Flatland is a mind-bending novel written in 1884 by mathematician Edwin Abbot that depicts an encounter between a three-dimensional person and a creature living in a universe of only two dimensions. It has recently spawned two movies: One known as Flatland the Film, profiled here, and another confusingly named Flatland the Movie. Flatland the Film is a garage effort by filmmaker Ladd Ehlinger Jr. The other movie is a comparatively bigger budget film (albeit a third the length) with name actors produced by Seth Caplan. Seth seems more interesting in bilking schools for money (by marketing his film as educational and charging teachers over a hundred dollars to buy a copy, a tactic many businesses indulge in nowadays that I find particularly distasteful) than in creating art, so you will NOT find a link to his film here, although it is easier to find on the web than Ladd’s movie, thanks to an aggressive marketing effort.

Below is a preview of Ladd’s more sincerely independent film, which you can learn more about on his website.

I’m still not sure what this is about, but it’s the funniest thing I’ve seen come out of Denmark since the Jyllands-Posten’s political cartoons that triggered an Arab boycott. OK, you may not think they’re funny, but if someone had predicted a cartoon would trigger a global political incident in some sci-fi novel, readers would’ve just rolled their eyes and murmured “Oh, right.” Real people are weirder than aliens.

Anyway, the trailer is a hoot. Watch it.

Footnote: This is actually a better quality trailer than the youtube version above.

This is a strange little foray into stop-motion animation that took the Judges Choice award at Comicon this year…

Another garage effort from Cleveland, The Rapture is the story of two cybernetically-enhanced humans and the forces maneuvering to exploit them.

Anyone remember the Start Trek episode Arena? What if the stakes had not simply been one ship, but the fate of the entire human race? What if our hero faced a cyborg in mortal combat, instead of a lumbering lizard? An what if Earth’s champion was not the testosterone-drenched Captain of the Enterprise, but an unarmed pregnant woman? That is the premise of the award-winning indie film, The Outsider.