BradNeely Tagged Articles at Cinematical

When was the last time you saw a short film in the theater? I don't mean an 85-minute animated movie; I mean an actual short, like they give separate Oscars to. Otherwise known as a short subject, defined (by the Academy) as anything with a running time less than 40 minutes. Chances are, unless you attend film festivals, go to see the toured screenings of Oscar shorts, or bought a ticket to Paris, Je T'Aime, it's been awhile since you actually saw a short film on a big screen.

Or, maybe I should specify that it's likely been awhile since you purposefully went to see a specifically timed screening of a short film or compilation of shorts at the theater. Technically some ads for Coca-Cola and other companies, the ones made by novice filmmakers as part of a competition or something, count as shorts. And, I'm fully aware that some arthouse cinemas, such as NYC's IFC Center, run a short film in place of pre-show commercials. But as far as I can tell, such shorts are not specifically advertised as screening at a designated time. Sure, you can go on the IFC Center's website and find out that Erik Rosenlund's Looking Glass is the short currently being shown (as it was this past week when I saw Trouble the Water there), but for most people (myself included), it's a surprise. And I doubt anyone has trekked to IFC just to see that particular film, unless anyone is a huge aficionado of frightening black and white Swedish animation.

Quick, raise your hand if you're a Harry Potter fan. Yeah, there are a lot of boy wizard fans, which is probably why a documentary about Harry Potter fandom sounded like a great idea. We Are Wizards, though, is not so much a documentary about Harry Potter fandom in general, as it is about the "Wizard Rock" bands that have grown up around the franchise, and a couple of the bigger Harry Potter fan sites.

The film introduces us to some of these Wizard Rock bands, including Harry and the Potters (brothers Paul and Joe DeGeorge), Draco and the Malfoys (brothers Brian Ross and Bradley Mehlenbacher), and The Hungarian Horntails, headed up by seven-year old punk rocker Darius and his four-year-old brother, Holden, who write songs they call "dragon rock."

About a week before I hopped a plane to last March's South by Southwest Film Festival, a funny-looking envelope arrived on my doorstep. It looked a whole lot like the one David Poland received around the same time, and inside said package was an animated short called Washington. I threw the disc into my suitcase and broke it out while I was hanging with my festival posse. (Erik Childress and Eric Snider, if you must know!) To say the three of us "broke down laughing almost to the point of involuntary urination" would not be an understatement, and we spent the next week quoting Washington to one another. ("I'll kick you apart" makes a great stupid threat.)

Brainchild of the unquestionably twisted Brad Neely, Washington is a mega-funky animated rock video that goes to great lengths describing how amazingly awesome our first president was. Fantastic blog Screenhead (YouTube now) gives you the chance to enjoy the mini-flick in its entirety, although it might not be "work-safe," as they say. Me, I can't get enough of the thing. I wanna put the song on my iPod.

And if you don't find the short amusing at all, at least you spent 2.5 minutes to figure out what my sense of humor is like.