As much as I love film, and as much as I love festivals, I’m not sure if I love film festivals. I’ve attended plenty, but in spite of living in a town that presents one of the best festivals in the world – the Ann Arbor Film Festival  – I haven’t even attended that one since we gave it light coverage here a couple of years ago. Looking back, the year I stopped being so enthused about them was around 2000, which coincides almost precisely with the widespread availability of the “time shifted viewing” that the web and digital recorders have made possible. Combine that with the fact that I never much enjoyed hobnobbing with mobs of film snobs and hypersocial restaurant workers with SAG cards anyway, and film festivals have sort of become a thing of the past for me. That’s why I’m ecstatic that when I can’t attend a festival like Sundance, there’s a good chance that at least portions of it will be available online. Not that I’ve ever been to Sundance; to be honest, I’d probably only go if Delphine Chanéac asked me to be her date. So we can probably rest assured I won’t be attending Sundance any time soon. Anyway, one of the highlights of Sundance having an online presence this year was the selection of shorts available on one of their YouTube channels. As I’ve pointed out before, I have a fetish for short film, so below I’ve selected a couple of favorites from this year’s Sundance collection, as well as another exceptional short called VOICE OVER that wasn’t at Sundance. Enjoy, and see you at the festival. On line.

VOICE OVER

This wasn’t in the Sundance collection on YouTube, but is awesome. To say more would ruin the reward of taking the few minutes to watch it, ideally in full screen.

THE APOCALYPSE

Don’t let this one give you any clever ideas.

CATNIP: EGRESS TO OBLIVION?

It’s probably about time we took a look at this troubling abuse issue.