This week we’re highlighting the films of Popcorn Horror’s Blood Games. Give it a watch, then head over to vote if you like it. Why Watch? This low-budget short from Mark Callum is little more than a display of a nifty nail-through-the-hand effect. In it, four men sit around a table while one shuffles Styrofoam cups around. Once each has their own cup in front of them, they start slamming their hands down to see whose is empty and whose has a sharp surprise waiting on the other end. Again, the marks of a limited budget are visible here, although what they lack in camera quality, they make up for in camera movement. The shots are interesting, but the drama is drawn a bit thin considering how generally uninteresting watching someone shuffle cups can be. What they get away with is cool, but it’s still a fairly bland platter to serve up a single idea, and while the ending comes as a shock, it does so by killing any tension the game itself can have. What Will It Cost? About 4 minutes. Skip Work. Watch More Short Films.

This week we’re highlighting the films of Popcorn Horror’s Blood Games. Give it a watch, then head over to vote if you like it. Why Watch? In the opening moments of this short from William Prince, a few children are playing in the courtyard of what looks like an abandoned set of buildings. The “Lord of the Flies” feeling continues as they bicker between each other, but generally goof around (ominously) without any supervision. Then the feeling grows. These kids are more than alone. There doesn’t seem to be another living being in existence. But they’re about to play a simple game that suggests they aren’t the only ones on the block. The tension in Click is pretty much immediate thanks to a droning score, a Dickensian set of buildings haunting a modern time and children who are woefully unguarded. That intrigue never lets up, and we get to see Prince and DP Mark Reeson deliver some spine-chillingly suggestive framing — mostly playing around the the geometry of the buildings. And then there’s the game. Echoing a quick match of Bloody Mary, the children gather round a light switch and see what happens when everything goes dark. From here, it’s near-perfect execution of a quiet, reserved terror all the way to the finish line. What Will It Cost? About 12 minutes. Skip Work. Watch More Short Films.

Short Starts presents a weekly short film from the start of a filmmaker or actor’s career. Australian comedienne Rebel Wilson is really on the rise, and very quickly at that. It’s only been two years since she made her mainstream Hollywood debut (if we exclude playing a featured goth extra in Ghost Rider) with a small yet memorable role in Bridesmaids. But last year she was on fire with six major parts including a voice performance in the latest installment of the Ice Age series. Her big breakout, though, came with her scene-stealing stint in Pitch Perfect, which she’ll have a chance to reprise in a newly announced sequel. That movie helped her land the gig hosting last Sunday’s MTV Movie Awards, a ceremony hip to what’s hot at the moment. And now this Friday she can be seen in smaller capacity as a “penis magic” specialist in Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain. To find her short start, we only have to go back to 2009′s Bargain! This isn’t exactly the beginning of her career, which for years has consisted of regular TV work Down Under, but it is her first lead performance in film. And while this lead performance is only a few minutes in length, it garnered Wilson a Best Actor award at Tropfest. The funniest thing about it, however, is that it’s nothing compared to the confident comedic standout we know her for only three years later. She’s great in the film, which is written and directed

Why Watch? Dropping us into a world of vibrant creativity and trippy slackerism, this playful short from Anton Groves uses some fantastic design work to translate the hectic inner world of a loser into a place that we can see. Dan’s (Mihai Stanescu) reality is inhabited by monsters that look like an arts and crafts nightmare, looming everywhere he goes and symbolizing his greatest flaws. We get to learn all about him through the voice over of a young woman (Ana Ularu) who takes a romantic interest in him (probably for the stubble) and seems all too aware of the inventive decorations that cloud his mind. Fun and breezy, just about every scene is sourly milked for the comedy of a lovable loser, but it’s without a doubt the clever monsters that they’ve built that are the real stars here. The production team has taken a common idea and displayed it in a unique, mirthful way. Plus, you can learn how to make them for yourself after you fall in love with one. What Will It Cost? About 8 minutes. Skip Work. Watch More Short Films.

Why Watch? Equally sharp and absurd, this short film from Stuart Blumberg features Marisa Tomei and Elodie Bouchez as a couple who are close to ending their marriage, David Wain as a high-fiving mediator, and a few ridiculous flashbacks. Each piece of their shared history that they fight over forces them to remember the full spectrum of their relationship while creating some very funny scenarios. Especially if you’re into Aubrey Plaza making “fox babies.” The dialogue is sly, and it’s often difficult to figure out whether a line is meant as an insult or flirtation, and the talent here delivers.  It’s also sleek with smart visuals and seductive — both while sharing the calm power of generosity and when sliding a loose dress slowly up the back of its star’s legs. This comedy is a long, slow pour of whiskey with a smooth finish. What Will It Cost? About 7 minutes. Skip Work. Watch More Short Films.

Why Watch? Well, because Steven Spielberg calls it the “Citizen Kane of animated film.” That’s not enough for you? Here goes. One Froggy Evening is among the best of Chuck Jones‘s cartoons, recognized by the National Film Registry along with Duck Amuck and What’s Opera, Doc? It’s the first appearance of Michigan J. Frog, American cinema’s most influential singing and dancing amphibian. The top-hat wearing vaudevillian toad starts out in a box, hidden in the cornerstone of a just-demolished building. The innocent construction worker who finds him can the piles of cash waiting to be collected before his eyes (literally, because this is a Chuck Jones cartoon), and rushes him off to an entertainment agency. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. We all know the story: the frog never performs when he needs to, and everyone thinks that the poor sap selling him is a lunatic. It’s almost like Raoul Servais’s Harpya, though nowhere near as viscerally disturbing. In the end, Michigan’s cakewalk through the tunes of the Ragtime era and Tin Pan Alley become grating reminders of the man’s failure, and he tosses him back where he came from. Yet as an audience, we can’t forget him. The songs themselves, especially “Hello! Ma Baby” are indelibly linked to this short and its dancing frog. It’s been spoofed a number of times, including by Mel Brooks in SpaceBalls. Whether it’s actually the “Citizen Kane of animated film,” I’m not sure. I think I’d rather give that title to Duck Amuck. Yet no matter how you rank it, One Froggy Evening

Why Watch? By 1990, Shepard Fairey had already been littering the streets with stickers of Andre the Giant’s face and the phrase “Andre the Giant has a Posse,” but the image was about to get a lot bigger. Acting on an ambiguous school project at Rhode Island School of Design, Fairey defaced a campaign billboard for former mayor/convicted felon Buddy Cianci. Julian Marshall‘s brash short film tells that story with a middle finger and a smile. There’s a one-man Animal House aspect to it with more punk rock thrown into the mix, and while that might normally mean quick cuts and aggressive shots, Marshall keeps things glossy and polished all the way around. It features a tight script that wastes no time in dropping us into the world and giving us exactly what we need before hopping to the next sequence. Plus, it’s filled with some sharp dialogue that makes Fairey sound a lot wiser than he probably was at the time, and Josh Wills (the actor playing Fairey) enhances that feeling with a shit-eating grin that keeps his tongue in his cheek. In fact, most of the scenario’s feel tailor-made to build to a stand-off with authority simply so that Wills can offer a kind of Alfred E. Neuman shoulder shrug before getting back to scamming the computer lab. There’s little consequence to this tale beyond the fascination of how far its young subject has come, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun right down to the last winking

Why Watch? After their previous entries, the team at Bloody Cuts essentially has a standing invitation to be featured here. They consistently make high quality, intriguing horror work, and I hope sincerely that they make more than the promised thirteen movies they have planned. Don’t Move is their eighth, and it combines claustrophobia with hellacious creature design courtesy of Cliff Wallace (Hellraiser, 28 Days Later…) and Millennium FX. Six friends get together for a game night that results in them unleashing a powerful entity that’s a lot like a T-Rex: it can only see you when you move, and it loves ripping vital body parts away from their owners. The short itself plays out like a bottle episode of a television show with heightened parameters. Writer David Scullion and director Anthony Melton achingly squeeze out all the angst that comes along with watching characters unable to move, but there’s nothing inert about the plot as supposed friends use some clever tricks to get each other to shuffle off their mortal coil. There’s one cringe-worthy moment when one young woman lays out what we already know, but everything else is airtight, and the team must have had plenty of the red stuff on hand because they’re not afraid to let it fly. Special kudos go out to that face-ripper of a final kill and to all the design work in service of a dangerous and exasperating horror concept. Whoever created that teeth-smacking, cheek-sucking sound effect for the demon deserves a special place in hell. What Will It

Why Watch? Incredibly easy-going, this short animation continually draws back our perspective through hazy landscapes until we reach a destination. Floating on piano keys, it’s a small hint of minimalist beauty — like the last bite of dessert. Nothing overwrought. Everything balanced. A nice showcase of simplicity. What Will It Cost? Around 2 minutes. Skip Work. Watch More Short Films.

Why Watch? Betty Boop is mostly remembered these days as America’s first cartoon sex symbol, with her Jazz Baby get-up and high-pitched squeal. That’s the general thrust of her cameo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, certainly. She’s was the animated incarnation of Pre-Code Hollywood decadence, at least in her early years before Fleischer Studios made her more demure and redirected the cartoons from adults to children.

Why Watch? Her name is Rosie, and her father’s just been bitten by a zombie. Alone except for her, he swallows his own emotional devastation in order to ensure that his infant daughter survives in a world that’s doomed him to walking death. Beyond the smart twist of the genre concept, this moving short film from Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke has a host of small touches that hit home without pouring sugar in the wound. Their leading man is facing a tragic, challenging scenario, and the production tackles the largeness of it with clear touchstones — communicating instant information to get the best of the short runtime. In other words, it’s tight, but the impact is powerful thanks to beautiful cinematography and the excellent execution of a clever concept. Hat tip to io9 and to Rod P. for sending it my way. What will it cost? Around 7 minutes. Skip Work. Watch More Short Films.

Why Watch? Prepare for your breath to be sucked from your lungs. In Paris Zarcilla‘s long-form music video, a young warrior races over land and through sea to safe his beloved from death, creating a powerful story through its high concept, its imaginative design and booming sounds from Slow Magic. The song itself is a slow jam synth enema while the visuals (particularly the smoke-and-skull constructed visage of death) are vibrantly earthy. Everything combines to add emphasis, building on each element’s momentum to create a totally wondrous experience. Incredibly, it’s the first short from what’s obviously a fantastically promising new directorial voice. What will it cost? Around 8 minutes. Skip Work. Watch More Short Films.

Filmmaker Les Blank died today at age 77 from bladder cancer. He is best known for directing Burden of Dreams, a feature film on the making of Werner Herzog‘s Fitzcarraldo. Roger Ebert, who we lost to cancer just days ago, called it “one of the most remarkable documentaries ever made about the making of a movie.” Two years earlier, Blank made another film with Herzog as the subject. It’s wonderful title is Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. Probably not coincidentally, it also involved one of Ebert’s favorite films of all time, Errol Morris‘s directorial debut, Gates of Heaven. The 20-minute short film is, of course, literally named. Blank shows us Herzog cooking up his shoe and then eating it during a public event, part on stage at the UC Theater in Berkeley in front of a large crowd and part at a famous Berkeley restaurant called Chez Panisse. Why did Herzog eat his shoe? Because he told his friend Errol that if he ever manages to finish that first documentary of his that he’d eat his shoe. Plain and simple. In the short, Herzog offers that he’ll eat the other shoe he’d worn that day if a major studio picks up Gates of Heaven for distribution. New Yorker Films, which ended up finally releasing Gates in 1980, didn’t count. 

Why Watch? After all the cultish love and the trivia and the rebooting, isn’t it nice to get back to its roots? Also, The Rebooting is a horror movie I’m writing. Don’t steal the idea. It’s pretty obvious to see the DNA for The Evil Dead in this short where Bruce Campbell plays himself with terrifying make-up (and a mysteriously deep knowledge of ancient rituals). In fact, it was made specifically to raise money for a feature film called The Book of the Dead that Campbell, Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert were planning on making. It…didn’t succeed. It only played publicly one time — before a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in Detroit — but Raimi and company didn’t have permission to use the music, and the whole thing became a clustercuss that would haunt them all the way through the 2002 special edition release of The Evil Dead. There are sadly no high quality versions out there, but even through the wavy VHS-friendly lines, you can still make out the abject terror that comes with running a camera as low to the ground as possible in a disgusting forest. And the horror make-up effects! So good. So, so good. What will it cost? Around 30 minutes. Skip Work. Watch More Short Films.

Why Watch? With commanding visuals and a supreme sense of timing, this short from Benjamin Wong tells the story of a world-weary fighter faced with a newcomer’s sword and the guilt of a haunted past. The opening sequence is a testament to how gorgeous slow motion can be when it’s not overwrought — the figures and their swords carved out of the space with a fine patina, a remarkable anguish on the old man’s face. But the tale it silently tells is compelling as well, sharing an insight into the kind of man the samurai is that explains ultimately why he’s struggling, yet still fighting. Beautifully choreographed and executed, it’s a killer combination of antique visuals and timeless honor. What will it cost? Around 6 minutes. Skip Work. Watch More Short Films.  

Why Watch? Because Dušan Vukotić is your new favorite old school Croatian animator, I promise you that. Piccolo is a gleefully ridiculous exercise in allegory, poking fun at the Cold War at its peak. Two neighbors share a house, split down the middle. They lead a quiet, friendly existence until one of them buys a tiny (piccolo) harmonica. His refusal to put the damn thing down, even in the middle of the night, kicks off an arms race in miniature as they try to out-blast each other with an endless progression of instruments. In a way, this is a musically-minded remake of Norman McLaren’s Oscar-winning Neighbours (1952), but without its bleak sense of humor. Piccolo‘s comedy is beaming, taking advantage of the dynamic character of Vukotić’s style. A pair of cymbals turns into a bicycle. The walls of the house are punctured by pizzicato. There’s a particularly clever gag involving a bottle of gin. The music used is mostly bombastic and recognizable, classical pieces chosen in the spirit of Chuck Jones. It’s also very well paced, growing louder and louder without reaching the pinnacle of orchestral noise too quickly. The finale, two armies of identically marching soldiers with two decades of totalitarian irony underfoot belting out Verdi choruses, is both bluntly political and charmingly absurd. Brightly colorful and skillfully animated, it’ll make you think twice about pulling out that guitar after dark. If you like Piccolo, you should check out Vukotić’s Oscar-winning Surogat and the delirious Ars Gratia Artis. What Will It Cost? Around 9 minutes. Skip Work. Watch More Short Films.

Why Watch? In the first few moments, this clever short film from Alexei Popogrebsky plays a visual trick that becomes the curious heart of a simple story of Boy Meets Girls. After a passing train causes a picture’s framing glass to break, a young man peeks into a two-dimensional world and makes a new connection. The success of this whimsical movie is the marriage between camera work and production design. The former moves like a ballerina while the latter sets up a lot of nooks and crannies to magnetize interest. His apartment is a bohemian rhapsody (which explains why an elevated train is right outside his window), while her house is a little bit of paradise complete with an inset firewood shelf. Beyond the look and illusions, there’s a simple sweetness to it as well. As a showcase for imagery, it wisely keeps the story at a basic level, although if you’re inclined to look deeper, you’ll probably see a parable about the way we interact with art and the frames we have hung in our house. Particularly the one you’re looking at now. What will it cost? Around 6 minutes. Skip Work. Watch More Short Films.

Why Watch? Last fall, when the world was all set to end, Nikolas Dane asked people from all over the planet to answer the question of what memories they would want to endure even as the rest of our existence was wiped out. The idea was kind of like a video time capsule that wouldn’t seriously be needed, but beyond the Mayan anchor to the experimental project, the idea of treasured experiences lived at the core of what Dane was doing. Using a window pane look into the raw footage, what emerges is a host of similarities and common bonds: babies, parades, natural and man-made wonders, adventurous images and everyday simplicity. The most fascinating thing is the short’s ability to take intimate (otherwise meaningless moments) and make those of us on the outside understand them. It’s a cipher for inside jokes. Knowing that these are memories someone wants to live on, to share, makes it immediately obvious what’s happening even if we’re filling in blanks more than a little (I need to learn the rules to that hand game). It’s a bit long, and that’s made most clear by the repetition of some of the footage. That’s also the product of using 6 feeds at once, but even as dreamy as it is (in that We Are The World kind of way), it could probably be cut into a tighter experience. Otherwise, it’s nice to let The End of the World Project wash over you, but after you take a deep breath and

Short Starts presents a weekly short film from the start of a filmmaker or actor’s career. Director Fede Alvarez, who made the Evil Dead remake out this Friday, broke out with a short film that went viral. You’ve probably seen that one, the giant robot invasion pic Ataque de Panico! (Panic Attack!) — watch here if not. Before that, though, he and his Evil Dead writing partner, Rodo Sayagues, made a few other movies including one that you can also watch online. And it’s a lot more akin to what we can probably expect from his Hollywood horror debut. There’s blood, boobs, semen, guns, machetes and screams of pleasure and of pain. It’s called El Cojonudo: La Nunca Jamas Contada Historia De — loosely translated on screen as The Never Ever Told Story of Mr. Balls.

Editor’s Note: We don’t need a reason to find Kubrick “topical,” but the release of Room 237 definitely doesn’t hurt when it comes to excuses for re-posting this valuable bit of film history. Why Watch? It’s Stanley Kubrick‘s first movie. This newsreel short is swelling with history because of the iconic heights its creator would go on to. Perhaps someone smarter than I can “see” Kubrick somewhere in the style here, but it’s hard for me to see the future master within the confines of the 1950s information short confines that seemed director-less. Of course, fighting would become a major subject for Kubrick, but as far as the visuals, I could have watched this without ever knowing how directed it. As a bonus, Open Culture featured this and two other short documentaries alongside the full story of Kubrick’s early career. It’s a must-read (and must-see). What will it cost? Only 16 minutes. Skip Work. You’ve Got Time For More Short Films