Yesterday, guest blogger Kevin Lee put two shorts by members of the Court 13 collective on his list of the 5 Best Music Videos of 2008, Benh Zeitlin’s clip for O’Death’s “Lowtide,” and MGMT’s “Time to Pretend,” directed by Ray Tintori. For those unfamiliar with these guys, Zeitlin’s the director of the much-lauded short Glory at Sea, on which Tintori is credited as writer and production designer; and Tintori directed the 2007 festival hit, the Wes Anderson-does-Frankenstein-in-the-style-of-Guy Maddin short Death to the Tinman, which Zeitlin also worked on. The filmmakers, who are mainly based in New Orleans, also worked on the Obama campaign earlier this year, and made a couple of videos for that cause.
Tinman is one of my favorite shorts of the past few years, and I’ve embedded it after jump. You can currently watch the 25-minute Glory at Seaon YouTube, thanks to Wholphin.
Herewith, our semi-regular round-up of notable film events coming up in New York City:
MONDAY
It’s time for another installment of Flaherty NYC at Anthology Film Archives. This time out they’re showing work by Lee Wang and Laura Waddington, with a conversation moderated by Ariella Ben-Dov. 7:30 PM, Anthology FIlm Archives.
Also: Rooftop Films is showing a program of Wholphin shorts at Chelsea Market. The program is free, and includes free beer. 7pm.
TUESDAY
Legendary documentarian Richard Leacock will be at a special Stranger Than Fiction, to “present and discuss film clips that accompany the autobiography that he’s been writing for several years.” 8pm, IFC Center.
WEDNESDAY
Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams will be on hand for a Q & A after the premiere of Wendy and Lucy at Film Forum. 8pm.
THURSDAY
Nothing seems to be happening on Thursday. If you know otherwise, correct us in the comments.
FRIDAY
Back to Anthology, for a new episode of Catching up with the Kuchars, their recurring showcase of new and old work from brothers George and Mike. 7:30 pm.
The Wholphin Blog alerts us to the news that Carson Mell will be screening a program of his animated shorts and music videos a week from tomorrow in San Francisco. Mell is producing some of the most cinematic (in terms of narrative scope and point of view) indie animation around right now. His Chonto, a former Wholphin DVD pick, screened at Sundance this year. I saw it when I was on the shorts jury at CineVegas and absolutely loved it, but my fellow jury members had their own favorites and compromise was inevitable. You can watch a trailer for Chonto above. The Chonto issue of Wholphin was also a topic of an episode of FilmCouch.
Responding to your emails on The Dark Knight conversation. Wholphin 6 is here! Our favorite DVD quarterly returns with some amazing short films that have to be seen to be believed. We talk to Wholphin editor Brent Hoff about where it came from.
Bonus: Can you name a post-apocalyptic movie where the human race is condemned to death? We can and do.
Turner Classic Movies has hired Elvis Mitchell to host a new interview series called TCM: Under the Influence.Lou Lumenick reports, via Movie City News.
In an interview with Stream, Wholphin’s Brent Hoff gives props to the programmers of some of our favorite film festivals: SXSW, Cinevegas and True/False. Of the latter’s Paul Sturtz and David Wilson, he says, “Their selections are incredible. They are people with such heart, and they look at everything through the prism of who they are as people and what moves them. And I think that’s why they put on such beautiful films. And believe me, everyone says it, everyone that goes universally agrees that these guys nail it like nobody else, and few people know about it. I guarantee it will become a much bigger deal. I’m outing them. I’m sure I’ve just ruined the town.” Via BigScreenLittleScreen.
Above: a talk at Drexel University, wherein Arin Crumley talks about rethinking cinematic content for web episode distribution.
If you’re visiting a theater and tired of the same old movie clichés, conventional wisdom would point you to the independent movie selection. However, a string on indiewood flicks–most recently The Visitor(opening tonight)–are caving in on their own “indie” clichés. Like rogue environmentalists tracking an invasive species in an Appalachian creek bed, we digest their ways and spew out some indiewood movie pitches of our own.
As a palette cleanser, we talk to Carson Mell. We formed a crush on him last week watching Wholphin DVD No. 5. His sharp wit and creativity are on display in his short animation, Chonto.
Iraq fatigue: the conventional wisdom settled on in the last year that nobody wants to go to a movie theater for an Iraq war movie (most recently: Stop-Loss). Is it a new phenomenon or are all movies questioning war during wartime doomed to financial failure?
The new Wholphin quarterly DVD magazine is out. It’s probably the best curated source for short films outside a major festival and we give it the attention its due on FilmCouch.
Winner of the SXSW Wholphin Award (and rapturously reviewed for us at the festival by David Lowery), there’s not a single short film on the circuit more eagerly anticipated (by me, at least) than Glory at Sea. As director Benh Zeitlin is still recovering from injuries sustained en route to the film’s SXSW premiere, Sea’s next screening has been postponed until May. But in the meantime, via Twitch, we can watch the trailer. See above.
I’ve recently been enjoying Wholphin DVD magazine issue four. It’s a great collection of short films that would otherwise be pretty hard to see. My favorite so far is Olivo Barbieri’s site specific_LAS VEGAS 05. The film features a montage of partially blurry aerial footage of Las Vegas, with only the center of the image in sharp focus. The result is a mesmerizing image that oscillates between reality and an infinitely detailed scale model, as if shot through a macro focus lens.
If you haven’t gotten your hands on the DVD yet, you can check out Barbieri’s next installment in the Site Specific project, Waterfalls, showing at Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, opening November 1 and running through December 22.
As Karina mentioned here, Wholphin will be doing their first screening in LA next month, November 27, at the newly reopened Silent Movie Theatre. The description of the event is loaded with delightful McSweeny’s weirdness:
The screening will likely involve short films about- and live entertainment from- drunk bees, bioluminescent squirt guns, a crying competition, Satanic nine-year-olds, super-slo-motion tongues, and if we’re lucky, a never-before-seen short film by Paul Thomas Anderson starring Elliot Smith as a Rastafarian basketball player with a cameo by Bette Midler.
If you still haven’t gotten enough of Wholphin, check out the online screening room featuring web-only content, and stay tuned to FilmCouch, where Paul and I will be chatting about the DVD magazine sometime soon.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Responding to your emails on 
