The Guardian Watch: Destruction after Fires in Breezy Point, Queens

The Guardian Watch is a photograph of the horrific destruction wrought by Superstorm Sandy and the fires that swept through Breezy Point, Queens, a picture of what’s left of the Breezy Point neighborhood. The Official FDNY Flickr account has other photographs of the horrible damage from Hurricane Sandy.

The Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy: Inside the Chaos of Breezy Point, N Y

Hurricane Sandy NYC: The Evening Before and the Morning After

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Gloam: A Frightening Journey Through a Very Dark Forest

Gloam is beautifully crafted animated short film, created by David Elwell and Gareth Hughes. In the film, a solitary creature wanders alone through a dark forest and encounters a mysterious, luminous sight, with only curiosity to lead the way. With antlers, reflective button eyes and skin like bark, the hero of Gloam could have stepped out of Where the Wild Things Are or The Lord of the Rings, but it feels quite distinctive nonetheless.

Gloam: A Frightening Journey Through a Very Dark Forest

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Weary of Hurricane Sandy? Watch This Cute Tiny Boat Weather the Storms!

Little Boat: A Bittersweet Tale of Persistence and Adversity

Little Boat is a bittersweet, sometimes heartbreaking minimalist five-minute animated short film by CalArts student Nelson Boles. After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in September 2005, Boles enrolled in the Teen Program at The Animation Academy in Burbank. He was a 16 year-old young man from New Orleans, a refugee from the storm. Later, when things got back to semi-normal in New Orleans, he returned home.

Boles’s Little Boat is an inspiring story of adventure and perseverance, starring a surprisingly expressive little dinghy. The short film went viral a while back, charming thousands of viewers and winning a number of festival prizes, but it feels particularly relevant while people all up and down the East Coast braced themselves for the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy.

Little Boat imbues life into an obstinately mundane object, as the little red the dinghy steadfastly pushes forward through storms, floods and wars. One shot, at the 2:10 mark in the film, shows the little boat resolutely thrusting forward upon the stormy seas, only to have its mast shattered in half; it’s as heartbreaking a moment as anything that could happen to a more conventional animated character with eyes, hands and legs.

The deceptively simple animation contains lots of surprises, so make sure to watch it full screen with the sound turned up; half the story is in the audio.

Little Boat: A Bittersweet Tale of Persistence and Adversity

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Somewhere: Pigs Fly. And Sing. With Chickens!

Somewhere is a short film created by FMS, featuring a CG pig for the animal cruelty prevention charity, Animals Australia. The CG pig, named Peanut, takes viewers to a real factory farm before she sings Somewhere and flies to freedom.

There are many things in this world we are powerless to change, but this is not one of them. We all know how horrible factory farming is by now, and at the very least we owe all animals raised for food, a decent quality of life and protection from cruel treatment. This campaign encourages retailers, producers and consumers to work together to ensure the ethical care of animals.

Somewhere: Pigs Fly. And Sing. With Chickens!

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A Hyper-Gothic Badtime Halloween Horror Story: The Mascot

Since we’re just a week away from Halloween, let’s take a moment here, since watching movies is what many of us do on Halloween, to view this classic Middle-European badtime puppet-animated short film, complete with a fake forest awash in fake dry ice mist harboring fake subhuman atrociousness. Yes, this little film summons forth a frightening return to the dark corners of childhood, to a time of being that young kid shivering before, yet utterly fascinated by old-timey horror cobwebbiness.

The Mascot (Fetiche Mascotte) (1934) is a surreal old-school Goth-horror stop-motion puppet-animated short film created by Ladislaw Starewicz, a Lithuanian-born animator. Starewicz’ childhood passion for entomology led him to began producing short documentaries in Moscow around 1909-1910, beginning with a documentary about insects in Lithuania. In his spare time, he experimented with stop-action films using beetles, which led to his big breakthrough,The Battle of the Stag Beetles,said to be  the first puppet-animated film. The Russian Revolution caused Ladislaw to emigrate; he fled to France in 1920, where he spent the rest of his life producing surreal, lyrical animations.

The Mascot, also known as The Devil’s Ball or Puppy Love, was created using toys and demonic vegetables. The film tells a long and very strange story about a loving dog puppet, who practically goes through Hell trying to get an orange to a little girl who is dying of scurvy. The Mascot follows the adventures of errant toys lost in the frightening shadows of a dark city, climaxing with a windblown, Satan-haunted oratorio that is sure to get right under your skin.

A Hyper-Gothic Badtime Halloween Horror Story: The Mascot

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The Taxidermist: Time to Say a Final Goodbye

The Taxidermist (Le Taxidermiste) is a darkly humorous animated short film directed by Le Taxidermiste Team (Antoine Robert, Dorianne Fibleuil, Paulin Cointot and Maud Sertour) at Supinfocom. This surreal comedy tells the story of an old woman who wants to pay last respects to her recently deceased husband, a taxidermist. Following his death, the widow welcomes a somber team of funeral directors into her home, a strange apartment full of stuffed, dead animals. It’s time to get the body ready to perform the ceremony, pay a final tribute to the deceased and say goodbye to what is left behind.

The Taxidermist: Time to Say a Final Goodbye

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Monster Roll: Heroic Chefs Battle Sea Creatures in Epic Sushi Horror

Monster Roll is a wildly imaginative, comedic short action film by Daniel Blank, where heroic sushi chefs face off against giant sea monsters in an epic battle with plenty of tentacle action. The ridiculously entertaining film provides a good balance of spectacular knife-wielding heroes, mixed with strong environmental themes.

Monster Roll: Heroic Chefs Battle Sea Creatures in Epic Sushi Horror

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