Short Film Showcase - Knick Knack (1989)

Knick Knack, 1989.

Written and Directed by John Lasseter.
Original Music by Bobby McFerrin.

The final computer animated short produced by Pixar before the release of their debut feature Toy Story in 1995, Knick Knack revolves around a snowman, Knick, who finds himself trapped inside a snowglobe while the rest of the souvenirs on his shelf are enjoying a party in the sun. Desperate to join in the fun, Knick employs a number of methods to break free of his glass prison and eventually finds a means of escape, only for his plan to backfire on him.

Knick Knack was Pixar's first foray into 3D and premiered in this format at the 1988 SIGGRAPH Animation Show. It was later completely rebuilt for a 2D theatrical release alongside Finding Nemo, with this new version incorporating reduced breast sizes on two of its characters, the Miami bikini girl and the Atlantis mermaid. This updated version also enjoyed a theatrical 3D run in 2006 when it was attached to the 3D version of The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Knick Knack (2003 version):


Knick Knack (original version):


Related:

Animated Storytellers: A Pixar Animation Studios Profile
Short Film Showcase - The Adventures of Andre and Wally B.
Short Film Showcase - Luxo Jr.

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Short Film Showcase - Bottom of a Glass (2011)

Presenting short films from independent filmmakers...

Bottom of a Glass, 2011.

Produced, Directed, Shot and Edited by Xavier Neal-Burgin.
Co-Directed by Joe Will Field.
Assistant Director Rene Gromotka.
Starring Coryanne Gromotka and Rene Gromotka.

SYNOPSIS - In the blink of an eye our protagonist loses everything he's loved. With nothing to live for he fills his life with a collection of self-deprecation to fill the empty void. His life seems lost until someone comes along to remind life is worth living even after tragedy.

Bottom of a Glass is a student short from Xavier Burgin, a Film Production major at the University of Alabama, which adopts the rather unique approach of employing a puppet as its main character. Bottom of a Glass features some striking black and white cinematography and is a touching short that sensitively explores its themes of loss and grief. It was named Best Drama at the Campus MovieFest at UA as well as being a semi-finalist for the Rethink Possible Award, and has recently been accepted to the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival 2011.


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Movies... For Free! Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946)

Showcasing classic movies that have fallen out of copyright and are available freely from the public domain...


Dick Tracy vs. Cueball, 1946.

Directed by Gordon Douglas.
Starring Morgan Conway, Dick Wessel, Anne Jeffreys, Lyle Latell, Joseph Crehan, Ian Keith, Rita Corday, Douglas Walton and Jimmy Crane.

Morgan Conway makes his second and final appearance as Chester Gould's incorruptible police detective in Dick Tracy vs. Cueball, a sequel to 1945's Dick Tracy, Detective. This time Tracy finds himself on the trail of the murderous Cueball, an ex-con who kills a diamond thief and takes the loot for himself. Tracy plans to catch Cueball by allowing his girlfriend Tess Trueheart (the returning Anne Jeffrey's) to act as a buyer for the diamonds, only for Cueball to take her hostage as he vows to eliminate the hard-boiled lawman.

Stepping into the director's chair for this second feature adventure is Gordon Douglas, whose previous credits included the Academy Award-winning Our Gang short Bored of Education (1936) and Laurel and Hardy's final Hal Roach comedy Saps at Sea (1940). Douglas would go on to direct films such as the cult sci-fi Them! (1954), Elvis Presley musical Follow That Dream (1962) and crime dramas The Detective (1968) and They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! (1970), while RKO Radio Pictures' Dick Tracy series would continue for a further two installments released the following year.


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Short Film Showcase - Shooter (2009)

Presenting short films from independent filmmakers...

Shooter, 2009.

Directed by Ronnie B. Goodwin.
Starring Paul Hunter.
Written by Ronnie B. Goodwin and Paul Hunter.
Produced by Ronnie B. Goodwin and Basil Khalil.
Music by Gregor Narholz.

Shooter is a multi-award winning short from director Ronnie B. Goodwin about an ex-soldier (Paul Hunter) haunted by his experiences of conflict. Seeking solitude in the wilderness of the mountains, lochs and forests of Scotland, the shooter is torn between the images of the inhumanity of war that plague his imagination and the natural beauty that surrounds him. Running at just five minutes, Shooter does a fine job of conveying the protagonist's internal struggle to deliver a thought-provoking and emotive piece of filmmaking.

The film has enjoyed a successful run on the festival circuit these past two years, including 27 Official Selections (including the Cannes Short Film Corner, Palm Springs International Short Fest and the Edinburgh International Film Festival), 2 Jury Nominations and 4 International Awards, while it was also named Best in Festival at the Swansea Bay Film Festival in 2010. Shooter has also recently enjoyed its British TV premiere on the Sky Super Shorts Channel, and you can find out more about the film and Ronnie's upcoming projects at his official site.


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Short Film Showcase - Diary (2010)

Diary, 2010.

Directed by Tim Hetherington.

Earlier this week came the sad news that acclaimed British war photographer and documentary filmmaker Tim Hetherington was killed in a mortar attack while covering the ongoing conflict in Libya. Having spent much of the past decade in war zones such Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Afghanistan, Hetherington had contributed to the acclaimed documentaries Liberia: An Uncivil War and The Devil Came on Horseback before receiving an Oscar nomination for his work as co-director (alongside Sebastian Junger) of Restrepo (2010), the Grand Jury Prize winner at the Sundance Film Festival last year.

In tribute to Tim here is his most recent work, the short film Diary, described by the filmmaker as "a highly personal and experimental film that expresses the subjective experience of my work, and was made as an attempt to locate myself after ten years of reporting. It’s a kaleidoscope of images that link our western reality to the seemingly distant worlds we see in the media."


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Movies... For Free! Dick Tracy (1945)

Showcasing classic movies that have fallen out of copyright and are available freely from the public domain...


Dick Tracy a.k.a Dick Tracy, Detective, 1945.

Directed by William Berke.
Starring Morgan Conway, Anne Jeffreys, Mike Mazurki, Jane Greer, Lyle Latell, Joseph Crehan, Mickey Kuhn, Trevor Bardette, Morgan Wallace, Milton Parsons and William Halligan.

Chester Gould's hard-boiled police detective Dick Tracy had already graced the silver screen in four Republic serials between 1937 and 1941 before RKO Pictures delivered this first B-grade feature outing in 1945. Taking over from the serials' Ralph Byrd as the incorruptible title character is Morgan Conway, with Dick Tracy on the hunt for a serial killer known as 'Splitface', who is responsible for a series of brutal murders where the victims have been slashed to pieces.

Although Dick Tracy opts against a straight-forward recreation of the comic strip in favour of a noirish approach, it does feature a number of familiar faces such as Tess Trueheart (Anne Jeffreys), Junior (Mickey Kuhn), Chief Brandon (Joseph Crehan) and Pat Patton (Lyle Latell), and was followed by three sequels in 1946 and 1947.


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Short Film Showcase - We Were Once a Fairytale (2009)

We Were Once a Fairytale, 2009.

Written and Directed by Spike Jonze.
Starring Kanye West.

After first working together as co-directors on the music video for Flashing Lights in 2008, acclaimed filmmaker Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) and Grammy Award-winning rap artist Kanye West next collaborated on the surreal 11-minute short We Were Once a Fairytale, which premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival back in June 2009 and was released online later that year.

Shot over two days in West Hollywood's Foxtail nightclub, West stars as himself - or rather an overly-inebriated, obnoxious and embarrassing version of himself - whose night takes a bizarre turn after vomiting rose petals in the club bathroom. Cutting into his stomach with a bowie knife, West empties the contents only to discover Henry, a rodent-like creature who is attached to the musician by an umbilical cord.


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Short Film Showcase - Factory Farmed (2008)

Factory Farmed, 2008.

Written and Directed by Gareth Edwards.
Starring Jacob Court and Allen Leach.

After spending the early part of his career supplying visual effects on documentaries such as Seven Wonders of the Industrial World (2003), Space Race (2005) and In The Shadow of The Moon (2007) and directing the BBC TV docudrama End Day (2005), British filmmaker Gareth Edwards went on to win SCI-FI-LONDON'S 48-Hour Film Challenge in 2008 with the five-minute short Factory Farmed. Written, shot and edited in just two days with a team of four, Factory Farmed is a superb technical achievement that fully demonstrates the director's impressive visual flair.

Edwards has since went on to continue his 'one-man' film revolution with the release of the lo-fi sci-fi Monsters last year, for which he received a BAFTA nomination for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer, losing out to Four Lions' Chris Morris. Edwards is now taking his talents to Hollywood where he is busy developing a big-budget Godzilla reboot for Legendary Pictures.


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Short Film Showcase - The Key to Reserva (2007)

The Key to Reserva, 2007.

Directed by Martin Scorsese.
Starring Simon Baker, Kelli O'Hara, Michael Stuhlbarg, Christopher Denham and Richard Easton.

Collaborating with screenwriter Ted Griffin (Ocean's Eleven, Matchstick Men) and long-time editor Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese directed and starred in The Key to Reserva, a 10-minute short film which was created as a long-form commcercial for Spanish wine company Freixenet.

The film begins with Scorsese giving an interview about a supposedly unfinished three-page screenplay by Alfred Hitchcock which has recently been discovered. Scorsese intends to produce a screen version, faithfully recreating Hitchcock's style as a tribute to the legendary British director, with the remainder of the short then intercutting between the interview, the production stage and the final 'film-within-a-film', The Key to Reserva.

Joining Scorsese in the cast for the short are Simon Baker (The Killer Inside Me), Kelli O'Hara (Sex and the City 2), Michael Stuhlbarg (A Simple Man), Christopher Denham (Shutter Island) and Richard Easton (Revolutionary Road), along with appearances by Griffen and Schoonmaker as themselves.


For more on Martin Scorsese check out our latest filmmaker profile Understanding Scorsese.

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Short Film Showcase - Luxo Jr. (1986)

Luxo Jr., 1986.

Written and Directed by John Lasseter.

Luxo Jr. is the first short film produced by Pixar Animation Studios, which arrived in 1986 to coincide with their establishment as an independent entity following Steve Jobs' purchase of the Computer Graphics Group from George Lucas. Written and directed by John Lasseter (Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2 and Cars) as a demonstration of Pixar's technical capabilities, the two-and-a-half minute piece follows the antics of a small desk lamp, Luxo Jr., who would go on to become the company's unofficial corporate mascot.

Luxo Jr. premiered at the 1986 SIGGRAPH conference in Dallas, Texas, where it received a standing ovation from those in attendance. It was the first CG-animated film to receive an Oscar nomination (although it lost out to A Greek Tragedy for Best Animated Short Film at the 59th Academy Awards) and is credited with shifting opinion on the possibilities of computer animation within Hollywood. Luxo Jr. also enjoyed a theatrical run in 1999 when it played alongside Pixar's third feature, Toy Story 2.


Related:

Animated Storytellers: A Pixar Animation Studios Profile
Short Film Showcase - The Adventures of Andre and Wally B.

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Short Film Showcase - StreetFighter: Legacy (2010)

Presenting short films from independent filmmakers...

StreetFighter: Legacy, 2010.

Directed by Joey Ansah and Owen Trevor.
Written by Joey Ansah and Christian Howard.
Starring Jon Foo, Christian Howard and Joey Ansah.

It's fair to say live-action adaptations of Capcom's Street Fighter video game franchise have been utterly disappointing - first up was the Jean-Claude Van Damme monstrosity Street Fighter (1994) from writer-director Steven E. de Souza, followed by the equally appalling 2009 reboot Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. Step forward British filmmaker and actor Joey Ansah (The Bourne Ultimatum) who, driven by his love for the video game series, looked to rectify the situation with the highly impressive three-minute fan film StreetFighter: Legacy.

Working alongside co-director Owen Trevor (Top Gear) and a team that included producer Jacqueline Quella (Toolbox Murders) and executive producer Anthony Waye (the James Bond franchise), Ansah secured Capcom's blessing for the project, which faithfully recreates a showdown between fan favourites Ryu (Jon Foo) and Ken (Christian Howard). Having debuted the film online in May of this year to much success, Ansah is now hoping to nab the rights to develop an official live-action Street Fighter series.

For more on StreetFighter: Legacy, visit the offical website.


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Short Film Showcase - The Big Shave (1967)

The Big Shave a.k.a. Viet '67, 1967.

Written, Directed, Produced & Edited by Martin Scorsese.
Starring Peter Bernuth.

For his final project as a student of New York University's film school, Martin Scorsese produced the six-minute short The Big Shave as an anti-Vietnam piece for an "Angry Arts Against The War" demonstration. Dialogue-free and employing only a single location and character, Scorsese took a simple premise and crafted an accomplished and unsettling piece that is said to be a comment on the self-destructive nature of U.S. intervention in Vietnam.

Set to the musical styling of Bunny Berigan and his jazz classic I Can't Get Started, The Big Shave sees a young man (Peter Bernauth) enter a bathroom and begin shaving, only to repeat the action over, mutilating his face into a bloody mess. Scorsese makes great use of the stark contrast in colour between the deep red blood and the pristine whiteness of the bathroom, and utilises inventive editing techniques such as repeat cuts to enhance the graphic imagery.

The success of The Big Shave paved the way for Scorsese to move into feature filmmaking by completing a project that had began in 1965 as a student film entitled Bring on the Dancing Girls, which went through a number of changes before being issued in 1968 under the title Who's That Knocking at My Door.


For more on Martin Scorsese check out our latest filmmaker profile Understanding Scorsese.

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Short Film Showcase - What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963)

What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?, 1963.

Written and Directed by Martin Scorsese.
Starring Zeph Michelis, Sarah Braveman, Fred Sica, Mimi Stark and Robert Uricola.

What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? is one of the earliest shorts from legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese and was shot on 16mm while he was studing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1963. Considered by the director to be his first real film (he had previously made the 'miniature epic' Vesuvius VI in 1959), the 9-minute surrealist comedy is described as "a tale of pure paranoia" and revolves around a writer, Harry (Zeph Michelis), who becomes obsessed with a picture of a boat on a lake, leading to a frustrating bout of writer's block.

For its time, What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? is a remarkably inventive student film, employing rapid-fire editing and clever cinematography techniques to give an early indication of Scorsese's dynamic visual style. Scorsese would follow this up with a further two shorts - It's Not Just You, Murray! (1964) and The Big Shave (1967) - before making his feature debut in 1968 with Who's That Knocking at My Door.


For more on Martin Scorsese check out our latest filmmaker profile Understanding Scorsese.

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Short Film Showcase - The Adventures of André and Wally B. (1984)

The Adventures of André and Wally B., 1984.

Written and Directed by Alvy Ray Smith.

The Adventures of André and Wally B. is an early computer-animated short created in 1984 by the LucasFilm Computer Graphics Project, which would later become Pixar Animation Studios following the purchase of the company by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 1986. Directed by Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith and featuring animation by John Lasseter and sound design from LucasFilm regular Ben Burtt, the 2-minute short centres on a character named Andre, who is awoken from a restful nap in the forest by a pesky bee intent on stinging him.

The short film is notable for its groundbreaking animation techniques including the first use of CG motion blur, and premiered at the 1984 SIGGRAPH conference in Minneapolis. It was also shown theatrically before Terry Gilliam's cult sci-fi Brazil (1985), and was reissued a decade later alongside Pixar's debut feature Toy Story (1995).


Related:

Animated Storytellers: A Pixar Animation Studios Profile

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Short Film Showcase - Aventure Malgache (1944)

Aventure Malgache, 1944.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Starring Paul Bonifas, Paul Clarus, Jean Dattas, Andre Frere, Guy Le Feuvre and Paulette Preney, a.k.a. 'The Molière Players'.

Originally entitled Madagascar Landing, Aventure Malgache is the second of two British propaganda films produced by Alfred Hitchcock for the British Ministry of Information. Shot in French and intended as a morale booster for the Resistance, Hitchcock used his experience with the French government on the preceeding short Bon Voyage to explore the disjointed nature of the Resistance movement and its infiltration by Nazi spies and Vichy collaborators.

Aventure Malgache's government backers were unimpressed with Hitchcock's numerous jokes and stereotypes, not to mention his depiction of the French as 'anti-British', and the film was never released for public screening until it reemerged in the early 1990s as part of a double-bill with Bon Voyage.


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Short Film Showcase - Bon Voyage (1944)

Bon Voyage, 1944.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Starring John Blythe and 'The Molière Players'.

The first of two propaganda films made by Alfred Hitchcock on behalf of the British Ministry of Information and designed to boost morale for the French Resistance, Bon Voyage tells the story of a daring escape from a Nazi prison by RAF Sergeant John Dougall (John Blythe). Co-scripted by Angus MacPhail, the man credited by Hitchcock as coining the term 'MacGuffin', Bon Voyage is also notable for its early use of multiple viewpoints - a technique employed by Akira Kurosawa to great effect in the 1950 classic Rashomon - and the 'unreliable flashback' that Hitchcock would revisit that same year with Stage Fright.

Receiving only sporadic screenings in France at the time of its release, Bon Voyage was shelved for a number of years before being broadcast on US television alongside follow-up Aventure Magalache in the early 1990s.


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Movies... For Free! Deep Red (1975)

Showcasing classic movies that have fallen out of copyright and are available freely from the public domain...


Deep Red a.k.a. The Hatchet Murders (Italian: Profondo Rosso), 1975.

Directed by Dario Argento.
Starring David Hemmings, Gabriele Lavia, Daria Nicolodi, Macha Meril, Glauco Mauri and Clara Calamai.

Italian horror legend Dario Argento enjoyed his international breakthrough with his fifth feature, the critically acclaimed giallo Deep Red, which is regarded by many fans as the highlight of his career. The film centres on an English music teacher (David Hemmings), who witnesses the brutal murder of a psychic medium (Macha Meril) and sets out to unmask the killer with the help of a local news reporter (Daria Nicolodi), and features all of Argento's filmmaking trademarks such as elaborately constructed death scenes, inventive cinematography and atmospheric lighting.

Read our full review of Deep Red here.


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Short Film Showcase - George Lucas in Love (1999)

George Lucas in Love, 1999.

Directed by Joe Nussbaum.
Written by Joe Nussbaum, Timothy Dowling and Daniel Shere.
Starring Martin Hynes and Lisa Jakub.

A self-financed independent short from writer-director Joe Nussbaum, George Lucas in Love first came to attention in 1999 when it began circulating Hollywood prior to its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival later that year. Inspired by both Star Wars and recent Best Picture winner Shakespeare in Love, the film takes us back to 1967 when USC student George Lucas (Martin Hynes) is struggling with writer's block on his latest script, a space fantasy about a young farmer. Everyone he meets resembles characters from his upcoming masterpiece, but Lucas is unable to shake his creative shackles until he meets his muse in a rebellious young woman (Lisa Jakub).

George Lucas in Love enjoyed a successful festival run, picking up a number of awards including the Canal+ Short Film Award (Deauville American Film Festival), Audience Award (Florida Film Festival) and Pioneer Award (Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards), and reached #1 on Amazon.com's sales chart when released on VHS in 2000. Lucas himself offered a congratulatory letter to the filmmakers, while Nussbaum secured a deal with Dreamworks and has since went on to direct teen comedies Sleepover (2004), American Pie Presents The Naked Mile (2006) and Sydney White (2007).


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Short Film Showcase - Guillotine Guys (2010)

Presenting short films from independent filmmakers...

Guillotine Guys, 2010.

Written and Directed by James Ricardo.
Starring Russ Kingston, Mark Wood and J.C. Maçek III.

Guillotine Guys is a short comedy thriller "about loss and detachment" from Los Angeles-based filmmaker James Ricardo, best known for his 2005 feature debut, the independent comedy Opie Gets Laid (a.k.a. Sunnyvale). The darkly comic tale centres on a liquor store hold-up that takes an unexpected turn for the robber (Mark Wood) when he finds himself up against the cunning of weary shopkeeper Elmer (Russ Kingston).

An imaginative and well-crafted short that also features an impressive soundtrack courtesy of composer Jason Solowsky, Guillotine Guys screened at a number of festivals in 2010 including the Arizona International Film Festival, LA Shorts Fest and South Korea's Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival.


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Short Film Showcase - Jesus vs. Santa (1995)

Jesus vs. Santa (a.k.a. The Spirit of Christmas), 1995.

Written, Directed, Produced, Animated and Voiced by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

After seeing the original 1992 version of The Spirit of Christmas, Fox executive Brian Graden commissioned Trey Parker and Matt Stone to create a follow-up which he could use as a video Christmas card to send to friends. The resulting film (known as Jesus vs. Santa) features a more-refined and familiar animation style along with named versions of Cartman, Kenny, Kyle and Stan, who find themselves mediating an argument between Jesus and Santa Claus over the true meaning of Christmas (which is of course presents).

The short was initially distributed to Graden's friends in December 1995 and went on to generate interest as a bootleg before coming to the attention of Comedy Central, who hired Parker and Stone to develop the film as a series, South Park, which debuted in 1997. That same year Jesus vs. Frosty also received the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Animation.


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