All the films were good at some level. Of the ones with full versions below, my favorites were:

• Luminaris
• The Wheel
• Lucky Day Forever

Session 1:

Film:
Luminaris Dir: Juan Pablo Zaramella (Argentina 6 min)

Así se hizo LUMINARIS from Juan Pablo Zaramella on Vimeo.

Film:
The Wheel Dir: John Roberts (USA 14 min)

The Wheel from John Roberts on Vimeo.

Film:
88:88 Dir: Joey Ciccoline (USA 14 min)

88:88 from Paper Beats Rock on Vimeo.

Trailer:
Evelyn Dir: Dale Nicholls (USA 12 min)

EVELYN – TRAILER from DALE NICHOLLS on Vimeo.

Trailer:
Small Time Dir: Ged Murray (Ireland 12 min)

Small Time Trailer from Ged Murray on Vimeo.

Film:
Frankie Rulez!!! Dir: San Charoenchai (USA 5 min)

Frankie Rulez!!! from San Charoenchai on Vimeo.

Trailer:
OowieWanna Dir: Bridget Palardy (USA 14 min)

OowieWanna Teaser from Bridget Palardy on Vimeo.

Trailer:
The Narrative of Victor Karloch Dir: Kevin McTurk (USA 15 min)

The Narrative of Victor Karloch from Kevin McTurk on Vimeo.

Trailer:
Zing Dir: Kyra Buschor & Cynthia Collins (Germany, 8 min)

Zing – Trailer from Philipp Wolf on Vimeo.

Trailer:
Giant Monster Playset Dir: Greg Pope (USA 12 min)

GIANT MONSTER PLAYSET, trailer from Greg Pope on Vimeo.

Session 2

Trailer:
Tumult Dir: Johnny Barrington (UK, 13 min)

T U M U L T ( trailer ) from johnny barrington on Vimeo.

Trailer:
Foxes Dir: Lorcan Finnegan (Ireland, 16 min)

FOXES – Teaser from LORCAN FINNEGAN on Vimeo.

Film:
Cats in Space Dir: Robert Dastoli and James Dastoli (USA, 2 min)

Trailer:
A Lost and Found Box of Human Sensation Dir: Stefan Leuchtenberg and Martin Wallner (Germany, 15 min)

A Lost and Found Box of Human Sensation (Trailer) from Dancing Squirrel on Vimeo.

Film:
You, Me, and We Dir: Trevin Matcek (USA, 11 min)

You, Me & We from ManMade Films on Vimeo.

Trailer:
PostHuman Dir: Cole Drumb (USA, 6 min)

PostHuman trailer from Jennifer Luk on Vimeo.

Film (slightly cut down from what was screened at the fest):
The Gate Dir: Matt Westrup (UK, 11 min)

THE GATE (CUTDOWN VERSION) from Joyrider Films on Vimeo.

Trailer:
Cheap Extermination Dir: Minka Farthing-Kohl (USA, 9 min)

Cheap Extermination Trailer (short) from Minka on Vimeo.

Film:
Lucky Day Forever Dir: Alek Wasilewski (Poland, 17 min)

LUCKY DAY FOREVER from Alek Wasilewski on Vimeo.

Trailer:
Motorhome Dir: Thierry Uyttenhoven (Belgium, 7 min)

BANDE-ANNONCE MOTORHOME from Noyau Mou on Vimeo.

Trailer:
Thumb Snatchers From the Moon Cocoon Dir: Brad Schaffer (USA, 7 min)

“Thumb Snatchers From the Moon Cocoon” Trailer from Bradley Schaffer on Vimeo.

I made this animated gif in a new iOS app called Jittergram. This was the first one I tried to post directly to twitter from the app. The tweet went up, but the link it used to the jittergram site doesn’t include the image, alas. Fortunately I also mailed it to myself.

I tried to post it to my tumblr (since that’s where animated gifs belong), but since it’s over a megabyte (just) they resized it when I posted it and broke the animation in the process. Sigh. Technology.

You can see a list of all of this year’s films on the EMP SFFSFF page

Looking at the thumbnails on that page you might think like I did that there was less animated fare this year. This isn’t actually the case. What was different, though, was the number of films with mixed live action and cgi.

I went hunting to see how many of the entries I could find for viewing online. Here they are:

Carta A Julia got my vote for best of the fest. I love how much it does with so little.

Terminus was another fave, this one for its deft blending of cgi and live action (the 70s film look treatment undoubtedly helps cover any seams, but it looks great for itself too.) The director was present at the screening and it was a good thing because he walked away with two of the awards (third overall and the Trumbull award for visual effects)

I liked Matter Fisher for its textural monochromatic animation and mysterious/wistful storyline which reminded me of Gahan Wilson’s ink blot story from Again, Dangerous Visions

The Captivus was another winner in the less-is-more school with its gut-punching social message. The director of this one was at the screening all the way from Boston and gets bonus points for how much he seemed to be enjoying his visit to our fair city. (Granted, Seattle was pulling out all the stops with an early February warm spell.)

Birdboy had pretty animation with an uber-dark storyline.

The Hunter And The Swan Discuss Their Meeting picked up the jury’s Grand Prize continuing the record of jury selections that leave me scratching my head. The film is nicely produced and wittily scripted and acted, but it just felt slight to me for the top award. It’s also distinctive for having the only nudity in this year’s fest. You get the pixelated version on YouTube

Mahahula the Giant Rodent of Happiness is only a minute long and kind of harkens back to the early days of the festival where many of the entries seemed to be the output of people playing with their computer animation software for the first time. But it gets points for a charming voiceover and goofy as heck story.

I’m still not sure what the filmmakers get out of making a short, and what the logic is behind the decision whether or not to put the films online. Thanks to those filmmakers that did decide to share their films online so I could bring them to my reader’s (hi Mom) attention.

Visible Light is a collection of fantasy and science fiction short stories by Ms. Cherryh. They are surrounded by bits of a framing tale that has the author accompanying a reader on a routine commercial space flight whose long periods of boredom allow the two to discuss the stories in a sort of Platonic dialogue.

In “Cassandra”, afflicted by visions of destruction who thinks herself crazy finds to her dismay that she is not.

“The Threads of Time” explores what happens when time travel causes history to unravel.

“Companions” shows a mission to a planet rich in vegetation, but lacking any sort of motile or intelligent life. An unknown and mysterious plague takes the lives of all but one of the crew and he carries on with only the ship’s AI for company. Unless they were wrong about the lack of intelligent life.

“A Thief in Corianth” is a fairly standard swashbuckling fantasy only the thief is a woman, but one who operates mostly within the limitations of women in the standard pseudo-middle ages fantasy setting.

“The Last Tower” is a short short about the end of a war.

“The Brothers” is a Campbellian hero’s journey with some satisfying twists and appropriately tricksy fae.

The stories shared in my mind a distant and melancholy tone, but all of them have rich metaphorical grounds that echo off real life in interesting ways.

Whoa, I just noticed that if you point your mouse at a star it will tell you all about it.

via James Nicoll

Theo is never happier than when he can tie you down by resting his chin on your hand or arm.

We did do some pretty cool things this year that might have eaten some of my reading time.

• Went to the first annual Science fiction short film festival
• Had a big party to celebrate our 40th birthdays
• Had an art and craft sale at our house
• Learned how to do chain mail. And did
• Went to the Philippines
• Switched blog platforms to WordPress
• Got back into hand drumming, this time dragging Becky along
• Photographed lost gloves #69-111 (42)

We also watched a bunch of movies, so like I posted last year, here’s what we saw and what we thought of them.

The notes are about where we saw the movie and who saw it. “T” indicates we saw it in the theater. Other letters indicate who attended. The default is Becky and me. If only R appears then Rachel saw it with us. If just “J” or “B” appear then only the one of us saw it. “B, R” means I skipped that one, etc.

That’s 75 movies (only 10 in the theater) and doesn’t include everything we watched that we’d seen before. We don’t actually use stars when we rate movies, we use words. I’ve translated our “Don’t Miss” to ****, “Pretty Good” to ***, “Okay” to **, and “Don’t Bother” to * if that helps you make sense of this. If you’re wondering whether you’d like something on here, leave a comment or send email and I’ll blather on.