Happy Noam Chomsky Day, my dears!

Here’s what I have for you this week…

Camilo Caballero listed, “10 Historically Influential Short Films,” on his blog Breaking the Fourth Wall on December 3rd:
“Yet, there are whole aspects of the filmmaking world that go well beyond features, and to claim that the real cinematic art lies purely on over an hour long movies that would be an utter farce. That’s why today I want to talk about short films and their place in film history. These ten shorts are not only great and acclaimed world wide, but they have the very special honour of being very influential to the history of movies, more so than many well beloved feature length films. Unlike my other lists, where I usually rank the movies in question in order of how I personally appreciate them, today I’ll list these shorts chronologically, since we’re focusing on their degree of influence and not necessarily their quality (though all of them very well deserve to be considered among the best that cinematic art has to offer). So here they are: 10 historically influential short films.”

On December 5th, Taffy Brodesser-Akner interviewed Amy Heckering for The New York Times:
“If she can, Amy Heckerling writes all night and sleeps until 2 p.m. She’s heard that night people don’t live as long, but she read somewhere that when we were all tribes running around together, some people, the nervous types, were tasked with staying up all night to keep guard and serve as human alarm clocks. That’s her, she said.”

On December 6th, Mike Vanderbilt over at the Daily Grindhouse looked at the music videos of The Killers:
“With their full length debut Hot Fuss, The Killers painted a neon and synth drenched vision of modern day Las Vegas. On their follow up Sam’s Town, the band looked to the more rustic back roads side of their home state of Nevada. Their 2009 release ‘¡Happy Birthday, Guadalupe!’ featured Los Angeles punk/mariachi band Mariachi El Bronx as the band’s horn section as well as east coast indie rockers, Wild Light. The video doubles down on the mariachi inspired track, cribbing from westerns, featuring Luke Perry filling in the boots of the lone cowboy, searching for his lost love. The video is inspired by westerns—American and spaghetti—and features imagery inspired by Mexico’s Day Of The Dead.”

Enjoy!