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October 23, 2009

We Were Once A Fairytale

I know I'm a bit late to this particular party, but I just had to mention this short film from Spike Jonze and Kanye West, which to my understanding has been appearing and disappearing online for the past week or so. I found it here. Hopefully when you read this it's still available.

I was referred to it by two friends who compared it to a few short films of my own; and indeed, it's right up my alley - partially for West's convincingly obnoxious performance in the first ten minutes, partially for the sad surrealism of the last two, but mostly because the disparate juxtaposition of the two yields something that, while somewhat obvious in the symbolic sense, is surprisingly moving for that very same reason.

And what of Jonze's other fairy tale, currently in theaters? I don't really want to write about it, because to do so, I think, would be to dilute the memory of those two precious hours. An irreplaceable mixture of film and filmgoing. I'll wait until I've seen it again.

UPDATE: Today's New York Times has a story on how the short film was leaked prior to its intentional release on iTunes this coming Tuesday...

Posted by David Lowery at October 23, 2009 1:20 AM