The Pawnshop

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Release Year: 1916

Director: Charles Chaplin

Review:  Charlie Chaplin stars as a trouble making pawnshop assistant, who is more trouble than he is worth.  What follows is the usual slapstick fare, usually involving Chaplin fighting with his co-worker.  The highlight of the movie comes when Chaplin has to assess the value of a customers alarm clock.  He systematically dissects and demolishes the entire thing, as the customer looks on in horror, only to reject the clock and give it back in pieces.  It's a great scene, in a fairy mediocre movie.
Rating: 3/5

What's Opera, Doc?

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Release Year: 1957

Director: Chuck Jones

Review:  Elmer Fudd vs. Bugs Bunny staged as a dramatic opera.  It works great.  The score, is actually quite good, and the atmosphere it sets is fantastic.  The animation, voice work and music are all top notch.  It's an intelligent spoof which is really holds up.
Rating: 3.5/5



Powers of Ten

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Release Year: 1977

Director: Charles Eames and Ray Eames

Review:  This is an impressive scientific demonstration, taking us on a journey to the furthest reaches of the universe to the inner workings of cells, all in an attempt to show the magnitude of powers of ten.  Its a fascinating look at distances so great or so microscopic that its difficult to comprehend.  I love these types of shorts.  Ones that get you excited in the world outside of what surrounds us.
Rating: 3.5/5

Wavelength

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Release Year: 1967

Director: Michael Snow

Review:  Absolutely one of the toughest movies to have to sit trough.  This is a 45 minute short, with virtually no action.  There is a single camera set up, fixed on three walls of a room.  It gradually, very gradually, zooms in on a picture on the wall over the course of the run time.  There are a couple times a person or two ventures into the room, but it is brief.  To make this experience even more fun, is a buzz which is ever increasing in pitch.  This ties in with the movies title. It is enough to drive a person insane.  Every second of it is excruciating.  'Wavelength' may be hailed as one of the finest Avant Garde films ever made, and one of the first structuralist works ever produced, but its not enjoyable in any sense of the word.
Rating: 1/5

Gertie the Dinosaur

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Release Year: 1914

Director: Winsor McCay

Review:  Gertie was originally created for Winsor McCay's Vaudeville act, and later this film was made, which took the cartoon and put in live action bookends to the cartoon.  The setup to the cartoon, is that there is a bet on whether or not McCay can make a dinosaur come to life.  He wins this bet by hand drawing ten thousand frames, and creating one of the first animations.  The cartoon itself is impressive for the time.  It may be a simple line drawing, but there is some great attention to detail.  When the dinosaur dances back and forth, its very fluid, with every part of the dinosaur moving naturally.  It's more of a demo cartoon than anything.  However, packaged with the live action, it makes for an interesting look at the beginnings of animation and is a true part of cinema history.
Rating: 3.5/5

The Very Eye of Night

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Release Year: 1958

Director: Maya Daren

Review:  I liked Maya Deren's short 'At Land' quite a bit, so I was excited to see this one later in her career.  Unfortunately, 'The Very Eye of Night' is in a completely different vein of filmmaking.  There is no plot to speak of.  Its a group of interpretative dancers performing in a celestial landscape.  I've never been able to get anything out of this kind of dance, so the film was never going to work for me.  The space effect was interesting, but this certainly left me wanting the earlier days of Daren.  
Rating: 1.5/5



Dwaj ludzie z szafa (Two Men and a Wardrobe)

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Release Year: 1958

Director: Roman Polanski

Review:  This early Roman Polanski silent, black and white, short is a glimpse at his future brilliance.  The short starts with two men walking out of the ocean with a wardrobe with which they are quite happy with.  They proceed to parade around town with it, meeting increasingly more hostile people who don't share their same love for the wardrobe.   This is apparent that this is a metaphor for intolerance.  Intolerance to what, isn't explicitly clear.  The reading I got out of it, was that the two men were homosexuals.  They were 'out of the closet', and were being weighed down by this heavy burden in an un-accepting society.  This is just my own interpretation, but the message of intolerance is strong, and the film manages to say a lot with this simple metaphor.    
Rating: 3/5



Mongoloid

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Release Year: 1978

Director: Bruce Conner

Review:  A collection of old educational videos spliced with other clips to the tune of a Devo song.  This is a music video in the infancy of its medium.  It's an interesting collage of clips and all, but not really something that holds up.
Rating: 2/5



Now

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Release Year: 1965

Director: Santiago Álvarez

Review:  A documentary short about racism in the United States.  It's a series of video clips and photographs set to music by Lena Horne.  Aspiring to be a call to action to make changes "Now!", but with it's in your face delivery it loses it's impact.  The images are stirring, but arranged in this way doesn't add much.
Rating: 2/5

King-Size Canary

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Release Year: 1947

Director: Tex Avery

Review:  Another clever short by Tex Avery.  He takes the animal wars to a new level.  Instead of cat vs mouse, he kicks it into high gear with dog vs. cat vs. bird vs mouse.  To top it off you give them all a special solution which makes them grow, resulting in gigantic monster versions of the creatures chasing after one another.  It's a cute short, but not quite as witty as some of Avery's other stuff.
Rating: 3/5