Creepy good music video {3} 9 Crimes, by Damien Rice

Leave me out with the waste
This is not what I do
It's the wrong kind of place
To be thinking of you

Creepy good music video {2} The Fear, by Lily Allen

I don't know what's right and what's real any more
I don't know how I'm meant to feel any more
When do you think it will all become clear?
'Cause I'm being taken over by the fear

Creepy good music video {1} Chasing Pavements, by Adele

I build myself up
And fly around in circles
Waitin' as my heart drops
And my back begins to tingle

Way out of my league ...

She's a high 9, and you're barely a 4!  She's way out of your league, man.

~AJ's friend | second geek

2 + 2 = 5

A totalitarian state does not tolerate anything other than obedience and conformity.

One-Minute Time Machine

Every time the beautiful Regina rejects his advances, James pushes a red button and tries again, all the while unaware of the reality and consequences of his actions.

On the bright side, you're the first successful multiple suicide. That's pretty cool.

~Erinn Hayes

Entropy

Speaking of entropy, here is a short animation film where entropy is a metaphor for longing and loneliness.

Harmony is a young girl living on a cold and desolate Earth, alone and longing for friendship. While trying to tune into a station on her home radio one night, she picks up a melody that leads her to the moon.

Entropy is an emotional and dreamlike short that articulates feelings of loneliness, hope, and love.

Doll Face

In the future, even our robotic selves fall prey to ideals of beauty and myths of media.
 

Paramus, New Jersey

I watched the couple from the car. I couldn't tell if they were having a good time or falling apart.

Iris

That's what the forest is... a pattern. Like this world is a pattern, only we see it this way... I want to go there... I can feel the patterns of the universe.

Emily

When teenage Justin’s sexual explorations are sabotaged by Emily – an old flame and the ghost who haunts him–he must reconsider his previous promise of joining her in the afterlife.

This gem has so much going for it.  The young man isn't exactly grieving for the loss of a girlfriend, at least not in the way film or media commonly portray grief.  But he is, and in an artistic vein we see how he can best work through grief.
 

Momster Playground

Skewed perceptions cause a mundane event at the local playground to escalate into a comedy of errors where two mothers' loving kindness gives way to the ugly side of human nature.

This is such a terrific short film.  The soundtrack is sinister from the get-go, so we sense that we're in for a dark ride.  Two very different Moms simply want their children to play nice, and in fact the children do play nice.  But in a deft piece of film making, the Moms conspire to expose that ugly side of human nature.
 

The Scan

When a woman seeks a diagnosis for pain, her search raises provocative questions about how we store and record psychic and physical trauma.

In the future we will have technology like a PET scan to see the things that cause us deep sorrow.  That technology will be dispassionate, that technology will possess no empathy.  So, in the future, we must engage souls for kindliness, understanding, and nurture.
 

(5) She Sings For Me - The Met

Annette Dasch and James Morris

The lengthy Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City last season.

(4) She Sings For Me - The Piece

"Selig, wie die Sonne" is the operatic piece (Quintet from Act III) that Holly hears from inside her neighbor's house.

 

(3) She Sings For Me - The Cobbler

One main character in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is the real-life mastersinger Hans Sachs, who was a cobbler and poet. Coincidentally for Holly, in Davey's short film "She Sings for Me," the man she encounters in her neighborhood is a shoemaker (i.e. cobbler).
 

(2) She Sings For Me - The Opera

(image credit)

In the 16th century Nuremberg was one center of the Renaissance in Northern Europe. Wagner's opera is about the real-life guild of Master Singers, i.e. a gathering of middle class poets and musicians who plied their art like craftsmen.
 

(1) She Sings For Me - The Short

Rebecca Davey fashions a lovely romantic comedy from Richard Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
 

Shorts on Love (6) Forever in my Dreams

Sawyer Hartman proudly noted:

For my one year of making weekly videos on YouTube, I decided to try and make my first ever dramatic short film! i hope you enjoy it. Please Share it with your friends if you liked it :)  

The entire film was written, filmed, and edited in 48 hours. costing me a total of 12 $ :)

Several comments speak to how this hastily made short film made them cry.  Perhaps it wasn't so hasty, after all, as I imagine the story had germinated in his mind for awhile.  In any case, Hartman is proof positive that it doesn't take a big budget or long timeline to make art that resonates with a lot of people.  His is one of the few short films that garnered a lot of views:  nearly 560,000 right now.  Make art that is honest, heartfelt and timeless, and you have art that is quite lovely indeed.

By the way, I fell in love with this oh so tender music Forever in my Dreams, by Fariborz Lachini, which I first listened to on Pandora.  It's supposed to be a love theme for a film, but I hadn't seen it or heard of it.  So I Googled Forever in my Dreams, and stumbled serendipitously on Hartman's piece.  Meanwhile I'll keep searching for the film, as my spirit takes me, that Lachini scored with his own lovely piece.
 

Shorts on Love (5) Yellow Fish

A young couple must pick up the pieces when fault lines in their home and relationship are exposed in the aftermath of an earthquake.

The fault lines that give rise to the earthquake are a metaphor for fractures in this young couple's relationship:  fair enough.  But that's just on the surface of things.  One step below has to do with his smoking.  It is probably no directorial accident that the earthquake occurs, the moment that he breaks a cigarette in half.  His struggle to abstain from smoking, and more importantly the physical and psychological meaning of cigarettes for him, are more than she apparently understands or tolerates.  (Her casually tossing that vase from his aunt is another example of how little she is plugged into his interior world.) That struggle shakes him up more than a little. 

What was most striking about this short film is that he totally ignores her calling for him during the earthquake.  Afterwards he lies about where he was and what he was doing, as he cannot seem to articulate what his distemper may be about.  We don't know for sure, but it clearly has to do in part, or even in large measure, with her.  All of which make the fault lines metaphor even more powerful, I believe: They lie well below the surface of the earth, just as fractures run well below the daily lives for the two of them.  She is evidently not aware of them, and he may not be so conscious of it, either.  Still the earthquake began to surface his distemper in relation to her, and he is clearly unsure and-or unwilling to raise it with her.  Regardless, their relationship is in trouble, the earthquake being merely a precursor to a more volatile, emotional shake up for both of them. 

An altogether brilliant, poignant film.