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.

For the second year, Delta and Gen Art have teamed up for Delta's Fly-in Movies Competition. Five short films have been selected as finalists; the films will be on Delta flights, and you can also watch them online. And the judging panel is comprised of -- you! That's right, you get to determine the fate of these five filmmakers by rating each film on a scale of 1-5. The filmmaker with the highest rating at the end of the contest gets an amazing prize package: $10,000 cold, hard cash, a $2500 Gen Art membership, and a pair of round-trip tickets valid for any international Delta flight. Plus, all the finalists get flown to Sundance for a special celebration on January 23, where the winner will be announced.

This year's finalists (with descriptions from the contest website) are:

Kurt Kuenne's Slow -- A traffic safety worker is accidentally caught in the background of a newspaper photo, and his life is changed forever.

Levni Yilmaz's Tales of a Mere Existence: Conversation -- A simple trip to the video store can bring up EVERYTHING that's wrong with your relationship.

Edward McGinty's Morning Fall -- A mysterious man wakes up on the side of the road, injured and confused. Where will he end up when he can't find his way home?

Bob Giovanelli's Tis The Season -- A little girl is disappointed to learn that Santa Claus is on a break-but she soon stumbles on a somewhat unorthodox replacement.

Robert Kirbyson's Ctrl Z -- When a computer malfunctions, an office loner takes full advantage of the chance to magically undo a lifetime of regrets.

All the entries are quite good ... go watch them for yourself and tell us which you like the best. You have until January 15 to get your votes in!

For a few years now, Cinema 16 has been packaging great short films on Region 2 DVDs for European release, but as far as I can tell, this new "European Short Films" collection, with 16 short films on two discs, is the first to get the Region 1 treatment. This new set culls shorts from various previous collections; I'm not sure why they just didn't re-transfer the European DVDs for American release, but no matter. What we have here is a wide selection of shorts from many decades, by filmmakers both famous and unknown. Probably not too surprisingly, the best shorts come from folks you've never heard of. Most of these folks provide commentary tracks for their work (almost all of it in English).

Like many authors, filmmakers sometimes try the short form in order to "practice," which ultimately shows a kind of lack of respect for the medium; it's seen as a stepping stone to features rather than a form in itself. But it also sorts those filmmakers that are good at the short form from those that aren't. Ridley Scott's first film, Boy and Bicycle (1965), starring his little brother Tony as a young boy, is a particular example of a failed attempt. Scott admits a fascination with John Schlesinger (Billy Liar) at the time, and his endless attempts at arty realism are painfully dull. This film was also released on Paramount's The Duellists DVD, and both times I sat down to watch it, I couldn't make it through. It's a pretty long 27 minutes.

It will be a few more days before we find out the lineup for the inaugural edition of the Middle East International Film Festival in Abu Dhabi, but festival programmers have announced one thing already: a short-film competition open to anyone living in the Middle East.

The Hayah Film Competition ("hayah" is Arabic for "life"), sponsored by the festival and by Abu Dhabi Women's College, is taking the theme "life at the size of an iPod screen." Projects must be less than five minutes long and submitted in an iPod-compatible format. All the entries will be watched and judged on iPods; it may not surprise you to learn that EmiratesMac Apple User Group is also a presenting partner in the competition. Entries can be submitted now through Sept. 27, and prizes (including cash) will be given in student, professional, and amateur categories.

The Middle East International Film Festival is new, but it has a few things going for it already. One is its director, Jon Fitzgerald, a veteran festival programmer and co-founder of Slamdance, whose appointment Kim Voynar told us about in July. Another is its location. Abu Dhabi is the richest city in the world and is the capital of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, a modern, wealthy nation on the Persian Gulf. The film festival will be held at the Emirates Palace, a hotel so opulent it makes Charles Foster Kane's Xanadu look like a Motel 6.

For more information on the short-film competition, visit the Hayah Film Competition's website. For more on the festival itself -- which runs Oct. 14-19 -- check it out here.

My introduction to Spike Lee came through the commercials he shot for Nike starting in the late 80s, featuring Michael Jordan and Lee himself as Mars Blackmon, his motormouth character from She's Gotta Have It. Eventually I caught up with his other work, and over the years I have always admired his ability to switch effectively from narrative features to documentaries to short filmmaking. He's made a flock of commercials for a variety of advertisers as well as numerous music videos, and short films for MTV and Saturday Night Live.

His short Jesus Children of America was one of seven that comprised All the Invisible Children, focusing on children struggling "in the face of violence, disease and poverty," according to UNICEF, which partially funded the project. The film played at Venice, Toronto and many other film festivals in the last couple of years, though it doesn't seem to have screened much, if at all, in the US. Earlier this year Lee struck a deal with online video startup Babelgum to show Jesus Children of America exclusively on the site. He will also serve as honorary judge of the new Babelgum Online Film Festival, as announced recently during a press conference at the Venice Film Festival.

The competition is open to short films screened at international festivals between January 2007 and February 2008. While there is no entrance fee to submit films, note that Babelgum will hold exclusive online rights to all accepted films from March 2008 to March 2009. The Hollywood Reporter notes that $27,500 will be awarded in each of six categories. The Babelgum site is still marked as "beta," but you can find out more information about their plans by clicking around a bit.

While most fans were preoccupied with whether or not Sam Raimi would be continuing the Spider-Man franchise -- and it seems that that neither Toby Maguire or Raimi can make up their minds on that question -- the director has been focusing some attention on his plans for "multi-platform" projects, which of course means projects that have components designed for the Web, cable and other non-theatrical arms. A few weeks ago, Chris had news about Raimi's collaboration with FearNet (a horror site created by Sony, Lionsgate, and Comcast) for a seven part online series through his own Ghosthouse Pictures. Now, Ghosthouse is premiering some web films of their own, on their own site.

There are four shorts in total, and the subject matter includes the usual chestnuts of standard horror films, such as the bimbo and the babysitter in peril. Not to mention a surprising amount of skin snatching. The directors for the shorts are Ben Ketai, Toby Wilkins, John Coven, and Peter Logreco, and Ghosthouse seems to be keeping both Ketai and Wilkins busy, since they are working on the FearNet projects as well. There are five more films promised on the Ghosthouse site, but no word on when that is going to be, or whether Raimi has any intention of making his own short for the site, or how deep his commitment to multi-platform filmmaking will go in the future. Considering the amount of rumored Raimi projects on the horizon, I doubt he is going to have the time to focus on much else.

Gentlemen (and ladies!) start your engines, er, cameras. Film Racing is coming soon to a city near you. Here's how it works: teams meet at a noon at a predetermined location, where they receive a theme and a "surprise element" that must be included in their film. Then they have 12 hours to write, shoot, edit and score a short film no more than four minutes long. A few days later, all the films from that city will screen at a local theater, and winners will be announced and awarded fab prizes.

The Seattle International Film Festival does something similar every year with their Fly Filmmaking fun, and it's always one of the more enjoyable parts of that fest. If you're a filmmaker, and you'd like to try your hand at making a film in half a day, you'll find The Rules and everything else you need to know over on the official Film Racing website. Boston and NYC are accepting registration now, and Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Portland, OR and San Francisco (What? No Seattle? C'mon, guys ...) are coming soon, so get with your filmmaking pals and start pulling equipment together.

And hey, if you decide to pull together a team, drop us a line and let us know so we can root for you from the sidelines!

One of my favorite things about the Sundance Film Festival has always been the different shorts programs they offer. These are short films from around the world that you would probably never be able to see anywhere else. There is always a great variety of different material, styles, and performances. Sure, sometimes you'll run into something that you might not enjoy, but you know that within ten minutes or so, you'll be watching something else. Not to be cliche, but it's a bit like a box of chocolates ... some are good, some aren't.

This year's Sundance shorts are being offered up on iTunes, which is a fantastic way for these films to reach a new audience. Typically you might see these films at Sundance, and then never be able to find them again. If you were lucky, you might see them on the Sundance Channel, but even the chances of that were slim. Kudos to the festival and Apple for making these available online. As much as I'm a fan of flash fiction and short stories, short films are perfect for me, and I'm sure there are other people out there who enjoy them.

Are you obsessed with trying to figure out the manic mind of David Lynch? If you win this contest hosted by ThisNext, then the prizes will take you a long way down the road and hopefully help to unravel some of the pieces. A word of warning though, once you set foot on this trail you'll go insane trying, or you'll reach a whole other plane of existence. Or something. The key is just not to blame Cinematical in the process, because you're not supposed to shoot the messenger. Although, if the messenger was just pure evil, I guess that would be okay.

While Inland Empire itself is just now being rolled out in theaters (check here to see where it is near you), Lynch has been confounding minds and expanding horizons ever since Eraserhead back in 1977. You've probably seen Blue Velvet at some point, or heard people talk about Twin Peaks around the water cooler, back before TV shows like Lost filled the current need for enigma in our entertainment. So at the very least, you probably know he's one weird guy. If you want to know here's what you can win:

This week's prize, assembled by the dancing dwarf from Twin Peaks, contains:

• The first Inland Empire poster ever made available to the public
• A signed Eraserhead deluxe DVD.
• A Dumbland deluxe DVD: You've never seen cartoons quite like these.
• A David Lynch T-shirt.
• The Short Films of David Lynch: This DVD = weird x 6.

Sound good? Head over to ThisNext and follow these instructions.

How to Enter:
1. Go to ThisNext.com (comments left on this blog don't count as entries. You must recommend an item someone else can buy)!
2. Recommend things that help you express your creativity.
3. Tag your recommendations "creativity"
4. Multiple entries increase your chances of winning.

That's it. Get cracking and let us know what sort of maddening or enlightening information you're able to glean.

The idea and feelings behind Christmas change drastically at a few key points throughout your life. Of course, there's the first realization that Santa does not actually exist, and instead your mom and dad are buying the presents -- at the same time, trying to convince you it is instead some big fat man from the North Pole who's sliding down the chimney with a bag full of stuff from the local mall. Some kids just connect the dots as they begin to get older, others find out from "smarter kids" and, well, people like me find out after they get up to go to the bathroom at midnight.

Once the cat is out of the bag, you go through a brief period of time where, instead of harassing Santa through poorly-written letters, you harass your poor parents. A lot of the magic is now gone, and it becomes simply about the gifts. However, once you're old enough to start working, a new kind of pressure emerges -- the kind that quietly whispers in your ear: "Hey kid, you should start getting presents for other people now." Once that happens, Christmas, as you know it, is officially over ...