You can listen part one here. Part two will up next week.

Shorts

Best Short: Glory at Sea – A 25 minute tour de force that uses a contemporary tragedy (Katrina disaster) to create a powerful myth that seems as old as the hills.

Special Mentions:

• Validation
• How Wings are Attached to the Backs of Angels
• Dilemma
• Home

Best Stop Motion: Illuminant – To experience this on a big screen like I did at Carrboro Film Festival was incredible.

We posted quite a few innovative stop-motion video including Lucia & Adjustment

Best Short Doc: Bullet Proof Vest

Best Hidden Product Placement: The Ramp

Best Acting in Shorts: R.L. Jackson & Tori Lee in Remember When

Best Abstract film: Pencil Face

Also:

• William Lamson
• Still Life vs Cashback

Special mentions for Animations:

• Holtgban
• Big Buck Bunny
• Ark
• Pearce Sisters

Web

Best Web Video: Dr. Horrible – It is nice to see big name talent doing web content. It certainly lived up to the hype. Hopefully, this is a sign of good things to come.

Special mentions:

• The Guild
• Goodie Bag
• West Side (nothing since June)
• Rhett & Link
• Epic Fu

Music Video

Best Music video: Fleet Foxes: White Winter Hymnal – After a year full of shocking videos, especially in content, the one video that haunted me was Sean Pecknold’s animated classic. Simple in style, resonant story and a great fuckin’ song.

Sexiest Music Video of the year: Toe Jam

Special mentions Music videos:

• How much of a woman
• Damien Jurado – Caskets
• Bjork – Wanderlust
• MGMT – Time to Pretend
• The New Pornographers – Myriad Harbour

Commercials

Best Commercial: JC Penney: Aviator – Also the cutest video of the year. The direction is pitch perfect.

• Carrboro Film Festival (it is good to love one’s own work)
  
• Zürich Chamber Orchestra

Other awards

Best Interview of the Year: Katie Couric’s interview with Sarah Palin – Unintentionally hilarious that changed the course of the presidential elections.

Best Parody: SNL’s version of Katie Couric’s interview with Sarah Palin – Saturday Night Live came back with a bang. Even more wicked than the original.

Best Online Radio: This American Life: Super

Note: Some of these videos were not released in 2008, they are included here because this is when we discovered them.

Our Australian friendsThe Glue Society, a group of artists, designers and projecteers, have created these amazing series of sculptures and films commissioned by 42Below Vodka where they’ve created chair rainbows on the frozen tundra, a curb-side wrap party, gratuitous nudie pictures for airplanes passing by, a house of crates, and a blow-up doll’s vacation paradise.

- Hi-Fructose Magazine

Watch Videos

The Glue Society’s Website

JUAN GONZALEZ: Bob Scheer, the issue also of this rush to pass this legislation—I’m reminded somewhat of the PATRIOT Act after 9/11: an immense tragedy occurs, and immediately they try to rush through legislation without many of the members of Congress even having a handle as to what it really contains.

ROBERT SCHEER: Oh, it’s absolutely outrageous, and we can’t let them get away with it. I mean, consider that Paulson was the head of Goldman Sachs, OK? He knew about credit swaps. He knew about hybrid instruments. He knew all of this stuff. And now he’s the guy that says Congress has to give him a blank check, it has to be a pure bill? Nonsense!

This is our money. Why isn’t this money used to help people who are going to lose their houses? You miss two, three payments, and they’re going to foreclose on you; then they say, “Well, we hope the banks will work out new agreements.” Nonsense! Do a freeze on foreclosures. Stop the bleeding. Have a year to let it settle, and force the banks to come to agreements.

Listen to or read the show transcripts – via Gruber

Watch them in concert – download the song for free (available for a short time)

The show page – the direct link to the mp3 (this may stop working after a while).

Currently, it is impossible to get through any respectable news program and not hear how America should interrogate (torture) its captured militants . Kolm has plenty of insight into of all of this. His experiences on his life and also torture are priceless. Kolm is against torture, besides it being the wrong thing to do, he believes you can never trust information that comes from such methods. But another point, a more subtle one, is that war has changed drastically from less than a century ago. Kolm doesn’t think the Al Qaeda’s of the world should be treated as soldiers because they are fundamentally different from Nazi’s. War and how it is conducted is on the slide, after a brief show of civility, we have regressed into being…idiots.

Listening to Nazis page – Download the show (download will start automatically) – Subscribe to the podcast

Watch it. (Flash Video)

Last weekend, I saw Lars and the Real Girl. A thoroughly enjoyable movie that adds to the awesome credentials of Ryan Gosling. The film needed an incredible performance from the lead and he surely delivers. I have to admit I was a little disappointed with the overall film and I am not certain why. It was intelligent, well directed and a quirky story. I loved the characters, all of them, but I wished it ended a little later in the life of Lars. The romance that blossoms at the end was too much of a tease. For most of the film, there was so much lifelessness, in terms of Lars falling in love with a mannequin, that I was hoping for some action with the “real” girl. Kelli Garner as Margo is so bloody cute. I wished there was more of her in the film.

M.I.A has been popping in my radar with more regularity. Her new album is one of most daring albums I have heard recently. And it isn’t music that is meant to be talked about but listened to. To promote this album she did a little interview series with music video legend Spike Jonze. I can’t but help feel a little awed by her multi-national creative streak. Watch part one, two, three, four, five, six.

September morning still can make me feel that way…

Listen. (Hold on while the MP3 loads)

P.S. The text is just the Italian translation of the lyrics.