Our Five Favorite Short Films of 2009
As we've come to welcome our new media overlords, so has the market for short films expanded and further evolved. Once measured as an extra five or ten minutes to sneak into a screening, the short film has found a new home through online distribution as well as overshadowing the films they get partnered with at film festivals. That said, here's my Five Favorite Shorts of 2009: 
5) The History of Aviation (New York Film Festival, 2009) This is an infuriating short that reads like "filming-by-the-numbers." But it's impossible to deny that Bálint Kenyeres' film isn't magnificent in its' composition as it zooms in and out of the mountains, to the sea and back again while a family searches for a missing child. There's little sense of dread as period actors fumble about or the elderly matriarch drools in her wicker wheelchair. This is instead what you should give to your aspiring filmmakers and say, "This. Just without the whole hammer-on-the-head bit about modernization and crashing."
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4) Batman: Ashes to Ashes (DailyMotion, 2009)
We were watching this take on Batman as Sin City by way of The Spirit by co-writers/directors Julien Mokrani and Samuel Bodin. It takes all the good parts of an Elseworlds tale and turns it into the sort of thing that you'd never see released under the Batman mythos. Also, it proves a French Batman is still as disturbing as the actual Batman.
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3) The Slow Game (NYFF, 2009)
Paolo Sorrentino's incredibly intense, yet completely average setting against a rugby practice has you on the edge of your seat the entire time. Only when you realize the tension is nothing but a daily occurrence, do you appreciate the weirdly comforting nature of the short. Also, wicked Guitar Hero cameo.
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2)Plastic Bag (NYFF, 2009)
Ramin Bahrani proves he has a wicked sense of humor with this short that divided people at NYFF this year. But I'll be damned if it isn't awesome.
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1) Marble Hornets (Something Awful, 2009)
What started as a Goon thread about creepy images gave birth to a legitimately frightening figure: The Slender Man. A few days later, someone posted about their friend Alex was working on a student film. He slowly got more and more irritable until finally he gave up and couldn't watch the tapes. That was 2006. In June, the tapes were brought back out in an attempt to see what happened to Alex.
Here's the first take:
Hornets is legitimately enthralling, sucking you into its' world (follow the 90+ page thread on SA) and even updating on twitter in real time.
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