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Dear Scrappy readers, I have a confession to make: Until this week, I didn’t realize short films on Vimeo can include a director’s commentary track. I made this discovery while watching Jordan Michael Blake’s 12-minute animated short, Paradise Man. The film, a 2025 Sundance selection, combines various low-resolution animated GIFs to tell the story of…
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October means the start of the fall/winter holiday season. Halloween arrives, then you look up, and it’s New Year’s. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, I like to think of October as starting another key period: the season of stop motion animation. Whether it’s the classic herky-jerky movement of the Rankin-Bass productions like Rudolph…
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Breaking news: The world is a strange, depressing, messed-up place right now. So much so that, as history is removed from Philadelphia’s President’s House, a key location in this country’s founding, somehow it falls to a zombie horror film to help keep history alive. Filmmaker David Dylan Thomas wasn’t setting out to make a film…
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There’s a good reason the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences requires a film festival to have ten consecutive editions before it will even be considered as an Oscar-qualifying festival. It takes that long, or longer for a festival to establish an identity, make smart film selections, and simply prove its long-term viability. Well,…
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In March 2002, merely six months removed from the tragedy of September 11, 2001, CBS aired a remarkable documentary. The project included what was billed as the only footage from inside the Twin Towers on the morning of 9/11. To say that the documentary broadcast was an event is an understatement. More than 39 million…
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Over the long Labor Day weekend, the film world seemed to be talking about only one thing: The super-secret, unannounced screening of You Can See Everything, the new Elizabeth Holmes documentary directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim at the Telluride Film Festival. While Fielder is well-known from his former Comedy Central show Nathan For You, and more…
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When choosing a Book of the Month selection, we look for something that might be instructive for new filmmakers, or perhaps, a book that highlights an interesting/underreported moment in film history. And then there are those that are just a bit random, and maybe tangentially related. This month’s book falls into that last category, while…
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Previously on the podcast, we interviewed Billy Miossi, director/editor of Goldie, a short documentary about a longtime rocker who brings his talents to long-term care facilities. That film was ultimately picked up by The New Yorker, and made available online. Miossi’s latest short doc is The Moleman, which focuses on Tom Schmidt, known as Cincinnati’s Mole Man, who has…
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As news of Dolly Parton’s death spread across the globe last week, plaudits rightfully arrived, touting many of Dolly’s legacies. Of course there was her incredible singing and acting career, her amazing support of literacy, her commitment to East Tennessee with the creation of the Dollywood theme park, and her unwavering support of marginalized groups.…
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Every once in a while, we like to check in with our neighbors to the North, and see what cinematic delights the National Film Board of Canada have to offer. (And by the way, on behalf of just about everyone in this country, we’re sorry.) Today, it’s the short Hospital, With Love. This powerful, animated short from Carine Khalifé…