vegas and work from the Cowboy Headquarters and Casino) the astronauts (who live in a space station on the moon), the U.S. may not be the great country that it is today.

This ambitious project has been about four years in the making. Before any animation processing was done, MK12 storyboarded. Then, they finished a live-action rough cut, complete with actors and set design, to see what they had. Even when the computer processing had begun, every part of the film was still hand-tweaked in some fashion. A startlingly orginal creation, it combines cutting edge slick graphic design with a worn-out third-generation print look. Read On and watch the entire film at Scene-Stealers.com

There is something to be said for a movie that can get across a wave of emotion, however slight, in just over a minute’s time. It will take me longer to write this capsule review than it will for you to watch Hermann Karlsson’s melancholy animated short simply titled Dog. What this Icelandic import (although Karlsson currently resides in Edinburgh, Scotland) lacks in running time, it certainly makes up for in feeling.

A muted color palette of mostly gray and white, Dog feels like an overcast winter afternoon. It looks like the director used old-fashioned animation techniques only—like maybe it was drawn on film or sketched on paper. In reality, Karlsson used a mixture of 2D computer-drawn animation and painted-cell animation to bring to life the story of a late, lamented dog and a decision that will haunt a boy forever.

Mat Elliot’s sparse piano accompaniment holds out each keystroke for maximum resonance while non-diagetic sound effects such as wind blowing and stereo-panned, crackling fire enhance the visuals. Karlsson’s inspired use of imagery has parallels to the story he’s telling, but he never falls into the trap of the two being too directly and literally related. Read On and watch the entire film at Scene-Stealers.com

Often times, even when dealing with short films, it is sometimes difficult to remember that storytelling is not always the first priority. After all, film is like any other form of art and should not be held to any hard and fast rules—like plot, character development, and all the other things we associate with narrative filmmaking. Rather than being relegated to the art museum, experimental films get their day in the sun at Sundance (no pun intended) right alongside the more traditional modes of filmmaking.

Shawn Bannon’s Ignite is a three-minute film that surveys the raging intensity with which the fires in Griffith Park, Calif. burned last year by using stark, color time-lapse cinematography sped up to an alarming degree. Helicopters streak through the night sky, but are mere flashes. They look more like comets with blinding tails. Later, the ashes of the landscape are contrasted with cigarette ashes and only a brief flash, burning photo, of the people who were affected by it. Seven time-lapse cameras were used to capture the event, which is melded together with a soundtrack of crackling fire that’s all wind and clipped microphones.

“You cut my tongue, now only my heart speaks.”
- Tania Willard

Nikamowin is a fascinating 12-minute short from Director/Editor Kevin Lee Burton that asks the musical question, “What happens when you start speaking Cree?” D’arcy O’Connor is responsible for the intricate score/sound design, which is made up entirely of spoken words in the Cree language. While O’Connor’s linguistic soundscape unfolds with rhythmic cadence, Burton channels a little bit of Koyaanisqatsi, using both city and natural landscapes to illustrate the impressive sound collage. He also employs quite a bit of split screen, only he visually highlights the layers of Nikamowin’s complicated music by going horizontal—and using up to five images consecutively. The short was produced with cooperation from the Canada Council for the Arts. Read On at Scene-Stealers.com

After following the production story for the feature film Fix via conversations with director Tao Ruspoli (see the Dec. 11, 2007 article “Slamdance’s HD Fix” from our HD Focus Newsletter), I was excited to see the world premiere of the movie albeit in the cramped conference-room-turned-theater at the Treasure Mountain Inn. Seeing the resulting footage from Ruspoli’s hand-held and Manfrotto Fig Rig-stabilized Panasonic HVX200 shots on a larger screen–along with Ruspoli’s excitement and gratitude–added significantly to my experience.

While sitting in anticipation of the film, I found myself seated next to a couple gracious attendees who also play significant roles in both Sundance and Slamdance–head honchos of Playa del Rey, Calif.-based animation and design house The Ebeling Group. more

“You can’t untell a tale…you can’t outslow a snail.”
- Bobby Bird, Chonto

This year, 45 of the 83 short films in the 2008 Sundance Film Festival are available at for viewing and/or download at iTunes, Netflix, and Xbox.com.

Carson Mell follows last year’s Sundance-featured short film Bobby Bird: The Devil in Denim with another adventure of the aging former rock star. The 2008 animation short program features Chonto, a relatively somber yet bizarrely amusing film, shot on Sony HD CAM, about Bobby’s search for a true friend. An obnoxious roadie named Rufus forces the rocker, in a flashback to his younger days, to consider something other than human companionship. A dog is too common, and a big shot like Bobby needs a “big-shot dog,” so he goes to a South American zoo to adopt a monkey.

Mell’s animation style is an interesting mix of photo-real backgrounds and stark, crisply drawn cartoon images that have very little mobility. Deep colors enrich the surrounding photos, but the characters themselves are flat images with barely any shading. Camera movement is mostly limited to slowly zooming in or out, and it makes for a very deliberate tone. Ironically, it is this approach, juxtaposed against Bobby’s homespun seen-it-all rocker mentality and his Southern drawl, that makes Chonto so charming. Read On at Scene-Stealers.com

With so much attention focused on feature-length films at the Sundance Film Festival, it is easy for the short films to get lost in the shuffle. This year, however, Sundance is pushing the short film programs pretty heavily. Starting tomorrow, the “10 Shorts 10 Days” feature appears at sundance.org/festival/shorts, where one short from the festival will appear for free for an entire day, with nine more to follow consecutively. In addition, 45 of the 83 short films in the festival are available at for viewing and/or download at iTunes, Netflix, and Xbox. The entries this year span a wide array of subject matter and themes, from straight-ahead comedy to action/thrillers and gripping drama. Entries have come from all over the world as well—from as far away as China, Iceland, and Denmark.

If you have a Netflix account, the entire animated film program is now streaming there for free. If not, just wait until Wednesday Jan. 23 to watch Director Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung’s multi-layered experimental short Because Washington Is Hollywood for Ugly People when it appears on the “10 Shorts 10 Days” site. This rapid-fire cutout animation piece, shot with a Sony HD CAM, is a biting satire of world politics and the public’s endless fascination with facile celebrity news. The effect of Tin-Kin Hung’s quickly moving and surrealistically adorned, flat images produces a film that’s very modern in its subject matter, but not too dissimilar from Terry Gilliam’s early work on Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Read On at Scene-Stealers.com