Showbits

With the last two weekly shorts being fairly light-hearted, I thought the third entry in the Summer Shorts series should shake things up a bit. The Black Hole, shown here last summer, toed the line of comedy and tragedy in that live-action short. Accompanying it in the fifth annual National Film Board of Canada Online Short Film Competition was the animated short Sebastian's Voodoo, which goes full-bore to the dark side while still offering a message of hope:

Sebastian's Voodoo takes the well-known concept of voodoo folk magic and gives it nuance. For a doll to represent a living entity, it too must have some connection to a life force. If so, then does it flow both ways? Must a voodoo practitioner have his own doll?

These questions are not just philosophical but have realistic applications and contexts. What gives any one person more right to live than another? It's a moral dilemma that has been examined again and again, from Hitchcock's Lifeboat to Roddenberry's Star Trek. In Sebastian's Voodoo, the hero's decision reminds me of the climax of one of my favorite fantasy films, Dragonheart, but in a visual style similar to the movie 9. The result wasn't inevitable, though; a protagonist in a similar scenario but making different decisions can be found in Black Button. Sebastian's Voodoo is also slated to become a feature-length film — but will it remain a dark morality play, or will Hollywood turn it into something more kid-friendly?

What films have helped you explore life-and-death decisions?

Today's short is the shortest short of the shorts I'll be posting here shortly. After the frenetic nature of What's in the Box?, I thought it'd be a nice change of pace to enjoy the contemplative and solitary nature of The Black Hole:

Given this film's dimly-lit environment, I was pleasantly surprised to find the overall tone of the film to be less dark. I'd worried that the hole itself would prove to have a nefarious or accursed purpose, similar to the extremely disturbing "Girl With Pencil" short. Fortunately, the director did not borrow Stephen King's style of horribly punishing his main character, resulting instead in a mildly amusing variation on the greed and regret of Office Space.

The Black Hole was produced for the fifth annual National Film Board of Canada Online Short Film Competition, as were three other films, each of them equally dialogue-free. Two are entirely computer-generated, while the third and longest of the set is special effects-free. Like The Black Hole, it's amazing how much can be said with so few words and embellishments.