{"id":31090,"date":"2019-05-02T18:50:32","date_gmt":"2019-05-02T22:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=31090"},"modified":"2019-05-02T18:50:32","modified_gmt":"2019-05-02T22:50:32","slug":"shorts-round-up-of-the-week-5-2-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/02\/shorts-round-up-of-the-week-5-2-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Shorts Round Up of the Week \u2013 5\/2\/2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Albatross-Soup-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-31092\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Albatross-Soup-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Albatross-Soup-1.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Albatross-Soup-1-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Albatross-Soup-1-2x1.jpg 2w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a>For this week&#8217;s Shorts Round Up, we check out some great shorts including two animated experimental films one of which by film students, a thought provoking science fiction drama, and a riveting human drama.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>If you\u2019d like to submit your short film for review consideration, submissions are always opened to filmmakers and producers.<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>Albatross Soup (2018)<br \/>\n<\/strong>\u201cA man gets off a boat. He walks into a restaurant and orders albatross soup. He takes one sip\u2026 pulls out a gun, and shoots himself to death. So\u2026why did he kill himself?\u201d Director Winnie Cheung takes the time to develop an animated documentary to help decode one of the oldest riddles that many people have gone over for years. The Riddle has even been around since the beginning of the internet, and \u201cAlbatross Soup\u201d explores the nuances of the riddle, and the events leading up to the conundrum of the riddle all with amazing animation by Fiona Smyth.<\/p>\n<p>Although it is a documentary, Cheung doesn\u2019t give anyone face time, but instead uses much of the voices set among excellent animated sequences to help emphasize the inherent sanity of the riddle. The cryptic riddle is a masterful take on cryptic storytelling, allowing more of an idea of what we can interpret through human action, more than searching for some kind of ironic or funny cause as to why the man committed suicide. The answer to the origin is\u2014disturbing to say the least, but it\u2019s a great look at decrypting one of the more fascinating riddles ever conceived.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/73053331\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/center><strong>Cash For Gold (2019)<br \/>\n<\/strong>Robert Enriquez\u2019s drama is a nice slice of life that explores two people from vastly different lives learning to connect through pain and turmoil as adults. A young woman goes to a pawn shop hoping to hock her gold for major money. When the teller offers her only a small sum she begrudgingly accepts. A moment later she shows up to trade in a precious ring that she\u2019s kept from trading for years. \u201cCash for Gold\u201d keeps a lot of the back stories of both characters ambiguous but we learn a lot thanks to great editing, and what we can mine from hearing and seeing what they\u2019re going through.<\/p>\n<p>The young woman is introduced sitting in her car looking at a picture of her son hanging from the rear view mirror, and we\u2019re given a degree of understanding toward the teller who is being berated by his father before she walks in to the pawn shop. With excellent performances by Navid Negahban and Deborah Puette, we\u2019re able to soak in so much of this experience through the delivery of dialogue and subtle facial expressions. \u201cCash for Gold\u201d is a stellar human drama, one I strongly recommend.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/74176388\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/center><strong>E.M.M.A. (2014)<br \/>\n<\/strong>Stephen Herman\u2019s award winning science fiction drama reminded me a lot of Alex Garland\u2019s \u201cEx Machina,\u201d and it\u2019s just as ambitious in the way it explores the concept of free will and the ethics of Artificial Intelligence. Nicholas Wilder plays John, a scientist that is interviewing Emma, a robot that has been designed for human companionship. Every day they interview her and every day she seems to be growing a stronger sense of awareness of her life. Even worse, she seems to be more prone to resisting commands and seems motivated to explore the world and defy her master\u2019s desires.<\/p>\n<p>With John seemingly connecting to the AI in weird ways, he comes in conflict with his partner Carol seems more and more resentful and begins to question his own commitment to his work. \u201cE.M.M.A.\u201d is a great science fiction tale with an interesting focus on the idea of existence and whether or not it\u2019s wise to be conscious of our own imminent mortality. Charlie Gillette steals the movie as Emma, providing a convincing performance. While the editing could stand a bit more work, I enjoyed director Herman\u2019s genre entry.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/278174087\" width=\"640\" height=\"273\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Thermostat 6 (2018)<br \/>\n<\/strong>\u201cThermostat 6\u201d from the art school GOBELINS is a stark and haunting allegory for the future we face, and horror that it will surely cause if we don\u2019t act quickly. Directed and animated by the talented team of Maya Av-ron, Marion Coudert, Myl\u00e8ne Cominotti and Sixtine Dano, we meet a Parisian family as they\u2019re eating a feast for dinner. The daughter of the family is having a tough time focusing on dinner because of a leaky pipe situated directly above the dinner table. Despite her complaints and warnings that it will inevitably become a problem, her family ignores her warnings and complaints.<\/p>\n<p>Soon enough it becomes a massive problem, and we experience the various reactions from her parents, baby brother, and grandfather who sits idly by. \u201cThermostat 6\u201d is clearly a message about global warming and climate change, and a stark commentary about the fractions of society that are at odds over how to confront this dire situation. The final scene pretty much sums up how absolutely devastating this problem will become if we continue to split up rather than working to fix the problem standing in front of us.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/331524593\" width=\"640\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/center><strong>Verso (2019)<br \/>\n<\/strong>There\u2019s a very high concept behind what is essentially an amalgam of sub-genres for this short horror movie. It\u2019s a revenge picture, a date movie, a thriller, a mystery, and a zombie movie all rolled in to one. I\u2019m assuming that last note isn\u2019t jumping the gun considering the movie alludes to such an idea. In either case, Ryan Russell Steele and Joseph Victor\u2019s is a well done film with slick editing, I\u2019m just wondering if the climax is about as on the nose as it feels. Is the victim of said revenge a zombie or just some kind of monstrous result of an act of violence? While the film could stand more exposition and clarity as to what led to this scenario that unfolds during \u201cVerso,\u201d I liked what the directors were going for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For this week&#8217;s Shorts Round Up, we check out some great shorts including two animated experimental films one of which by film students, a thought provoking science fiction drama, and a riveting human drama. If you\u2019d like to submit your short film for review consideration, submissions are always opened to filmmakers and producers.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,12],"tags":[64,99,292,302,367,501,840,906,938],"class_list":["post-31090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-list-junkies","category-movie-reviews","tag-adaptation","tag-animation","tag-documentary","tag-drama","tag-foreign","tag-indie-film","tag-revenge","tag-science-fiction","tag-short-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31090"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31100,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31090\/revisions\/31100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}