HAPPY DOGS in Australia

I admit it, I Pharrell Williams' Happy. The videos on his site, 24 Hours of Happy, are wonderful. I think this one, submitted by a dog trainer from Australia is one of my favorites. Because really, it's hard to top a dog in joie de vivre.

Amanda Shires - Bulletproof (Live from Rhythm N' Blooms 2013)

I like to listen to the relatively local radio station WNRN, it is based in Charlottesville and plays a wide variety of music. The station is a sort of semi-professional college rado station. As a result i get to hear a fair amount of music before it becomes big. Case in point is this lovely song by Amanda Shires. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Happy

I admit it, I really like Pharrell's "Happy." It's just plain fun and gets under your skin. This version popped up on my feed in Face Book and I just had to share.

LUMINARIS

A little light entertainment, a stop action film by Juan Pablo Zaramella of Buenos Aires. The synopsis from the website states "In a world controlled and timed by light, an ordinary man has a plan that could change the natural order of things."

Notes on Blindness - Op-Docs

John Hull, a writer and theologian, loses his vision shortly after the birth of his second child in 1983. Years later he starts keeping an audio diary of his thoughts and feelings in regards to his blindness. This short film is a dramatization of his diary. Beautiful shot, the film captivates the viewer.

REVIVE

Revive is the Tropfest Australia 2013 People's Choice Award.

It's a fairly short feature, just over seven minutes long, but it is long on emotion. Interestingly he dropped out of an engineering program to pursue his film making dreams. The young director packs quite a wallop, it will be interesting to see what he does down the road.

La Maison en Petits Cubes

A lovely animated feature about, life, love, and diving into the past.

PROXiMITY (A Short Film by Ryan Connolly)

PROXiMITY is an interesting and suspenseful short film, an action movie boiled down to the basics. there is not a whole lot of story, nor character development, and even less dialogue, but the intensity is phenomenal. I found this via Short Film of the Week.

The Wikidrummer

A demonstration of how environment affects the acoustical properties of drums. No reverberation is added, the differences are all from where the drumming is being done. I saw this over at Colossal: Art and Visual Culture, No Reverb Added:An Acoustical Experiment in Drumming.

The Crimson Permanent Assurance

This is one of my all time favorite short features, from the fine folks of Monty Python. Originally slated to be a Terry Gilliam animation during "The Meaning of Life," its scope grew such that Gilliam requested it become live action and a stand alone short at the beginning of the movie. A brilliant satire of the go-go 80's of London.

Handspring Puppet Co

 Saturday I got to see the stage version of War Horse courtesy of Meryl. I wanted to see the movie, but missed it so I was thrilled when Meryl invited me to go with her. I knew going in that puppets were used instead of horses and I had a vague idea of what they looked like, however I was blow away by the creations in action. The construction and the manipulation of the puppets resulted in a very life like horse. The mannerisms and movement are spot on.

I found this video about the manufacture, Handspring Puppet Co. Based in Cape Town South Africa, they build the puppets almost entirely by hand.

Two Chips

A short animation film by Adam Patch using a joke his wife told him after a bottle of wine.

The Last Farm

A beautiful Icelandic short film about an old man, Hrafn, who has one last chore on the farm he shares with his wife Gróa before their daughter, Lilja, takes them to their retirement home in the city. Hrafn's one request is that Lilja should only come after the weekend.

A very well done film that is worth watching to the end.

Slug Invasion

A short film by students at The Animation Workshop, done in the style of a war movie that is all about perspective.

THE POSSIBILITIES

A Tropfest New York 2013 Finalist that showcases how sometimes you can have too many options.

Lottery - The FlipSide

An interesting short film written/directed by Ben Shelton of Shelton Films. It asks the question what would you do if you won the lottery.

Fresh Guacamole by PES

A delightful short film by PES.

Back In The Saddle Again

The last part of summer just about wiped me out. Two soccer tournaments, a big shindig in honor of our Rabbi, and the general chaos of back to school. Add in a new computer and all that entails and my little corner of the internet was sadly neglected. But now that the school year starts I'm back in the saddle again.

Sign Language

I'm back with a new computer. It took a week for the new system to arrive and another to transfer my pictures and load programs. I must say it's nice having a system from this decade. I didn't lose anything, most of my pictures wee backed up andmy old system gave its final gasp after I was done with it.

So anyhoodle, here is a sweet short film that was the Grand Prize Winner Virgin Media Shorts 2010.

Bootsy Collins- Stretchin Out Live

Because we can all use a little more funk on a rainy Monday.