The Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) will play host to a retrospective the films of Maureen Selwood in The Imaginary Voyages of Maureen Selwood, April 30th, 2012, 8:30pm. As Selwood's first solo screening in Los Angeles, the evening will encompass her more recent work, from 1998's Hail Mary, to this year's A Modern Convenience. 

 

This week in The Friday Five, it's all bringing the past to the present, and looking to the future with hope. I take a look at the retro influences behind some modern music-driven videos, get schooled in French politics, then blinded by science, and recover from all this sound and noise by indulging in a moment of feel-good altruism. If you've also been fighting the good fight out there on the visual battlements, then take a break and take a look.

Week of 4/27/12- Baby I'm Yours (Irina Dakeva), Excès de Caricature 2007-2012 (Paul Poutre), The power of x (Körner Union/WE ARE Pi), Insect Traps (Markos Kay), Mork (Phil Borst)

 

It's all stop-motion, practical magic, and pixelation for this week's Friday Five. Fresh-off-the-render-queue music videos, exciting adverts, and head-scratching techincal prowess abound. Let's jump right in.

Week of 4/20/12 - The Rifle's Spiral (Jamie Caliri), Seven Legs (Mikey Please), Bermuda (Calvin Frederick), BIG BANG BOOM (BLU), LUMINARIS (Juan Pablo Zaramella) 

Perhaps your cozy Friday night, hard won after the long week, was feeling too safe. Perhaps you'll need something to shake you out of a well-deserved haze and back into work. This week's picks are guaranteed to to make you think, make you cringe, or, at the very least, make you re-vise your weekend plan of attack. No matter what, if you want to put a little edge back into the mix, these'll do you just fine.  

Week of 5/4/12- TOPO GLASSATO AL CIOCCOLATO (Donato Sansone), Vésuves (Kevin Manach), Cecelia & Her Selfhood (Adrien Merigeau), Bare Bones Volume 4 (Julia Pott), [BRDG007] PLMS_IV_D (SyncBody) (Daihei Shibata)

Metamorphosis

Off-Model (and The Friday Five), are back, with a vengeance! After a too long away, the blog is going to be up and running more than ever before, with new videos, summer con coverage, and loads more. Some brand-sparkling-new changes, as well, for us frame-by-frame fiends; the shorts featured here, both this week's and from past blogs, will soon be easy to watch on AWNtv (if a fully released version has been made available to the public.) Get ready to take a trip, even if you're still counting down the hours at work. I, for one, think you deserve it.

Week of 6/21/12 -Metamorphosis (BUCK), 38-39°C (Kangmin Kim), The Fox (WINTR), Black Sun (Kagemu), Junkyard (Hisko Hulsing)

In honor of this blog's writer graduating with a Master's degree this week, Off-Model is celebrating with a smörgåsbord of apocalyptic and futuristic scenarios. A veritable buffet of delicious dystopias await, with a unsurprising amount of CG life, some fresh ideas folded into well-trodden tropes,  and solid advice about what to do with those extra human skulls you've got lying around the post-nuclear wastes. It's the end of the world as we know it, and you may not feel so fine. 

Week of 5/11/12- ROSA (Jesús Orellana), The Gift (Carl E. Rinsch), RUIN (Wes Ball), GAMMA (Factory Fifteen), Ducked and Covered: A Survival Guide to the Post Apocalypse (Nathaniel Lindsay)

 

 

The aim of The Friday Five is to shine a spotlight on short pieces that break the mold, serving as a toss-box for the best of what crosses my dashboard during the week. Each week, I'll be posting a selection of short films, commercials, motion graphics experiments, and trailers for currently circulating films, all from within the last year's cycle of festivals, premieres, and online releases.

Week of 4/13/12- For the Remainder (Omer Ben David), MATATORO (Mauro Carraro, , Raphaël Calamote, Jérémy Pasquet), Solipsist (Andrew Thomas Huang), Remington Requiem (Jules Guérin), unnamed soundsculpture (Dan Franke, Cedric Kiefer)

Summer blues have hit along with the expected late-June heatwave, putting this blogger in something of a sentimental mood. At play in this week's Friday Five is plenty of gentle beauty, and a tinge of melancholy, not to mention a bit of old-school nostalgia that could not be resisted. Water, whales and other large mammals, reflective vampires (without reflections), and some modern magic that could almost be old school round out the list.

Week of 6/29/12 - Bubble (Elliot Dear), TELEPHONEME (MK12), Cherry Blossom Elephant in Forest (Young-jun Kim/Earth Design Works), Blue Whale (Sivan Kidron), Kali le petit Vampire (Regina Pessoa)