video

Ten Second Films is a digital video competition in which all sumbissions must be exactly 10 seconds long. They received 1000 submissions (that’s 10,000 seconds total — a little under 3 hours = 1 regular film!), narrowed it down to 200 finalists, then chose 3 winners. The competition reminds me of Hemingway’s reputed 6-word short story (which he is said to have called his best work): For sale: baby shoes. Never worn. Like that evocative story, a good 10 second film must rely on creating a mood to imply the rest of the story. The 3 winning videos do just…

Come into my tummy, oh so very yummy. (Click here to watch at YouTube.) Also, this and this. And also, this. Apologies for my grand writing absence of late. Work is winning. Happy Memorial Day everyone!

Back when I posted my long lost favorite Sesame Street video, my awesome cousin Adam told me about this movie, Moonbird. It won an Academy Award in 1959 and is just so stirringly great. One of the things I loved about that Sesame Street video was the way the girl talked, and this is a movie built on a foundation of kids talking like real kids. John and Faith Hubley (audio) taped their young sons talking and then created the animation around their conversation. I love the way it rambles with kid logic, and I love the interaction between the…

I meant to post this one a few months ago but other videos kept jumping in line. And as it turns out, the timing is good: Welcome to FMV – The Mother’s Day edition! Yesterday I was driving my 9-yr-old Subaru Outback which, I’m proud to share, we just flipped to 100,000 miles. Back when we moved from NYC to NC, the Outback was my first ever new car, and this is my first ever time flipping an odometer. Needless to say, the car is nicely broken in. Kinda like my old LL Bean Bluchers whose sole was held on…

My mom once met a woman who had 12 yr old twin boys. She told my mom that when her sons got into making mischief it was so much more mischievous because it was two brains working together to come up with things to do. And two brains could cook up far crazier schemes than one brain alone. At the time, Zoe and Lucy were only around 2, and while the terribly twos were keeping us busy, it was all still within the realm of baby brains and, therefore, handleable (for the most part). This woman’s story seemed almost charming…

I am so excited to have found this video on YouTube. I loved this cartoon from my Sesame Street/Electric Company years, and my brother and I can still make each other laugh reciting the girl’s shopping list. But I have never come across anyone else who remembers it. Despite many years of reminiscing about the TV world of my youth. Seeing it again for the first time since I was very small, I’m amazed at the excellent animation — the mother’s hands, the constant motion of the little girl, the Oz-like mother in the thought bubble, the sparseness of the…

When Zoe and Lucy were 2 1/2, Dora the Explorer moved in with us. Zoe and Lucy spent every waking moment lobbying to watch a “Dora movie.” We could stop any errant behavior by pulling out a Dora book or telling a story in the same format as a Dora story (Problem; I need your help to solve it; Go here, here and here; You did it!). She potty trained them and rewarded them for succeeding with Dora underwear. She was more essential to our lives than food. I believe if you had shown me this video while we were…

Has everyone seen The Landlord already? By Will Ferrell and his writing partner Adam McKay? That moment when he first opens the door and you see her? Perfect. Utterly perfect. Here’s a bit of the story, according to People. (Edit: Ugh, I had to take the embedded video down — there’s no way to disable the auto-play and it just kept playing and playing and playing…. Click on the picture above, or try the link instead.)

While searching for a fabulous video to share with you, I found myself browsing the “Mosts” on YouTube. Most Discussed, most linked, most watched on mobile. I tell ya, it’s a funny world in here, y’all. So, in the spirit of being a part of “it” while “it’s” happening, I’m sharing with you today the #1 Most Viewed video on YouTube. Just in case you haven’t seen it yet. Which is unlikely — at the time that I wrote this sentence, it has been viewed 46,014,060 times. That’s a lotta YouClick. Enjoy!

Computers have a tough row to hoe, y’know? They give give give — working day and night to enhance our lives, speed up our workflow, and give us access to information the likes (and volume) of which we didn’t even know we needed. Like, for example, how to open a champagne bottle with a sword. But if the computer acts up for one minute, yawns and stretches in the middle of a task like it has all the time in the world, or doesn’t listen because it wants to keep doing whatever it’s doing, we treat it with utter disrespect,…