From Tugboats to Polar Bears

Reviewer: Dylan de Thomas
Rating (out of 5): ****

From Tugboats to Polar Bears

Recommending experimental short films can be a tough business. As so much of liking a regular movie is about taste, it seems that with shorts it can even be more so. They're the pinncale of the vitamin movie in your queue - the one that's in there that you should watch because it's "good for you," even if the thought of watching it is grim business. Well, while Portland filmmaker Matt McCormick's From Tugboats to Polar Bears is indeed a compendium of short films, some of which did even making their debuts in art galleries, it could hardly be thought of as anything but fine, engaging entertainment, with only the bare minimum of vitamins.

The best known of the collection - and the finest of the lot - is definitely The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal: a funny, thought provoking short narrated by Miranda July, of Me and You and Everyone You Know fame. The short posits that the city employees that drive around painting over graffiti with paint-rollers are they themselves the unwitting, subconscious members next step of abstract expressionism. It's laugh-out-loud good, poking gentle fun at graffiti artists, well-meaning governmental types and art theorists as well as giving you something to think about later while you stare at the blocky mis-colored boxes painted over tags or stencils on overpasses or warehouse walls.

Also included in the collection are two of McCormick's self-styled children's movies for adults: Towlines and American Nutria. The former is a short history of the tugboat - and who doesn't love tugboats? - with incredible tales of the little boats that could. The latter is a history of the Nutria, a large water-dwelling rodent (think a huge, swimming rat) that was imported from South America in the late 1920's for their fur - a move ultimately failing when the market realized the fur was from a huge, swimming rodent - and later escaping and populating many areas of this country as a voriaciously destructive, invasive species.

The rest of the DVD has some neat stuff, too, with Sincerely, Joe P. Bear and The Vyrotonin Decision interesting found-footage pieces; Grounded is a beautiful look at wildlife in urban, industrial settings. Rounding out the collection is an excellent video made for The Shins' "The Past and Pending"; that band's lead singer, James Mercer, does fine soundtrack work on Towlines.

Similar To: Vernon, Florida, Okie Noodling, My Kid Could Paint That, Shorts! vol. 2.