Snark Alert: Last Sunday the Saint Louis Rams escaped the ignominy that befell the Detroit Lions, by beating the Lions.  Last year the Lions did not win a single regular season game.  Until last Sunday the Rams were on track to repeat the Lions’ fate.  Now the Rams are one and seven and the Lions are one and six. Now that we are looking back to last season, then let us look at the totality of the Rams losing streak.  From the end of last year’s season through the beginning of this year’s season a total of seventeen straight games were lost and not just this season’s seven.  So a message to my Michigan friends, if you are going to lose big, spread out your losses.  😉

Today’s offering from Chris’ camera is a movie that stars our brother Frank.  It was filmed in our backyard in Ann Arbor in the early seventies.  It features a few special effects, so it is more than just a home movie.  It is basically a couple of kids, my brothers, having fun with a movie camera.  It looks like it was filmed in wintertime.  This year Chris had the original 8 mm film digitized.  I added the sound effects and score.  Be sure to go to widescreen.  Enjoy!

I’m sure that Bruce Branit started from similarly humble origins as Frank Scores.  As a film-maker he has moved on to more ambitious works.   I found his latest effort on YouTube, last weekend.  I give you the Vimeo edition of World Builder, a nine plus minute film, one part virtual reality and one part love story.  Here is a description of the film:

A strange man builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves.  This award-winning short was created by filmmaker Bruce Branit, widely known as the co-creator of ‘405’.  World Builder was shot in a single day followed by about 2 years of post production.  Branit is the owner of Branit VFX based in Kansas City.

Branit’s previous film, 405, shows a DC-10 jet making an emergency landing onto the 405 freeway in LA.  I used this film as a training aid before Dan left on last month’s LA driving experience.  The first highway out of LAX airport is the 405.  Here is a description of the film:

405 is the name of a 3-minute film released in June 2000 and produced by Bruce Branit and Jeremy Hunt. It was the first short film to become widely distributed on the Internet and became a media sensation for a short time. It is generally thought of as one of, if not the first viral film property.