Thanks to my very good friend Landon Zakheim – who curated the second annual “Razorblades in Your Reese’s” Halloween short film program at the Downtown Independent last Monday- I was exposed to the tender and hilarious ennui of filmmaker Emily Carmichael. I am very happy this has happened. Her short The Hunter and the Swan Discuss Their Meeting was an outcast among the more shocking and musically epic shorts in the program (The Legend of Beaver Dam is one of the greatest things ever, as well), but its sensibility was dry and sweet, like some Yellow Tail at a dinner party with friends you don’t quite you know yet. Her contemporary take on this classic myth is fresh and she uses her symbols well.
But it’s her ongoing animated series The Adventures of Ledo and Ix that has me jazzed up. In this currently 8-part work, Carmichael uses the pixelated melodrama of the adventure RPG to cast absurd exigence on the hero/sidekick-vs-indifferent-cosmos experience. In four minute bursts, and with only 256 colors (which close-up, still manage to evoke real pathos), she parses the loopholes of consciousness, the automation of society, fear of the unknown, and the habits we cling to that give us meaning.
I have to send my deep regrets and a fond farewell to CNN’s everyman and resident old-guy-who-knows-the-internet, Rick Sanchez. Watching Rick misread the news, mangle impromptu interviews, and generally make social media seem at once lame and revolutionary was a staple of my unemployed life. It was like discussing current events with the guy at the office who, despite knowing absolutely nothing about the subject at hand, will go on and on about some garbage some stranger sent him on the internet. He’ll eventually pull other people into the conversation awkwardly, and he’ll always draw a strange and contradictory moral from even the most straightforward snippet or event.
