This homage to computer games from the 1980s reportedly took 1,200 hours to make entirely from Lego, and features characters such as Mario Bros, Raccoon Mario, Bubble Bobble, Pong and more. The close up shots are a great touch (01:50 & 02:59) but what really sets this Lego stop-motion apart are the pixellated two-colour animations which portray some of the frustrations (01:35) and some of the ecstasy (03:02) that all of us felt at times when playing these games. Video produced by Tomas Redigh, music by Daniel Larsson.

To coincide with the release of the trailer for James Cameron’s highly anticipated Avatar, sold-out theaters all over the world showed 15mins of footage to critics, journalists and the general public, and it apparently went down a storm.

The fact that it’s Cameron’s first film since his 1997 movie Titanic, creates enough hype on its own. The story of Avatar was first conceived by Cameron eleven years ago, but he held off production until about four years ago when CGI technology was at a stage where he could fully achieve his ideas. And it is the CG that will be what everyone remembers about the film, for Cameron has invested heavily in the latest 3D stereoscopic techniques, as mentioned by MailOnline’s Eddie Wrenn:

Cameron also devised a ‘virtual camera’, a hand-held monitor that allowed him to move through a 3D terrain.This, Cameron said, allowed him to create ‘the ultimate immersive media’, which he anticipates will exceed any and all expectation. In essence, this allowed Cameron to direct the film as if it was computer game. If he wanted to change the viewpoint, he could click a few buttons on a mouse and a computer would redraw the virtual world from the new perspective.

The film’s budget is a massive $237m, so some people in audiences on release day in December may be expecting to be blown away, time will tell, but based on a review in the Guardian, Cameron may succeed:

There’s a moment in the footage I saw this morning, just after Jake has been rescued from a pack of baying, canine types, by a radiant, dread-locked Na’vi lady (who appears to be the flick’s romantic interest) when he looks around and takes in his surroundings for the first time. And it’s here that Cameron is most successful – not in the action sequences, which are admittedly remarkable and make excellent use of 3D, nor in the superb scene onboard the spaceship in which Jake’s brain is first fused with his alien body. I felt completely immersed in the sublime, bizarre beauty of the Pandorian rainforest, both comforted by its warmth, and unnerved by its inherent perversity. And that, certainly, is tribute to the 3D work – the dripping fronds almost seem to lick your face, the humidity makes you feel you should be perspiring.

This is the same concept as the daydream video in an earlier post but extended. Rather than a flashback before death, it is a video compilation of moments, both good and bad, that isn’t focused on one person’s life, but rather generic events that the majority of us experience at least once. Great editing and fitting music, directed by Will Hoffman.

Heartless was a huge hit for Kanye West, a highly experimental use of auto-tune, but this acoustic version by The Fray gives the song a totally different feel and is accompanied by a music video with a befitting level of quality.

Set in a classroom, it features a boy whose doodles in his exercise book come to life and tells the story of his heartache for a girl sitting at the front of the class. The storytelling is strong in both the animation on the pages and in the classroom scene. The director does well to choose shots that show the boys hurt, like the close up of his eyes which cuts to a shot of the girl in slow motion (01:35), it is almost as though she makes time slower and more agonising for him. All the while his sketch of a human heart travels across his pages getting battered and bruised by imaginary monsters and hazardous terrains, amongst his algebra calculations. The highlight of the post-production is when the band are visible on a scrunched piece of paper falling to the floor (02:35).

A time exposure of light tipped rotor blades of a grounded helicopter as it takes off into the dark sky. Looks like a giant slinky. Taken in February 1949, by Andreas Feininger.